Retail Price: $59.95 (single user); $79.95 (two-user LAN pack)
Street Price: $34.95 (single user); $45.95 (two-user LAN pack)
Requires: Mac Classic or later (Mac II or later recommended), 2MB RAM required under System 6.07 or 4MB under System 7, 2MB hard disk space.
Protection: Valid serial number
 
My dream of paradise is that each and every one of you has been following Inside Mac Games since its inception, by either choosing the path of righteousness and becoming a paid subscriber or selecting the parsimonious route of eating up your company’s on-line budget by downloading the free preview edition while your boss is on that monthly junket to Pago Pago. But I know that, for some of you, IMG is a recently acquired habit. To these readers I recommend the purchase of the superior Inside Mac Games CD-ROM, which contains every issue, plus mountains of cool shareware, demos, cheats, hints, and tricks.
This Is Not A Paid Advertisement. No, I’m not receiving a penny for the above plug, nor am I mindlessly sucking up to my editor. My motivation is bone-laziness. You see, if all of you had access to the complete IMG library, I could knock this review off in a few paragraphs, beam the text to the editor, and still have time to attack that patch of weeds in the back yard before the sun goes down. It would be this easy:
“Please refer to Gregory Wasson’s fine review of Spectre Supreme in the June 1993 issue. Forget the stuff in the second paragraph about QuickTime; that’s been fixed. Likewise, expunge the paragraph that refers to a program entitled More Matrices; it does not apply to Spectre VR.
“The rest of the review, including the positive conclusion, is applicable. Please note the following differences between the two versions of Spectre:
“• Spectre VR comes with the VRchitect, a program that allows you to customize your battlefields and gaming environment.
“• Your Spectre tank is now capable of flight.
“• Spectre VR allows you the option to view your tank and enemies as more complex shapes.
“• You may choose the background music type: Cyber/Techno, New Age, Rock/Rap/Rave, or V.R. Bach.
“• Spectre VR contains a QuickTime movie option. When this option is enabled, QuickTime movies will occasionally appear on battlefield walls — you can substitute your own movies for the four included with the game. Note: Switching on the QuickTime option slows the game to a crawl on all but the speediest Macs.
“• Even with all of Spectre VR’s added options turned off — essentially transforming VR into Supreme — the game runs more slowly than its predecessor.
“The end.”
It would be this easy to update the review, because Spectre Supreme and Spectre VR are so similar that one might make the case that Spectre VR is a mighty-fine upgrade and that, in a just world, registered owners of Spectre Supreme would be able to purchase VR directly from Velocity for a moderate discount. Well, sing hey-nonnie-nonnie and hot-cha-cha, justice lives! Registered users of Spectre 1.0 and Spectre Supreme may upgrade to VR for $29.95 (if you purchased Supreme in the last 60 days, the upgrade price is only $9.95) by calling Velocity and presenting a valid serial number.
 
The Weeding Will Have To Wait. For those of you who have not been exposed to Spectre and are just joining the IMG family, here is a synopsis of the game:
You command a futuristic tank — a Spectre. When you are playing in non-networked mode, your mission is to scurry around a large, gridded matrix collecting a number of flags. To grab the flags, simply drive over them. Each level is complete when all of its flags are cleared.
Admittedly, this process would soon become tiresome if not for the inclusion of a large contingent of nasties whose sole desire is to chase you about the matrix and de-rez your precious tank through various malicious means. These enemies are comprised of, among others, fairly-harmless-when-not-arrayed-in-packs Rovers, more-heavily-shielded Warrior robots, Radar and Optically Cloaked Robots, chainsaw-like Slicers, Smart Acid Pools, and flying Hunter Killers. These more-baneful opponents are released as you progress through the levels of the game.
To beat back this aggressive hardware, your tank is equipped with a cannon and, as you graduate to more-advanced levels, supplemental weapons such as Grenades, Smart Missiles, Seekers, Scattershot, and Proximity Mines. Although you carry no defensive weaponry, your tank is outfitted with shields that allow your tank to take a certain amount of punishment before it is completely vaporized. You replenish supplies of ammunition and shields by driving over the Ammo Dumps scattered over the matrix.
Along with the Ammo Dumps, the matrix contains other treats. You will find Invulnerability Shields that protect your tank from cannon shots aimed from the front; additional shields are added to the sides and back of the tank as you roll over more orange squares. New to Spectre VR, the Anti Grav Packs (appearing as light blue squares) briefly bestow the power of flight to your Spectre. Flight is especially handy on those levels where the matrix contains Flow Fields and Force Fields. As long as your Spectre is earthbound, the arrow-shaped Flow Fields force it to travel in the direction they point whereas Force Fields are lines over which your Spectre cannot flow. A winged Spectre easily floats over these fields.
In addition to travel on and above the matrix, you can zip from one location to another by engaging Hyperspace or entering a Transporter. Launching into Hyperspace is equivalent to hitting the panic button: You’re surrounded by baddies, taking a horrible licking, and need to go somewhere — anywhere — that is less hostile. Hyperspace zips you away from your present position and plops you down randomly in another spot. Paired Transporters, on the other hand, lack this random element and move you quickly from one Transporter to the other as you drive through them. Lastly, you can journey beneath the surface by entering a Submergence device. This is a dark-blue portal that sends your tank to the relative safety — Slicers are still just as nasty below as above — of Spectre’s underground. To return to the level playing field, you must locate and employ an Emergence device.
Jacked In. If you think the individual mode sounds like a mean mess o’ fun, wait until you try Spectre networked. Gregory mentioned the apocryphal tale of the MacUser editors’ PowerBook-linked, cross-country Spectre battle in his review. To this I add the story of how several Silicon Valley companies allegedly had to ban Spectre play until after 5 P.M. because the game had become so popular that networks were routinely clogged and little real work was getting done.
My personal experience has to do with the time I had the opportunity to attend a pre-release showing of Spectre VR and take on Velocity’s President, Derek McLeish, in a head-to-head battle over a couple of networked Quadras. In hindsight it occurs to me that Mr. McLeish was actually attempting to demonstrate the new QuickTime capabilities by having us cooperatively scout about the matrix to locate a wall where a movie was being shown. Because I’m a reviewer, he had to withhold his ire when I sent a missile up his tailpipe.
I’ve never had so much fun at a product demo.
In multiplayer mode, you can play with up to 8 others over an AppleTalk network. Each player must own a copy of Spectre, complete with unique serial number. The game includes a number of multiplayer scenarios that run the gamut from the cooperative Base Raid, where two teams attempt to capture each other’s flag, to the anarchistic SuperArena, where your goal is to blast everyone in sight. Spectre VR adds flight-based enhancements for many of the network games found in Spectre Supreme.
VR The Vorld. Every version of Spectre, from version 1.0 to the current VR, has allowed you to customize your tank’s capabilities to a limited extent — you are provided with 15 points to be distributed to speed, shields, and ammo. But until the inclusion of John Lindal’s VRchitect, there was no way to tinker with the other aspects of the game. VRchitect has changed all that. Although customization options for your tank are still limited to the 15-point system, virtually every other part of the game — difficulty, number of levels, colors, music, availability of weapons, placement of obstacles, lethality of enemies — is editable. This is a wonderfully powerful tool. My only niggling complaint is that you are not allowed to create a matrix from scratch; you must load a preexisting matrix.
The additions of flight, QuickTime movies, and more-complex shapes take their toll on game speed. Whereas Spectre Supreme rolled smoothly out of my accelerated IIcx, VR tends to jerk and become unresponsive when the enhancements are turned on. Although I’m not exactly tickled by this slower performance, I understand that my computer is no longer cutting edge and that computer games must take advantage of the kind of power offered by 040-based Macs (gee, it’s tough to admit that you’re operating a dinosaur!). I do think it’s unfortunate, however, that even with the VR enhancements turned off, Spectre VR runs a good 10 percent slower than its antecedent.
Paradise Misplaced. It’s not a perfect world: We can’t all have terrifically swift Macs, not everyone subscribes to IMG, and Velocity wasn’t able to add a load of wonderful enhancements to their game without taking a performance hit. Users with pokier processors may take some comfort in knowing that they can switch off these enhancements and customize their battlefields with the VRchitect to squeeze every possible bit of speed out of the game. For those who don’t mind a little jittery motion, have the tools it takes to enjoy the game to the fullest, or like nothing better than blasting those smiling androids over in Human Resources, Spectre VR may indeed be the ticket to paradise.
Pros
• VRchitect allows you to customize the game
• Terrific graphics and sound
• Music is selectable
• Great new features such as QuickTime movies, enhanced views of tanks and enemies, and the ability to fly
• Network play
• Upgrade available from Spectre 1.0 and Spectre Supreme
Cons
• Enhancements can gravely affect performance on slower Macs
