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January 1997 -- Magazine Feature


1997 Macintosh Game Hall of Fame

By Steven Levy

It's midnight in the Garden of Good versus Evil, one of the new displays at the Macintosh Game Hall of Fame in plucky downtown Pittsfield, Massachusetts. We've been here since 10 this morning, trying to pick our new class of inductees. The floor is littered with joysticks, Wendy's wrappers, CD jewel boxes, and paper airplanes made from yesterday's Berkshire Eagle. We're still arguing about the difference between role-playing games and adventure games.

It's almost time for me to make my annual "let's forget about the categories and just pick the best ones" speech. Who am I, you ask? Merely the Hall's curator and the ultimate arbiter of who gets in and who doesn't--a job that's taken its toll on my mouse finger, my joystick wrist, and my pacifist inclinations. But the job has its dividends, every year when dozens of games come tumbling into the Hall and once again I'm acquainted with an awesome range of creative fireworks, a brain-teasing set of puzzles, an eye-popping melange of graphics, and some really cool means of blowing apart inanimate objects.

But something weird has happened this year. I don't have to make the speech, because sometime, just after the stroke of midnight, everything becomes clear. The fog has lifted, or else everyone just wants to play another round of You Don't Know Jack. In any case, the winners seem obvious to us. Not that there aren't plenty of wonderful runners-up. It's just that this year's great games are, well, great.

So crank up your Power Macs and let off steam with the steamy, dreamy class of '97, the newest Macintosh Game Hall of Fame honorees. And if you're in the neighborhood, you can check out the games in person. Just be sure to call first.
____________________________________________________

Best Multimedia Game

Spycraft: The Great Game
Four Stars/8.1
Activision
310/479-5644
http://www.activision.com
List price: $45

When former CIA director William Colby disappeared on his boat earlier this year and then was found dead of "natural causes," those familiar with Spycraft: The Great Game suspected foul play. Why? Because Colby, along with his former rival General Oleg Kalugin of the KGB, added their expertise to this superb live-action CD-ROM thriller, which teaches that in the world of espionage nothing is as it seems.

Spycraft is better than a le Carre novel conveying the dirty tricks and covert actions necessary to be a spook, because it makes you the operative, immersing you in back-channel communications and high-tech intelligence tools. You'll spend many happy hours doing image and voice analysis, engaging in semilegal surveillance, and crawling through bushes with night-vision glasses looking for hard targets--all while trying to unravel a mystery of international proportions.

Perhaps because of the famous consultants, there's a degree of complexity that keeps you going past some of the inevitable boring patches in this three-CD marathon. Also, unlike in many other products of its ilk, Spycraft's live-action segments do not produce the impulse to spacebar ahead to the actions--you really have to listen to what's going on so you can play on. Finally, Spycraft breaks some important ground in linking players to a special site on the World Wide Web.

Makes you wonder: if a former CIA head could help produce a game of such intricacy and playability, how come he couldn't find Aldrich Ames?
__________________________________________________

Best Party Game

You Don't Know Jack (XL version)
Four Stars/8.9
Berkeley Systems
510/540-5535
http://www.berksys.com
List price: $40

When it comes to creating a great party game that works on the computer, many have tried, and most have failed. Finally, fueled by MTV energy and Generation X cultural radar, there's You Don't Know Jack. This is a gloriously irreverent, borderline-tasteless send-up of every bad game show you've ever seen, with a shameless nod to Trivial Pursuit.

You know something special is afoot when the opening credits roll, a hilarious parody of a real TV game-show warm-up that cleverly evokes the contestants' names and explains the rules. This is basically a question-and-answer session, distinguished mainly by the cosmically goofy questions and the host's cheeky attitude.

Those questions, by the way, can be tough, since they often mix pop culture and mild profanity with highfalutin queries involving scientific or literary knowledge. A question might marry Voltaire with Martha Stewart, or ask you to name the historical figure who died "while getting some action" (no, not Catherine the Great--Attila the Hun!).

The graphics are of the eye-popping variety familiar to Ritalin-drenched channel surfers, and the humor is low and abundant. Yes, it is true that the ideal audience for this game is the cast of Friends, drunk. But no matter who you are, after playing a few rounds of You Don't Know Jack, your mind will be sufficiently melted to place you squarely in that strange demographic. So next time you party, bring the Power Mac and a six-pack of Jacks.
__________________________________________________

Best role-playing Game

Bad Mojo
Four Stars/8.8
Pulse Entertainment 800/264-0325
http://www.badmojo.com
List price: $40

If Franz Kafka were alive today, living in a South of Market garret, hacking out adventure games instead of The Metamorphosis he might have produced Bad Mojo, an amazing experience in which the game player is transformed into the body of a scummy little cockroach. It's sort of a stretch, being a cucaracha, but the most delightful--and at times disgusting--thing about Bad Mojo is that it really takes the task seriously.

Believe me, some of the sights you'll see are among the most nauseating ever digitally presented--early on in the game a rat caught in a trap is portrayed much more realistically than I wished to see it. Things got worse when the rat ate me.

The animation, adopted from the work of genuinely serious artificial-life scientists, is amazing, and the puzzles are all appropriately cockroachish. Ultimately, though, it's the point of view that gets to you, the experience of seeing the world from a six-legged, ground-level perspective. When you finish Bad Mojo, I guarantee that the next time you see a roach, you won't be so quick to stomp.
___________________________________________________

Best Adventure Game

Amber: Journeys Beyond
Four Stars/8.7
Changeling
512/419-7085
http://www.changeling.com
List price: $70

Strip Myst of its fantasy-genre trappings and replace them with a dollop of Stephen King, and you can begin to understand what it feels like to play Amber: Journeys Beyond--a gorgeous, absorbing supernatural adventure.

In Amber, you are the intrepid rescuer who has to figure out what happened to Roxy, a type-A experimenter in the paranormal who has gotten herself in a deadly fix. In the process, you explore an exquisitely designed Victorian house in rural North Carolina, encounter some unexpected visitors, and ultimately "cross over" some sort of dimensional divide to visit with the unhappy souls whose eternal fate is dramatically intertwined with this haunted mansion. Amber has a wonderful novelistic quality.

Amber's pace is rather serene, but Ouija-like breakthroughs arrive with sudden and memorable force. And when you enter the worlds of the three lost ones, you get almost a magical, otherworldly--call it spooky--rush. At its best, Amber fulfills some of the almost-never-realized ambitions of interactive fiction.
___________________________________________________

Best Simulation Game

Afterlife
Four Stars/8.2
LucasArts
415/507-4545
http://www.lucasarts.com
List price: $45

It was once said that a simulation game made by a company other than Maxis (SimCity, SimEarth, SimEverything) would be inducted into the Hall of Fame's Simulation wing about the time that hell freezes over. Guess what happens in Afterlife, the witty simulation that involves building up the places you go to when you die? Hint: Maybe the devil should buy a muffler.

That's actually only one of the cosmically wacky things that can occur in Afterlife, a computer simulation that mixes Dante, Milton, and P. T. Barnum in an imaginative if not seriously twisted look at heaven and hell. If truth be told, this game owes a lot to the Maxis classics SimCity and L-Train, particularly in the way that zoned areas generate activity. But what a crazy difference. You are the Demiurge, directing a population of, uh, postliving beings to your personally crafted Hades or your designer version of paradise.

You'll want to pay attention to the tutorial before you play, and listen to your online helpers (demonic Jason and angelic Aria) once you get going, because Afterlife is easily as complex as Dante's trilogy. There are all sorts of complications such as Karma Structures, Fate Populations, and Belief Graphs. In fact, this thing gets downright liturgical at times. But a refreshingly heretical sense of humor keeps things upbeat, down to the monastic soundtrack and the Boschian graphics.

Most enjoyable of all are the Bad Things you can unleash on your SOUL creatures (made of the Stuff Of Unending Life, of course)--postnatural disasters like Bats Out of Hell; Birds of Paradise; and Disco Inferno, where the Stygian domain is terrorized by Vinnie, a demon who dresses like John Travolta and talks like Barry White. Talk about hell!
___________________________________________________

Best Arcade Game

Step On It
Five Stars/9.0
Casady & Greene
408/484-9228
http://www.casadyg.com
List price: $40

In the tradition of Lode Runner and Lemmings, Step On It is a multiple-level game that combines puzzle skills and manual dexterity--and will drive you to the madhouse until you master it. You are Ted, rather sparsely armed with an arrow and a magic ball--insufficient material to wipe out the various nasties (ant, piggy, ostrich, hippo, and the dreaded Beenie) that kill on contact. A more important aid are blocks you can evoke out of thin air: you use them to climb, thwart the nasties, and uncover treasures.

Your main tool is your wit, which determines how you negotiate your way through perilous scaffolding, infuriating obstacles, and annoyingly colorful foes to accumulate goodies and get to the door that moves you to the next level. Oh yes, there are more than 100 levels, and some of them, I swear, don't have solutions. At least I haven't figured them out.

All this is classic stuff for this genre, but the Game Hall of Fame welcomes fascinating variations on the tried and true. Step On It not only provides an addictive single-player experience but allows for multiple-player action, both in cooperative and--best of all--a mess- up-your-neighbor mode.
___________________________________________________

Best Sports Game

IndyCar II
Four Stars/8.4
Sierra On-Line
800/757-7707
http://www.sierra.com
List price: $55

The bad news: the Indianapolis Brickyard, home of the Indy 500, is not among the tracks where you can air out the high-performance machines in IndyCar II. The good news: this champion of race games has just about everything else.

We're talking about a choice of racers and a feature letting you customize them yourself, painting them your favorite color and even adjusting tire pressure. We're talking races on 15 different tracks.

We're talking about controlling arcane details like tire temperature, barometric conditions, and the amount of dirt kicked up by a spinout. We're also talking single-player, multiplayer-network, or modem competition. And finally, we're talking on the radio--in a Mac-only feature, IndyCar drivers can bark orders to the crew.

The real test of a racing game, though, is the feel of the road itself. That's where IndyCar II gets its checkered flag. Although you'll have to run plenty of practice heats before you can keep up with the pros, once you get the hang of it you'll be riding in the slipstream for many hours. Start your engines!
__________________________________________________

Best Flight Simulator

Flight Unlimited Four Stars/8.5
Looking Glass Technologies 617/576-3310
http://www.lglass.com
List price: $50

Imagine a flight simulator that takes you up in a plane without jets, heads-up displays, or even missiles and guns. That's right--no zipping smart bombs at desert saltboxes. Are you stifling a yawn? Don't.

Flight Unlimited does something even more special that those macho sims do: it puts you in touch with what makes flying special. Your runway is at a small rural airfield. Your craft is one of several lithe single-engine prop planes, like the German-made Extra or American Champion Decathlon--or even a smooth glider, the Sailplane Grob 103A. You fill out the logbook and take off--and suddenly, magic. Instead of the normally mundane, blocky graphics common in these things, there is the complexity and beauty of real life.

Compared with those of other flight sims, Flight Unlimited's controls are alarmingly low on bells and whistles, particularly in the cockpit. You hold the throttle, press down the rudders, and that's about it. Less really is more: with joystick in hand (don't even think about using the mouse), the realistic responses give the illusion that you're actually in control of your machine.

The meat of this simulator is small-plane acrobatics, and you'll have lots of fun flying through midair hoops. Of course, the dazzling view makes you feel, well, airborne.

But the crowning moment of Flight Unlimited comes while piloting the Grob, the engineless glider. You are silently, majestically soaring over Virginia hills, over Arizona desert, over Alaskan mountains. Lifted by the wind, blinded by the sun, spinning through the sky. Free at last.
___________________________________________________

Best Network Game

Spaceward Ho 4.0
Four Stars/8.7
Delta Tao Software
408/730-9336
http://www.outland.com/deltatao/
List price: $59

Avid would-be interstellar empire builders have been fixated on various versions of Spaceward Ho for some time now, but version 4.0 manages to push the envelope of complexity while providing an utterly clear path to pursuing the mechanics of taking over the universe.

The idea here isn't to increase your pulse rate to near-coronary levels, but to get involved in methodical, strategic initiatives as you attempt to dominate galaxies by mining helpless virgin planets, using the metals to build spaceships, and then taking over more planets, all while using some of your ships to fight off the evil forces represented by the dweebs on your AppleTalk network. If no one will play with you, there are some pretty-tough-to-beat computer opponents itching for a game, as well as an active community of Honuts on the Internet, who play by E-mail, and in real-time on the Outland network.

In short, Spaceward Ho is not an exercise to blow off steam after a hard day's work but more of a thinking person's way to obliterate your friends with a Dreadnought spaceship called Mass Murder, all while claiming cerebral, not muscle-twitching, superiority.

As befits such an enterprise, Spaceward Ho's graphics, while impeccably done, do not scream for resources--you can actually participate in a reasonable fashion with a monochrome PowerBook.
____________________________________________________

Best Strategy Game

Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness
Four Stars/7.7
Blizzard
714/955-1382
http://www.blizzard.com
List price: $55

If you're a strategy gamer hooked on all that faux Lord of the Rings folderol--serfs and footmen booming "At your command, Sir" and all that--you will go absolutely bananas for Warcraft II. No Hobbits here, but an impressive elaboration on the first version, which was a wonderful clash between humans and Orcs. As in the original, you assume either side and carry on the fight in increasingly challenging scenarios; most require you to build up your forces--footmen, archers, spell-spewing clerics, and so on--and then take the fight to the foes.

If you're into carnage, you still have plenty of chances to shoot arrows or slice up your opponents. But the new model, set in a stunning polar landscape, offers much more elaborate graphics, including a "fog of war" feature that cleverly limits what you can see. The cast of characters includes mages, griffin riders, goblin sappers, and juggernauts. The encampments you can build are much more elaborate--whole towns with foundries, stables, castles, and shipyards that send tankers to offshore oil platforms you build. And there's a scenario editor so you can create your own challenges.

The friendly game play in Warcraft II (which can accommodate eight players) even includes well-documented cheat codes for those too impatient to learn the best ways to build up forces and kick Orc (or human) butt. Most amazing, you can even enter the cheat codes via speech recognition.
____________________
Contributing editor Steven Levy, when he's not reporting for Newsweek, curates the Macintosh Game Hall of Fame.

January 1997 page: 130


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