SOFTWARE NEWS: Newsflash Issue 11 ITS A MATTER OF LIFE & DEATH !! Well, it is according to Mindscape who are releasing the successful goreware product "Life & Death" on the Amiga soon. Yes, you get the chance to be 'Mack the Knife' in this surgeon-sim you get to chop bits off, slash bits up and generally dabble with kidneys and such like, ever wanted to cut some bits off and bung other bits in?? Seriously though you've to do X-rays, monitor ECGs and ultrasound etc and finally perform your life-saving operation.. this could be interesting.. "STRADDLE YOUR 1340cc HOG AND SHIFT INTO HIGH GEAR" - well that sounds distinctly rude to me but it's all aid of Mindscapes new bike game, Harley Davison: The Road to Sturgis - soon to be released on our machine. The aim is to get to a place called Sturgis in South Dakota, US, on your Harley kitted out in leathers or whatever takes your fancy (what about a nice all in one black rubber piece with a lurex helmet??) You get the chance to race in various contents and competitions on the way and once you reach Sturgis there's competitions for real. It's all done tongue-in-cheek and much humour is promised along the way... so climb on, strap up, revv up and sod off.. The Sales Curve is leaving Virgin/Mastertronic and setting up completely on its own. The company, responsible for the excellent Silkworm and Ninja Warriors has more good stuff in the pipeline including Silkworm 4 (don't ask where 2 and 3 went.. this is the humour we're dealing with) which looks absolutely superb and is pencilled in for an October/November release date.. there's also Jalecos 'Saint Dragon' to come from the team and their first original program by Amiga coder Ronald Piekat Weserik. The 3d noggins from Leeds, Realtime Software have announced their two latest titles to emerge, Battle Command (a tank simulator for Ocean) and 'Duster' a spacey-alien wotnot in 3D of course. Both titles are looking good but don't expect anything until the end of the year.. sigh.. Micrprose are promising a totally different perspective with their soccer game, International Soccer challenge. Viewed from EYE level, in a similar fashion to Gamestars USA Football game (of yonks ago) it looks quite good but how it plays will be another matter. It's up to stiff competition especially with the amount of soccer games lurking about at the moment (because of the World Cup) and the release of Kick Off 2 hardly helps.. Kick Off 2. Yes, that guy Dino Dini has been faffing with the original program and it's been totally revamped, there's many more graphic enhancements and the game has been enhanced many times. New features include: 1-4 players (2 player teams possible, 2 players v 2 players too!) Hundreds of players all with their own characteristics, enhanced control for added bend of the ball, dip the ball, sissor kicks etc, set-piece free kicks - option to dummy the ball - bend the ball - form walls and select who to pass to, 9 corners and 2 throw-ins with complete control of power, refs and linesmen (currently 1meg only), Team selection from a 16 strong squad - substitution and tactics, League/Cup options - injury time and penalty shoot-outs, Action-replays of goals and option to save them to disk (1meg only), Kit-Design - 6 strips with 32 colours - change short colours too, Facility to load player-manager teams (up to 4) and tactics, Red & yellow cards, offside rules (at last!), 16 stringent refs and facilities to load expansion data for world cups etc, pitches that mirror the conditions (eg muddy) and much more.. Release sometime in May (please!) Major disapointment of the month was hearing that Andrew Braybrook plans to have his Paradroid '90 game just vertically scrolling like his ST version.. waaahhhh!!! WHY NOT JUST CONVERT THE 64 GAME BIT FOR BIT?????? More software news next month, not too-much this time due to the time of the year (I think)... Martyn.