Last month Graphic Simulations stunned and wowed MACWORLD crowds with their upcoming F/A-18 Hornet simulation. Scheduled for March or April release, this new modern fighter simulation should really blow some opinions about the future of Mac simulations! Be sure to read our exclusive sneak peek in this month's issue on the next page.
The buzzword at this year's San Francisco MACWORLD Expo was CD-ROM. A slew of new and exciting CD-ROM interactive games were exhibited at Macworld. With Apple's push to include CD-ROM drives in new Macintosh models, 1993 will no doubt be the year of the CD. Reactor gave a sneak tease of its erotic simulation Virtual Valerie II (due out in February or March). The game will feature new sophisticated 3D modeling, digitized sound effects, and an original music score. In addition, Reactor this month is releasing an update version of the original Virtual Valerie game appropriately named Virtual Valerie: The Director's Cut with new animated scenes and digitized voices. Later this year look for a new Sci-Fi adventure game from Reactor called Screaming Metal. Other new CD-ROM titles shown at the Expo were The Awesome Adventures of Victor Vector & Yondo: The Vampire's Coffin from Sanctuary Woods (which plans to release over 20 titles in the Victor Vector series over the next two years), The Journeyman Project from Presto Studios, and The Iron Helix from Drew Pictures.
Inline Design exhibited an impressive four new titles including Swamp Gas Visits Europe, Cogito, The Tinies, and S.C. Out. Also released was the long awaited Pax Imperia from Changeling Software. Other new notable games shown at the Macworld were Falcon MC from Spectrum HoloByte, Spectre Supreme 2.0 from Velocity, Spaceward Ho 3.0 from Delta Tao Software, and A-Train from Maxis.
On the hardware side, Advanced Gravis showed Macintosh gamers the Gravis MouseStick II and the Gravis GamePad. The MouseStick II looks similar to the original MouseStick but the MouseStick II has more features including five independent fire buttons and control panel software for creating custom settings. The MouseStick II will work with all desktop models of the Macintosh, from the Mac SE up to the Quadra series and it connects directly to the Mac's ADB port. The MouseStick II is available now but on back order at most mail order houses. The GamePad on the other hand is a different type of hand-held game controller, which looks suspiciously similar to a Super Nintendo controller. The GamePad comes with four independent fire buttons and a small removable joystick handle.
Altogether, 1993 should be a great year for Macintosh games. With a little luck, there will be more releases this year than any other year since the introduction of the Macintosh. If you haven't bought a CD-ROM yet, now might be the best time to get one because CD-ROM drive prices have gone down considerably in the last year. In addition, more than 20 game releases should appear on the CD-ROM platform.
The Future of Copy Protection
Ah yes, the dreaded words, copy protection. Nothing gives gamers more frustration and publishers more chills when mentioning the word “piracy.” Software piracy has been a constant headache for software publishers and some companies have shutdown resulting from widespread pirating of their product. In order to curtail piracy, many publishers in the early 80s resorted to some form of copy protection. In the early days, many programs were disk protected. In other words, you had to insert the original master disk to play the game. In fact, some games could not even be played on a hard disk, but only from the original floppy. However, these days most copy protection schemes are manual based; that is, you have to look up a word or graphic in the game's manual to answer the copy protection question. But users have also found this form to be somewhat annoying. Recently, some companies have begun using a different form of copy protection. For example, when you register your copy of Hellcats over the Pacific, Graphic Simulations will send you a code to permanently unlock the copy protection. Some recent games like Falcon MC and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis require you to enter the answer just once. Is this a better solution? It sure seems to be. While some users would probably love to see copy protection disappear all together, this is unrealistic. Lets face it—games are very easy to copy and piracy is still a big problem. So while copy protection will perhaps never go away completely, it is refreshing to see some companies relax their copy protection policies. Remember, if you don't like a game's copy protection, write the publisher. But, by all means, buy a game you have heard is good or have tried or seen. The only way you will see more games on the Mac is if you buy and support their software.
Coming in the March Issue!
In the next issue of Inside Mac Games, we will be reviewing games such as Civilization, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Pax Imperia, Spaceward Ho! 3.0, Spectre Supreme 2.0, Red Baron, and more. We will also take a first look at the new Mac joysticks. In addition, we will show you the results of our first reader survey (send them in!). Plus another sneak peek, the premiere of the Mad Mac cartoon, more tips, more tactics, and much more.
Special Thanks
We would like to start out the year by thanking all the software publishers that have given us their support during this project. Without their help (and software), it would have been impossible to publish the IMG. Thanks to all our writers, Steven Lundin, Mark Rubin, David Letterman, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Wings, Paul Dimitre (CzarDmitri), Bart Farkas, Sandy Kettenhofen, Rod Whitten, and all Macintosh gaming enthusiasts.
Special thanks to:
Trey Smith, Jeff Morgan, and the rest of the crew at Graphic Simulations
Mark Wall at Green Mountain Software
Pete Sipoidis and Andrew Sipoidis at Changeling Software
Norm Dryer at Reactor
Howard Luxenberg at Inline Design
Michael Beninger at Sanctuary Woods Multimedia Corporation
