~The Adventurers Journal By Martin Keen As promised this month's journal contains a preview of the graphic adventures set to be released sometime this year. Roughly in chronological order, these are the games that you may (or may not) be playing in the months ahead. ~THE ORION CONSPIRACY ú Domark ú Due Out: Any Day Now Promoted as an "adult" adventure containing "adult" themes. A bit of swearing has crept into the dialogue, and a dark and sinister plot is set to unfold. Whether all this is just a way of trying to cause a bit of controvesy, or is actually trying to cater for a different market remains to be seen. But the SVGA graphics look nice. ~SIMON THE SORCERER 2 ú Adventure Soft ú Due Out: Now This all-British sequel promises to follow in Discworld's footsteps. The original game suffered from poor puzzles and a lack of pace. Most of the time was spent getting stuck because the player did not spot a vital object that was blended into the scenery and only about 3 pixels wide anyway! Still, the last section of the first game was good and hopefully this will pick-up from where it left off. Chris Barrie again plays Simon. The game will contain 80 locations and about 100 characters (which could require the other voice-over artists to have a pretty wide range of voices!) ~STAR TREK: TNG "FINAL UNITY" ú Spectrum Holobyte ú Due Out: Very Soon All eight main crew members from the series appear in the form of voice-overs. The game has the look and feel of an episode from the series, even the intro sequences are nearly identical. The graphics used for the cut scenes are fantastic but the characters in game are simply digitised faces which have later been animated. But if all goes well this one could be a cracker. ~SPACE QUEST 6 ú Sierra ú Due Out: June Sierra take the series one step further with yet another Space Quest game. Initial reports have been quite a shock because they hint at this Space Quest game actually being quite good. The graphics are a cartoony SVGA affair with a similar feel to Kings Quest 7. The plot features take offs of Star Wars, Aliens, and Street Fighter 2. The game is bound to do well in the USA but the American humour may not be quite as successful over here. ~TOTAL DISTORTION ú Mindscape ú Due Out: July This one just about makes it into the graphic adventure preview, but it's pretty hard to slot it into any category. Its a game about rock music, the idea being to set out in search of the perfect music video. Its all very weird indeed and will either be brilliant or a complete pile of tripe (thats if its possible for a computer game to resemble a collection of fish). ~KINGDOM O' MAGIC ú Sales Curve Interactive ú Due Out: August Wacky. Mad. Silly. None of these words are sufficient to describe the plot of KOM. Its all set in a not-at-all-serious fantasy world filled with magic, dragons, and err.. Rincewind (oh no - wrong fantasy world!). In an attempt to make the game non-linear three seperate quests are available which can be completed in any order. And as an added bonus the music has been bought up from those weird Guinness ads. SCI have never produced a graphic adventure before and the games they have produced haven't exactly been brilliant (The Lawnmower Man 1 and 2 for example) so don't expect this to be up to much - but then you never know. ~I HAVE NO MOUTH & I MUST SCREAM ú Cyberdreams ú Due Out: Summer This adventure is based on an extremely popular book of the same name. Apparently this short story is one of the ten most reprinted stories in the English language. Question is, have YOU ever heard of it? Its another one of those "adult" interactive entertainment affairs but just for once this game may live up to its inevitable 18 rating. This will be no twee Kings Quest-type story. ~ALIENS - THE COMIC BOOK ADVENTURE ú Cryo ú Due Out: Summer Now here's a game that looks promising. Its even promising they'll be no need for the usual tactics of picking up every object come across then trying to use it on every other object whenever a puzzle element comes up. In this game if you don't need an object immediately you can't pick it up. Whether this will really be effective in practice is another thing entirely, but with a solid storyline and gameplay oozing with atmosphere this might be one to look out for. ~THE DIG ú LucasArts ú Due Out: Ever? The official date is December Origin's Strike Commander set a new record when it was released two years later than promised. LucasArts look set to beat it. The game thats redefined "delayed" seems determined to see off all comers. It was originally scheduled for release a couple of months after Sam & Max - which was back in 1993! Since then there has been talk of a new game engine, namely StoryDriod, which was subsequently dropped so the team started all over again. If you've not already heard The Dig is based on a short story by Steven Spielberg who is a great fan of LucasArts so when he was told the tale was too expensive to make he sold his idea to them. Then he started wanting changes made and the original code ended up in such a state they had to start over. There are still very few details of the actual game's storyline, all is known is it will use a modified SCUMM engine. Once the Full Throttle fever dies down attention is bound to turn to LucasArts next adventure so maybe more details will be made available soon. Or maybe they'll just give up.... ~Contact me on Cheet Sheets BBS by mailing a message to Martin Keen Copyright (c) 1995 Eurowave Leisure Ltd.