As the holiday season wraps its arms around me and my bank account begins to freeze, the lyrics of a song materialize right before my tired eyes: "All I want to do, is have some fun, I got a feeling I'm not the only one." It's not certain that Sheryl Crow was thinking about GEnie's multi-player games when she wrote that, but if she wasn't, she should have been. Because there are more ways to have fun on GEnie than you can shake a modem at, and more people ready, willing and eager to join in than fans at a Star Trek convention. When it comes to multi-player games, GEnie is the champion of virtual unreality. But just when you thought they couldn't get any better, they did -- with new games, new versions, and major upgrades. Here's a sample. It's a Small World While some folks are content to build cities, others have higher aspirations -- they prefer to build planets. In Federation II, the adult space fantasy (Page 220, keyword FED), players have the unique opportunity to design and build a planet of their own that other players can experience and explore. Of course, you don't start out that way. You have to play your way up -- from short-hop deliveries to galactic trading. With enough cash and status, you'll be able to design your own planet, attract more trade and tourists, amass even more wealth, and get into politics. If you're lucky (or even if you're not), you could end up being Emperor of the Galaxy. Although you play as an individual, Federation is a game of alliances and cooperation. There's competition, of course. But it's essentially non-violent, emphasizing social interaction and strategic thinking over brute force. A player can spend time blowing up NPCs (non-player characters) if he wants, but he'll gain nothing from it. Attempting the same thing with players, however, will gain less than nothing. Fed II is a text-based game, but a special graphical front-end is available for Amiga systems and IBM-compatibles. Employing a windowed environment, FedTerm greatly streamlines game play while offering multimedia capacity. You can even configure it to display custom sound samples and graphics. And now, with a brand new version designed to run under a different operating system, FED-II is faster and more efficient than ever. "It's packed with new features," says Federation's Fi Craig. "There's room for more players, there are more and bigger planets to explore, and the owners of the planets can change them whenever they choose, adding new puzzles and giving you an endless variety of new experiences." We Got the Power For interaction of a different sort, drop into the cockpit of an armored CyberPod and tap into the power grid in Simutronic's CyberStrike -- Computer Gaming World magazine's 1993 Online MultiPlayer Game of the Year. Cooperation and teamwork are important, but here the emphasis is on hand-eye coordination. Conquest and control of the power grid is accomplished by blowing up enemy towers and CyberPods, while protecting your own team's towers and remaining relatively intact. In the world of CyberStrike, power is everything -- literally and figuratively. Cyberstrike (Page 1380, keyword CYBERSTRIKE) is a VR-type game that is run exclusively through a graphical front-end. To play it, you need a minimum of an IBM-compatible 386/25 with a VGA graphics card and 2 megabytes of RAM. To download it, simply select menu item 2 on Page 1380; the files are self-extracting, so you just copy them to a separate directory and run them. Here too, major changes have been made. Just released Version 1.5 incorporates a host of new features, including 16-bit sound, custom sound file support, new joystick routines, Thrustmaster FCS support, enhanced pod performance and speed, new shields, new modules, and extra view keys. Some rules have also been changed to improve gameplay, most notably one which eliminates the need for multiplier points to purchase pods, and applies weight values instead. Now, speed and maneuverability have to be factored against armor and firepower, producing a greater variety of play options. Player reaction has been enthusiastic. WARLOCK (S.Stavropoul) summed it up nicely: "Sounds incredible guys!! Can't wait to play it!! HEHEH. Using your doomed pod as a weapon. Better sb16 sounds. New shields. Old bugs gone. SOUNDS AWESOME!" New Kids on the Bahn Speaking of new, a pair of new arrivals to the GEnie family this year brings modern variations to some classic fantasy roleplaying games. MUD-II by MUSE Ltd, is a new breed of multi-player RPG designed by Dr. Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw. MUDs, or Multi-User Dungeons, originated years ago in England as a university project (need we say more). They quickly gained in popularity and soon evolved into a vast collection of text-based multi-player games. MUD-II is the latest and greatest step in that evolution, offering gamers the ultimate enticement: a chance to take part in designing the game. MUD-II: The Quest for Immortality (Page 1550, keyword MUD), presents you with an ever-changing landscape of puzzles, populated by unusual creatures and unexpected dangers. Continued survival and success ultimately lead to becoming an immortal, or 'wiz,' where you actually become part of the team that runs the game. But that's not the end of the game, it's only the beginning. With immortality comes a whole new set of commands, a whole new set of challenges, a whole new set of responsibilities. Island of Kesmai started out over ten years ago as the Dungeon of Kesmai (DoK). Combining text descriptions and ASCII graphics in a multi-player environment, DoK's emphasis was action and adventure over pure roleplaying. It too became a huge hit. Kesmai improved the game, developed a powerful graphics front-end for Macintosh and IBM-compatibles, and brought it to GEnie as Island of Kesmai or IoK (Page 830, keyword ISLAND). IoK is big. Roughly 120,000 squares of playing area, populated by 5,000 critters of various types and temperament. It's computer-moderated, with lots of action and little emphasis placed on roleplaying. But it's full of surprises. For instance: You can roll up to EIGHT different characters, and switch among them at will; 'bequeath' the experience, bank account and locker possessions of a dead character to a new one; even transform a critter's carcass into a suit of armor. Small wonder it has become so popular. Come Together Solo computer games isolate people, put them one-on-one against silicon and software. But multi-player games are socially interactive. They bring people together from all over the world. Not for politics, not for science, but for the sole purpose of having fun. What was good is now better; drop out of reality for some improved interpersonal interaction. I got a feeling you won't be the only one.