From the Editor’s Desktop
News, Rumors, and Other Issues

Contest Winners!
In last month’s contest, Joe Makkerh from Cambridge, United Kingdom won a free copy of Hellcats and Leyte Gulf. Also, both Hobart Wheeler II from Salinas, California and Scott Magnuson from Charlotte, North Carolina won a free Hellcats t-shirt. In our game poll contest, David Sattar from Paris, France won a free copy of Might & Magic III (with clue book). Congratulations! Prizes compliments of Graphic Simulations and New World Computing.


How To Enter This Month’s Contests.
In this month’s contest you can win a free copy of Carrier at War by sending in your game poll. Also, by subscribing to IMG, you can win a free MouseStick II. To find out how you can win, look in sections “The IMG Game Poll” and “Subscription Order Form” in this issue.


IMG News
Quite a few people have asked us if they could upload the Disk version of IMG to local bbs’s and the internet. Unfortunately, no. We copyright the disk version so uploading the disk version is considered pirating. Please do not upload the disk version to any bbs or the Internet. But we’ve come up with a plan so that sysops or bbs’ers can have the on-line version mailed to them so they can put it on their favorite local bulletin board. For only $10/year we will send you the on-line version on a 800K diskette. This program is available ONLY to sysops or people who wish to upload the on-line version to their local bbs. You MUST include the bulletin board’s telephone number, name of sysop, and new user password. IMG will logon and verify the bbs, and check to see if IMG is on-line. Please use the BBS PROGRAM subscription form available in the IMG folder.

We’ve also decided to offer IMG on 2 double density diskettes. However, due to the extra cost of two disks and postage, we are setting a price for the double density subscription at $30. Please use the regular subscription form.


Cool Mac Games Plus! 
No, it’s not a game—it’s a book. A book? YES! Actually, it’s a book about games! Games? Yes! In fact, it’s a book about Macintosh games. COOL! Hey, it’s about time! When’s the last time you read a book about Mac games? Well, here’s your chance. Cool Mac Games Plus! by Cameron Crotty is a delightful book that comes with two high-density disks containing 16 of the best shareware games like Solarian II, Robo War, and Glypha II. Also in the disks is a cheat CDEV called Victorie!, and a few extra levels of commercial games. Whether you’re looking for fast paced action game or a hair-pulling brain-game, Cool Mac Games Plus! is sure to have it.

The games on the disks are divided into folders that mirror the chapters in the book. The first few chapters discuss each shareware game that comes with the book and includes some helpful hints in case you get stuck or need a helping hand. In later chapters, there are some wonderful commercial game hints for popular games such as RoboSport, VETTE!, SimCity and many others. Plus there’s some cool insights about network games like Spectre and Minotaur, and even a section on how to roll your own games using HyperCard.

Just by reading the introduction you get a sense that this book is different. How? Well, simply put, it’s funny. For example, the book whimsically hints that, “This book is packaged by weight, not volume. Contents may have experienced some settling during shipping.” Cameron Crotty’s humorous approach is refreshing and really had me laughing, something that books rarely do. All in all, Cool Mac Games Plus! is a must read!

Cool Mac Games Plus! is available at all major bookstores where computer books are sold, or contact Hayden, the publisher, at (800) 428-5331 for more information. -TD 


Coming Soon
OK, enough about last month’s sick April Fool’s joke, the following rumors are true, if you can call them that. (True rumors?) Anyway, the real word on Ultima for the Mac is that it is not happening. There’s been a buzz flying around that Origin is thinking about doing Ultima Mac but those rumors were dispelled when we talked to Origin. • Look at the end of this month’s Mailbox for information on X-Wing Mac. • Three-Sixty is working on a World War II naval warfare game called Victory at Sea. It’s a strategies & tactics game much in the same tradition of past Three-Sixty games like V for Victory and Harpoon. Victory at Sea is due out in July. • MacPlay is currently developing Star Trek 25th Anniversary for the Mac. Like most other adventure games these days, it will support 8-bit color only, The current alpha/beta version of Trek supports two screen resolutions, 320x200 and 640x400. Part of the game is a space combat simulation that uses the same technology found in Origin’s Wing Commander. Star Trek is scheduled to be released this summer. • By the time you read this, King’s Quest 6 from Sierra On-Line should be in the stores. From what we’ve heard, the graphics have been dramatically improved over previous releases. The game comes on nine HD disks and will require about 25 MB of hard drive space, 4 MB RAM, System 7.0, and 8-bit color. It includes some QuickTime movies (one movie is in 24-bit), live actors, and an original soundtrack. Sierra is using a new Mac interpreter that should make porting quicker and better. As a result, Sierra this year will release Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, The Incredible Machine, Space Quest 5, Leisure Suit Larry 6, and Space Quest 4. • The latest on F-117/A Stealth Fighter from MicroProse is that the port is going very slowly, so look for it in late 1993 or even early 1994. • On a brighter note, F/A-18 Hornet from Graphic Simulations is “coming along nicely.” A June release seems likely, but don’t count out July. • Warner New Media is excited about their upcoming time-travel CD-ROM adventure game Hell Cab. Hell Cab is being produced by Pepe Moreno, the internationally acclaimed artist known for his innovative, visual storytelling and sense of color. Among his numerous works is the best-selling Batman: Digital Justice. Look for Hell Cab this summer. • Calisto, makers of Super Mines, is planning to release a Spectre-like network game loosely based on an old Mac game called Maze Wars. It is scheduled to ship at the end of May. •  The evil Grand Vizier Jaffar is back. This time he assumes your identity, steals your beloved princess, and casts you out of the palace as a beggar. In Prince of Persia II: The Shadow and the Flame, you must battle through 15 treacherous levels, encountering serpents, spikes, magic spells, quicksand, skeleton swordsmen, disembodied heads and then... well, things get just a might tricky. Features include: multiple opponents; cinematic storyline with narration and eye-catching transitions; awesome musical score and highly detailed graphics; five exotic environments; 15 hair-raising levels of increasing difficulty. PoP II is due in late 1993. • If you have any rumors or tidbits about upcoming Macintosh games, please drop us a note. All sources will be kept confidential. —TD & PN  


Changes to IMG?
As you might guess, Inside Mac Games takes a lot of time and—yes—money to produce every month. Although we can’t do much about the time element (apart from quitting our real jobs and divorcing our wives, neither being very palatable options :-), we are looking for ways to cover our costs. One of our ongoing goals is to provide the “inside scoop” (hence our name :-) on Mac releases, and that includes interviews, visits to hardware and software manufacturers, and our usual sojourn to a certain semi-annual Expo. And we don’t need to tell anyone that none of this comes cheap (but we did anyway :-).

IMG is considering two possible additional revenue sources: sponsorships and advertising. Judging from the unsolicited mail we get on the topic, there’s clearly two schools of thought on whether we should, putting it bluntly, take money for plugs. Some readers have asked us to start including advertising, saying it would be a service to readers (and a novelty, we believe, due to our electronic format), while others have already taken us to task for what they perceived as a bias or alliance with certain developers, and we’re confident that this same faction of our readership would deliver a lot of words in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS to our doorstep if they ever saw an ad in IMG. So there we are: damned if we do, damned if we don’t ;-)

While we’re perfectly capable of making decisions in a vacuum, we’re opening this one up for discussion. What do you think? What would you do, and why? Send your views to any of the addresses listed in the first section of IMG. 


Special Thanks
The editors of IMG would like to thanks all our writers, Neil Shapiro, Gregory Wasson, Steven Lundin, Daniel Augustine, Rod Whitten, SNL, Cameron Crotty, U2, Bob Nordling, Lipton Ice Tea (with NutraSweet), Jonny Faratro, Eduardo Ferriera, Ted Wagner, Eduardo Chavarri, Mary Pandolfi, Guri, Pink Floyd, Mark Rubin, and all of you who have given us their support.

We would also like to thank:

Trey Smith, Jeff Morgan at Graphic Simulations • Mark Wall at Green Mountain Software • Pete Sipoidis and Andrew Sipoidis at Changeling Software • Mike Saenz and Norm Dwyer at Reactor • Howard Luxenberg at Inline Design • Michael Beninger at Sanctuary Woods Multimedia Corporation • Eric Hook at Presto Studios • Andrew Welch at Ambrosia • Tom Byron at Spectrum HoloByte • Sally Vandershaff at Maxis • Scott McDaniel at New World Computing • Ann Emmerth at Mac Play • Vincent Carrella at Drew Pictures • Ron Haidenger at Advanced Gravis • Maureen Donnelly at Velocity Development • Kathy Gilmore at MicroProse Software • Daniel Ballew at Leviathan • Colleen Mogan at Amtex Software • Ian Gilman at Buena Vista Software • Karen Conroe at Three-Sixty Pacific and many more.....