NEWS FLASH ============================================= Desolute ============================================= Desolute was first announced back in September 1997.Since then Vulcan have keeped quiet about the game. However, I am now able to bring you some new screenshots and information about the game. For those of you out there there that don't know about the game it is a platform/shoot-em-up much in the style of the Bitmap Brothers classic GODS. Basically, the storyline of the game is that Earth is dying and the population had ytp be moved to another planet. However, while this planet was being prepared it was struck by an alien invasion. By now, the Earths population was on the way to the planet - the alien forces have to be wiped out before they get there, it is your job to to this. You take control of a Drone Cyborg armed with the latest weaponary, it is up to you to save Humanity. The final game will have 12 massive levels for you to fight through. Through these worlds you will face over 30 different enemies, all with there own charactaristics. Things are not all bad though as you have 4 massively powerful weapons to choose from, all with addons. Despite the game supporting ECS, the graphics look very good The game contains some nice special effects such as parallex backdrops and something called anti-shock scrolling. As well as the shoot-em-up aspect of the game, there will also be a puzzle element to tax your mind to the full. Other features include full digitial speech, 3D stereo sound, a 3D intro animation and lots more. Hopefully we will be able to play the game soon, if all goes to plan we should see it in June. The game will run on any Amiga with 2Mb Chip RAM, a hard-drive and at least a 2x speed CD-ROM drive. Expect to see the game released around June '98 time. ============================================== Alive Mediasoft Re-Releasing Labyrinth of Time. ================================================ Alive Mediasoft have announced that they will be re-releasing Labyrinth of Time. This is game that was originally released as a CD32 title around 1993. The game itself is in the Myst style and is being released at such a time that it would be seen to be 'riding the hype' generated by Myst. It can't be just coincidence that it bares such similarities and Alive have just decided to release the game now. The basic story of the game is as follows. The legendary King Minos has commissioned a labyrinth bridging time and space. Once completed, this labyrinth, with doorways into all eras of history, will allow Minos to rule the Earth. You have been chosen as hero. Abruptly lifted from your routine existence, you have been dropped into a realm where time and space hang in check. Through exploration and puzzle solving, you must overcome the awesome power of Minos and destroy the labyrinth by manipulating the very fabric of history. The game contains over 1800 amazing high-res images which represent over 270 locations. Many graphics are rendered in 256 colours. One thing is for sure the games certainly looks good. The game also includes over 25mb of quality mucic and sound effects. The gameplay is not left out in the cold either. Everything is done by a simple point-and-click interface. The game can be played directly from CD or can be installed to HD. It also supports full multi-tasking. Since the game was originally released quite a while ago, it needs very humble machine specifications to run. All you wil need is a CDTV, CD32 or an A500 with 1Mb of Chip RAM. However, don't let this fool you into thinking the game is rubbish as it qouted as having graphics, sound and gameplay to rival that of Myst and 7th Guest. The game is available now directly from Alive Mediasoft for the small sum of £14.99. ================================================ APC & TCP Feature. APC & TCP are a German publishing company. They have been around for quite a while now, releasing a number of good games into the German market such as Flyin' High and Pinball Brain Damage. Most of there games have also found there way into the Uk market via Epics Publishing arm, Islona. In this article I am going to have a look at the titles that APC & TCP have set for release in the future. Phoenix This is probably the most high profile of the games they have set for release. It is a game that has been publicisd quite a lot and despite the fact that there isn't much to show for the game a lot of people are talking about it. For those of you that do not know about the game it is going to be a realtime 3-D space combat game integrating adventure and business elements. It will be along the lines of the excellent Wing Commander and Elite. A lot has been said about the 3-D engine that the game will feature. It has been said that it will be very special, of the like that has never been seen on the Amiga before. The basis of the engine will be polygon based, however, it will also be completly texture mapped to give it an excellent look. However, the adventure part of the game is also very impressive. 75% percent of the graphics were created with Cinema 4D, the rest were hand-drawn by the excellent artist, Emmanuel Henne. The game will feature 256 colour graphics, which I'm sure you'll agree, look quite stunning. There will lots of different charactors in the game to pit your wits against. The universe in which the game is played in is made up of 15 different planets in 4 systems. The engine boasts the ability to cope with realtine fights consisting of up to 20 ships at once. Also, if all goes to plan the developers hope to include TCP/IP support for multi-player games. To run the game you will need a reasonably specced up Amiga. The minimum required is an AGA Amiga with at least a 68030/50mhz, 4Mb Fast RAM and a hard-drive. Obviously, faster machines, more ram and graphic cards will also be supported if found. Release Date: November '98 Testament 2 This is the follow-up to the moderatly successful Testament. It boasts a host of improvments which should allow it to suceed where the original failed. It has a lot of competition in the form of Genetic Species, if it can compete, we'll have to wait and see. Features that Testament 2 boasts includes much improved AI, new textures, many different pixel sizes, support of screen sizes upto 320x256, VGA monitor support, new enemies, much improved engine and much more. The minimum specification of the game will be A1200, 2Mb Chip RAM and 1Mb Fast RAM. Release Date: July '98 Forest Dumb Forever This is a new platform game that is in development. I don't have much information about the game at the moment, however, I can tell you that is will feature some huge, colourful graphics and will take place over 6 hugh levels. The game will on any Amiga with al least 1Mb. Release Date: July '98 Daydream Daydream is yet another adventure game. It is still very early in development and isn't due for release until 1999, however it already sound quite good. The game will be played in a 640x256 resolution, will feature lots of speech, has over 100 locations and will have many intelliegent computer charactors to talk to. To run, you will require an Amiga with 2Mb Chip RAM, 16Mb FAST, AGA or Graphics Card, a 2xCD-ROM and a hard-drive. Release Date: 1999 Marbleous 2 Another follow-up, this time a puzzle game. Your mission in the game is to guide up tp 3 marbles through a maze to the exit by placing arrows. However, before you can leave the level you must collect some objects. To help you in your quests, there are teleports, shields, rails and many other things. There is also a forth marble in the game, this is computer controlled and has the sole intention of destroying your marbles. The game will feature over 100 levels, has AGA/ECS and CyberGFX support and a level editor with which you can design your own levels for the game, this virtually allows you to customise the game to your tastes. Release Date: July '98 Pulsator I'm sure many of you have heard about this game. It is a shoot-em-up in the Project-X mould. It promices to make full use of the Amiga hardware in its quest to be the best Amiga shoot-em-up ever. The game boasts many features that have never before been seen in an Amiga game such as 512 colours on screen at once, parallax scrolling and all at 50fps. The game will also feature a nice 2-player games in which they will be able itto pit there combined forces against the enemy. Other features includes a hugh weapon system, 6 varied levels, rendered graphics and 16bit music. The game will probably be getting both a CD-ROM and disk release later in the year. Release Date: June '98 Skimmers Skimmers is a racing/battle game set far in the future. In it, four gangs are fighting for control of a planet by winning territory in futuristic races. You pick a piece of land and then race against the other players, if you win, you get to keep that piece of land. The racing is viewed from above, similar to that of micro machines. However, instead of plain racing you also have weapons at your disposal in your quest to beat the other racers. Winning is not tne be al and end all as you score points for damaging the other cars, the more points the better. Release Date: December '98 Other games that APC&TCP have set for release (More news on these as I get it) : Magic Island (Role Playing Game) - Release: Unknown Adventure Shop (Adventure Creator) - Release: July '98 Skaut (Adventure) - Release: September '98 Westerados - Release: Unknown Gunbee F-99 - Release: July '98 Flyin' High Data Disk #2 - Release: Unknown For more information check out the APC&TCP webpage at:- Http://www.chiemgau.com/apc&tcp ================================================= Update: Caveman Species. I first brought you news on this a couple of months ago. Since then is have been going quite well and the authors have been adding new ideas and features to the game all of the time. Unfortunalty this means that the game will now be delayed into the summer months. For those of you that do not remember, Caveman Species is a Command & Conquer like game that is set in prehistoric times. Having this setting allows the developers to add many features and ideas that are not found in other games of this type. More details of the game have now been released. The game will feature a number of different tribes, all of which have the aim of conquering the 3 different maps which consist of over 90 territories. To do this you will have at your disposal a hugh variety of army units, ranging from the clubman to mounted dinosours such as the T-Rex, these beasts will be able to tear apart the weakest enemies with just one bite. All of these army units will improve as your tribe go through the stages of evoloution. Other features that the game will have includes the maps being filled with rivers, trees and seas and many other obstacles to hinder your progress, special weapons that can be brought onto your side such as witches and and the might of the gods, the ability to bribe the enemy units to join your side and much more. The game will be fully multitasking, will contain megabytes of pre-renedered animation in up to 262,144 colours, hundreds of highly detailed charactor animation, lots of sound effects, multiplayer support via modem and CD-ROM CDDA soundtrack. The specs required to run the game have changed slightly now too. The minumum specs are not an AGA/CyberGFX Amiga with an 020 processor, 4Mb Fast & 2MB Chip RAM, 2xspeed CD-ROM and a modem for mulitplayer games. However to play the game at its best an 040 is recommended along with a 6x speed CD-ROM. Like I said before the game is now set for a summer '98 release, currently it is only 20% complete. =================================================== Epic Sign up Eat the Whistle & Escape Towards the Unknown. Epic Marketings' games publishing arm have signed up two of the future games from Italian development team, Hurricane Softwares. The first of these is Escape Towards the Unknown. This is a graphic adventure in the Monkey Island style. It is played in a high resolution 640x480 and in 256 colours. On this page you can see some new screenshots of the game that have only recently been released. The game was originally set for a disk release but will now probably be released on CD-ROM. It is 100% OS friendly and will feature graphic card support and AHI sound support. The second of the games is titled 'Eat the Whistle'. As the name suggests, this is a football game that has, according to the developers, the potential to move Sensible Soccer off the top of the Amiga football games ladder. The game is still in a very early stage of development so there isn't much info about it. =================================================== Update: Martian Tales. You may remember this game when I wrote about it quite a while ago. Back then it was aiming to be the best C&C/Warcraft clone on the Amiga. However, things have changed a lot since then and the game is now aiming in a slightly different direction. The authors, Skillo Interactive, have now decided to move the game more towards the Colanization/Civilization style. The game will now be far more tactical and will be turn-based instead of being in real-time. Because of this change in game type the features that the game will boast have also changed. The style of the game is different too, as you can see from the screenshots. The game will features 8 different tribes from 2 species all of which are totally unique. The gameplay itself, like I said before, will be similar to Cililization, however, they aim to make it much more inuitive. Features that the game boasts includes inuitive trading options, GFX that reflects the chaging seasons, inner revolts, migration patterns for animals, animated water reflections and much more. The gameplay will be completly non-rescrictive, however, there will be a secret storyline that works in the background. A nice touch that the game will feature is that cities will actually grow and look like places where people live instead of just being a simple square on the map like in other games of this type. Land, sea and air units will be at you disposale to wipe out the enemy tribes. When a battle does begin, instead of just being mathmatically worked out by the computer you can actually fight it yourself. If doing it yourself, the battles are fought like a highspeed 'Tiny Troop' battle and usually don't last any longer then a minute. The game will be completly multitasking, as for machine specs required and release date - these are yet to be decided. =================================================== EXCLUSIVE: NALPALM: The Crimson Crisis. NAPALM: The Crimson Crisis is an all new real-time strategy wargame from Clickboom. Both Command & Conquer and Red Alert featured high in the Clickboom wishlist that they ran, because of this it was obvious that this type of game was something Amiga uers wanted. The only decision that ClickBoom had was to decide if to port a PC game or to develop a completly new one. Many users thought the former route would be chosen, however this was not to be the case, ClickBoom have decided to make a completly new game and thus giving them the chance to implement ideas and features that only a self developed game allows. The game is set in the near future in which human made robots with high intelligence yet very rebelious behavior attempt to take over the Earth, it is your job to stop them. The game itself follows in the footsteps of the most popular real-time wargames such as Dune II & Command & Conquer. It plays in a very similar fashion, where two armys clash on on the battlefield. This can be either against the computer or against another player with two linked computers (via serial, modem or internet connection). To win, the aim is simple. To destroy the other sides army, obviously, you have a massive range of soldiers, vehicles (from tanks to helicopters) and other attacking devices at your disposal. The fact that Nalpalm is set in the future allowed ClickBoom to implement very high-tech vehicles that are only limited by there imagination - some of these units will be of the like that has never been seen before, however, you'll have to wait till the games release to find out what they are. To enable you to build these buildings/units you will require credits, these are gained by mining your surroundings for fuel. Obviously, the 1 player missions will be great fun with them not all being of the destroy everything mold but also with specific aims. However, as with any other multi-player games Napalm comes into its own when played with a human opponent. ClickBoom have put a lot of effort into this part of the game to make sure that it doesn't become to repetitive. Many features have been added so that even when it looks like you are down and out there will be a way for you to survive and come back. Many options have been implmented that ensure a long lasting appeal, there are many ways to attack, defend against, trick and destroy your enemy. As I'm sure you can see, the graphics are a big part of Napalm, they are absolutely stunning (Click on the screenshots on this page to see them in full size). These are of a high resolution screenmode, however the game can be played in any screenmode from 320x200 (useful for 030 owners) upwards. The higher resolutions are better suited to faster processors and GFX cards, however there is nothing stopping you playing in high resolution on an 030. Obviously, the game supports AGA/CGFX and P96. The sound is not being left out in the cold either with effects that will almost sound real. The on screen explosions will be hugh along with sound effects to match. The game will be completly multi-tasking and OS friendly, it will come on CD-ROM only. As for a release date, one is yet to be set. =================================================== OloFight Demo Released. After quite a long time of inactivity from the author of this game, a demo has finally been released. OloFight is a new 2D fighting game for the Amiga, we have been lacking one of these ever since Mortal Kombat 2 was released. Is this the game we have been waiting for and does it remove the crown off the excellent Mortal Kombat 2? The demo that has been released only allows you to play a two player game so it is impossible to draw conclusions on what the full game will be like, however, judging buy the small part of the game this demo allows you to sample it could turn out to be very good. The demo allows you to sample two of the 10 fighters that the full game will contain. First impressions of the gameplay are very good. Each of the fighters has a large own array of moves which can be pulled off without too much trouble. On top of this there are also special moves for each fighter, unlike other games these do not require you to move the joystick in 20 different directions before they are pulled off (You mearly need to hold the joystick button down until a bar flashes and then move the joystick in the direction of the special move you want to pull off), however, the number that you have of each one is limited so use them sparingly. The game speeds along at a very repectable rate and doesn't seem to suffer in any slowdown whatsoever, quite surprising considering the fighters are quite large and very detailed and that the action is upto 3000 colours at one time. It is also worth noting that all of the graphics are 100% rendered, this makes them look very good. I am told that even on an unexpanded A1200 the game manages to maintain a rate of 25fps, quite impressive I'm sure you'll agree.Other notable features that the game boasts includes multiple layer parallax scrolling, realistic shadow effects for the fighters and animated backgrounds - all of which go to improve the general look of the game. As for the full game, well, it will contain 10 different fighters all with their own selection of normal moves and 10 special moves each, background music that adapts itself to the games events, multi-language support in both the manual and game and something that is a first for a fighting game - internet support. I'm not quite sure how this will work but if they pull it off, it will certainly add to the game in a big way. Currently the demo is not available on Aminet so, for the meantime, I have made it available on my server for you to download. The full game will be released on floppy disk very soon. It requires only an AGA Amiga with 1Mb Fast RAM. Currently the authors are planning to distribute the game themselves (To keep the costs down). It will cost $39 (US Dollars). They seem pretty sure that this is the way to go, however, I can't help thinking that a dedicated publisher would get the game more publicity and maybe better sales - and I'm pretty sure there are publishers who would be interested....