The European Computer Trade Show - Spring '96 A report by Richard Hewison Olympia played host once again to the ECTS. This show was significant as being the last Spring show to be held. From now on, there will be just one trade show a year, in the Autumn. After wandering around the stands I could see why! Most companies keep their big titles under wraps until Christmas, so they have little of interest to display in the Spring. There are really just two platforms worth publishing titles on at the moment in the games industry: IBM PC CD-ROM and the Sony PlayStation (PSX). The Sega Saturn (also CD based) comes in a poor third, and many publishers are already getting sceptical over the still non-existent Nintendo Ultra 64, which will be cartridge based. One of the biggest stands at the show (with the exception of Sony) belonged to MicroProse. They were showing off a number of titles. After the success of their "Star Trek - T.N.G. - A Final Unity" graphic adventure game last year, they have another Trek license on offer this time around. "Star Trek - Generations" is based on the film of the same name. They had it running on a Pentium PC using Windows 95. The section of the game I saw looked like an SVGA version of "Doom" but with Star Trek items and sound effects. People by the stand were dressed up in Next Generation Starfleet uniforms and were handing out promo leaflets for the game. From these, it looks like you will also get the chance to control the Enterprise during combat, using an interface which looks a little similar to "Elite". The game will also use the voices of the movie cast to enhance the authenticity factor. The release for the Win 95 and PSX versions is scheduled for this Autumn. MicroProse also had the follow up to "F1 Grand Prix" available to play. The graphics have been vastly improved over the original, and it can also be played in SVGA if your machine can handle it. The Pentiums running the game on the stand didn't do a particularly good job of demonstrating this, as it looked quite jerky in SVGA. Apparently it should run fine on a 486 DX2 in standard VGA with all the detail options on. The game was supposed to be released at the end of April, but it has been put back again until the end of June. "Magic: The Gathering" is based on the massively popular card game. I know Sue has been keen to see this game for quite a while. Last year MicroProse took the decision to make the game Win '95 only, hence the delay. It is now quite close to completion, and was on show for the first time. From what I saw, you take direct control over your character and walk them around the isometric map. When you encounter other characters and/or enter buildings, the card game elements come into play. The artwork and stats of the original card game have been faithfully re-created. Being a Win '95 only game, it runs in SVGA and therefore looks very crisp and clean. How it plays is another matter, but unlike their last attempt at an RPG (Darklands), MicroProse do at least have a proven game to fall back on. @~Yes, I read recently that the game has been substantially @~changed and will now play more like an adventure with the card @~deck as the means of defeating five wizards. Sid Meier is aiming @~for strong AI and enough random worlds to give good replay @~value. Each game is expected to take 10-25 hours. There's a @~screenshot in SynWin, sadly cutting down the size doesn't do it @~justice but it took too many K otherwise ... Sue Other Microprose games to look forward to are "Citizens", "Master of Orion 2" and "Super Heroes" which looks and plays similar to "X-Com" (or "UFO" as we all knew it as until MicroProse U.S. forced the name to be changed). There is one thing I should mention at this point about Win '95 only games. Those I have seen to date have been notoriously sluggish running on a 486 DX2 66 MHz machine. Considering that both "Star Trek" and "Magic: The Gathering" employ 3D or isometric views, they are likely to be a little frustrating to play on anything less than a DX4 or a Pentium. Neither seemed lightning fast on the Pentiums MicroProse had on their stand, but hopefully the code might be optimised a little better by the time the games are released. GT Interactive had the most impressive entrance to a stand, thanks to the show debut of "Quake" - the official follow up to "Doom" and its ilk. The entrance was decked out like a castle, with flickering flame torches flanking the walls. In reality, the torches were lights blowing air upwards and decorated with cloth that flapped in the wake of the air and therefore looked like flames from a distance. Very smart. Anyway, having pushed open the doors I had to navigate down some very dark steps and into a very small (and packed) area bathed in red lights. In here were six Pentiums linked together in a network game of "Quake". I didn't get the chance to play it, but I watched for quite a while and had a good look. The graphics are much better than in "Doom". The lighting effects are more effective and so atmosphere wise this game looks great. The characters in the game (monsters and other players) are now proper 3D figures (as opposed to flat rescaled sprites in Doom, Doom 2, Heretic, Hexen, Duke Nukem 3D etc). They look and move very well. When a character is hit in combat they re-coil from the force of the blow. There are other more gruesome extras (blood spurts, limbs flying off, etc). but I don't want to dwell on these too much. As with a large number of up and coming games, this one will be slow on a 486. A deathmatch test version has been on the Internet for the last few months and if you play the game on a 486, a little tortoise icon appears on-screen to tell you that your system isn't really up to the task! Time Warner Interactive had a fairly uninspiring collection of titles on display. "The 3 Skulls of the Toltecs" isn't about head hunting in Liverpool. It's a graphic adventure in SVGA inspired by "Monkey Island" (for the umpteenth time!) and is effectively a Western style graphic adventure. Also on show was the game with the longest development period in the history of the industry (probably - but don't quote me on that!). "Z" began it's life over four years ago. I first saw it two years ago and I immediately recognised it as a blatant "Dune 2" clone. Well, two years down the road and on seeing it at the show I haven't changed my mind. Over head troop based wargame set in a heavy sci-fi setting, with lots of action thrown in for good measure. Meanwhile "Deadlock" is an empire building game based in a colony on an alien planet, and "Safe Cracker" is about cracking safes! (Okay, I'll admit I can't really remember too much about the latter game. It couldn't have been very inspiring otherwise I would have made more notes!). Sierra have a long list of CD-ROM full motion video games in the pipeline. However, considering how "Phantasmagoria" was slated by the press last year we can only hope the actual game aspect will improve in future. There's certainly no let up in releases. "Light House" is a sci-fi fantasy adventure, "Earthseige 2" is a sequel to...I don't really need to say what do I? More stomping robots slugging it out no doubt. No sign of any new instalments in the Space Quest, Larry or King's Quest series though. Noticable absentees were "Virgin" and "Mindscape". However, they were only absent from Olympia. Virgin's nice new offices in Kensington were only 10 minutes drive away so they ferried people back and forth instead. Mindscape meanwhile took over a nearby hotel and did their business from there instead. New titles on the way from Virgin include "Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight" and a multi-player "X-Wing vs TIE Fighter", both from Lucasarts. There is also the new Revolution adventure "Broken Sword" to look forward to, with SVGA graphics and cartoon quality animation. It also features full digitised speech and a cast of thousands (well, half a dozen or so anyway). Players of "Beneath a Steel Sky" might recognise one of the characters in this new game in a cameo role! I've spoken to a number of people who also attended the show this time, and we all agreed that it was fairly disappointing. The good looking titles seemed to be concentrated on just a handful of publishers, whilst the majority seemed to have very average and uninspiring products on show. The PlayStation console games all look very nice and glossy, but the number of strong RPG and adventure titles are very thin on the ground. As I said at the start of this report, PC and PSX are the dominant formats and Win '95 is slowly having a hold. Time for that DX4 or Pentium Overdrive processor upgrade I think! - o -