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ART4
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1993-02-27
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108 lines
╓───────────────────╖
║ Amazon ║
║ Guardians of Eden ║
╙───────────────────╜
by Tony Curro
Back in the, 1950s, every Saturday morning kids would flock to the
movie theater to see the latest chapter of: The Perils of Pauline,
Flash Gordon, The Lost City, Rocketman, and many others. Many of you
may not remember the serials.
It is, 2:06 A.M. on August 10, 1957. Allen Roberts, your brother, is
in the, Allister Research Expedition Base Camp, in the Amazon Basin.
A boat makes its way down the river. The camp is attacked. Some, are
stabbed, others shot. Allen disappears and his whereabouts are
unknown. What happened to Allen will change your life forever. You
are Jason Roberts. These events are, for you, the start of a
perilous journey, wrought with adventure, and alas, even death.
Danger lurks everywhere, and many cannot be trusted. Do you have the
resourcefulness to survive, and to rescue Allen? So begins Amazon by
Access Software.
Amazon, is a new type of interactive adventure, the serial. Amazon
is divided into 14 Chapters. Each chapter ends on a cliffhanger. You
can complete one chapter at a time. It is a type that will make
you keep returning to finish another chapter.
Installation requires approximately 9.6MB hard disk space. It will
run in 'basic' or 'SUPER' VGA.
Minimum hardware requirements:
286/12Mhz, hard disk, 640K RAM (540K available), VGA, Mouse.
Recommended hardware requirements:
386/20Mhz (or faster), Super VGA, Sound card, others as stated above.
Amazon features a full sound track and digitized speaking
characters. To use Super VGA mode, you card has to support the VESA
standard. The game comes with drivers for many popular cards, and
most cards already have VESA drivers as part of their utilities
disk. Amazon will set this up for you.
You see the game from first or third person perspective. In the
third person, you actually move on the screen. In first person view,
you are looking at things. There is also an interlude called
Meanwhile. These are flashes about what is happening elsewhere in
the story.
For those who are familiar with this type of game, you will recall
using a hint book, or calling for game hints. Amazon saves those
steps. It has a pop-up on-line Help window. It is also configurable.
For those experienced gamers, you could opt for no hints. Those with
some knowledge can choose up to 3 levels of help, from a little to
very detailed. The choice is yours.
The opening of the game is just like the old movies. You see a
countdown, followed by the name. You now start your adventure. The
game starts in VGA mode. If you have a VESA driver installed, you
can hot-key using ALT-V, to go into Super VGA mode. This gives you a
tighter screen, which gives you more options on screen at once. For
example, in Super VGA, mode, there is a strip running across the top
and bottom of the screen. At any time in the game you can click on
one of these and recap that chapter. Of course you have had to
complete the chapter before you can review it.
CD-ROM versions for the MPC and VIS standards are under
construction. There is limited speech in the disk based version,
otherwise you would not have a hard drive big enough to store it
all, not to mention the cost of the program. However, the CD-ROM
version will have much more speech, and other added features.
This Interactive Cinema Adventure, called Amazon, has been selected
by ComputerTalk Magazine as one of the Editor's Picks for 1992. It
is in the vein of other games out there like: King's Quest, Space
Quest and so on. While those are also excellent games, Access does
thing a little differently with the serial-type format. In essence
you are playing 14 games in Amazon. Each Chapter is a complete
adventure that can take up to four hours to complete. This makes you
want to keep returning, just as you did years ago each Saturday, to
find out how this weeks' adventure will end, and how your hero will
get out of the predicament he got into last week.
Three cheers for Amazon, and I hope to see more wonderful games like
this from Access.
As a sidebar, Access is a three time winner at CTM this year. Along
with accolades for Amazon, they also won for Links 386 Pro, and they
also helped developed the excellent golf game for Windows, Microsoft
Golf.
╓───────────────────────────────╖
║ Product Information ║
╟───────────────────────────────╢
║ Amazon ║
║ Guardians of Eden ║
╟───────────────────────────────╢
║ List Price -- $69.95 ║
╟───────────────────────────────╢
║ Access Software Inc. ║
║ 4910 W. Amelia Earhart Drive ║
║ Salt Lake City, UT 84116 ║
║ 801-359-2900 ║
╙───────────────────────────────╜