Consoles, Games and Emulators.

Tempest 2000 offers older gamers a chance to relive the adrenaline rush of the arcade game.

Of all the “classic” arcade games of the early 1980s, Tempest is my favorite. I’ve always loved the simple premise (shoot everything), the never-ending parade of increasingly intense levels with just enough time to catch your breath in between, and the odd combination of strategy and mindless shooting required to advance in the game. So needless to say I was excited to hear that Tempest had finally made it to the PC in the form of Tempest 2000, an updated version of the original.

Tempest 2000 adds a slew of new features to the original game, including wavy, fluorescent graphics, a surprisingly good techno soundtrack, multiple power-ups, level warps, an “AI” droid who helps you in battle, and a two-player battle mode in which you try to destroy your opponent. Those who loved the original title just as it was will prefer the “Tempest Plus,” mode, which is much closer to the arcade classic. The configuration menu also offers a wide range of gameplay and display options; you’ll find the version of Tempest that’s right for you.

Although the new graphic flares of Tempest 2000 are wild and colorful, they aren’t all that impressive. Explosions tend to be a collection of small square pixels flying across the screen, and power-ups look clunky as they fly towards you. There’s also a lot happening on the screen at once; display-hogging printed messages like “Excellent!” and “Zappo” can cloud your view. All these explosions and messages make it hard to see enemy fire coming towards you. If you own a Saturn or a PlayStation, consider buying Tempest for your console system; either version of Tempest available for these systems is graphically superior to the PC version.

Luckily the gameplay of Tempest 2000 retains the feel of the original with great success. A keyboard or joypad is no match for the elegance of the original’s paddle control, but after a few minutes of practice you’ll feel comfortable controlling your movements. Tempest 2000 offers older gamers a chance to relive the adrenaline rush of the arcade game, and younger gamers the chance to discover the beauty of a classic.

It’s definitely a better looking and more playable game than the original PC Destruction Derby.

Let’s face it: at a certain age, destroying your toys becomes more enjoyable than playing with them. When you were a kid playing with matchbox cars, did you ever actually race them against each other? I thought not. No, you slid the little die-cast speedsters as hard as you could at one another until they smashed to pieces on the kitchen linoleum. Am I saying that this is the correct way to play with matchbox cars, that one should be encouraged to enact scenes of demolition with his playthings? Yes, because it’s fun.

Fun, in case you were wondering, is what games are all about. Few auto racing games actually let the player do more than nail down the accelerator and brake around turns. Last year’s Destruction Derby was a refreshing break from this monotonous trend, combining stimulating, competitive racing with the meaningless vandalism that action gamers crave. It was the first racing title to come along that encouraged you to and rewarded you for driving straight into oncoming traffic - now THAT’S a racing game. Psygnosis have finally released the sequel, and gamers who appreciated the irrational smash-’em-up mentality of the original PC version are sure to get a kick out of riding on the hard driving path that is Destruction Derby 2.

The most notable enhancement in DD2 is your car’s ability to leave the road - skyward. Courses now include banks and jumps that send speeding cars flying into the stratosphere, colliding mid-air with other cars, eventually landing on more cars, only to skid on the ground and bash into yet more cars. Vehicles have to take jumps with caution or risk corkscrewing and landing completely upside down, helpless as toppled turtles. Occasionally, car physics push the limits of reality. Sometimes, when a car takes to the air, it careens overhead in slow motion as though someone had turned on the anti-gravity machine. Surprisingly this detour from true car physics just adds to dramatic quality of the action.

Crash scenes have also improved. Cars now spew more parts than an auto shop when blindsided. Vehicles can also lose hoods and wheels, driving around with engines exposed, trailing sparks as their bare axles scrape the ground. Damage is the word when it comes to racing in Destruction Derby 2, which lends new meaning to the term “eliminate the competition.”

Seven new race tracks, ranging from winding desert roads to nighttime streets, are introduced in the game, and the races here seem to be much more difficult to win compared to the original. Additionally, Psygnosis has heeded the cries of the gaming masses, introducing four new destruction derby tracks (wherein the sole objective is to disable other cars) for our demolition pleasure. The last of these,called the “Death Bowl,” features an inescapable chasm that cars can be knocked into. Playing in “Total Destruction” mode (where all vehicles, as if operating as a unit, abandon all other causes and go straight after YOUR car), you can lure a pack of vehicles to the edge of this pit and swiftly move away, watching them tumble over to their smoky deaths.

The graphics and playability of Destruction Derby 2 aren’t as silky as they were in the Playstation version, but it’s definitely a better looking and more playable game than the original PC Destruction Derby. Combine the new improvements with a bold, sludge-metal soundtrack and you’ve got a great sequel to Destruction Derby. The main complaint you could lodge against this game is that, compared to the previous title, the other cars are nearly impossible to overtake during a race. Still, if you’re looking for more chassis-crushing fun in a game that ends up somehow being even more silly than the original, Destruction Derby 2 is your ticket.

Psygnosis has done a beautiful job of bringing Pratchett’s entertaining world to the realm of electronic gaming.

Terry Pratchett, the British master of humor-fantasy-fiction, has written 18 novels in the Discworld series (most recently, Feet of Clay published by HarperPrism), and Psygnosis has done a beautiful job of bringing his entertaining world to the realm of electronic gaming with Discworld II: Mortality Bytes!. “Entertaining” is the key word here: If you don’t expect Dostoyevsky, you may unexpectedly find yourself with ribs sore from laughter.

As with most all point and click adventures, you take possession of a vehicle body and go on a confounding quest for obscure objects used to help solve a massive puzzle. What keeps Discworld II one step removed from this process is its sardonic wit. In Discworld II you become Rincewind, a dour wizard who needs to find three sticks, a drippy candle, an odor, and mouse blood so that a spell allowing the spirits to separate from the bodies of the deceased can be cast . One thing leads to another (as things usually do in adventure games), and the quest becomes compounded by mallet yielding monkeys, a protesting co-ed, a miniature Casanova, and even the sugar-coated steed of Death. Rincewind keeps all this in the proper perspective, lending his dry commentary to the proceedings. And if his banter reminds you of an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, it’s no wonder. All the musings and interactions of Rincewind have been masterfully narrated by Monty Python’s own Eric Idle.

All this fun does bring some bulky baggage. The dialogue between the characters is a bit prolonged. The puzzles do require a free-form, dadaist type of other-worldly concentration, but there are clues aplenty. Rincewind will even provide his own brand of “wink and nudge” at times, but mostly for the more obvious puzzles.

Discworld II leans closer to being an interactive cartoon than anything else, a sort of Who Framed Roger Rabbit with a boastful 100 hours of gameplay. And if you choose to buy the hint book and simply enjoy the ride, well, what’s the harm? It’s a pip!

Playing this spooky game might have you sleeping with the lights on - at least for a little while.

Several pleasantly creepy experiences await the adventurous in Amber: Journeys Beyond. If you’re fascinated by poltergeists and unexplained phenomena, or simply enjoy sitting alone in the dark and listening for things that go bump in the night, playing this spooky game from Hugh Forest Entertainment might have you sleeping with the lights on - at least for a little while.

Set in a house in the North Carolina mountains, Amber is a modern-day ghost hunt where merely observing poltergeist activity has expanded to include interacting with it. Amber gives players an intriguing paranormal experience. What begins as a response to a friend’s concern develops into a journey to rescue souls.

As you explore the house and the surrounding property seeking clues to your friend’s plight, you realize quickly that you are not alone. Strange things are happening and as you figure out how to use your basic equipment, things get stranger. Without giving too much away, I can say that you will learn the history of the souls haunting the house from an up-close-and-personal point of view. Each died a tragic death and is trapped in a purgatory-like state. To help them move into the afterlife, you must solve a series of well-integrated and moderately challenging puzzles. The souls in and of themselves are plenty intriguing - watching the gardener’s lifeless body swinging slowly from the rafters, all because he couldn’t get a date, makes your life seem a whole lot better.

While it may look like a Myst-ical experience, Amber’s graphics and sound effects transcend the typical point-and-click static screens encountered in so many adventure games. The richly textured environment is sprinkled with eerie video segments of supernatural activities, like objects flying around in the house and talking bees. It all combines into an engrossing, captivatingly wicked time.

Sadly, the game is not without disappointments. It’s simply not long enough. With a few more spiritual encounters and puzzles, Amber could have been a great game, not just a good one. Worse still, the final sequence is pathetically anticlimactic compared to the rest of the game. Even so, if you’re looking for a few hours of torturous fun, Amber is definitely worth considering. If anything, it’ll keep you wondering what really does go bump in the night.

There’s nothing really wrong with Virtual Jigsaw.

There’s nothing really wrong with Virtual Jigsaw. The graphics are reasonably good. There’s almost no sound to annoy or enthrall you. Each of the five levels is appropriately difficult or easy. It’s just, well, missing something.

Virtual Jigsaw: MasterPieces is one of four available editions of the game. (The others are Photo Gallery, with photos of landscapes and wildlife; Purrr-fect Puzzles, with lots of cat puzzles; and Wildlife - you guess.) You select a work by your favorite artist, from van Gogh to Vermeer, choose the difficulty level, from 20 pieces to 200, and presto! The computer creates a puzzle just the way you want it.

Putting all those little puzzle pieces together, however, is another story. While the piece is easily controlled - you can drag, flip, move, and rotate with right and left mouse clicks - lining the pieces up to the computer’s satisfaction is extremely difficult. You know the piece fits, but the AI takes some convincing. And when the computer is satisfied, it joins the pieces together seamlessly with a slightly annoying “mmmpock” sound - one of the very few sounds anywhere in the game (the other is the short, happy selection heard when a puzzle is completed). However, once the pieces are joined together, they behave as one piece and it’s easy enough to move around whole frames, partial frames, and islands.

One feature the folks at SouthPeak Interactive seem particularly proud of is the double-sided puzzle, which makes for more than 6,000 puzzle possibilities. You can create a puzzle with Rembrandt on one side and Gaugin on the other. Or, better yet, you can choose from the post-modern canvases done in a single color (red, neon green, white, electric blue, black) to create a black on black puzzle. Put it against the black background, turn the “shadow” feature on to prevent insanity, select the “Impossible???” difficulty level - which, it should be noted, shatters the puzzle into bizarre and unpredictable shapes reminiscent of Rorschach blots (What do you think it is, dear?) - and you have a giddily frustrating puzzle to play with. Granted, that’s probably not what SouthPeak had in mind when they developed the game, but it’s an entertaining bonus.

The major problem with VJ lies in the overall concept. The whole joy of jigsaws comes from the tactile sensation of holding the thin cardboard between your fingers, from the soft snap of one piece fitting snugly into another. Doing a jigsaw with Grandma was fun because you and Grandma chatted all the while; doing one with your brother was great because it invariably turned into a who-can-flick-a-piece-the-farthest contest. Virtual Jigsaw: MasterPieces has solid renditions of great works of art, good gameplay, and very good replay value; but unless you, Grandma, your brother, and the dog are sitting around the computer together, it misses the point.

Originality isn’t one of Pray For Death’s strong points.

Someday, designers will figure out a way to make an original PC fighting game that can hold its own against the fighting hits on console-based systems. Until that day, however, we are stuck with the mediocrity of games such as Pray For Death.

Players go for a best-of-three victory using the normal punches, kicks, and special attacks, such as fireballs. Kind of like a poor man’s version of the arcade fighter Killer Instinct, the game comes complete with huge combinations that don’t take much skill to pull off, as well as combo breakers, which are used to escape combos. The concept of finishing moves that annihilate your opponent is lifted straight from the Mortal Kombat series. Needless to say, originality isn’t one of Pray For Death’s strong points.

The game looks pretty good. The rendered backgrounds are sharp and use light sourcing and shading. In Painkiller’s background, moving from one side of the level to the other will make the character come out of the shadows, into a green light. The fighters, based on figures from history and legend, move fluidly, but the game’s special moves aren’t spectacular enough to close the deal and make the experience worthwhile. On top of this, the soundtrack gets a touch repetitive after a few plays, and turning it off just subjects you to the typical grunts, smacks, and screams that are standard issue in a fighting game.

I’m a huge fan of fighting games, and I really wanted to like Pray For Death. But there are just too many problems to make this game a winner. It lacks any true originality, and while there are only so many things you can add to make a fighting game seem fresh, this title never even attempts anything new, unless you count a few lame tournament modes. Add in some dull music and long, boring combos, and it equals a competent but uninspired game.

You know you’ve got a good sports sim on your hands when you realize that youenjoy playing it as much as seeing the real thing.

You know you’ve got a good sports sim on your hands when you realize that you enjoy playing it as much as (or more than) seeing the real thing - and that’s exactly how I felt after I fired up FIFA Soccer 97 from Electronic Arts. It has a few minor problems, to be sure, and one annoying omission. But with a game as ambitious as this one - which includes over 4,200 players on 255 teams - achieving perfection is about as likely as a year without a soccer riot.

Just like every EA Sports title, FIFA Soccer 97 boasts a huge array of options and features that give you control over nearly every aspect of gameplay. Three skill levels and three game types - Action, Arcade, and Simulation - let you fine-tune the challenge to match almost perfectly your skill level and preferences. Newbies will probably get their game in shape playing in Arcade mode, where all teams perform equally well and no players tire; gamers who want a more realistic challenge will opt for either the Action game (unlimited substitutions, better player attributes, faster gameplay) or a Simulation, where skill ratings accurately reflect teams’ performances and players tire during the course of play. Other game parameters you can control include length of half, clock type (continually running or stopping when the ball is dead), fouls (on, off, no bookings), offsides (on or off), pitch size (large, medium, or small, but you can only use this feature for Friendly games), and pitch condition. You can also opt for Indoor play, but the small pitch size means the game moves incredibly fast, which can take some getting used to.

That same level of flexibility extends to the various types of matches as well. In addition to Friendly games between any two teams (new teams can be created from the player database for these games), you can also see how you fare in long-haul affairs such as Tournaments, Playoffs, and League play, all of which allow human control for up to 16 teams. A Transfer feature means you can create a dream lineup for your run at a championship or simply keep your team authentic by mirroring real-life trades, but it’s here that you run into the annoying omission I mentioned earlier: the lack of a Player Editor. Not only are you unable to create new players to reflect real-life additions to a team, but also there’s no way to edit existing players’ attributes - a true annoyance for those wishing to alter the fictional names used for all the U.S. teams.

But you’ll be more than willing to forgive that oversight once you’ve got a few games under your belt, because out on the pitch, FIFA Soccer 97 delivers the kind of fluid, realistic action that’s become a hallmark of EA Sports’ titles. Diving saves and headers, bicycle kicks, volleys - all these and more are here, and so well animated that at times you’ll think you’re watching a televised match. Be forewarned, though, that you’ll need a high-end machine to get a good frame rate: On my 133 with 32MB of RAM and a 2MB ATI Mach 64 Pro Turbo PCI video card, I had to either knock down the display size a couple of notches or turn off the grass textures in order to achieve smooth play. The polygon-based players look a little chunky when seen close up, but that’s usually a moot point since you’ll invariably play from a perspective far enough away to give you an idea of where your players are headed. The play-by-play is good, but as with almost any sports sim you’ll inevitably hear a lot of the same comments over and over; if that bothers you, just turn it off.

Two- and four-button joysticks are supported, but the game really shines when you use the Gravis GrIP system: All six buttons and both “paddles” are supported for up to four players, giving you about as much control as you could hope for. In fact, it could be a little TOO much at first; the best tactic is to use the game’s Practise (love that spelling!) mode to learn button assignments for situations such as throw-ins and corner kicks, as well as master the Passback mode where you control someone on offense other than the ball-handler. Passing can be especially tough to master, but again a little practice goes a long way in helping you master the basics.

In short, I really enjoy this game, but even I have to admit that it has a few rough spots, perhaps most noticeably in its goalie behavior. Play at Semi-Pro or Pro difficulty levels, and you’ll see very good goalies doing some very stupid things, allowing the computer-controlled opponent to score much too easily. Heck, I once saw a goalie DUCK as a header came his way! Computer-controlled teams almost never commit fouls, a real drag for aggressive players like me who invariably receive two or three yellow cards (or worse) during a game. Knowing whether you have control of the ball is a little tough, too, because the only indicator is a circle surrounding the player you’re controlling that brightens when he has the ball. It’s all too easy to take control of the ball during a tackle and then lob it because the same button is used for tackles and lobs. I also have gripe with substitutions: There’s no gauge to tell you how fatigued a particular player is, information that’s vital in deciding who to sub and who to keep on the field.

But the funny thing is that I somehow seem to conveniently forget all that stuff when I load up FIFA 97, especially when I’m playing against friends (up to four can compete on one machine using the GrIP system, or with up to four machines over a network). If EA can find a way to get this thing working over the Internet, the world’s most popular sport might be the most popular sport in cyberspace, too.

You Don’t Know Jack Volume 2 brings back everything that was exciting and fun about the original.

If you’re into computer trivia games, you’re probably already familiar with Berkeley Systems’ amazingly popular You Don’t Know Jack title. With its irreverent humor, entertaining questions that tested players’ knowledge of both random trivia and pop culture, and simple party-style play controls, You Don’t Know Jack achieved not only critical success, but also a great deal of commercial success as well. Enter the sequel. You Don’t Know Jack Volume 2 brings back everything that was exciting and fun about the original, and throws in a host of new questions, along with plenty more jokes and music, without ever threatening the title’s fantastic balance or playability.

If you’re not familiar with the original, You Don’t Know Jack Volume 2 will be a welcome treat. Basically the game is set up like a television game show with the players gathered around the computer acting as contestants. Using an assigned key as a “buzzer,” each player tries to be the first to answer each of the trivia tidbits that pops up on the screen (a game can consist of seven or 21 question rounds). The questions, while always somewhat bizarre in their presentation, are both intellectually challenging and entertaining, and run the range of pop culture silliness, drawing parallels between the Brady Bunch and Shakespeare or Charles Manson and television theme songs. Throughout all of this, the host provides quick-witted and surprisingly humorous off-color commentary. Although this smart-ass commentary may turn off more conservative players, most normal folks will find the constant patter to be amusing and realistic enough to never get irritating.

New features have been included - there’s new question categories like: DisOrDat, in which players separate words at high speed into two or more classifications; Celebrity Collect Calls that summon up weird stars (Dennis Miller and Phyllis Diller have been included, so relax…) to deliver bizarre questions; and Picture Questions (the only new category that Berkeley was unable to trademark) that add a visual twist to the typically sound-oriented game. New songs have also been added to introduce each question number, but continue in the original’s tradition of poking fun at nearly every category of past or present music.

If there’s any real fault in You Don’t Know Jack Volume 2, it’s that there’s not that much difference between it and its predecessor. Yes, there are a bunch of new questions, and yes, all of the patter has been replaced, and granted the new counting songs are really funny, but in the end, those changes are all superficial. Even so, as the old adage goes, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” and for once it looks like somebody had the sense to leave a winner of an idea alone. A must buy for fans of the genre.

On the whole, SimCopter offers a solid action experience combined with added value for SimCity 2000 owners and virtually endless gameplay.

CALLING ALL SIMCITY 2000 FREAKS!!!Getting a little tired of building city after city? Have you accomplished your life’s goal of creating a SimCity replica of Des Moines, Iowa, only to find that you have no greater purpose to aspire to? Now it’s time to actually go inside your city and control it not as an all-powerful comptroller, but as an ordinary Sim citizen- - an ordinary Sim citizen with a helicopter, that is.

After Will Wright, the creator of SimCity, finished his second masterpiece, SimCity 2000, he set to work on a new challenge for his disciples. He wanted the thousands of people who had created vast metropolises in SimCity 2000 to be able to explore them in 3-D. A simple first-person walking tour interface would not suffice, though; the new game had to take advantage of the random event generator in the SimCity world that controlled crime, fires, riots and such. What better vehicle to cope with all these contingencies than a helicopter? It can carry police to a crime scene, dump water on fires, launch tear gas into rioting crowds…. Anything the Sims need, their chopper-armed guardian can provide.

As you start a career game using the 30 included cities or a user game using yours, you will find yourself on the tarmac standing next to a little Schweitzer 300 helicopter. As you climb aboard, the radio inside turns on and starts blaring music and commercials. Hit the right key and the rotor begins to turn, taking you into the air to await your first call. You won’t have to wait long before “Dispatch” crackles over the radio and relays your mission. If it’s a traffic jam, you have to fly over and use your megaphone to tell the cars to move along. Medevacs require you to retrieve injured Sims and transport them to the hospital. For rescues, you’ll need to have equipped your copter with a rescue harness to snatch trapped Sims from their precarious settings. Dousing fires with water takes quite a bit of dexterity and numerous trips to a nearby lake to refill. Riots can sometimes be handled with stern announcements over the megaphone and maybe a little spritz with the water cannon, but occasionally they reach Rodney King proportions and the tear gas has to be broken out. The list goes on, and the variable difficulty of each type of mission, combined with the differing characteristics of the nine copters, will keep almost anyone engrossed for hours at a time.

The graphics, although fluid and colorful, could have been visualized a bit better. The buildings and terrain are adequate, but the people and vehicles look as if they were designed by a junior high school art class. Even so, this is the only substandard element in what is otherwise a terrific package. The sound is especially well executed. The tunes on the radio (which you can customize) blend seamlessly with the realistic chopper sounds and the environmental noises to create a rich soundscape. Plenty of tongue-in-cheek Maxis humor awaits fans as well, with secret laughs that appear everywhere from the comical user’s manual, to the congratulatory marching band that awaits you back at your hangar, to the sound a passenger makes when you drop him out at 4,000 feet. Even the cheat codes are funny. Type in “I’m the CEO of McDonnell Douglas” and see what happens!

Perhaps the finest feature of SimCopter is its added value to the SimCity 2000 user. The translation of the cities is impressively accurate. Each building, vehicle, street, bridge, and lake is exactly where it would be in SimCity 2000, only in rendered-on-the-fly, texture-mapped 3-D. If a SimCity with a high crime rate is loaded into SimCopter, you can be sure to get more than your share of robbery and mugging calls. Playing with a poverty-stricken city? Look out for riots.

On the whole, SimCopter offers a solid action experience combined with added value for SimCity 2000 owners and virtually endless gameplay. It’s all the fun of watching a SimCity grow plus the feeling that you have a real hand in the process. Beyond that, it’s a full-blown helicopter sim that would be extremely playable even if it didn’t translate SimCities into 3-D. This one’s a keeper.

Not only does Humans III have remarkably dated graphics, annoying sound, and inept gameplay, it is also as boring as a sack of sticks.

It’s not that often that a game of this caliber gets installed on my computer. Not only does Humans III have remarkably dated graphics, annoying sound, and inept gameplay, it is also as boring as a sack of sticks.

The story in Humans III revolves around a dumpy little cave dweller named Arthur. It seems that Arthur bopped an alien zoo keeper over the head with his club and took control of its time-traveling spaceship. Arthur, not the smartest of fellas, broke the time machine into six pieces with his blunt instrument of destruction. Now, with the help of some famous historical and legendary figures (Merlin, Confucius, etc.) who have also been kidnapped, Arthur must retrieve the six pieces so he can return to his time.

Humans III, like its predecessors, is a puzzle game in the vein of Lemmings. Using the characters’ special abilities (magic, archery, etc.), you must navigate each level and get everyone to the exit, collecting pieces of the time machine along the way.

Unfortunately, the wearisome interface makes Humans III nearly unplayable. It’s difficult to gain control of each character and, because you can’t see the entire level while you’re playing, even after you do gain control it is completely exhausting trying to get your character to go where you want.

If this weren’t bad enough, the graphics add the adjectives dark, simple, and uninspired to the list describing this game. You’ll wonder why you spent $3,000 on a computer to display graphics that would have been considered bad in 1983. The music ranges from pooty syth-pop to pooty synth-calypso, and sound effects are nearly non-existent (which, judging by the high set of standards found in the rest of the title, may be a good thing). The only thing less fun than Humans III is a broken seesaw, and maybe Catfight.

I was also amazed by the lack of information on the Web about Humans III. I couldn’t find anything about it on Gametek’s Web site…and it’s pretty scary when the developer doesn’t even acknowledge a game’s existence. Plus, I have yet to actually see this game on any store shelves, so don’t be surprised if you never even see Humans III. In the end, that may be best for everyone involved.