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Cheet Sheets 1995 August
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CHEET43.ZIP
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1DVJOUR3.TXT
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1995-08-07
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99 lines
~The Adventurers Journal
By Martin Keen
After a month off (even adventurers need to take a holiday) its time
to take another look at the world of graphic adventures. Industry
secrets are revealed within...
~Long Gone Jackals
Full Throttle not only had superb graphics, it had thumping music too.
All through the game's documentation and end credits sequence
LucasArts plugged the band responsible for the tunes: The Gone
Jackals.
"Hear the complete rock 'n' roll soundtrack of Full Throttle on the
Gone Jackals latest album BONE TO PICK".
Sounded good to me so I went over to my local high street to route it
out. HMV didn't have it. Virgin Megastore didn't have it. Our Price
had never heard of it. Well OK, I don't suppose this band are too big
over here but seeing as I'm off to America next week I'm BOUND to be
able to get hold of it there I thought.
The Florida record stores certainly had a wide variety of musicians.
As I trawled through all the CDs beginning with 'G' I found
such classics as The Go Go Brothers, God Is A Fish, and a group which
really got my hopes up called Gone who turned out to be someone
completely different.
If you really are desperate to get hold of this album then contact
Blue Black Records in California but this could prove expensive - too
expensive for my liking. You'll find the address in the Full Throttle
User Manual. But you can't help feeling software and music retailers
have missed out on a great opportunity to sell some more CDs by
putting the Gone Jackals CDs on display next to the Full Throttle
game. Hopefully someone will catch on by the time The Dig soundtrack
is released.
~Please Insert Disc 6
Its was the most annoying thing about the Amiga. Hard Drive prices
were a rip off so virtually no games players had them. Monkey Island 2
was a nightmare to play even with a second disk drive. The problem was
disk swapping. As Amiga games became more complex the number of disks
grew until it all got out of hand and games were coming on volumes
reaching double figures. Then everyone bought PCs with hard drives and
the problem went away.
But the age of multimedia appears to be bringing the problem back.
What can you do when each disc a game is stored on has a higher
capacity than your own hard drive? You get CD swapping, thats what.
So far even the biggest games like Wing Commander 3 with its 4 CDs
haven't caused problems with excessive disc swapping thanks to
sensibly stored data. But the new Sierra title Phantasmagoria comes
on 6 compact discs. How long before the first 10 disc game comes out
and we all need to buy a second CD-ROM unit to reduce the swapping?
If you're into adventures then you're going to get a pretty sore
index finger pressing the eject button because those extra graphics,
animations, music, and speech fill up space like theres no tommorrow.
Its probably only a temporary problem though - HDCDs are just around
the corner.
~No More Mouse Scanning
Now here's a good idea from Adventuresoft, producers of the Simon The
Sorcerer games. The biggest fault with Simon 1 (and with many other
similar games) is trying to find all the objects on screen. When
scanning the mouse across the screen its all too easy to miss
something vital, especially if it blends into the background. Simon 2
has come up with a solution. When pressing the F10 key all objects
that can be interacted with (looked at, picked up etc) flash with a
white star to indicate where they are. So theres no way you can miss
a item that may help solve a puzzle. Its works very well in practice
so hopefully will be adopted by a few more adventure game producers.
~New LucasArts Graphic Adventure!
The Dig looks like it might actually make it to the shelves soon but
what else have LucasArts got in store? A brand new graphic adventure,
thats what. Its characters have been designed by Steve Purcell who
everyone knows was the creator of Sam & Max. There are going to be
action sequences too which will use the Rebel Assault engine. Sounds
good? Well don't get too excited because its aimed at children
between 4-9 years old! Mortimer And The Riddles Of The Medallion will
be available in early 1996. As for what the next real LucasArts
adventures will be we'll just have to wait. All efforts seem to be
firmly put into finishing The Dig.
Thats about it for now. If anyone has got hold of the Gone Jackals CD
then please, please mail me on the Cheet Sheets BSS (by posting a
message to Martin Keen) and tell me about it. Until the next time...