***** - Immortal

**** - Impeccable

*** - Imperfect

** - Impermissable

* - Immoral

IS THAT IT?

Nostalgia Trip No.1499 - 'I remember the CES Show when people used to go to it...'

This year's bash at Earl's Court was distinguished mainly by the amount of floorspace which was empty and blocked off. Few companies bothered to put in much of an appearance, and dragging the affair out for four days seemed to be stretching things just a little too far. Still, those who did show up had some interesting stuff on offer, even if you did have to queue up for 20 minutes beside the stand's single monitor to get a look at it...

Ocean were progressing apace with Robocop III, which is already considerably advanced on the preview I told you about a few weeks ago. There's lots more in there now, including a wild 3D beat-'em-up section and some top driving action, and the whole thing's had an injection of speed too. Keep an eye on this one, it could be special. Also on show they had (at last) an early Amiga version of coin-op conversion Smash TV. It's looking very violent and very fast, and most importantly it doesn't slow down when the baddies start to pile onscreen in ridiculous numbers. The WWF wrestling game was underway (although still at a very early stage) too, but the most exciting development was Parasol Stars (or Bubble Bobble III). Looking and playing like a cross between the two previous games in the series (Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands), this is an absolutely gorgeous arcade game which is being very accurately translated from the PC Engine original. There was a fair amount already done, and I for one can't wait to see the finished article. If it's anything like its predecessors, stand by for fun on a global scale.

Activision didn't have an awful lot going on, but they did have Shanghai II - Dragon's Eye up and running on PC and Super Famicom. Both versions are lovely, but the Famicom version is, as you might expect, the lovelier. The presentation is outstanding, and they've even managed to use the hardware scaling and rotation, which is quite a feat for a Mah Jong game...

Gremlin had an impressive set of products on the go, the star of which still has to be Lotus Turbo Challenge 2. Improved significantly on the last preview version I saw, this could well turn out to be the ultimate arcade driving game. Harlequin looks good too, a Strider-inspired platform runaround but with a surreal feel to it. This one doesn't look too far off, so expect it in the next couple of months.

At System 3, the big deal was Last Ninja 3, which I told you about a couple of weeks ago. The best prospect for me though, was a game which the team premiered at the show called Fuzzball. It's a cute platform game in the mould of Bubble Bobble, and System 3 have been working on it secretly over the last year or so. Totally simple and hugely playable, I think it could be a surprise smash in the festive period. I wonder what else they're keeping under their hat...

Drawing the biggest 'ooh's though, had to be Microprose's stand. Microprose Golf (snappy title, guys) looks like making a strong challenge for PGA Tour's title as top 16-bit golf sim, with its 3D polygon graphics and MicroProse's traditional attention to detail, but also on show was Formula One Grand Prix. Written by Geoff Cramond of Stunt Car Racer fame, this is a polygon-graphics Indy 500-style race game, but where it scores over the latter is in graphic detail (the course is packed with scenery, to the level of the arcade version of Sega's Super Monaco GP) and speed. Everything zips around at a very impressive rate, and there are all the usual options and different views and suchlike you'd expect from MicroProse. No word on a release date yet, but this really ought to be an enormous success. Start saving up now and prepare to be impressed.

BEG, BORROW AND BURN

Okay, okay, you win. I can hardly open the office door for the amount of letters I've had in the last few weeks complaining that I never review any of the more 'grown-up' games software available on the larger machines. And it's a fair enough criticism, I can't just go reviewing fun games all the time, so, especially for all you grumpy old D&D FRPG fans out there, here's my authoritative and expert opinion on what's what in the orc-slashing field these days. It has to be said, I wasn't particularly looking forward to playing any of these when our copies came in, but all of them affected me in one way or another...

KING'S BOUNTY (New World Computing)

This is a corker. All too often the 'serious' nature of this kind of thing provides programmers with an excuse for sloppy, ugly products, copping out with the claim that decent graphics, user-friendly interfaces and tidy presentation aren't what's important in this genre. This game is the exception to the rule, a beautifully put-together and accessible affair that I played enjoyably for several hours without having to refer to the manual once. It's fast-moving and involving, and any kind of games fan could have fun with this.

DEATH KNIGHTS OF KRYNN (SSI/US Gold)

'Average' is a word that seems to crop up a lot whenever I'm writing this column. And funnily enough, it's a word that I'm going to use again in a minute about Death Knights Of Krynn. It's a competent-enough troll-chopper, but everything about it screams 'production-line-churn- 'em-out-the-daft-buggers'll-buy-anything-with-the-official-D&D-logo- on-it-ho-hum-snoozerama'. Which must leave it a bit out of breath, but there you go. This isn't terrible, but it's not the game to buy if you just want to dip a toe into some new waters, and that's for sure. It's all just too...average.

SECRET OF THE SILVER BLADES (SSI/US Gold)

In my forthcoming country-wide series of lectures on 'How To Do A Dungeons & Dragons-Style Amiga Game', this is the one I'll be using as the example of how it can all go tragically wrong. Incomprehensible screens full of nested menus, atrociously stupid copy-protection, completely action-free gameplay, hideously complicated battle sequences, this is complete agony to battle through, and if you like spending money to torture yourself in this way I'd venture to suggest that you're a sick, sick man. ('Cos let's face it, girls have more sense than to fall for this sort of crap).

GAME REVIEW

TERMINATOR 2 (Ocean, C64)

Ocean's latest movie licence at least has a halfway-decent film to base itself on, but have they made the most of it or is it another production-line formula job? Bit of a rhetorical question, that. Ocean have found a strategy that seems to do the business for them, and it's difficult to see them changing it until that ceases to be the case. In Terminator 2 you get a couple of simplistic beat-'em-up sections (so no surprises there), a couple of tough driving sequences (so no surprises there), a couple of little puzzle sub-games (so no surprises there), and some fairly uneventful Double Dragon-ish maze runaround levels (so, er, no surprises there), but only one of them (the second driving stage where you have to drive a van and control Sarah Connor shooting at a pursuing helicopter out of the back door at the same time) brings any vaguely imaginative ideas, or decent entertainment, into play. The beat-'em-up parts are particularly rank, and the whole thing has been set at a severe level of toughness, undoubtedly as a cheapskate way to provide it with some degree of addictiveness. Sound and graphics are admittedly fairly impressive, with some huge sprites in particular looking very good for an 8-bit machine, but surely everyone knows better than to be suckered by pretty pictures by now. Don't they? (Another rhetorical question). *

UTOPIA (Gremlin, ST and Amiga, £29.99)

Gremlin's entry into the getting-very-crowded god sim market takes elements from two of the genre's best games (Sim City and the imminent Mega lo Mania) and attempts to weld them together into an epic of metropolis-building with a confrontational edge. As commander of a newly-colonised planet it's your job to build the settlement up into a thriving and happy civilisation, but there's a threat on the horizon. Alien races are eyeing up your new city greedily, and at a point sometime in the future, they're going to attack. When they do, you have to have built enough defences and armed forces to be able to defeat them in battle. Luckily, you have teams of scientists and engineers at your disposal, and if you fund them well enough they'll come up with the goods. Beware though, your funds are limited and you have to grow food, produce air, and keep the population occupied at the same time.

Anyway, to cut an enormous manual short, Utopia is a pretty good Sim City clone. Where it falls down is by being all just too easy. My first game lasted all day and I oversaw the development of a huge, thriving, and militarily powerful colony with more money than it knew how to spend, and alien armies were conspicuous by their absence after the first few battles. The city-building element was (compared to the game's illustrious predecessor, at least) simplistic, and the population weren't too demanding, so there was very little feeling of triumph against adversity. The instructions claim that a tough target is to get the 'Quality Of Life' rating (much like the popularity rating in SC) above 80%, but that seems like a bit of a cop-out to me. There isn't much going on in the way of problems or dangers in Utopia, and the all-important game element of challenge is missing, to crippling effect. I had high hopes for this game, but it didn't really live up to them. *** 

PLAYING TIP

BLADE WARRIOR (Image Works, ST and Amiga)

Having trouble defeating nasty old Murk in this atmospheric hack-'em-up from Image Works? Why not see if these cryptic hints point you in the right direction?

You can encounter Murk during the game. Each time you defeat him he will come back stronger the next time. If possible, try to avoid fighting him until the end, then he will be at his weakest.

The orchid and humming bird are not required to finish the game, and you only need to collect one of the two Stone Flutes.

The Dragon spittle may be hard to find!

Different monsters require different attacking 'moves' to destroy them. Learn which are most effective. The best strategy is to move into the monsters to hit them as the strike will be more effective than if you fight them from a distance and allow them to back off.

Travelling from your own tower on the back of a dragon may take you back to the last tower you visited, depending on the mood of your dragon. Travelling from any other tower will always return you to your home tower, if you survive the attack of the harpies.

Save regularly. Only six different saves are allowed on each blank disk that you use.

The following Wizards want the following items to trade for their tablet fragments.

SWAMP WIZARD wants Ginti's Amulet

WEST WIZARD wants the Silver Ring

NORTH WIZARD wants the Talisman of the Moon

EAST WIZARD wants the Helmet and the Name

PALACE WIZARD wants the Banshee's Wail

PINE WIZARD wants the Swamp Fish Sparkle

SOUTH WIZARD wants the Crystal

SLUSH FUND CORNER

Far be it from me to speculate, but can it really be true that a hack from Another Computer Mag was 'gifted' a VGA PC by a firm exhibiting at the show, in return for a couple of pages of coverage which his mag had been planning to give them anyway (not that he let on, of course...)? I wouldn't like to say for sure, but...