More MacPlay titles are in the works. Star Trek: Judgement Rites (late fall) continues the expedition in the highly popular Star Trek series. The new game is an adventure game that combines the challenge of role playing with the thrill of 3D space flight with the opportunity to manage landing parties in the same episodic format as the TV show. Each episode (8 in all) consists of a specific mission that requires the player to solve various puzzles and other mysteries in order to progress to the next episode. Players who may have found the flight simulation portion of the original game a little difficult will be able to choose their own difficulty level. Also look for Dungeon Master 2 from MacPlay late in the year
The crew at Cyberflix is at it again. They’ve announced 4 new titles including Mortality, Inc. (an arcade horror title like no other, Christmas ‘94), Dust (an interactive tale of a lawless town in the wired West, Winter ‘95), Dark Streets (an electronic film noir, Spring ‘95), and Titanic (an adventure/thriller onboard the doomed ocean liner, Spring ‘95).
In addition to Return to Zork, Activision/Infocom plans on releasing 2 more titles in 1994. Planetfall is the sequel to the original best selling adventure game and will be released under the Infocom label in late ‘94. Steve Meretsky, the original Planetfall designer, returns as the driving force shaping the product. Planetfall will feature live actors and an animated Floyd, the robot, against computer-rendered 3D backgrounds.
Also in the works is Shanghai II: Dragon’s Eye in the 3rd Quarter of 1994. In this solitaire version of mah-jongg, players set up a game board using 144 tiles in seven units and must remove matching tiles until the board is cleared. Shanghai II will feature enhanced graphics, and advanced game play.
Our friends from France tell us Brainstorm Software is working on a Mac CD-ROM version of International Tennis Open, one of the more popular games on the Philips CD-I platform. The game includes many options like types of courts, practice rounds, control difficulty levels, etc. Also included are actual live announcers giving the play by play of the match. But if you can’t wait till June-July for this title, you can buy a CD-I NuBus card for your Macintosh that will allow you to play CD-I titles on your Mac. Prices are around $500 for a consumer version and $1,200 for a developer unit. The Nubus card sounds like a nice idea, but given the fact that you can buy a new CD-I unit for $399.00, why bother.
A hot new interactive movie on CD-ROM tentatively titled The Daedalus Encounter from Mechadeus is in production for an October release. It is a sci-fi adventure starring Tia Carrere from Wayne’s World and Rising Sun. According to the developers the graphics “WILL blow the doors off ANYTHING that has come before.” The game will ship on a dual mountable MAC/PC CD-ROM(s). It will probably be two disks and will feature 90-120 minutes of video composited over 3D backgrounds. Sounds good to me!
The guys at Presto Studios will be following up on a sequel to the popular CD-ROM game, The Journeyman Project with The Journeyman Project II later this year. Presto promises better performance, better graphics, and much more.
Not all the news is good news. A rumor in the March issue regarding Crusaders of the Dark Savant turned out to be a false. Sir Tech assures me that Crusaders is not being done for the Mac. Cyberdreams has also decided to cancel the Mac version of CyberRace after weak sales and lousy reviews forced its cancellation.
And finally, Origin announced that it has tentatively put Ultima 8: Pagan on it’s schedule (provided they can find a programmer to port it over). In the game, the evil Guardian transports you to a world already under his dominion. You must confront alien realms and powerful new enemies in a battle without allies. The game features smooth and lifelike animation (400 frames of art per character) and 10 times the art of any previous Ultima. Once again, keep those fingers crossed.
