Beads of sweat crawl into your eye sockets. Chills shoot up your spine. Fingers fumble for control. That's what you can expect when you squeeze into the cockpit of Super Strike Eagle, the most realistic flight simulation ever created for the Super NES!" Super Strike Eagle will challenge you with outrageous aerial dogfights in 7 explosive war theaters. Each brought to life by vivid graphics and eardrum-popping stereo sound! Twist and bend your way through enemy fire with wild roll and pitch functions. Vaporize enemy targets with awesome firepower. Blast a friend clear out of the sky in head-to-head competition mode. Or. bark commands at your friend as you fly together in the same F-15. Super Strike Eagle from MicroProse. Any other flight sim is for the dogs. To order, visit your favorite retailer or call 1-800-879-PLAY! LICENSED BY (Nintendo) MICROPROSE sMnrnim fkumAiMMftn s r s r i * 1992 MicroProse Software, Inc ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System ■ and the official seals are trademarks of Nintendo ol America Inc 1992 Nintendo of America Ire Phone Toll Free: 008 801047 (Strictly orders only) Software Trade-in Quotes & Enquiries: (09) 227 9991 Fax Orders: (09)2271114 GAMES, GAMES, GAMES ★ Hundreds more titles available ★ New titles arrive daily all at discount prices ★ We buy and sell used Sega and Nintend o cartrid ges and IBM CD ★ Hardware and Accessories HOURS OF BUSINESS (Western Australian times) Mon - Thurs. 9am - 6pm Friday. 9am-7pm Saturday.10am-3pm A320 AIRBUS - EUROPE ACES OVER EUROPE AlRWARR OR SVGA ALONE IN DARK it AMAZON ARCHON ULTRA BASEBALL FOR WINDOWS BATTLE ISLE 93 BATTLETOAOS BODY BLOWS BURNING RUBBER CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER Civilization COMANCHE OVERKILL COMANCHE MISSION DISK CROSSWORDS FOR WINDOWS CYBER RACE DARK SEED DARK SUN DAY OF THE TENTACLE DEJAVU 1 &2(WW . DUNGEON HACK EMPIRE DELUXE SCEN (WIN) EVEN MORE INCRED MACH EOBTRlLOGYd.ll. Ill) FANTASTY EMPIRES FLIGHT SIMULATOR 5 F S 5 SCENARiO-PARIS F S.5-SAN FRANCISCO FORGOTTEN CASTLE FREDDY PHARKAS FRONTIER ELITE II GENIES CURSE OODS. HARRIER JUMP JET HONG KONG MAHJONG JORDAN IN FLIGHT JURASSIC PARK KINGS QUEST 6 LANDS OF LORE LEATHER GODDESSES II LEGACY . LEISURE SUIT LARRY VI LINKS 386 PRO 15 25) LINKS COURSE DISKS FROM MECHWARRIOR H MICROPROSE GRAND PRIX NHL HOCKEY POPULOUS 2 PREMIER MANAGER PRINCE OF PERSIA PRIVATEER PRIVATEER SPEECH ACCES PRIVATEER-SPECIAL OPS OUARTEP POLE RAILROAD TYCOON RAILROAD TYCOON DELUXE REALMS OF DARKNES RETURN TO ZORK REUNION SAM & MAX SARGONV seal team 76 00 95 00 85 50 CALL 28 50 47 50 95 00 7600 76 00 76 00 57 00 66 50 47 50 95 00 57 00 85 50 95 00 28 50 95 00 85 50 66 50 CALL 57 00 66 50 11400 84 95 85 00 66 50 66 50 CALL 85 50 85 50 CALL 47 50 38 00 66 50 76.00 05 50 66 50 85 50 76 00 28 50 95 00 95 00 38 00 38 00 CALL 47 50 85 50 38 00 76 00 28 50 95 00 36 95 CALL 7600 38 00 95 00 7600 95 00 CALL 85 50 28 50 85 50 SECRET WEAPONS LUFTWAFFE 28 50 SENSIBLE SOCCER SHADOWCASTER SILVERBALL SIM ANT FOR WINDOWS SIM CITY 2000 SIM CITY POPULOUS PACK SIM FARM SIMON THE SORCERER SPACE HULK STONEKEEPER STREETF GHTER 2 STRIKE FLEET STUNT ISLAND SYNDICATE SYNDICATE DATA DISK TERMINATOR 2 OP SCOUR TERMINATOR RAMPAGE TIE FIGHTER TORNADO TV SPOR'S BASEBALL ULTIMA 7 . ULTIMA VIII . ULTIMA Vlli-SPEECH PACK ULTRABOTS UNINVITED IWINDOWSi WING COMMANDER 2 WING COMMANDER ACADAMY WRESTLE MANIA X WING IMPERIAL PURSUIT X WING B WING X WING STAR WARS YSEBIUS 20TH CENT ALMANAC 15 COl 7TH GUEST SPEC-AL ADVANTAGE T E\MS ALONE N’he Dark B17 SILENT SERVICE BLUE FORCE CASE OF CAUTIOUS CONDOR DAGGER OF AMON RA DAY OF THE TENTACLE . DRACULAUNLEASHED DUNE DUNGEON HACK ECO OUEST EOBTRILOGY Fl 17A'Fl5 II 4 SCENARIO FAMILY DOCTOR GREAT NAVAL BATTLES GUNSHIP 2000 & SCENARIOS INDIANA JONES IRON HELIX (WINDOWS) KINGS OUEST Vi KYRAND'A LABYRIN’H OF TIME LIBERATION LORD OF THE RINGS MANHOLE 85 50 95 00 7600 47 50 104 50 7600 85 50 76.00 85 50 95 00 66 50 28 50 9500 95 00 38 00 47 50 95 00 95 00 85 50 47 50 85 50 CALL CALL 47 50 57 00 47 50 85 50 1900 47 50 28 50 8550 66 50 285 00 123 50 95 00 95 00 95 00 85 50 95 00 95 00 85 50 89 95 104 50 85 50 85 50 114 00 95 00 157 00 95 00 95 00 95 00 157 00 114.00 95 00 95 00 CALL 85 50 95.00 MANTIS 114 00 MARIO IS MISSING DELUXE 95 00 MEGA RACE CALL MONKEY ISLAND 85 50 OCEANS BELOW 76 00 PETER PAN 95 00 PUTT PUTTS FUN PACK 57 00 REBEL ASSAULT 95 00 RETURN TO ZORK 95 00 SAM A MAX CALL SCOOTER S MAGIC CASTLE 85 50 SECRET WEAPONS & MISSIONS 95 00 SHERLOCK HOLMES 3 95 00 STRIKE COMMANDER 95 00 SVGA AIRWARRIOR 85 50 THE DIG. 95 00 TONY LA RUSSA !l 95 OO TORNADO 85 50 WORLD OF XEEN 95 OO A TRAIN 95 00 AFTER DARK 95 OO ANOTHER WORLD 85 50 CARRIERS AT WAR 2 85 50 CHESSMASTER2100 66 50 CIVILIZATION 95.00 CROSS WORD 66 50 OARK SEED 85 S3 OEJA VU 2 LOST IN VEGAS 66 50 EAGLE EYE MYSTERIES 76 00 FALCON MC 85 50 FREODY PHARKAS 95.00 HARPON DESIGNER SERIES 2 76 00 HOYLES GAMES 2 57 00 INOIANA JONES 8550 IRON HELIX (MAC CD) 166 50 LOOM 85 50 LOST TREASURES 2 76,00 LOST TREASURES OFiNFOCO 104 95 MONKEY ISLAND 2 95 00 NASCAR CHALLENGE 76 00 NO GREATER GLORY MAC 76.00 OCEANS BELOW (CO) 76.00 OH NO MORE LEMMINGS 85 50 PETER PAN 76 00 PETER PAN (CD). 85 50 PGA GOLF 2 CALL PGA TOUR GOLF COURSE DISK 47 50 PING & KOOKY S CUCKOO ZOO 76 00 POPULOUS. 85 50 POWERMONGER CALL PUTT PUTT S FUN PACK 47 50 REX NEBULAR 95 00 ROBO SPORT 85 50 SCOOTERS MAGIC CASTLE 76 00 SEVENTH GUEST (CD) CALL SIERRA AWARD WINNERS 95 00 SIM ANT 85 50 SIM CITY 2000 95 00 SIM EARTH 95 OO SIM LIFE 95 00 SPACE QUEST V 95 00 SPACE SHUTTLE (CD) 76 00 STAR WARS SCREEN SAVER CALL SVGA AIR WARRIOR 85 50 UNLIMITED ADVENTURES 85 50 V FOR VICTORY 3 85 50 V FOR VICTORY GOLD JUNO 85 50 V FOR VICTORY PACK 104 50 VICTORY AT SEA 95 00 WILLY BEAMISH 95 00 ALFRED CHICKEN .104.50 ALIEN 3. 104.50 ALIEN VS PREDATOR 104.50 ANOTHER WORLD 104 50 ASTERIX 114 00 BATMAN RETURNS 104 50 BATTLETOAOS 9500 CAL RIPKIN BASEBALL 104 50 CAPTAIN AMERICA 104 50 CHAMPION SOCCER 133 00 CUFFHANGER 8550 COOL SPOT 104 50 CYBERNATOR 114.00 DAFFY DUCK 104 50 DESERT STRIKE 114 00 DRACULA 95 00 EMPIRE STRIKES BACK 13300 FAMILY DOG . 123 50 FLASHBACK 104 50 GOOS 104 50 HOME ALONE 2 *** 69 95 HOOK 85 50 JACK NICKLAUS GOLF 89 95 JIMMY CONNORS TENNIS 104 50 JOHN MADDEN FOOTBALL 104 50 JURASSIC PARK 129 95 KING ARTHURS WORLD 104 50 LAGOON . 142 50 LAST ACTION HERO 85 50 LETHAL WEAPON 69 95 LOST VIKINGS 104 50 MARIO ALL STARS 169 00 MARIO IS MISSING 104 50 MARIOS TIME MACHINE 104 50 MECHWARRIOR 104 50 MORTAL KOM BAT 133 00 MYSTIC OUEST LEGEND 95 00 NBA ALLSTAR CHALLENGE 104 50 NBA JAM 99 50 NHLPA HOCKEY — . 79 95 OUTLANDER 104 50 PEBBLE BEACH GOLF 104 50 PILOT WINGS ...... 95 00 PLAYER MANAGER 114 00 PLOK 95 00 POPULOUS 104 50 PRINCE OF PERSIA 104 50 PRO QUARTERBACK 133 00 PUGSLEYS SCAV HUNT 104 50 REN & STIMPY 82 50 ROYAL RUMBLE WWF 133 00 FREE members card . ' on purchase of a control deck, hand held unit or once you have spent overS300. Members^Yr\j£2?l$f entitled to an extra ^ discounted (Sale items and specials not SHADOWRUN SPIN DIZZY STAR TREK-NEXT GEN STARWING-SFX STREET FIGHTER 2 TURBO STRIKER SUPER BATTLESHIP SUPER BOMBER MAN SUPER DOUBLE DRAGON — SUPER STAR WARS SUPER STRIKE EAGLE TECMO NBA BASKETBALL T2-ARCADE GAME T2-JUDGEMENT OAY TINY TOONS ULTRA MAN — WING COMMANDER WORLD CLASS RUGBY ZOMBIES 133 00 104 50 CALL 133 00 142 50 104 50 104 50 95 00 79 95 109 25 104 50 104 50 104 50 104 50 99 75 69 00 104 50 104 50 123 50 SPEEDY GONZALES SPIDERMAN 2 SUPER KICK OFF SUPER MARIO LAND 2 TERMINATOR 2 TINY TOONS WORLD CUP SOCCER WWF KING OF THE RING iTiEiND ADOAMS FAMILY ADVENT MAGIC KINGDOM ALIEN 3 AUSSIE RULES FOOTY BART VS RADIOACTIVE MAN BATTLETOAOS CAPTAIN AMERICA CHILLER CRASH DUMMIES DOUBLE DRAGON 3 ELIMATOR BOAT DUEL GAUNTLET 2 HIGHSPEED HOOPS INTERNATIONAL CRICKET JETSONS JOE & MAC CAVE NINJA JURASSIC PARK LEGEND OF ZELDA II NORTH & SOUTH PACMAN SIDE POCKET SPIDERMAN STAR WARS SUPER MARIO BROS 3 SUPER OFF ROAD TAILSPIN TOM 4 JERRY TURBO RACING 76 00 76.00 80 75 7600 85 50 47 50 76.00 19 00 80 75 7600 80 25 76 00 76 00 7600 85 50 76 00 85 50 80 75 7600 7600 1900 7600 85 50 7600 76 00 66 50 76 00 76 00 80 75 BART VS JUGGERNAUT 57 00 BART VS BEANSTALK 47 50 BATTLETOADS 57 00 CASTEUAN 57 00 CASTLE QUEST 66 50 CRASH DUMMIES 57 00 DOUBLE DRAGON 3 57 00 DRACULA 57 00 ESCAPE CAMP DEADLY 47 50 F-15 STRIKE EAGLE 57 00 F 1 RACE 47 50 FELIX THE CAT 66 50 FORTRESS OF FEAR 47 50 GEAR WORKS 47 50 GHOSTBUSTERS 2 57 00 HOOK 57 00 JACK NICKLAUS GOLF 57 00 JURASSIC PARK 57 00 KUNG FU MASTER 47 50 LEMMINGS 57.00 MARBLE MADNESS 57 00 MORTAL KOMBAT 57 00 NBA ALL STAR CHALLENGE 57 00 PAPER BOY 2 57 00 PITFIGHTER 57 00 POPULOUS 6650 POWER MISSION 57 00 PRO QUARTERBACK 5700 PUGSLEYS SCAVENGER HUNT 66 50 m ALIEN 3 BART VS SP MUTANTS BART VS WORLD BATMAN RETURNS CASTLE OF ILLUSION CHAKAN CHUCK ROCK 2 COSMIC SPACEHEAD DEFENDERS OF OASIS DRACULA DRAGON CRYSTAL ECCO THE DOLPHIN Fl GRAND PRlX HOOK INDIANA JONES JURASSIC PARK LEMMINGS MARBLE MADNESS MASTER OF DARKNESS MICKEY MOUSE 2 MORTAL KOMBAT PREDATOR 2 PRINCE OF PERSIA PSYCHIC WORLD ROBOCOP VS TERMINATOR SHiNOBI 2. SONIC 2 STAR WARS STREETS OF RAGE STREETS OF RAGE 2 STRIDER 2 SUPER MONACO SUPER OFF ROAO SUPER SMASH T V T2 JUDGEMENT DAY TAILSPIN TAZMANIA . TERMINATOR TOM 6 JERRY WIMBLEDON TENNIS WOODY POP WORLD GUP SOCCER ADDAMS FAMILY. ANOTHER WORLD ARCADES REVENGE ARCADES REVENGE ASTERIX AWESOME POSSUM BART VS SPACE MUTANTS BARTS NIGHTMARE BASEBALL 2020 BATMAN RETURNS BATTLETOADS BILL WALSH COLLEGE FOOTY BLAOES OF VENGEANCE BUCK ROGERS BULLS VS BLAZERS CAL RIPKEN JR BASEBALL CASTLE OF ILLUSION CHAKAN . CHESTER CHEATAH CHUCK ROCK CHUCK ROCK 2 COOL SPOT CORPORATION 76.00 57 00 7600 57 00 47 50 66 50 47 50 71 25 76.00 7600 76 00 7600 66 50 85 50 7600 7600 7600 57.00 66 50 7600 76 00 47 50 76 00 76 00 57 00 76 00 76 00 76 00 95 00 85 50 76 00 47 50 CALL 76 00 76 00 76 00 76 00 76 00 76 00 57 00 7600 47 50 76.00 66 50 7600 7600 66 50 76 00 38 00 85 50 CALL 85 50 11400 11400 123 50 133 50 85 50 95 00 95 00 95 00 85 50 95 00 95 00 95 00 85 50 85 50 85 50 85 50 99 95 128 50 114 00 76 00 57 00 COSMIC SPACEHEAD f CYBORG JUSTICE DAVIS CUP WORLD TOUR OESERT STRIKE DRACULA ECCO THE DOLPHIN ELEMENTAL MASTER EX MUTANTS Fl GRAND PRIX F117NIGHTSTORM Fl 5 STRIKE EAGLE 2 FIFA SOCCER FLASHBACK GAUNTLET 4 GENERAL CHAOS GHOSTBUSTERS GODS I GREATEST HEAVY WEIGHTS Lgreendog \ GUNSHIP \GUNSTAR HEROES 1 HAUNTING 1 HOOK r HUMANS INOIANA JONES INTERNATIONAL RUGBY JAMES PONO 3 JOE MONTANA SPORTS TALK 3 JOHN MADDEN FOOTBALL 94 JUNGLE STRIKE JURASSIC PARK KID CHAMELEON KING OF THE MONSTERS KRUSTY S SUPER FUN HOUSE LANDSTALKER LEMMINGS . LETHAL ENFORCERS LHX ATTACK CHOPPER LOTUS TURBO CHALLENGE II MAZIN WARS MEGA-LO-MANIA MORTAL KOMBAT MUTANT LEAGUE FOOTBALL MUTANT LEAGUE HOCKEY NFL QUARTERBACK NHL HOCKEY 94 PGA TOUR GOLF 2 POPULOUS 2-TWO TRIBES PUGGSY RANGER X ROAD RASH 2 ROBO VS TERMINATOR ROBOCOP III . ROCKET KNIGHT ADVENTURE ROLLING THUNDER 3 SENSIBLE SOCCER SHINING FORCE SONIC 2 SONIC SPINBALL STREETFIGHTER 2 STREETS OF RAGE 2 T2 JUDGEMENT DAY TECHNOCLASH TINY TOONS VIRTUAL PINBALL WHERE IN WORLD 'S CARMEN WIZ N LIZ WORLD OF ILLUSION . WWF ROYAL RUMBLE X-MEN ZOMBIES ZOOL 109 25 66 50 104 50 114 00 95 00 95 00 95 00 85 50 109 25 95 00 104 50 95 00 123 50 95 00 95 00 47.50 104 50 147 50 76.00 114 00 114 00 95 00 85 50 129 00 11900 85 50 95 00 95 00 95 00 95 00 128 50 85 50 95 00 85 50 142 50 85 50 147 50 57.00 95 00 7600 69 95 14995 95 00 95 00 147 50 9500 95 00 109 00 85 50 109 25 9500 114 00 CALL 109 00 CALL 95 00 142.50 69 95 95 00 147 50 109 00 123 50 85 50 104 50 95 00 11900 95 00 95 00 138 00 11900 104 50 95 00 BATMAN RETURNS BILL WALSH FOOTBALL BLACKHOLE ASSAULT CHUCK ROCK ECCO THE DOLPHIN FINAL FIGHT JAGUAR XJ220 LETHAL ENFORCERS NHL HOCKEY 94 NIGHT TRAP POWERMONGER PRINCE OF PERSIA ROAD AVENGER ROBO ALESTE SEWER SHARK SHERLOCK HOLMES SHERLOCK HOLMES 2 SILPHEED SONIC SWITCH THUNDERHAWK TIME GAL WOLFCHILD WWF RAGE IN CAGE MORTAL KOMBAT POPULOUS POWER STRIKE 2 PREDATOR 2 PRINCE OF PERSIA ROBOCOP VS TERMINATOR SONIC 2 SONIC CHAOS STAR WARS T2 JUDGEMENT DAY THE FLASH TOM & JERRY 1869 ALFRED CHICKEN BOOT BURNING RUBBER D-GENERATION DONK GENESIS JAMES POND 2 JAMES POND 3 JURRASiC PARK LOTUS TRILOGY . MORPH OVERKILL PINBALL FANTASIES REACH OUT FOR GOLD RYDER CUP GOLF SLEEPWALKER SURF NINJA TOTAL CARNAGE TREASURE IN SILVER LAKE TROLLS.. TV SPORTS WHALES VOYAGE ZOOL 95 00 76 00 76 00 76 00 66 50 85 50 76 00 76 00 85 50 76 00 CALL 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 . 114.00 95 00 99 00 109 25 11400 11500 CALL 95 00 CALL CALL 129 00 95 00 95 00 104 50 95 00 123 50 95 00 128 50 CALL 114 00 CALL 129 00 95 00 95 00 149 00 A320 AIRBUS . ADDAMS FAMILY Alien breed APOCALYPSE ASSASSIN BATTLE isle 93 BEASTLORD BODY BLOWS CIVILIZATION . COMBAT A:R PATROL DARKMERE DRACULA ENTITY FRONTIER ELITE GEAR WORKS HIRED GUNS SHAR 2 JURASSIC PARK LEGACY LIBERATION LIONHEART LOMBARD RALLY MORPH OSCAR OVERDRIVE. PINBALL FANTASIES PIRACY POPULOUS . SENSIBLE SOCCER SOCCER KID SUPER FROG SWORD OF MENDOR TWILIGHT 2000 WALKER WORLD CLASS CRICKET ESCAPE MONSTER MANOR SUPER WING COMMANDER TWISTED THE GAME SHOW ZOMBLIELAND MAD DOG MCCREE PGA TOUR GOLF RETURN TO ZORK ROAD RASH JOHN MADDEN FOOTBALL 66 50 76 00 1900 38 00 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 85 50 66 50 66 50 85 50 66 50 76 00 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 CALL 76.50 66 50 16 00 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 28 50 66 50 66 50 66 50 6650 85 50 66 50 66 50 CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL ALIEN 3 . 76 00 AMERICAN PRO FOOTBALL 28 50 ANDRE AGASSI TENNIS 76 00 ASTERIX 66 50 SUPER MONACO 66 50 BART VS SPACE MUTANTS 66 50 BART VS THE WORLD . 76 00 BATMAN RETURNS 66 50 CALIFORNIA GAMES 57 00 CHUCK ROCK 2 CALL COSMIC SPACEHEAD 85 50 DESERT STRIKE 85 50 ECCO. 76 00 Fl GRAND PRIX 85 50 G-LOC 47 50 JURASSIC PARK 76 00 KRUSTY S FUN HOUSE 76 00 LEMMINGS 66 50 MARBLE MADNESS 28 50 MICKEY MOUSE 2 76 00 BENEFITS OF SHOPPING AT HITECH WORLD ★ Choose from our huge selection. ★ Best selection of games, peripherals and hardware for all popular formats. ★ Buy at the best possible prices. ★ Save with our special deals. ★Toll free orders line. ★ Free mailing list. Som« items may not be available or be out of sioek at dale of prating No ra^checks on sale items A software new & used carries a 30 DAY WARRANTY Dealer & Video Store enquiries welcome We reserve me right to re^se any sae tv trace Prices sublet to cna^ge wihout ootce TO TRADE SEGA; 1 NINTENDO CARTRIDGES OR IBM CD S/WARE 1. Call (09 227 9991) for trade value of your games. 2. You will then be given a quote number, (valid 14 days) 3. Use this value toward purchase of any software/hardware we sell. | 4. Pack your software, with quote number, your details and software selection. Mail via registered post/courier to our postal address. 5. Your order will then be despatched within 24 hours of receipt of your traded games. TELEPHONE: (09)227 9991 94A ROE STREET, NORTHBRIDGE POSTAL ADDRESS: P.O.BOX 1199, WEST PERTH WA 6872 TO BUY SOFTWARE 1. Call ( Toll Free 008 801 047) for current price & availability of title. 2. Credit card payments will be despatched same day. 3. Payment by cheque/money order must include your name, address I phone number and your order, (allow 7 days for cheque clearance).] DELIVERY CHARGES PER ORDER Under $50.00 ($5.00) $50 to $100 ($2.50) Over $100.00 (FREE) Delivery usually within two days by courier or registered mail. to keep going and going with the months ahead looking just as promising as well. Actually 1994 is shaping up to be a very interesting yeer for video games in Australia (and world-wide). Not only are Nintendo opening their own offices Down Under, and reputedly spending big to cut down Sega’S dominance, but all the “Super COnSOleS” should be launched on the local market as well. The Amiga CD32 is already out (we'll review games as soon as they send us a machine and some good software gets released), and the Atari Jaguar and the 3D0 are only months away. Sega have also taken up the challenge to Nintendo, and their new machine, the Saturn, is now a 64-bit machine (of sorts), and it will be out early next year all going well. We've got a bit of a treat for all those interested in the upcoming choices with a review of the first 3D0 game, Crash ‘n Burn, which comes packed with the machine. Hmmm, very spunky. But back to the here and now, and there's some awesomely hot games floating around. NBA Jam has hit both the Mega Drive and SNESin amazingly good conversions that will have arcade junkies foaming at the mouth. The SNES is hitting high gear with Skyblazer, Aladdin and the veediotic Ren & Stimpy, while Mega Drive owners finally get a chance to play an old Nintendo favourite in Castlevania - the New Generations. James Pond will also have Sega owners smiling in his third (and best) adventure, Operation Starfish, while Mega CD players will be drooling over the long awaited Microcosm. PC users have been saturated by titles over the last couple of months and we take a look at some of the best, including two outrageously excellent LucasArts games, Sam & Max Hit the Road and Rebel Assault. Apart from that, we’ve got a look at computer animation and the world of Silicon Graphics with Australian company Animal Logic, who are responsible for many of the TV commercials that rate highly on the HYPER “Wowometer” chart. Mr Virtual Reality, Jaron Lanier, also downloads his thoughts, and we get inside his head for a look at the future direction of VR. As if that’s not enough, we take a sneaky perve on Sonic 3, and Mega Drive kids should start going berserk now because this is the one you’ve been waiting for! It’s high time for me to get out of here and start raving somewhere else, so tune in, turn over and get off on HYPER. Stuart HYPER» 4 PUBLISHER: Phillip Keir EDITOR: Stuart Clarke ART DIRECTOR: Aaron Rogers ASSISTANT EDITOR: Andrew Humphreys EDITORIAL INTERN: Simon Vandore ADVERTISING MANAGER: Phillip Keir OFFICE MANAGER: Roberta Meenahan ACCOUNTS: Maria Haros RECEPTIONIST: Kate Barratt CONTRIBUTORS: David Wildgoose, Ben Mansill, Julian Schoffel, Simon Vandore, Jad McAdam, Sarah Longhurst, Steve Polak, Simon Sharwood, Marcus Leadley, Stretch Armstrong, Amanda Huginkiss COVER PHOTOGRAPHY: Scott Wajon PRINTED BY Wilke Color NBA JAM © 1993. Midway is a trademark of Midway Manufacturing Company. The NBA and the NBA team trademarks used herein are used under license from NBA Properties, Inc. All rights reserved. NBA JAM SESSION is trademarked and owned by NBA Properties, Inc. 6 Letters 8 News Features 22 Logical Illusion Enter the amazing world — of computer animation with Animal Logic, an Australian company who are creating wonders with Silicon Graphics machines Through the Looking Glass The “founder” and main proponent of VR technology talks to HYPER about the future of cyberspace. Previews .Sonic 3 Pele’s Soccer Eternal Champions Mechwarrior 2 Virtua Racing Star Trek: Next Generation Inspector Gadget 30 Reviews 30 NBA Jam 34 A merican Football Joe Montana CD John Madden ‘94 NFL Quarterback Club 38 James Pond 3 40 Skyblazer 42 Aladdin 44 Ren & Stimpy 46 Castlevania - New Generation 48 Aero the Acrobat 49 Greatest Heavyweights _5ft Crash ‘n Burn 53 Spiderman vs Kingpin 54 Microcosm 56 Simon the Sorcerer 57 Leisure Suit Larry 6 58 Blood net 59 Innocent Until Caught 60 CyberRace 61 IndyCar Racing S2 Sam & Max Hit the Road 64 Rebel Assault Mega Drive/SNES Mega Drive/SNES Mega Drive SNES SNES SNES Mega Drive SNES Mega Drive 3D0 Mega CD Mega CD PC PC PC PC PC PC PC/PC CD-Rom PC CD-Rom SEPARATIONS BY Pica Overseas Pty Ltd DISTRIBUTION BY NDD Ph. 693 4141 All copyrights reserved by Otter Publications Pty Ltd WRITE TO HYPER! PO Box 634, Strawberry Hills, NSW 2012 Fax: (02) 310 1315 Advertising: (02) 310 1433 Byte Size 7^Play Guide Aladdin 74 Cheat Mode ^gSound 80 b * Screen Q^' Freebies HYPER» 5 Letters... Stuart’s still stuck in the I playground (no Michael Jack jokes please!), but he’s son found the time to read throu your letters. And guess what? I even answered some! If you want your letter in I keep it under 300 words (ap mately), keep it funny (not a pre¬ requisite) and keep it clean (well, not totally). When you’ve finished,! send it to: HYPER Letters PO Box 634 Strawberry Hills NSW 2012 HYPERMart We re; going to be starting a small cl^sifieds section for these of you wBo want to swap, selllindj buy gamfe (we may also have a sec¬ tion for Jenpals if you're lucky) These ads will be FREE. Yes, that's important so I think I'll put that ini capitals again (and maybe ever in bold thidtime) - the ads will be FREE, so send your details in alO words or less to: HYPERMart PO Box 634 Strawberry Hills NSW 2012 This service is only for private] advertisers (no retailers), and we won't beiprinting names and address«HM(BMMBMHE^o be sure to include that. HYPERMart will begin in a couple of issues time, as soon as we get enough response Australia’s only independent video and computer games magazine is looking for a sales¬ person. Duties will include the man¬ agement of existing accounts and the creation new advertis¬ ing opportunities. Preference will be given to peo¬ ple with previous sales experience. Applicants should have excellent Ridiculously High Dear Hyper, I just bought the first issue of your mag and, having read it, want to congratulate you on producing a first class publication to rival any¬ thing overseas. I am writing to show my disgust at the ridiculously high prices of games for consoles compared with those for other formats (PC, Amiga, etc). Take, for example, Flashback and Street Fighter 2. On the Mega Drive, the games cost $90-$ 120 and $160 respectively. On the Amiga, if one buys these games (and let’s face it, who does buy Amiga/PC games these days with the rampant piracy that goes on?) they cost about $70 each. I can’t for the life of mel console gam^s manufacturers can justify thyiuge difference in pric¬ ing. Suip, SF2 is stacks better on a MD. but after shelling out another $4 for a 6-button joypad, the price Merenceis $130. THAT jsolutely scandalous. Sure, cartridges cost more thd lisks, but this is itse t does not justify the price differ- nee. Jcdginl by the quality and mpssive scale I of most PC games Sese days, they take just as loj| g to pro | gramme as console ; there should be no argument there. To add insult to injury, PC games are often infinitely better packaged with very professional manuals whereas console games often get a folded piece of oaper. With the games m arket targeted at the teenage group, ie. those least likely to be able to aff : i games, the exorbitan pricing of con sole games must arrlunt to the jiggest rip-off along wii : : 'Ds/cassettes! I want to know the reas on for] [these prices and what can i ut them. written and verbal skills, an apti¬ tude for organisation and be com¬ mercial-minded and highly self- motivated. The position is located in Sydney. If you think you have the qualifications call Phillip Keir on 02 310 1433 or write to PO Box 634, Strawberry Hills NSW 2012 Thank you and keep up the good work. Yours sincerely, Kevin Ong Toorak, VIC I can only say that I totally agree with your comments. The mark-up on console games is unbelievably high, and the only justification is that the distributors want to make huge prof¬ its. CDs cost only a few dollars to press, so technically CD titles should be a lot cheaper than carts, but that is not happening. However having said all that, games now cost an absolute bundle to produce so the manufacturers have to make their money back, through the high pricing I of the titles. I think you’ll find a bit ore discounting over the next year, as mere third party distributors get into tflhAustralian market. Celebra tion & Rejoicing | Dear I This is the |pest news for a long | time... Much celebs and rejoicing, a mag to replace {he once venerable | Megazone. The Clarke's name or inute I saw Stuart the editorial I knew I’d found the magazine I’d been waiting for tp come back into existence. HYPER I own an NES snd a PC. Maybe one day I'll fork oat for a Mega Drive, but at the moment I satisfy HPHPHHR/ adventures with the likes of the Prince of Persia series, Waxworks and Flashback for PC.I like the format of the new mag, but please broaden your section on P^^fcj^jde tips. Got anything on please. Being a _^^Ho read types of game^Even if I don’t own a super new console I still want to keep up to date with what's avail¬ able. It musrbe hard to cover every¬ thing, but for me. that’s what makes ^^^Hgessential reading. Thanks ^^^^reat first issue. You’ve won Te over. Tony Norris St Ives, NSW Thanks Tony, and I think you ’ll find we Ve already increased our PC coverage. But I’ve got nothing on Waxworks at the moment, and it seems to be stumping quite a few people, so a solution would be very nice (hint). Child Abuse To the Editor, I was extremely displeased at your article, “Virtual Sex" in Issue #1 of your magazine. I feel for a magazine whose target audience is male and possibly between the ages of 10 and 15, the article was most inappropriate. The graphic descrip¬ tion of “Virtual Valerie’’ and your pro¬ motion of it as a form of enjoyment, represents a gross degradation of women in general. As two females aged 16 and 19 years who hap¬ pened to flick through their 14 year old brother’s magazine, we were dis¬ gusted at such an obvious promo¬ tion of pornography in a magazine designed for young teenage boys. As something that can only be described as pornography, “Virtual Valerie” and disks of the like cannot be viewed for their “novelty value” as was stated in your magazine, as it can only lead to further hard core pornography and eventually to a total abuse of the system (ie. child abuse). As a magazine whose aim is to promote fun and enjoyment through technology for young teenage males, the article was totally out of context. Please take this into consideration in publishing further issues, as your magazine is otherwise of a very high standard. Sincerely, Anonymous W.A. For a start, our * target audience ” Is not males aged 10-15, and our readers surveys have confirmed a wide and diverse audience (including women and over 18s). But you’re right, when you say that this maga¬ zine aims to promote fun and enjoy¬ ment through technology, and Virtual Sex (when it eventually happens) will hopefully contain a lot of fun and enjoyment and very little exploitative pornography. The article did not seek to promote Virtual Valerie or any other “ porno" software, but was an objective coverage of sex-orient¬ ed software that is available (most of it is hard to get, even if you are over 18). I don’t know where you get the idea that viewing ‘pornography ' leads to child abuse but this maga¬ zine is probably not the forum to debate this question. Hyper Kicks raphic | To Ed, I was walking dowr^to the I have a 12 year okHJo^hc^ newsagency to get the latest saves his pocket money every Megazone. That’s when I saw Hyper, month to buy the Nintendo Hyper kicks Megazone so I bought Magazine. This month he decided your mag and /an home. I read it. lt'' T0 4 OT^your magazine instead. I was good. was appalled at what he Showed But a few things get me cut. In ‘heme on pages 16 and 17. I could review of Mortal Kombat Andrew not believe a magazine marketed Humphreys said “In terms of dep:h to attractive younger generation! and gameplay it was no match for Streetfighter 2”. Get a life. Mortal Kombat s gameplay spits on Streetfighter. Let’s face it. Streetfighter is too old and boring. could print such pictures and print such information about what the |game Virt ual Sex would be. I have | n to the newsagent who sold my boy the magazine and] (now have a few questions for you. he of course had no idea what was 1. Is World Heroes 1 or 2 coming in it. to Mega Drive? 2. Is Fatal Fury 2 coming to MD? 3. Could you show us a few combos for each character in Mortal KombaM Thanks for the space. From Rjbhie Benuad Ah Richie (nice name choice way). The Mortal Kombat/ Streetfighter debate is a verysi tive thing, but we still believe that Mortal Kombat is merely a Streetfighter ci Each character the He, along with all the many par¬ ents I showed, was shocked apd e this magazine will become more responsible with the information it prints. You are influencing our chil¬ dren. Yours since^ly, K. Mears Murdoch _ I’m sorruthat the Virtual Sex nded you, but it w with nice graphics, hardly hidden away inside, a the same basic was a very large cover me r ■ moves and a few fecial moves - graphic. And if you call %n intelli- none of which you need to use. It’s gently written article about the pos- shallow and too forgivin&tstreetfightersibility of compuwrtechnology requires precision timing and strategy, being able tXfmulate sex, porno- By way of explanation then, HI answe^rapm^then I suppose it was. question 3 first - there are no real Fortunately the vast majority of our combos for Mortal Kombat! readers appreciated the article, and As for 1, World Heroes should be we have had the grand total of hitting the MD and SNES in a couple three complaints compared to hun- of months. 2. It’s not confirmed yet, dreds of compliments via our read- but we’d be very surprised if it wasn’t, ers surveys. While the graphics used were obviously sensational, the same " cybersex” suit and the Virtual Valerie CD have been given far more explicitly coverage by other magazines and TV programs such as " Donahue” (at 7.30pm) which your son could easily watch. One Question Dear Ed, Your mag is the best thing since Street Fighter 2, much better than other magazines. It has good reviews, cheats and the poster was excellent. One question: will Super Street Fighter 2 be coming out on Mega Drive? Scott Sullivan Woronora, NSW P.S. Your mag is great (I had to say it again) Thanks Scott, and if you turn to the news pages you ’ll see my fear¬ less prediction that Super Street Fighter 2 will be hitting the Mega Drive just in time for next Christmas. That’s not confirmed or anything - just an educated guess. Mega CD Admirer Dear Ed, I bought your new Hyper mag and I think it’s great, except that it hasn’t got many Mega CD reviews. I have a few questions for you: 1. Can you put more Mega CD reviews in your future magazines? 2. How much does Night Trap and Wonder Dog CD cost? 3. Can you get Day of the Tentacle for Mega CD? If so, how much is it? Jeffrey Rossington Charleville, QLD Well Jeffrey, the reason we don't have many Mega CD reviews is because there’s not that many games being released for the Mega CD. We are covering all the releases so just stick with us. 2. Night Trap is around $120, but Wonder Dog has never been officially released in Australia (you could pick it up at importers for around $100) 3. No. I wish. The Ed Has An Admir To my darling Eddykins, I love you with all my head Stuart! Let’s get married righj now - hey! Let’s just skip the wee :ing and go straight to the honeymoorp. Ha! Ha! Had you going there for < minute, didn’t I? Okay, okay,^here are my questions: 1. Do you know the releasellate for Leisure Suit Larry (LSL) 6 (pl^^h review it)? 2. I wanna subscribe! There wa§ no form in #1. 3. A software prize (or cash!) would be nice for the author of the best letter (me! me! me!). 5. Notice how I skipped Question 4? Just like LSL4: The Case of the Missing Floppies! 6. Any news of LSL7? 7. How about Legend ofjKyrandia 2 ? 8. I’m stuck in LSL 2 and 3 and Kyrandia 1. Please print solutions (go on!). 9. Who were the two hornie^pB the photo from the article “Virtua Sex" (naughty, naughty) in Issue # 1 ? What a waste of time, Tayla Ashcroft Shorncliffe, QLD Why was that a waste of time? Your letter was printed, and my heart has been touched, but onto the questions 1. It’s already released and you’ll find a review inside 2. There was a subscription form in the first issue and there's another one in this issue. If you don’t want to cut up the magazine, just photocopy it. 3. Get knotted 5. Very clever 6. I hope not. 7. Yes, it should be out now 8. No .9. Contrary to popular belief I was not one of them. Honest. Lucky Victim Dear HYPER, Not knowing whom to write to concerning computer and video games, you are the lucky victim of this request. I would like more infor¬ mation concerning the 3DO multi¬ player. That is, who built it, where land wh en and that sor|^fthing. Do have, or know who else may have the address of the 3DO co m pa" ny (“Palo Alto” doesn’t really tell i much)? How do I contact somebody such as Trip Hawkins, who runs it? Secondly, how do I find out more about Virtual Reality? I am hoping to somehow get a job designing the graphics inside VR environments, but cannot find how to trecomea part of thkindustry. The Lawnmower Man inspireo me to go into graphics of the sort and preliminary experi¬ ments in graphics have also inspired me more. The magazine s article on Virtual Reality in the sex indu stry is | not quite my style (I’m not wo about the sex bit or the physical arfacing or anything like that...), though the industry interests me (VR, not sex). Would it be wise to contact animators or “Reactor Inc" for further information? If so, then | wher e do I contactuBB^| ^fcanks for you r tinj Tim St Clair Manilla. NSW What!. You want more info after our feature article? If you want to contact the 3D0 company give Electronic Arts a call, and they will give you the details. E.A's NSW office number is (02) 911 66 unci ask for the lovely Jane Bui don’t beunaenn^mpression that Trip Hawkins will answer your letters though - he has a multi-national cor¬ poration to run. As for Virtual Reality, try contacting the Australian distributor of the Virtuality system, the Virtual Reality Corp. in Melbourne on (03) 827 0333. BRRKLEV TURBO itirjerle HOSKinS TURBO TURBO TURBO Cast your mind back to last issue’s Cheat Mode. Remember we told you that there are 5 hidden characters in NBR Jam (the arcade game) who haue requested that their names and birthdates be kept secret and that 3 of them are females? Well, here’s one in action - yep, it’s one of those foreuer smiling cheerleaders! Both of them appear in the game. But it seems that their appearance has caught them by surprise and that Midway are now caught up in a bit of a legal battle with Playboy. Vou see the girls are Playboy mod¬ els. Mark Turmell, NBA Jam’s chief designer, isn’t willing to discuss the matter. Rll he’ll say is this: “It’s become a legal thing with Playboy. I don’t think the girls realised that when they posed in the magazine we might include them in the game”. Needless to say, Midway will still not release the initials and birthdates of the Basketball Bunnies. Will they make it on to the home versions of the game? Hmmm. Check out a uery suspicious screen grab of the SNES version on page 33. The Sega Saturn goes 64-bit. Or does it? to get the media to understand that its Saturn, due late in 1994, is neither a 3D0-style 32-bit System nor a 64-bitter like Nintendo’s Project Reality, but a hot MULTI-PROCES¬ SOR system. The Saturn game sys¬ tem’s main processor will be a custom 32-bit RISC chip developed by Sega and. Hitachi, but the video processor is going to be at least 64-bits, ensuring super-smooth graphics. Multi-processing doesn’t end there, though, as there are reports of seven differ¬ ent processors in the Saturn, each with different responsibilities. The new machine will have 24 megabits of RAM and a further 32 megabits for the CD-ROM drive to work with. Sega of Japan is report¬ edly a tad peed off about all this talk of 64 and 32-bit- ness (Aren’t we all? All this “I’ve got more bits than you” stuff is getting radically out of control. Just remember that a machine’s technical specifications mean nothing without a good library of games. Games matter - bits don’t!) and has announced a whole list of advanced design features for the Saturn. These include high perfor¬ mance CG processing, glow shading, texture mapping, 60 minutes of full-motion video, a 16-million colour palette and optional wide¬ screen display mode. The Japanese press, responsible for hyping up the 64-bit story, have come out with a whole lot of Saturn rumours themselves, like a quadruple speed drive with a rewriteable CD sys¬ tem for saving data, both of which would be phenomenal¬ ly expensive and not very likely. More credible rumours say the Saturn will be direct¬ ly compatible with 5th gener¬ ation Sega arcade games, though not compatible with Mega CD or Megadrive games, and will cost about US $275 for a cartridge-only system and US $460 for the CD version. Ten games for» NBA Jam Bunnies ffto [EonmmBd HYPER» 8 & Ben? No f but weed makes a conspicuous appearance in a new PC game currently doing the rounds on bulletin boards every¬ where. The game is HappyWeed , a modern day version of Pacman on pot. Instead of that ugly Pacman thing, you play the part of a doper (repre¬ sented by a Smiley face) with the task of collecting as many cannabis leaves and joints as you can while being chased by an assortment of vil¬ lains from the drug squad (the Ghosts in Pacman ). Swallow a super¬ drug and you can chase them back to their base. Needless to say, we don’t approve of this sort of thing at all. Where do all the international Hip Hop acts go when they’re in town? To the HYPER office of course. Yep, we’ve been hobnobbing with the stars again. The Young Black Teenagers (YBT to their friends), one of America’s hottest rap groups, took time off from their recent Australian tour to play some games with the HYPER crew. These four guys - Kamron, First Bom, ATA and DJ Scribble - are seri¬ ous game heads. They know their stuff, and they know their systems. In fact, the only other place they’d been before we met them was the arcade around the corner from their hotel to rattle the local NBA Jam machines! They would’ve played 2 on 2 all night, but the $1.00 a quarter put them off - it’s only 25 cents a go in the States. Lounging around the luxurious HYPER quarters, Scribble would not stop talking about Aladdin (on Mega Drive) and the new 3DO wonder sys¬ tem. Aladdin's smoother than silk ani¬ mation blew him away (“I thought Tazmania looked like a cartoon - this is 10 times better") but he couldn’t wait to get his hands on a 3DO. Young Black Teenagers In Australia and Playing Games They’re on sale back home, and he’s already started saving. The biggest games freak of them all was Kamron (who you may have seen in the movie House Party II - he played Kid’s funky college room¬ mate). Kamron is the perfect HYPER reader. A self confessed game junkie, he’s got a Super Nintendo and a Genesis (Mega Drive) at home, and he obviously missed them, because we couldn’t get rid of him. After we finished the photo shoot and the other guys went back to the hotel, Kamron came back to the HYPER pad with us just to play Joe Montana's NFL Football on the Mega CD. Once he got the hang of it he was good too, taking Dallas (his favourite team) to victory over Miami, 37-7. But, with the day coming to an end, Kamron had to leave us - after all, he had a show to do the next night. The HYPER crew were there though and YBT went off. Their cur¬ rent album, Dead Endz Kidz Doin Life Time Bidz is one of the best rap albums we’ve heard for years. Support your fellow gamesplayers - go out and buy it! the new wonder-console are rumoured to be underway, including Virtua Fighters and Sonic the Arcade Gamel With Sega of Japan’s focus firmly on the Saturn, what’s to become of the Mega CD? Rumour (supposedly from within Sega of Japan) has it that soft¬ ware development for the Mega CD has come to a halt and that in-house development proposals for Mega CD games are no longer accepted! All their energies are being chan¬ nelled into Saturn develop¬ ment. Yep, you heard right. Once the current crop of games (around 10) are coded, that’s it for the Mega CD from Sega of Japan. Where does that leave those of you who shelled out big bucks for the Mega CD? Crying in a dark corner of your bedroom I suppose. But take heart - there’s still third party developers out there and Sega of America are still enamoured with the machine. Oh, and it is only a rumour. o* the bandwagon Meanwhile, Sony of Japan is planning to join -• the Sega-Nintendo-Atari- 3DO fray with a new CD- based system due at by the end of 1994 or mid-’95. Nobody really knows what they’ve got planned, but it should be a 32-bit RISC sys¬ tem able to process 3-D software with rotation and scaling built in, and “graph¬ ics processing capabilities on par with workstations". That’s according to Sony and its subsidiary, Sony Music Entertainment Japan anyway. They’re forming the Sony Computer Entertainment Company to release the system after Nintendo dropped their joint Play Station/SNES venture. "It will go beyond the 64-bit class systems under development by Nintendo and Sega," boasts Sony, who are apparently doing deals with the best 3DO licensees for software development. Whew. Next please... HYPER» 9 Photo: Tim Levy So you’ve been hanging around the house all day, glued to the chair in front of the telly with a control pad in one hand and a packet of chips in the other, wondering how on earth a person of your obvious talents can land a job in the games industry, have you? It’s a tough nut to crack - but not impossible, just look at the shambling indi¬ viduals that make up the HYPER crew. Well, here’s the foot in the door you’ve been wait¬ ing for: Sega are on the lookout for the "Ultimate Sega Masters". Yep, they’re actually willing to pay you to play games - providing you’re willing and able to communicate your awesome knowledge of all things Sega to callers on the Sega Hotline. To be in the running you must : » Be over 17 years of age » Have an extensive knowledge of Sega products and games » Be computer liter¬ ate (real computers - the ones with keyboards!) » Have good oral and written communication skills And remember that Sega’s HQ is in Mascot, NSW, so you’ll have to be able to get there too! Send your resume, with a list of the games you’ve played and finished, to the ever-lovely Karen Collins Sega Ozisoft Locked Bag 7 Rosebery NSW 2018. We know there’s a lot of comic fans out there - you keep bombarding us with letters and artwork. So you should all be happy to know that OzCon III, Australia’s biggest and best Comic Book Convention (and successor to the highly success¬ ful OzCons I and II) is just around the corner. OzCon features comic cre¬ ators, dealers, merchandise, and thousands of crazed fans all under one roof - and it’s a pretty luxurious roof too, because it’s at the Sydney Hilton Hotel. Here’s your chance to Dick up rare back issues, promotional copies, signed copies, original artwork, or that elusive pair of Incredible Hulk underpants you’ve always wanted. Of course, all the big overseas publish¬ ers will be represent¬ ed, so Marvel and DC fans can get all that hero wor¬ ship out of their systems. Confirmed special guests include Archie Goodwin (a DC editor famous for his work with Batman), Dave Sim (creator of cult comic hero Cerebus) and his offsider Gerhard (he doesn’t have a second name, he’s kind of like Iman), and Wolverine - yes. the hairy X-person himself. But local talent won’t be neglected either. The Australian comic industry is growing all the time, and with quality publishers like Issue One and Rat Race, the future looks very healthy. Cyclone, Aaargh!, Kronos, ARC and Xpress will also be there. Make sure you say hello to Sam Young and John Horvath from Issue One who drew the first two HYPER covers. Ask Sam all about him and Elle McPherson while you’re at it. OzCon III is on at the Sydney Hilton between the 5th and 6th of February. A one day pass will cost you a measly $15; a two day pass is only $25. Family passes are available too. Contact OzCon (ask for the lovely Christine) on (02) 267 1693 for more information. More Like Ground Zero, Texas is a $3 million Hollywood produc¬ tion directed by Dwight Little whose film credits include Halloween 4 and Home Alone. But don’t go looking for the movie in the cinema - you’ll have to own a Mega CD to see this sci-fi action flick. While Night Trap, Sewer Shark and Return to Zork have all used live actors and location shoots, Ground Zero, Texas is the first game to use full-on Hollywood production values and talent - directors, writers, actors and producers. While it seems to play a bit like Night Trap, in that you control cameras hidden HYPER» 10 A Movie... around a small Texas border town and have to scan between them to find ene¬ mies, it also looks far more interactive. An alien race, the Reticulans have begun to infil¬ trate the town as the first step in a full-scale invasion of Earth. You are an undercover agent sent in to save the world! There are four Battlecams set up in town, each armed with a state-of-the-art particle beam disruptor with which to stun the aliens. When you identify them, crosshairs will come up and you’ll have to target and shoot the enemy within a short time frame, oth¬ erwise they’ll escape, abduct humans and the plot will change for the worse. If you subdue all the aliens then you can activate a remote camera so you can search the town for the alien’s weapons. If and when you find them, there is safe with an inge¬ nious puzzle lock. To open this you need to piece togeth¬ er clues you would have picked up from the stunned Reticulans. Once you do this though, the Reticulan storm- troopers will find out and from here on in it’s a full-scale shoot ’em up, with the aliens exploding in spectacular green goo when you hit them. Ground Zero looks very promising indeed, and while the Mega CDs grainy video is a constant downer, this looks set to be the first interactive movie for the Sega system. It will be released in Australia in late February so we’ll have a full review for you next issue. WINNERWiRINNERS After almost three months, the sackloads of reader's surveys from our first issue have finally stopped coming in and we’ve had time to read them all and take in the com¬ ments (well, some of them any¬ way). To all those who were con¬ fused at the lack of space to fill in your address, and didn’t tell us - bad luck, you just failed our intelli¬ gence test (it sounds better than saying we forgot to leave room) and there’s no way we can give you the prize. Luckily 98% of HYPER readers are highly intelligent (we knew you would be), and included all their -- w% i m details. One of those people was Ken BayllS, from Sunnybank Hills in Queensland, ^ and he was the one drawn to win the Sony entertainment system worth $700 Onya Ken! But there were also 10 Suede CDs and 10 Pearl Jam CDs to give away, and these tasty discs were won by: Pearl Jam Suede R. Kiseljev. Mt Druitt NSW Evan Pearce. Hallett Cove SA Jeremy Francis. Hawthorndene SA Neil Francis. Wanneroo WA Tim Ward. North Bondi, NSW Matthew Brooks. Maryborough, VIC Mrs C. Balkin. Boronia Heights QLD Craig Jensen. Greenway ACT Michael Voulgaropoulos. Redfem NSW Ellie Leiters. Howard Springs NT Chris McMahon. Eungai Creek NSW Russell Rohde, Bribie Island, QLD Aaron Kirsh. Toronto NSW Dave Heslin. Nth Rockhampton QLD Kevin Desa. Wantirna South VIC Andrew Quay. Farrer ACT Amanda Garvey. Cairns QLD Joe Mettam. Wulagi NT M. Rimmer, Albany, WA Michelle Tate. The Channon NSW CAME OF THE YEAR II M k*n COMING SOON * ORDER NOW AT YOUR RETAILER Suagy; Fighter 2 Mortal Kombat 2 The Blood's Back and it’s Redder than Ever! Mortal Kombat isn’t the only hot fighting game to get a sequel. The best fighting game in the world has spawned another spin-off in Super Streetfighter 2 - The New Challengers. If you haven’t seen it or played it already, you’re not missing out on too much - it defi¬ nitely isn’t Streetfighter 3. It’s basically just a tarted-up version of the old favourite with four new characters to play with. There’s a new female fighter, Cammy who represents England. Her best special move is a “spiral arrow” which is very similar to Dhalsim’s “spear attack”. The giant Thunder Hawk hails from Mexico, and is particularly brutal with his "Tomahawk Buster”, as waII as a "Condor Dive” and the very tricky “Mexican Typhoon.” Fei Long from Hong Kong is a very tough character with hi ■ ’ -w : . T v ■■■■■T * . , -T - ^ ^ ' Tr ^TT. ., Mi L M j* , | |i r E m rn >• - - - E iy □ All but the most fanatical Sega gamers ^ will have probably overdosed on the antics of the spiny blue one by now, with both Sonic Spinbali and Sonic CD hitting the shelves a month . ago. But hold on to your tails A and hype yourself up once more because Sonic 3 looks / f set to be the biggest and a a baddest adventure the W hedgehog superstar has ever undertaken. be The HYPER crew are hard- core gamers, but we're also the cynical, world- weary types and very few V A titles raise our interests (or ^ our voices) past a moderate enjoyment level. However. Sonic 3 had the entire office > crowded around the screen mak- ing fools of themselves, right from the beginning of the mightily impressive intro. And we hardly got any sleep the first night we had it in our grubby little hands. We're not going to bother relating the new story or describing the many different levels here. Suffice it to say that Sonic 3 is about as close to perfection as a 16-bit platform game can get. The graphical detail is astonishing, the lev¬ els are long and challenging, and the gameplay is everything we've come to expect with Sonic, plus that little bit more. And the extra good news (for some of you) is that Sonic 3 is quite a deal hard¬ er than the first two Mega Drive adventures, so there’s no way that you'll be finished this one in the first few hours of playing it. Tails is back to keep our hero company again, and the split-screen two-player mode also returns, this time without the annoying flickering and slowdown. Sonic also has some very groovy new power-ups, including flame power (which turns Sonic into a fireball), an invincible air bub¬ ble and a lightning strike which will attract all nearby rings. As always, the bonus stages are very special, and can also get very difficult. We were dying to review the whole thing, but as its release is nearly three months away we thought we’d wait and let you drool over some of the gorgeous graphics instead. Please don’t get the magazine too wet. J-i '2 vjjd ■MM ■ m • - _ k * A 1 23F* J •v - -y-’ S.3SP3 UK* ji ii —T 1 M jlT ■ Ji } r L f ..L.Z- ^5 L ^ r l U ^ J _ ■ *- I Spill m ft EternalChampions MEGA DRIVE I Available: February I Category: Fighting I Players: 1-2 [Publisher: Sega You’d think we’d all be sick of one-on-one fighting games by now, wouldn’t you? I mean, no one can top Streetfighter II can they? Well, Sega think they can. They’re billing their 24 meg Eternal Champions as the fighting game to end all fighting games (yeah, yeah - we’ve heard it all before) and if the number of options are anything to go by, they might be right. There’s nine playable characters, three training modes, a deadly Battle Room full of mines, grenades, buzzsaws and a host of other obstacles (18 in all!), a prac¬ tice mode (where you select your enemy, the background stage, speed and skill level) and a tournament mode too. There’s even three instant replay modes - manual, auto or high¬ lights! Each fighter has around seven special moves plus an insult to drain the opponent’s “inner strength" (which appears as a Yin/Yang sym¬ bol next to their energy bar). All moves require a certain amount of inner strength, so the insult move can come in very handy. But if all that hippie-type stuff bothers you, you can always turn the inner strength requirement off. To get the most out of Eternal Champions you’ll need a 6-button control pad - without it, you’ll have to toggle between punch and kick with the start button, just like Streetfighter II SCE. It’s also fully compatible with Sega's new Activator control system, but if you’re sane and stick with a control pad, you’ll have to perfect charging techniques - all special moves are either charge moves (back or down) or button com¬ binations (like A+B+C). As for the fighters, they all look interesting enough and they’re sup¬ posedly the greatest fighters of his¬ tory - from 699 BC to 2345 AD. They’ve been drawn together in the year 2225 by the Eternal Champion, a God-like entity responsible for maintaining the cosmic balance between good and evil. When it finds itself dying (not very eternal really), the tournament begins to find a wor¬ thy successor. If you can defeat all 8 characters, you win the right to chal¬ lenge the Eternal Champion. It sounds pretty involved, huh? Trust us, it is. By the time we got our hands on a copy it was too late to review it, but let’s just say it looks very promising. It’ll be on the shelves soon but don’t buy it until you read the full HYPER review next issue! Inspector Available: May Category: Platformer Players: 1 Publisher: Hudson Soft Go go Gadget game! SNES own¬ ers could soon be battling Doctor Claw in the role of the world’s clumsiest bionic cop, Inspector Gadget. Dr Claw’s M.A.D. organisa¬ tion has kidnapped Gadget’s niece, Penny, and it’s up to the Inspector to free her. Fans of the TV show will know a scenario like this means a whole lot of bumbling from Gadget, with Penny and Brain, her dog, coming to the rescue at the last minute. Just how the programmers pro¬ pose to capture Gadget’s utter incom¬ petence remains to be seen, but they seem to have done a fairly decent job of portraying his... well, his gadgets. adget He performs attacks with his limbs-on-springs and the punching glove in his hat. There are also a few extra gadgets to find, like a plunger for climbing walls and an extra-long hand. The platform-style action por¬ trays all the characters from the show, with plenty of vicious M.A.D. henchmen running around to block Gadget’s progress. If you’re hoping at long last to find out who Dr Claw really is, pre¬ pare for disappointment. But if you’re a Gadget freak and this sounds like your cup of whatever... always remember never to ride in a car without wearing a seat belt and you'll still be around to read the HYPER review when we get the game. HYPER» 24 Dungeon Master II: Skull Deep IPejeSoccer PC/MEGA CD Available: May Category: RPG Players: 1 ^ Publisher: Interplay Way back when the Amiga 500 and Atari ST-FM were the ultimate in gaming technology, a Californian company called FTL Games released Dungeon Master, the fantasy RPG game that launched a thousand imitators. Its first person, hit-you-on-the- nose interface had games review¬ ers keeling over in shock, gibber¬ ing about “The best game I’ve ever played”. Nowadays, after Captive and the Eye of the Beholder series, Dungeon Master is long forgotten and Origin's Ultima Underworld I & II rule the RPG roost. But high up in the San Diego hills, FTL have spent the last two years working on something called Dungeon Master II: SkuUkeep, with gameplay that may well beat the crap out of anything that’s gone before on the PC, the Amiga and the Mega CD. Screenshots HYPER has seen don’t compare graphically to Underworld , but FTL President Wayne Holder says that’s not the issue: “We made a decision early on to just forget about things like graphics and CDs and that stuff that everyone else is chasing, and just focus on the key issues - the simulation aspects, basically... For example, in our system in SkuUkeep, a creature is a whole collection of data which is han¬ dled through a sort of intelligent scripting program where they all run their own self-contained little programs." Three quarters of the data for SkuUkeep is game code - only a quarter is graphics - which is highly unusual for a modern game. SkuUkeep is due, on both PC and Mega CD, in a few months time and FTL have already started work on two follow-ups, True Identity and Secret of the Void. So they must be confident. MEGA DRIVE/SNES finally got our hands on a copy of the Mega Drive ver¬ sion of Pele (too late for last issue’s Soccer feature, but never mind), and we’re not sure what to do with it. Originally we were going to review it, but after playing it and seeing the big “For Preview Only” on the cart label we decided that it couldn’t possibly be a com¬ pleted game. So, rather than scoop the review, we’ve opted to be fair to the game, and its producers. We can only hope that what we played was an unfinished version - it really is very smelly as it is. Sure the static screen grabs look OK, but you have to see it move to appreciate how dodgy it is. And the play control is absolutely terrible - the players skid around like chooks with their heads cut off and don’t pay much attention to what you want them to do. Accolade's Canadian programming team (Radical Entertainment) have a lot of work to do if they want this to be a hit. Anyway, take a look at the grabs and keep your fingers crossed. Oh, and we haven’t seen the SNES version at all so it could be an entirely different ket¬ tle of fish. I Available: March Category: Soccer Sim I Players: 1-2 ^Publisher: Accolade HYPER» 25 SNES/MEGA DRIVE Available: March Category: Going Boldly... Players: 1 Publisher: Spectrum Holobyte The Next Generation Star Trek fans tend to go to extremes to prove their love of the show. They wear the uniforms (Stuart’s Mum spent weeks on his Captain Kirk outfit), talk the talk, walk the walk and all that. In a word, they’re freaks. But don’t let this put you off Spectrum Holobyte’s Star Trek: The Next Generation , which looks set to be an involving action/adventure game that even well-balanced members of the community can enjoy. You control the Starship Enterprise and its crew, tackling a series of missions assigned by the Federation. Yes, intergalactic harmony is in your hands. The action takes place on the Enterprise itself (there’s even some space combat to get excit¬ ed about) and on alien planets too. The gameplay is a nicely bal¬ anced mixture of RPG and action elements so it should please just about everyone. Trekkies will be foaming at the mouth just at the thought of it all. HUTTif: unv Virtua Racing Virtua Racing has revolutionised arcade racing. It’s fast, smooth, and it plays beautifully. Link a bank of the beasts up and race against your mates - there’s nothing quite like it. How did they do it? Well, the coin¬ op’s graphics board is packed with extra-hard hardware - like a V60 processor (the chip Sega’s Saturn is rumoured to revolve around) and five Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) to animate around 180000 polygons per second. It’s all done with 16.7 million colours too. So how can a puny Mega Drive hope to capture the wonder that is Virtua Racing? With it’s own DSP chip, running at an impressive 26M Hz. It’s Sega’s answer to Nintendo’s SFX chip, and it drives the polygons in Virtua Racing at over 15 frames per second, making a game that is much, MEGA DRIVE Available: May, maybe Category: Race 'em Up Players: 1 ^Publisher: Sega Japan much closer to the coin-op than you ever could’ve imagined. In fact, after it was shown at the recent Amusement Machine Show in Japan (JAMMA), developers queued for miles to get their hands on the DSP chip. Hopefully, they’ll use it to create the Mega Drive titles of the future. Check out the screenies. All four arcade viewpoints will be included in the finished game and it really is very fast. THE NEW ALBUM INSTORE NOW can roduced oncre ondc wi mt ***** How did the HYPER crew get to be the veritable games wizards that they are today? With skill, prac¬ tice, and natural charm - and with the help of the Super NES Power Tips Book and The Official Sega Mega Drive Power Tips Book 2. They’re chock full of cheats, Action Replay and Game Genie codes, and of course, enough power tips on all the latest games to keep you gaming till the wee hours (not that kind of wee you moron). For Super NES gamers, there’s full coverage of 60 titles, including Mortal Kombat, Pugs ley’s Scavenger Hunt, Starwing, and Shadowrun. Mega Drivers get tips on games like Jungle Strike, Mortal Kombat, and the X-Men, as well as 8-page extended tips on Flashback, Ecco, and Rolo to the Rescue. Learn the cheats, follow the tips, study the maps. You might even get as good as us. You could win one of 20 Power Tips book (10 Sega & 10 Nintendo), just by subscribing to this most excellent magazine. Subscribing means that you get HYPER quicker, easier and cheaper (save 25% or $14 off the newsstand price). So get off your arse and plug into HYPER every month - it’s only $44.95. Not much to pay to be first with the latest! *Y>aW V>as* e V\t^ S uav e y\a^v When I first saw /VS/A Jam in action I peed my pants with joy (we do a lot of that here at HYPER - the cleaners complain, but hey, who cares?). The graphics, the sound, and the game itself just blew me away. Two thoughts filled my mind: I must remember to wear my rubber undies when in public, and there’s no way the Mega Drive or the SNES can handle this game. But I was wrong - both the MD and the SNES can handle it and handle it well. I don’t know how, but what we’re looking at here are two fantastic conversions of a ground-breaking game. Love it? Of course we do. For the Cave Dwellers nba Jam is fast paced, two-on-two bas¬ ketball. With only two-players a team, you get more speed, more breaks, and a flowing game. It’s a great one-player game, but it’s pure magic with four players. Thanks to new multi-player gad¬ gets, both the Sega and Nintendo versions can be four-player games too. Oh joy! It’s not just the pace of the game, the amazing graphics, and the incredible commentary that makes it such a blast to play - it’s the dunks. There are over 50 spec¬ tacular dunks hidden away in the game. Some players can do them all, most can’t - it all depends on your dunk rating. Being the first arcade game with an official NBA license, it has all 27 NBA teams and real NBA superstars to play with, as well as a host of “secret characters” (we told you the codes in the first two issues). Each team has its own strengths and weaknesses: some have good speed, but can’t shoot from outside; others shoot well but are slower than a pensioner on Mogadon. Each player is rated for speed, dunks, 3 pointers and defence. The ultimate aim is to defeat all 27 teams - then the computer throws up new teams to challenge. There’s thousands of possible com¬ binations, including all the secret characters. For the cheaters so, is every■ thing in the home versions? All the secret characters? All the cheats? To be honest, we’re not sure yet. We tried all the arcade cheats on both versions, and we only got one to work (power-up defence on the SNES) - but turning off computer assistance is an option for both. We couldn’t find the secret charac¬ ters either. The Autostat feature is there, but it’s been modified: instead of entering your initials and birthdate, you have to enter your initials and a password. You proba¬ bly need the right password. We defeated all 27 teams on the Mega Drive version and didn’t get to play any special teams or secret characters. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen on the finished carts though (in fact, the hot rumour is that all the cheats will be there on both versions) - we’ll have to wait and see. Oh, and where the hell is the Shaq? He, and other players like Dan Majerle, have been replaced in both versions. The stats aren’t as comprehensive either - all the num¬ bers are there, but the percentages are gone. But these are small niggles. Both the Mega Drive and SNES ver¬ sions of NBA Jam are better than you could have hoped for. Honest, you won’t believe how good they are. Hit three baskets in a row without the other team scoring and you’re on firel You can goal tend to your heart’s content and your scoring percentages dramatically increase. Occasionally you can shatter the backboard (right on SNES). Far left is the MD, and left the SNES. Left: Entering initials, followed by a password on the MD. The SNES version is exactly the same. Right: Coaching tips pop up in between quarters. Read them well my followers. This is the MD version. Far Right: SNES coaching Snip.7 PLAY. nn open plaver is rore likely to RAKE A BASHET SO PASS TO VOUR OPEn TEARKATE KHEnEVER POSSIBLE. TRY TO AnTICIPATE VOUR OPPOREnTS flEHT ROUE BEFORE HE RfiKES IT. mcmnc tips smi me. DECREASE THE CHAIICE OF All opponEnTs shot coins in the BASKET BY CETTinC in HIS FACE. HnocK hir Bonn nno steal the BALL. The quality of the stills is much better on the SNES. Far Left: A big win on the MD. Left: A close one on the SNES. Right: Team selection on the MD. Left: You even get the Halftime Report (without the speech). MD shown. Right: Stats galore on the SNES. Far Right: Final stats on Mega Drive. The still screens really show the MD’s limited colour palette. are on the Mega Drive. It’s as good as having the machine at home. Only one thing bothered me - three point¬ ers, especially in two-player games, were too easy to hit. Even players with the worst three-point ratings could make the shot simply by stand¬ ing at the edge of the court. NBA Jam is an amazing game and the Mega Drive conversion is so good you just have to have it. It’s the best sports game ever and a top contender for the best game of all time. Like I said, buy it. ( FORMAT: MEGA DRIVE ) ( AVAILABLE: FEBRUARY ) (CATEGORY: IT’S NBA JAM) ( PLAYERS:1-4 ) ( PUBLISHER: ACCLAIM ) $149.95 visuals ( The heavy-duty scaling of the arcade game is gone, but otherwise,! this is spot-on. The detail and animation are wild. sound ( All the music and VG nearly all the speech • thi as gameplay you pass to your team-mate, you then become that player. I prefer it off, but it’s a handy option to have. The Game When you’re ready to press start, you get the “Welcome to NBA Jam" from the commentator and the option to enter your initials and password. It’s all very familiar. At the tip-off (“Here’s the tip!"), you begin to realise just how close to the arcade game this is. The animation is superb, the detail on the crowd and court is excellent, and the dunks are incredible. It’s so like the arcade game that you even get to break the backboard every now and again. The graphics are as good as they get - the only slightly dicky bit is the player stills - the SNES stills are much better. But in-game, it’s hard to tell them apart. The sound is spot-on. The music’s been lifted straight from the arcade game and all the in-game speech is there too, including my favourites, “Is it the shoes?" and “The nail in the coffin”. You get it all - “Swish”, “Head fake”, “Boom Shakalaka”, and even the Tarzan yell and rotor blade noises for super¬ slams. The quality is excellent. The gameplay is just like the arcade game‘In fact, it might even be a little smoother. The speed is incredible (try a turbo pass) and the controls are excellent - with an Arcade Power Stick they’re perfect. All the features that make the arcade game such fun - the steals, the knock downs, fakes, the sweetly-timed passes, and of course, the dunks - Drive Acclaim (under their Mega Drive sub-label, Arena) like to farm out the programming of their top titles to crack programming teams. For NBA Jam they’ve used a team called Iguana Entertainment. I’d never heard of them, I don’t even know where they’re based, but I want to hug and kiss them all. If any machine was going to struggle with NBA Jam it was the Mega Drive (with only 64 colours from a palette of 256), but Iguana have ignored any technical limitations and produced an amazing conversion. The Options Just like the arcade game, NBA Jam is a four-player game if you’ve got a Sega Tap. If you’ve only got two control pads though, you can either play a Team Game, which puts you both on the same team against the computer, or a Head to Head match - you and the CPU against your mate and their computer friend. There’s plenty of options. You can set the timer speed from extra-slow to extra-fast (5 speeds in all) and the difficulty from extra-easy to extra-hard (5 difficulty levels). You can also turn the computer assistance feature off. Leaving computer assistance on makes for a more even game - if a team is behind, the computer will increase their chances of scoring by boosting their scoring percentages and reducing the percentages of the other team. The further the team is behind, the bigger the boost. It can be frustrating when you see a huge lead cut down, but remember, it works both ways. There’s also a thing called Tag Mode, which you can turn on or off. The default setting is off and it only affects one-player or two-player, head to head games. With Tag Mode off, the game plays just like it does at the arcade: you con¬ trol your guy and the CPU controls your team-mate - but you can make him pass or shoot when you want to. With Tag Mode on, you control the player with the ball. If 2NBA •Jjam ij ii REHTIJf-’l'TI fiifiSl ■■■■■■■■■ V * * ► VOU HflUE DEFEATED ALL 27 nBfl TEAms overall If you don’t get this game you really don't deserve to own a Mega Drive - give it to someone who’ll use it properly. fist HYPER» 32 SNES Iguana Entertainment have been very busy. Not only did they pro¬ gram the Mega Drive’s NBA Jam , they landed the job for the Super Nintendo too. And guess what? They did it again. Just like the Sega version, this is a near-perfect conversion of the coin-op. The Options All the options are exactly the same as the Mega Drive, so take a look left for all the info. Oh, and instead of using the Sega Tap for the four-player game you use the Super Multitap. The Game Hit the start button - straight away you’ll notice some¬ thing missing. Where’s the "Welcome to NBA Jam” voice? It’s gone. In fact, a lot of the speech is gone, but we’ll get to that later. Whack in your initials, choose your team and your away. It’s tip-off time. Just like the Mega Drive version, the ani¬ mation is fantas¬ tic. All the play¬ ers move beautifully and the dunks are as spectacular as ever. The detail on the court and the crowd is excellent too. In-game, it’s hard to pick any real differences between the graphics of the two ver¬ sions (everything is just a touch sharper on the SNES). Only the still- screens (the team selection and match-up screens) show the SNES’s big, 192 colours advantage over the Mega Drive. They look great - just like the arcade machine, and much better than the Mega Drive’s stills. But the sound is disappointing. The music’s straight from the arcades but the crowd noises don’t match the Mega Drive’s and a lot of the commentary is missing. In fact, aside from the "He’s heating up/on fire” and “At the buzzer" bits, the commentary seems to consist of “Wild shot”, “Two points”, “Intercepted”, “The rebound” and “Jams it in”. The Mega Drive version has heaps more speech. Why? Never fear though, the game plays just as smoothly and as quick as the Mega Drive version does. The con¬ trols are perfect - excellent touch, and excellent response. All the action - the dunks, the rejections, the knock¬ downs - from the arcade game is right here on the SNES too. There’s no easy three-pointer zone either. Aside from the mystery of the missing speech, this is another fan¬ tastic version of a fantastic game. If you’ve played the arcade game, or even admired it from a distance, you’ll know why you’ve gotta get it. If the world was as beautiful as it should be, we’d give every HYPER reader a copy. But it’s not, so you’ll have to buy your own. ( FORMAT: SNES ) C AVAILABLE: FEBRUARY ) (CATEGORY: MORE NBA JAM) c PLAYERS: 1-4 ( PUBLISHER: ACCLAIM ) r $149.95 ) visuals gameplay overall Buy it and you’ll turn you into a 7 foot tall dunking machine, which comes in handy in most social situa¬ tions we can think of. fist HYPER» 33 The popularity of American Football in Australia is growing every day. Eager fans religiously watch the Tuesday night replays on the ABC to check on the progress of their favourite teams and even people with no idea about the game know that a Raider’s cap is a nifty fashion accessory. No wonder American Football games are big sellers. NFL Quarterback Club Last month HYPER checked the ball weight of the latest Soccer games. This time Andrew Humphreys steps into the Goodyear Blimp for an aerial view of American Footie games. fBet vou can’t wait for next issue’s special on Croguef). What’s out there? In a word, shitloads. But only some of them are good enough to get the HYPER Big Rubber Stamp of Approval. The John Madden series (the original John Madden Football, Madden 92 and Madden 93) of games on Mega Drive are generally regarded as the cream of the crop - in fact they’re two of the best games ever made. Madden 93 on SNES is very good, but it’s not quite as slick or as playable. Bill Walsh College Football (for Mega Drive) is also excellent. EA used the Madden team to produce this one and it shows - it looks and plays like a warm up version to Madden 94. However, Mutant League Football is best forgotten. Sega’s first two Joe Montana Football games lack playability, but the “Sports Talk” commen¬ tary of Montana II is impressive. Montana 93 was a lot better, with multiple views and much tighter play control. For a more arcade-style approach, check out Super High Impact on both Mega Drive and SNES. It’s loud and flashy, but for longterm fun, it’s suspect. The SNES version is definite¬ ly the pick of the two. Madden NFL <94 What’s Coming? More footballing confusion is on the way. Whether or not Sega’s NFL Football 94 Starring Joe Montana (for Mega Drive) will ever make it to Australia is anyone’s guess, but it’s out now in the States. Two other Sega Sports titles are in the pipeline: a College Football cart and NFL’s Greatest: San Francisco Vs Dallas for the Mega CD. EA have a Mega CD version of Bill Walsh College Football to flog, with added video footage and play-by-play commentary. Keep an eye out for Tecmo Superbowl (an updated version of the old NES hit) for SNES and Mega Drive and the two-in-one Sports Illustrated Football/Baseball cart for the SNES too. Oh, and don’t forget John Madden for the 3D0 - it looks hot! Joe Montana’s NFL Football HYPER» 34 All screen shots from the Mega Drive. Sorry, the SNES version came late. NFL Quarterback Club Like the other two games in our feature, NFL Quarterback Club has an official NFL license (do they give them to anyone who asks polite¬ ly?). But Acclaim, who love a big name more than anyone in the business, have got individual licenses with some of the NFL’s biggest Quarterbacks too - Troy Aikman, Randall Cunningham, John Elway, Jim Kelly, Steve Young, Boomer Esiason, Phil Simms, Mark Rypien and Bernie Kosar. Why did Acclaim need to sign them all up? Because aside from being a normal, 28 team NFL Football game, NFL Quarterback Club also contains a special “Quarterback Challenge”. It’s a sub-game which puts two of the above QBs (represented by poor quality digitised stills) through their paces to determine who’s the bet¬ ter man (well, the better Quarterback anyway). There’s four “events", testing Accuracy, Speed and Mobility, Distance and Read and Recognition. It’s all about hitting targets and pushing buttons. Much like other "event" based games (Olympic Gold for instance) once you get the timing down, you’re unbeatable. As for the real game (you know, the Football bit), basically it’s a Madden clone - which is hardly sur¬ prising as it’s been developed by Park Place Productions, the guys responsible for the original John Madden Football. You can play exhibi¬ tion matches or a playoff series under two diffi¬ culty levels (beginner or advanced) but you can’t play a full NFL season. If you want sea¬ son play, you’ll have to go for Madden 94 or Montana on CD. The graphics are fairly uninspir¬ ing on both SNES and Mega Drive - the scrolling and screen-updates on the Mega Drive are particularly ugly. The sound is nothing to get too excited about either. There’s some good crowd samples and the odd bone-crunching hit, but it’s all a bit tame. The gameplay, using the familiar Madden-style behind the Quarterback perspective, is solid. NFL Quarterback Club does play a decent game of football. The con¬ trols are simple and responsive. Calling and executing plays is easy - in fact, it plays just like a Madden game. The only difference is that for passing plays, instead of pass¬ ing windows, the receivers have coloured circles marked A, B or C over their heads. Aside from the Quarterback Challenge mode (which is a dodgy addition to say the least) though, there’s nothing that marks NFL QB Club as anything special. If you want a Madden game then buy a real Madden game - you’ll get more plays, more features and more teams for your money. The selection screen for the Quarterback Challenge. The first event in the Quarterback Challenge. A passing play. There's no windows, but each receiver is clearly marked. ( Nothing to get terribly excited about here either, I'm afraid. gameplay A2 I Solid, that's the word for it. A few more" plays would’ve been nice though • and don't bother _ with the QB Challenge longterm I No season play, but, as always, a good honest waste of time for two. overall Put two “7s” together and you get 77. Not a great game, but not a bad one _ either. HYPER» 35 Madden NFL ‘94 Feeling a little confused lately? Got a sense of personal disorder? The world seems to be spinning inexorably towards chaos, does it? What you need is something to reas¬ sure you - something familiar enough to be comforting, but new and exciting enough to bring you out of your shell. What you need is Madden NFL ‘ 94 . Every year EA trot out the latest incarnation of John Madden Football, and every year they make it just a little bit better. But under¬ neath it all it’s always the same game. Whether or not you need this game if you’ve already got a copy of an earlier Madden game is up to you. It depends on how keen you are and how much money you’ve got. I’ll tell you what’s new and improved and you can take it from there. 1. It’s finally got an NFL license so you get real teams, updated for the ‘94 season, and real team logos and helmet designs to admire. 2. It’s multi-player. With EA’s Way Play’’, the more, the merrier. 3. It’s got Season Play. You cai play a full NFL season, storm through the Playoffs and take out the Super Bowl - and it’s all saved to battery backup. The NFL Season adds a lot to th< one-player game, but even though tl computer has smartened up, it’s sti too easy. You won’t get too many blowouts any more, but you shouldi lose too many. I’m 10 and 0 in my visuals A great perspective! scaling galore and moi instant replay angles than | you really need. “Helmet- , Cam” is a winner. Good FX and a genuinely annoying US commentator give it of atmosphere. gameplay Lots of plays and good player control. It’s a nice change for Montana game. longterm r lt might be too easy | for 1 player but there seasons to play and Su bowls to win! 2 player challenges are the go. overall Surprise, surprise! Joe finally scores. A worthy game in any sports fan’s collection ] and a top Mega CD title. Joe Montana’s NFL Football We previewed this last month. The screen grabs looked good, didn’t they? Well, it turns out that the game itself is actually rather good too. Yep, Joe Montana CD is the real surprise packet of the NFL pretenders. Sega have crammed a lot of stuff onto the CD. There's three difficulty levels (Rookie, Normal and Pro), all 28 NFL teams, and you can play a full NFL season too. Actually, the only way to qualify for the playoffs and have a shot at the Superbowl is by playing a full season. Win the Superbowl and you can face 10 All- Time Great teams, like Joe Namath’s ‘68 Jets, the unbeaten ‘72 Dolphins, and Montana’s ‘84 49ers. The graphics are a real standout. It's one of the first games to use Cinepak technology (we told you about it in Issue #1) and it shows: the colours are nice and clean and the scrolling and scaling is very smooth. Even the "TruVideo” of Joe looks OK. The sprites may be a bit blocky (and as they’re scaled, the bigger they get, the blockier they get), but the animation is good and the action is speedy so it shouldn’t bother you too much. You can see the work Sega’s pro¬ grammers have put into the game when you fiddle around with the instant replay feature. There’s 4 cam¬ era angles to choose from: normal, close up, an overhead blimp view (which is cool), and Helmet Cam (which is cooler). Even Don Lane can’t deliver coverage as good as this. As you’d expect, the CD sound is pretty nifty. The crowd’s nice and noisy (there’s even some idiot with a trumpet), the hits are as big and hard as the HYPER crew, and the commen¬ tary is fantastic. Here’s a particu¬ larly satisfying example: “Well the receiver was covered and there was no one to throw to so the Quarterback had to eat the football’’. It's almost as if (and I apologise for being a bit Zen) you, the game, and the commentator become as one for a fleeting moment. I’ve saved the biggest surprise till last - the gameplay is good too. The behind the Quarterback perspective (it really is the only way to go) works very well. You can even scan the field to the left and right before the snap to check out the defence. There’s lots of plays (each team has it’s own Playbook) and they’re easy to call. You can flip every play too. Player con¬ trol is good (and very much like a Madden game - you can spin, dive, throw a lob or a bullet pass) and after a while you should be able to run and pass with the best of them. Joe Montana on CD is a much bet¬ ter game than I expected. In fact, I’d even recommend it to diehard Madden fans - the gameplay’s not as good, but it comes close. I hate to end on a sour note, but there are a few niggles: the computer’s Al seems very low (I’ve won every game by a big margin) and the CD access time makes it a bit of a stop/start affair. Check it out though. This could be the NFL game for you. HYPER» 36 Season Play. The Chiefs are well on the way. The new reverse angle instant replay. Touchdown! gameplay Madden ‘94 on SNES Electronic Arts will not be officially releasing Madden NFL 94 for the SNES in Australia - in fact, all EA SNES releases are up in the air at the moment. Why? Because EA are having a few licensing disagreements with Nintendo. Given the strength of the yen and Nintendo’s strict control over the manufacturing of SNES carts (third party producers give their game’s code to Nintendo and then buy back the fin¬ ished cart), EA feel that, in all but the biggest markets (like America), it’s not profitable enough to sell SNES games. The good news is that you should still be able to get a copy of Madden ‘94 on import, and if you do, you’ll live happily ever after. Features-wise, it's exactly the same game as the Mega Drive version. It’s multi-player too: using Hudson Soft’s Super Multitap up to 5 players can compete at once! Visually, the SNES version has the edge on the Mega Drive. The graphics are sharp and detailed, using the SNES’s 256 colours to the full. For Mode 7 fans the screen rotates during punts and turnovers and the 360° instant replay camera lets you review every single angle of any play. The only weak spot is the animation - it’s a bit choppy. It doesn’t quite match up to the Mega Drive ver¬ sion in the game- play department. Madden *94 on Mega Drive is faster, smoothe and the controls are more respon¬ sive. Don’t get me wrong, the SNES version plays well, it’s just that the Mega Drive plays a bit better. Madden ‘94 is still miles ahead of any other SNES NFL game. As for scores, take the Mega Drive box and add a few marks for the Visuals but take a few away from the Gameplay. Leave the Overall score where it is. Now go and try to find a copy! The 360° instant replay camera. Love that Mode 7. HYPER» 37 Defeated by James Pond, Dr Maybe leaves the North Pole... intent upon revenge... Before long his schem¬ ing mind hits upon a dastardly new plan... The riches of the moon shall be mine! I must find someone stupid enough to do my dirty work... A few weeks later... a mysterious advertisemnt causes a stir in Rat City. And so, Dr Maybe arrives on the moon with his army of rodents. How do you like your fish? Crumbed? Pan fried, perhaps? With chips? How about in a platform game? Andrew Humphreys develops a taste for cod... James Pond is the only Special Agent in the world with fins. He’s also a bit of a game veteran. James Pond was originally an Amiga superhero, but his first adventure was also one of the earli- w ./ est titles available for the Mega Drive. It was fairly average (and that’s being kind). James Pond II: Robocod was better. James Pond 3: Operation Starfish is better still. It’s a serious¬ ly large, seriously playable plat¬ former. If the guys at Vectordean keep it up, James Pond 4: The Driftnet Escape will be a doozy. Mullet Pond's old enemy, the dastardly Dr Maybe, is trying to monopolise the world’s dairy mar¬ ket by strip-mining the Moon - which, as we all know, is made out of green cheese. Only Pond can save the world’s supply of milk fat. So, armed only with his anti-gravity boots and a rather nifty Flash Gordon signature range spacesuit, the Courageous Cod heads to the Moon on a mission of destruction. It all turns into a platform game with agents to rescue, evil hench¬ men (well, they’re rats mainly) to waste, mines to destroy, hundreds (literally) of levels to clear and mass¬ es of fun to be had. A password- backed map screen charts your progress. The basic objective in each level is to reach the exit (one of Maybe’s communication bea¬ cons), but there’s also weapons to find, items to collect, and puzzles to solve along the way. Just like a Mario game, it’s packed with enough challenging gameplay to put it in a class above the usual plat¬ form-fodder. The controls are simple and responsive. There’s a jump button (obviously enough), an action button (to pick up/use/ and drop items) which doubles as a punch button (hold it down and use the direction pad), and a speed button which lets James move his fishy feet at a frightening pace. Once he’s built up speed, Pond could outrace Sonic with one fin tied behind his back. He really is fast, and with his anti-G boots, he’s just as fast upside down. Yep. Pond clings better than Glad Wrap. This is Gameplay with a capital “G ”. The levels are big, there’s loads to do, and combining the vari¬ ous items to get to where you want to go is a lot more fun than simply pushing a jump button. The only slightly frustrating bit about the game is the password system. You don’t get a password until you find a surveillance beacon. That’s fine, it’s just that the passwords are so long and complicated you need an entire foolscap page and 5 minutes of your time to jot one down. At last my mines are operational! With this high- grade processed cheese I will corner the global markets and the earth shall be at my mercy. HYPER» 38 Flathead Not only does James Pond 3 play better than the first two games, it looks and sounds better too. It’s not the best looking game in the world, but Pond is well drawn and animated and the graphics have a distinct style and character all of their own. They’re colourful, varied, and everything scrolls smoothly even at full speed. The music’s good too (in a very secret-agentish way) and there’s some clear, stiff-upper-lip speech (“We’re counting on you Pond”) before each level. This is a very professional, slickly produced and programmed product. Even if you didn’t like the first two Pond adventures (I’m not crazy about them myself), you’ll like this one. There’s so much to do that you’ll be at it for ages and you’ll enjoy doing it too. James Pond 3 is one of the biggest, fastest, fishiest platformers around. Go on, play with the ...where you find hot custard... Hit this to complete a level. Find the springs and fly high. In the sky. Big Kipper. And when you’re finished with him, sprinkle some lemon juice on him, wrap him in foil and bake him in a low oven for about an hour. Mmmm. Lovely. The map screen as you go into Hot Custard Springs... ...and even some big ‘nanas. Pond’s got his fins on the apple gun! Helpful messages guide you through the game. MEGA DRIVE ( NORRP ) visuals ( Good FX, clear speech samples and some cloak and dagger on the Moon type tunes. gameplay ( Lots to do and it’s a joy to do it too. Classic, Mario-rivalling platform fun. Am I the only one who’s getting hungry? longterm Hundreds of BIG j levels and some tricky I tactics to figure out to boot. overal1 The best Pond ^ I game by far. An excellent platformer | with all the right ingredients. Just like a good fish recipe really. HYPER» 39 REVIEW » What’s this? A new kind of hero in an old kind of game? Does Skyblazer have enough up his jockstrap to cut it? Andrew Humphreys has a peek and comes back with all the answers... Growing up can be tough. It can be even tougher if your parents see fit to burden you with an unfortu¬ nate name. Schoolyard taunts can ruin a young man’s psyche. Take a look at Sky, our hero. “Sky” might be an OK name for a girl (even then it’s just a bit, well, hippie ), but for a dashing young boy it’s less than appropriate. Sky was teased, beat¬ en up, and after a while, he began to question his own manhood. He reacted as all of us would - he went to the gym, pumped himself up, and set out to prove his true butch¬ ness to the world. When the evil Ashura returns to the land of the Mystic Pantheon (Sky’s home), captures the young sorceress Arianna and starts turn¬ ing everyone into evil warlords, Sky seizes the opportunity to clear up any lingering doubts over his masculinity. He will rescue Arianna! He will destroy Ashura and end his tyrannical rule! And he’ll be back in time for afternoon tea with Mumsy. A Silly Old Duffer Skybiszer has a bit more to offer than your standard badly-scripted fantasy platformer. It’s basically a side¬ scrolling affair, where you jump around and beat people up along the way but there’s also some first-person perspective flying sequences to break things up. More importantly, thanks to the nicely paced gameplay, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to play. To reach the evil Ashura, Sky must travel across three conti¬ nents and fight his way through twenty one levels filled with bizarre enemy creatures and chal¬ lenging bosses. A map screen and a very strange password system keep track of your journey. At the end of each level a silly old duffer pops up to call you names (like “Whelp”) and to tell you not to get too cocky. He also shows you the “Mystic Pattern” (the pass¬ word) and at certain points in the game he gives you new super¬ powers to play with. At the beginning of the game, Sky’s magical abilities are pretty weedy - all he’s got is the Dragon Slash as a special attack. As you get further on in the game, your powers and your Energy Bar increase. Soon you’ll be able to use the Comet Flash to fly across the screen and wipe out bad guys and once you gain the Healing power, there should be no stop¬ ping you. But, although you can switch between your special pow¬ ers, their use is not unlimited. Once your Magic Gauge is empty, that’s it • unless you can find a Red Potion power-up to refill it. HYPER» 40 Spiderman? am that weight training has made our Sky quite a versatile sort of a hero. He swims, he jumps and just like Spiderman, he’s pretty handy at sticking to walls. Yep, Sky can do almost anything with ease. The controls are excellent. Everything feels just right so you can jump (you stick to walls automatically), attack (pound away on the button for combos), and fire off magic to your heart’s content. Because the controls are so tight it really is fun to play right from the start. It looks and sounds just dandy too. Sky isn’t the biggest platform sprite around but his animation is very smooth so he looks pretty cool when he’s running and jump¬ ing around. The backgrounds are exceptional. This is one game that makes the most of the SNES’s 256 on-screen colours - the depth is excellent and everything is bright and very vibrant. There’s also some good scaling and rota¬ tion throughout the game (check out the Tower of Tarolisk and the expanding boss inside) and some smooth Mode 7 effects in the first-person flying stages. The music is very good and quite ambitious (the pompous, cymbal-crashing theme has really grown on me) and the sound effects are just as effective. Gameplay-wise, it’s a very solid game. It’s big (21 levels), it’s quite tough, and the programmers have done a good job at packing in some much needed variety. The way your powers keep increasing keeps up the interest level as you progress too. But... So why haven’t I been rav¬ ing on about how fantastic Skyblazer is from the first para¬ graph of this review? And why, even though I did enjoy playing it, has it left me a bit flat? Nothing is missing - it has everything a good game should - it’s just that in the end, Skyblazer is not exciting or original enough to be truly great. It’s a slick package though and it’s definitely good value for money so check it out - you might love it. I didn’t. But I did like it. A lot, I think. Oh, bugger it - just read the score box and look at the pretty screen grabs. o I <4 M.n Do not S»t ovor-contidont . ThO bat t I p ha* i U*t bogun. . SNES PLATFORM ADVENTURE SONY IMAGESOFT Superb back¬ grounds - full of colour and depth. The screen positively glows with pride. Some good Mode 7 custom effects. $2 ppHpnp !■■■ | wm&32 W r The effects are ^ solid-sounding enough and the music is very good. And I really dig those cymbal-crashes, honest I do. A lot of good, old-fashioned platform^ fun to be had thanks to the fab controls but don’t expect your telly to shatter with excitement. Twenty one levels with password support^ and some of the bosses can be a real pain in the arse. But will you play it over again once you L knock them all off? Big, colourful and generally a lot of fun to play. But if your after a new gaming experience, look elsewhere. HYPER» 41 Aladdin is possibly the most beautiful game ever released on the Mega Drive. Can the Super Nintendo com¬ pete? You bet your bot¬ tom dollar it can. STEVE POLAK joins the coolest street rat in Agrabah. There is a veritable smorgasbord of new releases available for the SNES at the moment, but few are as amusing, inspired and downright sexy as Aladdin. Just when you thought the genre had been as flogged to death as jokes about Bronwyn Bishop's hairstyles, Capcom have come up with a platform quest which is nothing less than a masterpiece. This game is so complete with “magi¬ cal" touches that it is hard to know where exactly to start. Where to Start? I suppose one of the most significant factors in Aladdin’s brilliance is that it was put together by the same Capcom/Disney team that was responsible for Mickey’s Magical Quest. As a result the cartoon ani¬ mation is excellent, and the nimble dude in his oversized “trakky daks" runs, glides, slides and generally zooms around the ancient Arabian kingdom of Agrabah with startling fluidity of movement. It might not quite have the flair of the Mega Drive, but it's so close that it's nothing to grumble about. Added to the main character’s animation is Abu the monkey, who points, gestures and generally pro¬ vides comic relief throughout the quest. One of the best bits of “street theatre” Abu performs is at the end of the first main stage, where Aladdin faces a rotund machete wielding maniac. Abu cowardly hides out of the range of the battle and makes some hilarious boxing gestures, in order to spur you on. But there is much more! Aladdin is bril¬ liant in so many other ways, as the cinematic (or should I say car¬ toon) sequences HYPER» 42 in between stages are extremely colourful, and add a realistic ele¬ ment of story to the platform action. For those who are interested in more malevolent sequences, you should check out the scene where the mischievous Abu touches the Holy relics in the Cave of Wonders and incurs the wrath of the gods. The sonics are also quite effective in that they map the progression of the adventure quite well, providing appropriate thematic elements depending on the landscape Aladdin is moving through. I haven’t heard such a wide use of musical styles, and atmospheric vibes since the days of Castlevania IV. The backgrounds are also beautifully sculpted. Such fantastic use of light, shade and the colour palette is quite tantalising. There are also some rather nice touches, like the end of game/con¬ tinue screen where Aladdin has to pull a : ‘yes” or “no" rope, depending on whether you want to continue. If you look like quitting, both the Genie who is holding the rope and Abu make pathetically sad faces, and if you decide to continue, the Genie beams a big “yes I’m overacting" smile and the monkey does little jumps for joy. This bit is not only very cute but proves to be a strong inducement to keep playing. Also at the end of each section of the game if you are lucky enough to grab the magic scarab you are rewarded with a spin of the Genie’s wheel where you can be given additional hearts, lives or other bonuses. Leaps Out of the Screen This game just keeps leaping out of the screen with additional new bits to excite and amaze! Stage 3, inside the Genie’s lamp, is very ethereal as you wander from cloud to cloud surrounded by some dopey looking Genie faces and other comic crea¬ tures. This section is preceded by some seriously hard stuff though as you are required to go surfing with the magic carpet, as you try to escape the lava flow that is just inches behind you (very similar to the Mega Drive). After the bit inside the Genie’s lamp you are set for the ultimate showdown with the evil Jafar (and no, he isn’t a candy coated chocolate snack!). A word here about gameplay is also worth it, as Aladdin is one of the few platform games where you actu¬ ally have a nice balance between nimble sprite movement and tolera¬ ble playability. The little dude can flit about the screen in quite a manoeu¬ vrable way, but he is not so fast that he (and subsequently your temper) is out of control. Aladdin gets full marks on this most critical point. So there you have it! A quick jewel-encrusted sprint through one of the real gems available on the SNES for this month. Thanks to Mega Games (03 894 3611) for the cart. sound gameplay longterm Not sure here. I am ijaa | either very good (which I doubt) or it should have been longer. Still, a fantastic short | journey is much better .than a long, tedious one! overall I Scintillating stuff! It might not look [ quite as good as the Mega Drive version but it certainly plays j as well. HYPER» 43 If you can remember back to our last issue (yes, I know that’s asking a lot), you’ll remember our Ren and Stimpy preview for the Mega Drive. We hadn’t seen the SNES game but we’d heard it was pretty bad, and we told you so. BUT - we also said (and I quote) “that this could vicious misinfor¬ mation”. Well, lucky for SNES-own- ing lovers of the cat and dog team it turns out that it was just that - vicious misinformation. Points for Originality The game is split into four sections, each based on an episode of the Ren and Stimpy Show. In the first two sections you play Ren, the asthmatic chihuahua; then it’s time to play Stimpy. Basing each section (there’s about four levels in each) on a specific episode is a smart idea. Each section has a totally different look and theme to the last. It also means that die-hard fans like the HYPER crew will sit there chuckling insanely to themselves as they remember those classic moments of Ren and Stimpy mayhem. All your favourite characters make cameo appearances too. Powdered Toast Man flies through every level dropping powdered toast (what else?) to protect you and little whirly things so you can fly. Watch out for Muddy Mudskipper and the Horse too. You’ll also come across items like smelly cheese (to turn your breath into a lethal weapon), old bandaids and toothpaste (for your health), and some extra-stinky socks for big jumps. All the time, you know you could only be playing a Ren and Stimpy game. Stimpy Style Animation purists will love the graphics job the pro¬ grammers have come up with. Everything remains faithful to the show - that 1950’s sharp-edged style shines through. Take a look at the lounge room from “The Boy Who Cried Rat” and you’ll see what I mean. Ren and Stimpy and all their friends are well drawn and animated and the music and effects are top-notch too. The voices (“I’m so happy!) are nice and clear. As for the gameplay, it’s pretty standard platform stuff but it plays well and there is a bit more to it than just running and jumping. There’s heaps of objects lying around just waiting for Ren and Stimpy to pick up and use. In “The Boy Who Cried Rat" there’s flower pots and logs to throw at Stimpy and “In the Army” gives you grenades (to blast through walls), umbrellas (to glide with and to pro¬ tect yourself from falling watermel¬ ons!) and cannons to play with. As the game progresses there’s even a slight puzzle element that creeps into it . In “Stimpy's Invention" you’ll need to figure out switches and even make an explo¬ sive. And just what is that blow¬ torch for? Oh - and don’t listen to people who tell you the controls are bad - they’re fine. It’s just that some bits are tricky. A bit of prac¬ tice makes perfect. Ren and Stimpy: Veediots isn’t the best game around, but it’s not the worst by any means. In fact, it’s probably a bit of a milestone for T.HQ when you consider their previ¬ ous efforts (Wayne’s World, Home Alone 2 and Rocky and Bullwinkle to name but three). What we have here is a great looking, solid platformer when we could have ended up with something much, much worse. Veediots breaks no new gaming ground, but it’ll keep fans of the show happy for weeks (or days if you play it heaps). at all, SNES available NOW m category PLATFORM m players K i m publisher 1 ( T.HQ m price $119.95 m Bright, colourful and very close to the style of the Ren and Stimpy Show. The wiggly [ tooth nerves inside Stimpy's mouth are particularly cool. Good soundtracks (nice bugles for “In I the Army”), effective I effects, and clear Ren and Stimpy samples. Solid platformin’ I fun with a little bit I extra besides. And variety is always good for a few marks. Once you've got I them sussed out, the four sections are relatively | [ short and sweet and there's unlimited continues too. Fans will play it again just for the thrill value. overall A treat for Ren & Stimpy gamers and a decent platformer for the rest of you. Now all we need is Channel 10 to put the j show back on. Steempy! HYPER» 45 REVIEW >> Vampire hunting any¬ one? The gaming joy that is Castlevania hits the Mega Drive with a big red splash of some¬ thing that looks remark¬ ably similar to blood. Andrew Humphreys dons a garlic necklace, grabs his wooden stake (will he ever let it go?) and leaps into the action... Konami are famous for their Castlevania games (well, they’re famous for a lot of games really, but you get my point). After a series of successful NES titles, they released Super Castlevania IV for the SNES and hit the jackpot. Serious SNES gamers rate it as one of the best platformers ever. And why not? It’s big and beautiful (the parallax is amazing) and the soundtracks cre¬ ate incredible atmosphere. Now Mega Drivers can get in on the fun with their very own Castlevania game: Castlevania - The New Generation. Bloodlines Some of you might be thinking, “Hang on, what hap¬ pened to Castlevania - Bloodlines?" . Good question. Have a jelly bean. Well, this is the same game, only it’s been renamed. Why? Who knows. Just don’t get confused by it and don’t let it worry you. Concentrate on the plot instead... Castlevania - The New Generation focuses on the descendants of the Belmont family - two strapping young blokes called Johnny Morris and Eric Lecarde. Johnny is from Texas and he carries a rather large whip (he calls it his “Vampire Killer” but we all know it’s just a plain old bull- whip). It’s rumoured that he can do many wonderful things with this whip, but what he chooses to do in the privacy of his own home is really none of our business. Eric is from Spain and he carries a spear. Johnny and Eric meet in a bar and become close friends. They team up to defeat the evil Elizabeth Bartley who is gathering allies in a bid to revive Count Dracula. The year is 1917. With a hearty cry of “Vampires Suck”, Johnny and Eric, hand in hand, set out to save civili¬ sation as we know it. You get to play as either Johnny or Eric as you travel across Europe killing vampires and assorted other forces of darkness. Yes it’s a plat¬ former, and yes, it’s a good one. The playing area is large and each level (it’s password backed) has a distinct stylistic theme. From Atlantis to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, you’ll meet a host of enemies and a stack of grue¬ some bosses. Both Eric and Johnny have some nifty moves to master and there’s plenty of power-ups and special weapons (like axes, boomerangs and holy water) to keep you interested. HYPER» 46 Nosferatu is a good movie Visually, it’s a dark and moody experi¬ ence. The detail and colouring on the backdrops is excellent and the paral¬ lax is all that we’ve come to expect from Konami. There’s even some gory stuff for the bloodthirsty among you. The Johnny and Eric sprites are kind of small, but they’re well animat¬ ed and the bosses are wild. Think of Rocket Knight Adventures, only with a much harder, less cartoony edge, and you’ll be close. The soundtracks are good too. Everything is eerie enough (just like a good B-grade horror movie) but they don’t match the ambience and malevo¬ lent feel created in Super Castievania IV. Comparisons aside though, they might be scary enough to give you a mild case of goosebumps if you’re ever playing the game alone in the dark. But will you stay up late into the night playing it? Hmmm. The game- play is solid - there’s lots of moves and plenty to do - but it isn’t as com¬ pelling as it should be. The controls are good but (and this is the main problem with the game) the game plays a little too slow for my liking. Call me sentimental, but I’d much rather plug in Revenge of Shinobi. Nevertheless, this is a good debut for Castievania on Mega Drive. Overall, it doesn’t quite have the impact of Super Castievania IV, but it’s a slick, challenging, professionally produced game that should keep you out of mischief for a good few weeks. Unless of course you use the cheat we’ve got in Cheat Mode... Above: Bosses galore in Castievania: The New Generation MEGA DRIVE FEBRUARY PLATFORM SLASHER Great backdrops (check out the Leaning Tower of Pisa) and some extra ugly | bosses. Kind of like mine. (Oops, sorry Stuart!) Nice music - not | enough to scare the pants off you (thank God), but it might get to the I spineless amongst you. | The effects are sparse , though. Good controls and some nifty moves, but the pace of the game is just a little too slow to j really grab you by the goolies and twist. Big enough and I tough enough to keep' | you going. Just about interesting enough too. If you liked Dracula I you’ll love this ‘cause it’s heaps better. Then again, if you liked Dracula you’re a total moron. HYPER» 47 REVIEW » Aero the Acrobat The games industry must be running out of “cutesy” animals to use as platform heroes. Aero the Acrobat closes the door on vet another species. What will be next? STEVE POLAK hanas upside down and reviews the little buaaer before the blood rushes to his head. The industry hype for Aero has been strong in America and he is supposed to succeed where the rather disappointing Bubsy failed. Yep, he's supposed to be the new Mario/Sonic! Once the wheel is invented though it's hard to be inno¬ vative with it -1 mean, even with the addition of chrome alloy mags or whatever, it’s still a wheel. And this is basically Aero’s problem. Now don’t get me wrong, Aero does do some pretty exciting stuff, but basi¬ cally he’s here too late to be inspir¬ ing, and we’ve seen it all before. Halfway Decent But there are some good points. Firstly, there is some semblance of a plotline for Aero's quests, and the thematic feel of the game is quite effectively portrayed. Aero’s Circus has been taken over by the Evil Edgar Ektor (we somehow knew with a name like that, he wouldn’t be nice) Aero’s job is to entertain the crowd, whilst at the same time dealing with Edgar’s minions and eventually tracking the malignant baddie to his lair for a showdown. The circus vibe is well created, and the music, although a little annoy¬ ing after an extended session, is quite appropriate. Aero also tries to give you some diversity and challenge in the “tricks” you are required to make him perform. One minute you have to find a key, the next there are a group of hidden stars, and then you are flying through circus rings, with some quite impressive Mode 7 bits to boot. The game benefits from not being too linear. You have quite a large playfield and it is not simply a case of jumping along and running right. Aero is required, as an “Aero- Bat", to jump on trampolines, ride unicycles, suspend himself from the high wire, and of course be fired out of the obligatory cannon. All of these features do help distinguish Aero from the long line of fairly dismal platform fodder for the SNES, cur¬ rently being used as doorstops across the nation. The Little Bat-ler But unfortu¬ nately (I bet you knew this was coming) the little bat-ler (groan!) just doesn't have quite enough originality and playability to stand out from the crowd. Also, there are some parts of this game that are downright annoying. Aero is quite fast, but his speed is largely a waste of time because it is often hard to get moving at a decent pace without having that “I've just hit another thing I couldn’t see coming because it was impossi¬ bly hidden off-screen" feeling. Also, a game as long and diverse as this would have benefited from a pass¬ word system or a greater number of continues. And Aero doesn’t really have any decent firepower of note, so he has to mince about the screen being terrified of cute piggy things carrying balloons! I kept wish¬ ing the little beggar had been watch¬ ing his Arnie vids, so that at least once he could whip out a real weapon and incinerate his cuddly foes in a hail of napalm death. So there you have it, Aero is bet¬ ter than most, but not quite inspiring enough to take its place in the “Hall of Fame". But it is still probably worth a look - you might not get all the fun of the fair, but the little beg¬ gar does have a little flair. Thanks to the Game Squad (03) 882 7828 for the cart. HYPER» 48 We couldn’t possibly use that line about big, Greatest Heavyweight sweaty men beating each other about the ring for the third issue in a row, could we? Oh look - we just have! When will Andrew Humphreys learn? First the bad news. This is basical¬ ly just a tarted up version of Evander Holyfield's Real Deal Boxing. Anyone who’s ever seen Evander Holyfield will know why that’s bad news. Here’s the good news. Greatest Heavyweights is better than Evander Holyfield. But, and this is the really bad news, it’s still not good enough. Pulls no punches Here’s what you get: 8 of history’s greatest Heavyweight Champs to knock the crap out of in exhibition, tourna¬ ment, and career matches. There’s Jack Dempsey. Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Floyd Patterson, Muhammed Ali, Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes, and Evander Holyfield plus a host of unknowns to hit too. Sounds dandy, doesn’t it? The problem is that you’ve only got three punches to hit them with. That’s right, three. Button A throws a straight left, B’s for defence, C throws a round right, and A+B (or B+C) throws an uppercut. Sure, you can throw them high or low (it all depends if you’re standing up straight or crouching), but there’s no hiding from the fact that your entire punching repertoire consists of a left jab, a right cross, and an uppercut. The gameplay is hopelessly shallow - all you do is move back and forth (it’s a side-on, left to right perspective) and wallop each other with one of three punches. Things get a bit better with a 6 button control pad (there's no need to hit two buttons at once) but your range is still too limited.l It’s a bit of a shame really, because if you ignore the lack of gameplay, Greatest Heavyweights is an OK game. It looks good - the sprites resemble the fighters they’re meant to be and they move well enough too. The Sega Sports (set up by Sega of America to rival EA Sports) presentation, including the much needed bikini-wearing bimbo between rounds, is excellent. As for the sound, the hits will make you grimace, the crowd noises are great, and there’s heaps of quality speech from the ring announcer - stuff like, “Let’s get ready to ruuummble!". Even the boxers have their own special taunts - they’ll call you a Mama’s boy, and Ali will tell you how pretty he is. In the end though, this is a very ordinary game. A game needs to do more than just look good and sound nice. The career mode is a welcome feature and the two-player game will keep dribbling idiots happy for a few minutes but there’s not enough game in here to make it worth the money (and it’s a lot of money too!). If you want a good boxing game, get Legends of the Ring (reviewed last issue) - it’s got the looks, the sound, the career mode, and some gameplay to boot. Return of Hitman Hyper Just like Legends of the Ring {see Issue #2), Greatest Heavyweights has a Career mode that lets you create your own boxer. It’s the game's best feature. Have a look at Hitman Hyper’s comeback. First you create a “look”, picking his head, body shape, hair colour, skin (blue’s such a lovely colour) and the colour of his trunks. Next you allocate energy between power, speed and stamina. Then you're ready to rumble. HYPER met a bum called Jimmy Wheeler and KO’d him in the first round. What a guy. But after the celebrations, it’s off to the gym for some training to boost your powers. How far can this boy go? tBffiS mmtt Dixon Victorious HYPER» 49 Crash ‘n Burn is the pack-in disc with the Panasonic R.E.A.L 3PO unit. Thanks to the lovely people at Electronic Arts, we’ve got our hands on one, and we thought you might like a review. We’re still not sure when Panasonic will be releasing their 3D0 player in Australia (May is a likely target), but keen gamers are already starting to import the machines themselves. Be warned - you’ll need an NTSC compatible TV or monitor and a power converter. EA will be importing 3DO disks for those lucky (or rich) enough to grab a machine from the States. The best advice is to wait for a local release; by then, 3DO should have the kind of software support it needs to be a successful machine. But, because interest in the 3DO is so high, here goes the review. HYPER» SO The future. 2044 AD. In a nuked-out world, car racing is as popular as ever - only now you get missiles to play with too. Oh, bugger it. You don’t want an intro, do you? It’s the 3D0!!!! Go on, look at the piccies, and if you’ve got time, read the review - Andrew Humphreys worked very hard on it. Remember Altered Beast I want to start with a reminder: this is the first game ever for the 3DO. Things will get even better - I mean try comparing Altered Beast to Aladdin on Mega Drive. Crash ‘n Burn is a very, very promising start for 3DO software. But it might not be the wonder game you were expecting. Underneath the flash graphics (actually, they’re very flash) is a fairly standard racer - it’s got lots of extra touches, but as a gaming expe¬ rience, it’s not revolutionary. And what about that CD access time? Don’t think that just because 3DO uses a double¬ speed drive that those annoying access delays will go away. They’re here to stay. Bottom line is, a conventional hard drive will always give faster access than a CD drive. Cartridges are even faster. If CD storage is the future of gaming, we’re going to have to learn to live with its limitations. But I digress... Crash n' Burn is a racing com¬ bat game. Take the dri¬ ving bits in Batman Returns on Mega CD and make them about 3 times better and you’ve got Crash n' Burn. There’s 6 tracks to race on and 6 characters to play with, each with their own custom vehi¬ cle. Some go for speed, others go for firepower. Your best bet is to go for balance. Be patriotic - try the Aussie hooligan with the Mohawk. There’s two ways to play: Rally Mode and Tournament Mode. No matter which mode you choose, your aim is to take out the Deathdrome crown. But if you want to get the most out of the game, you want the Tournament mode. As you qualify in tourna¬ ment races (1st, 2nd or 3rd) and your winnings grow, you can visit Floyd’s Auto Shop and upgrade your car. Floyd has everything you want - guns, lasers, mines, mis¬ siles, nitro, armour, custom enhancements - you just have to have the cash. If you’re good, you can build the ultimate machine. Tournament play quickly becomes complex, involving, and exciting. You need to win on every track to become the Deathdrome champ, and to do that you’ll have to take your strategic thinking cap with you into Floyd’s. For example, a rear- mounted flash laser will blind any driver on your tail without a polarised windshield. More gen¬ erally, is good armour or devas¬ tating firepower more important? Do you need more speed? Whatever you decide, your cer¬ tainly spoiled for choice. The only bummer about it (and it’s a big’ un) is that you can only save one tournament at a time - that’s a serious flaw. The Wow Factor visually, this rates high on the HYPER Wowometer. There’s scaling, rotating and texture-mapping all over the place, and it’s as » Circuits You get to choose froma selection of five tracks blah de blah... SHOCKWAVt 5*000 /SO son [RASH [BURSE CIRCUIT CIRCUIT - I 161 - 17000 IHflCK - | ZND - /SO lrps - 3 am — soo IROCK MrCflKO - C45 WASTELAND CIRCUIT riiUdivkiit CIRCUIT CIRCUIT — 4 161 — *2000 »RM« K - I — - ~ /Ml I ~ 4 - MHI I ROCK MH IKfll - // SEE Hll IS ROCE HYPER» SI r A bit of CD music, great effects and clear speech. fast as it is beautiful. One track seems to be made of glass - and even though it reflects the sky, you can still see through it. Everything about it - the digi¬ tised actors, the intro and pre¬ sentation screens - blows any¬ thing a SNES, Mega Drive or Mega CD could ever do out of the water. And you’d need some serious hardware in a home PC to compete. The sound is great too. The speech is clear, the effects are meaty, and the music doesn’t suck. But then again, even the Mega CD can deliver that. Then there's the gameplay. A lot of the guys around here weren’t that impressed. It does play like a standard racer. The controls are nice and responsive and the layout is good (Panasonic’s 3DO pad is a cross between a Mega Drive pad and a SNES pad - three buttons on the front, two on top) but, they cried, “Been there done that - it just never looked as good”. But the more you play this game, the bet¬ ter it gets. Like I said, in tourna¬ ment mode, things really start to heat up. And there we have it - I loved Crash ‘n Burn, but I’m not quite sure how to score it - I mean, I know it’s only the tip of the 3DO iceberg. If it was on any other system it’d score big time, but on 3DO, it’s only a hint of things to come. Right: Some fantastic texture map¬ ping turns the road to glass in the Tournament. Below: The stunning graphics and sound capabilities of 3D0 technology is shown off superbly in the charac¬ ter select stage. SELECT CHARACTER \ 328 / \28W/ [] L*P 1/3 I W w’m CHARACTER Bin (h ^ a * W "j -! m : C j L Y J m 1 I MAX WH ill TOM 1N Stlfctl tllH^K UNO S ' FMWWIW. - SfclfcCI OVHEK NM« available TBA category ( COMBAT RACER ) players publisher ( CRYSTAL DYNAMICS ) price visuals ( There really is no¬ thing comparable to this on any other home system. Flashy effects galore, excellent detail, great colour and smooth, fast scrolling. Great intro, sound gameplay Even if it is only a standard racer, it’s a | very good one. The controls are responsive and there’s j plenty of action to keep | you busy. Lots more depth L in the Tournament mode. longterm ( Even after you’re the Deathdrome Cham¬ pion, you'll probably play it again (Sam) just for the thrill of it. But why can you only save one game at a time? overall An action-packed race game and an excellent start for 3D0 software. Can't wait for the really good stuff. HYPER» 52 There's something to be said for dressing up in a lycra bodysuit and shooting sticky fluid all over the place. Hminm. but wo'd betr or not say Spiderman ys . SIMON VAND Or .->s the good taste to keep it clean... Spiderman vs The Kingpin is a game for dog-lovers everywhere. Tumbling wildly across the screen, beating the living daylights out of the bad guys, gorillas and a couple of little white bats, there is no way I can find to inflict any harm on the Kingpin’s guard dogs. All Spidey can do is wrap them up in a shower of web, allowing the brutes to unravel themselves and surprise him later on. Air Spidey But there’s nothing like flying through the air with the greatest of ease like Spiderman can. This game’s strongest point lies in Spidey’s manoeuvrability - once you've mastered throwing out webs left, right and centre to swing on, standard platform action gains a new acrobatic dimension. Spiderman vs Kingpin is a Mega Drive game that’s been somewhat pointlessly updated for the Mega CD. The graphics have been pumped, there’s some new moves and even the level design has changed, but the basic gameplay remains the same. The only real addition is a beautiful cartoon-style intro sequence (and other animated sequences), with speech, featuring Peter Parker in plain clothes sensing trouble and bounding out the window in his trademark red and blue suit. Starting up, my first reaction was to switch off the sound - “CD-quality music” boasts the packaging. Well, yes, it’s crystal clear and there’s lots of it, but it’s by Eric Martin of Mr Big, one of those one-hit American soft metal bands. It’s very irritating and would never have accompanied a real Spiderman car¬ toon. Worst of all, you find yourself singing along. The Key, the Secret The action takes place in New York City, where the Kingpin has hid¬ den a bomb and blamed it on l;& >■: n--gj Spiderman, distributing five keys for its defusing among ten vicious bosses. The player must use Spiderman's gadgets to battle through Kingpin’s hired guns, as well as through the police, who are convinced Spidey’s gone bad. From a map, the player chooses a location and the action is under¬ way. Unfortunately, the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. Running along platforms punching bad guys and picking up ammo is hardly an original concept. Web-swinging aer¬ obatics are this game’s only saving grace. Combat is boring, with limit¬ ed moves and an annoying tenden¬ cy for a sprite taking a hit to van¬ ish for a second and reappear in a slightly different place - even closer to the enemy, for example. Fighting the bosses can be particularly frus¬ trating. Thanks to the capacity of CDs, Spiderman vs The Kingpin has a well-designed front-end and is one of the biggest platform games I’ve ever come across. Trouble is, it’s unbearably repetitive - I’m sure only die¬ hard Spidey fans could per¬ severe to the bitter end. H Y PE R » 53 REVIEW » Being injected inside someone else’s body is an experience that makes Stuart Clarke feel just a bit queasy. But he’s going to review Microcosm anyway, just because it looks so spunky. Infinite one-shot laser power Assorted weaponry Only one man left In the final level, the brain, you are float¬ ing along in a bodysuit Two smart bombs. Microcosm is the “BIG CD GAME” that Psygnosis have been slaving away on for the past three years. It is scheduled to appear on the PC CD-Rom and the Amiga CD32 (as well as other formats no doubt), but its debut into Australia is via the Mega CD. This is quite unfortunate. The limited colour palette of the machine really fails to do the absolutely superb graph¬ ics justice, and combined with the relatively shallow gameplay, I was initially quite disappointed. But I suppose I had been look¬ ing forward to it for quite a while, and had let my expectations run wild, because when I looked at it again I realised that Microcosm really is a stunning game. It’s not a classic by any stretch but for its graphic style alone, it is a mile¬ stone in 16-bit gaming. Plagiarised Plot Ripping the plot straight from movies such as Inner Space and Fantastic Voyage, Microcosm takes place inside a human body. You have been miniaturised and injected into the bloodstream in a micro submersible craft. The twist is that you’re not the only foreign object in there. In the cyberpunk future, two multinationals, Cybertech and Axiom are fighting a vicious corporate battle which has resulted in two agents, the president of Axiom and the vice- president of Cybertech being injected into the one body. Which happens to be the body of the president of Cybertech. So not only is it a fight for survival, but for total corporate domination as well. Ooh, how exciting! However when it comes down to it and you strip away all the fancy touches, Microcosm is a simple shoot ’em up, and that’s not necessarily very exciting at all While the veins and arteries twist and flow around you beautifully, all you really have to do is blast the evil cells and viruses that come flying by, and avoid the red and white blood cells. If you do choose to shoot the relatively harmless blood cells, the balance of the body will change and the patient will die, taking you along with him. And for what basically is a shoot ’em up, the controls are quite loose and unresponsive. Your craft has the tendency to drift all over the screen and it is quite hard to line up enemies and give them what for. Early on this was very annoying, but you gradually get used to it and learn how to com¬ pensate. HYPER» 54 LEVEL THREE The Femur .**■ ■*- -<*v *S; - * iw • » # * • ♦ jt j •*-.**-« a. «** ^ ■+>- ^ LEVEL FOUR The Heart «V- S- £_ £- «v- r » *> 5-- C ^ «- ■'- <- ?-- . ^s. Like all shoot 'em ups, there are power ups for your weapon that you can collect on the way. You start with the standard single shot laser, but can graduate to double shots, orbiter shots (laser fire spins all over the place), homing missiles, heavy duty lasers and, of course, the ubiquitous smart bombs. The enemies you meet in the veins (how did they all get there?) are increasingly well armed and shielded, so tarted up weapons are definitely the items to be seen with. You are also given more powerful pods at various stages of the game, when you call into supply stations (do all bodies have supply stations inside them to rearm microscopic invaders? Hmmm, I wonder?), and these are essential for survival in later lev¬ els. The bosses are all very impressive, and in a couple of cases quite tough. Catch Me If You Can Apart from the simple shoot 'em up action there are also several chase levels where the action really hots up. These are races against the clock, where you are in pursuit of the rival probe which you must destroy before the occu¬ pants can activate the self- destruct devise which will open your host's arteries and kill him. The enemy craft dodges and weaves in the surreal surround¬ ings and it is an amazing inner- body experience (like, wow man), although not a particularly interac¬ tive one. Still it got me going and that’s what counts. So while Microcosm does have problems (it's a basic shoot 'em up, the controls aren’t the best, and there’s probably not enough levels) I would still recommend a good hard look at it. This one may just push all the right buttons for you, and the graphics just have to be seen to be believed. MEGA CD | JANUARY, categor SHOOT ‘EM UP jrs PSYGNOSIS price $109.95 j visuals Even though the j pathetic colours on I the Mega CD ruins the effect, the in-game graphics and cut-aways are truly wonderful. "E Rick Wakeman is a } dag, but he’s come up" with a good, atmospheric soundtrack. However the weaponry effects suck hard. This is where the game falls down. It may get addictive, but basically it’s very simple. A bit too simple. Controls are lacking too. But you’ll be I playing this one over and over just for the graphics. overal1 Not the game I was hoping for, but a superb looking shoot ‘em up that everyone should have a perve at. Should be amaz¬ ing on PC HYPER» 55 REVIEW » Simon the Sorcerer Simon is a 12 year old Sorcerer with Attitude. He’s also the star of one of the funniest graphic adventures since Monkey Island. Surprised? DAVID WILDGOOSE is. Brat. Brat. Brrrraaaatt. Say it to yourself a few times... no really, I mean it. It’s a horrible word isn’t it? But that's fair enough, I guess, since a “brat” itself is actually a pretty horrible thing. Think about it, every American sitcom has one, there’s that little... nnnghh... from Home Alone and, of course, “the fat kid from Hey Dad!". And we hate them all, don’t we? Simon the Brat? I thought that Simon was going to be a brat - all the ingredients are there. For a start he’s young, obscenely cute and is the “...bad boy of sorcery (with an) adolescent vitality and juvenile curiosity...”, according to the box. He’s also just celebrating his 12th birthday and Marvelo the Washed-up Magician is performing at his party for the twelfth year in a row. Simon’s parents have bought him a scruffy little puppy who arrives with a mysterious book in its mouth. One night, up in the attic, Simon begins to read the book and accidentally triggers a ish appearance, Simon does deliver some genuinely witty lines which I’ve, er, forgotten for the moment, but I do remember that I did laugh a lot. Tears and Laughter The best bits (and by that I mean funniest) tend to come in the extended sequences when Simon first meets a particular character. Two such inci¬ dents immediately spring to mind. There’s the woodworms in the forest who want you to collect some more wood for them, but they can¬ not decide what sort. They argue over the merits of oak, teak, balsa and driftwood before someone men¬ tions mahogany and, finally, they all agree. Then there’s the troll who goes on strike because he keeps getting thrown off his bridge before he gets to eat the billy-goats. The goats them¬ selves (who are reading their lines off a script) insist that he’s not following the story properly and demand that he lets them pass. spell which creates a magical por¬ tal. He steps through and into another dimension, drawn into a quest to rescue the nice wizard, Calypso, from the clutches of the evil wizard, Sordid. Simon’s not a brat though, and I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s because he didn’t irritate me as much as I thought he would. Or maybe it’s because he’s actually amusing. Hmm, I think that’s more like it. Simon The Sorcerer is an arcade adventure game in which you, unsur¬ prisingly, play Simon. It uses an inter¬ face essentially identical to Monkey Island-era LucasArts games and is very funny indeed. Despite his brat- You will laugh, honest. And you’ll cry as well. The Swampling’s story is so sad that only the most heartless of players will be able to keep a dry eye. He’s having a birth¬ day party like Simon, only his birth¬ day was actually two weeks ago and none of his invited guests have turned up yet. Sob. Then you arrive and... oh, just wait until you see those tiny tears roll down his cheeks... sob... Truly, this is a gorgeous game all round. Graphically, it is the best of its kind and right up there alongside the more cartoon-styled Sam & Max. What makes the graphics so good is the amount of detail they include. The animation is great and the back¬ grounds are exquisite. Wherever you look, from the butterflies darting among the flowers to the squirrels scrambling up the trees to the uni¬ corn prancing on the distant hillside, there is always something happen¬ ing to catch your interest. The music is a bit of a treat too. Simon the Sorcerer is a lovely game and definitely more of a tradi¬ tional adventure than Sam & Max, so if that’s what you prefer, this could be a better buy. Whatever, you certainly won’t be disappointed. Ow, ow ,ow? '> Cyber Race In the future there will be no war. Instead, rep¬ resentatives of opposing governments will take to the track in Cvber Race, a short dash around a sign¬ posted race¬ course in a around-huaging “sled”. The winner deter¬ mines the out¬ come of the dispute. BEN MANSILL straps himself in and goes for a ride. This is no ordinary challenge. You represent the Terran Empire (Earth and her colonies in a few lifetimes) and your primary foes are the unlikeable Kaladasians, with whom Terra has warred endlessly at the cost of millions of innocent lives. In your hands is the fate of Earth. Billions depend on your skill, and even worse, your reputation is at stake. Can you do it? And is CyberRace good enough to make you want to? A No Frills Big One CyberRace is a classic example of what can go wrong when a game that should be a no-frills occasional bit of good fun, is attacked by a team of spirit¬ ed programmers with a massive budget and the desire to make a “big one". There used to be an arcade driving game years ago (it took 10 cent pieces), where you had to steer a bonnet through a continuous stream of green edge posts that twisted and turned as they came at you. This same basic concept has been transplanted with minimal creative improvement to the age of fast PCs and con¬ sumers with high expectations. Taking the role of Shaw (with no option to add your own name!) you must repeatedly contest an endless sequence of short races. Each race is a short circuit of varying length and complexity, and you must accu¬ rately steer your sled through a tight¬ ly twisting course laid out by “holo¬ graphic" markers. Your sled can go in any direction, but to finish you must keep it between the extremely narrow markers for the entire race. To further complicate matters, it’s also a combat situation - all sleds are armed, including yours, and the blood flows freely. Great on Paper That's the gist of the game, it’s very simple stuff. Great arcade concept on paper, but the CyberRace that’s hit the shelves has the most widely contrasting good and bad points seen since the safe sex crusade began. The good is phenomenal, the bad a sad shame. Graphically, CyberRace is stunning - the style is all Comanche , beautifully sculpted 3-D landscapes with no straight lines to be seen. The terrain and colours change with every race, and the effect is sensational. The terrain graphics are easily the game’s best feature. They are also its biggest problem. To run in the best of three selectable levels of detail you need a PC that hasn’t been invented yet. I’ve run it on a variety of the fastest local-bus 486s, and every time the motion was as fluid as concrete. For true control there is no choice but to select the lowest detail level, and this trade off between potential and playability is almost criminal. Compounding this problem, the simi¬ larity between what you do to the joystick and what happens on¬ screen is minimal. Keeping your sled between the flags is hard and funless enough without the added bother of an awful joystick routine. CyberRace is an agonising combi¬ nation of potential and overkill. Still, the beautiful graphics and well scripted storyline are reason enough to take a look. Give it time, even if it means having to sacrifice quality gameplay in the process. FORMAT: PC AVAILABLE: NOW CATEGORY: RACING PLAYERS:1 [PUB LISHER: CYBERDRE AMS] PRIC£^99j95 Cutting edge and sensational, with a Cray Supercomputer. Sadly | wasted on a game with , little substance. r Nothing to complain | or rave about. Digitised speech during intro sounds muffled, although there's lots of it^ If grim satisfaction' is all to look forward I to with a win, then what's the point? The graphics will keep you interested for* a while, but the shocking playability will finish you sooner than you think overall Dazzling graphics, painful playability. Worth having in the collection, but you won't be joining the fan club. HYPER» 60 Indycar Racing Driving a car round and round an oval circuit may not sound particularly excit¬ ing. but IndvCar racing has a huae following in the United States. Then again, most Americans are crazv. Just like BEN MANSILL. For over a year now, Formula One Grand Prix from Microprose has reigned supreme as the premier serious driving sim for the PC. But now GP must hand over the crown, for IndyCar has arrived, and aside from being superior in every respect, it’s a knockout game that was admitted to the TRULY GREAT Hall of Fame the day it was released. Sensational in all the important departments, IndyCar is the new definitive driving sim for the PC. Win - at any cost That this American flavour of motor racing is far less popular in this part of the world than its European cousin matters not, the task at hand is a universal thing - win at any cost. A combination of twisty Formula One style tracks and the oval circuits that the Yanks love but the rest of the world finds so incomprehensi¬ bly dull are available for you to prove your skills in these two com¬ pletely different types of driving, in a car that’s guaranteed better than the real thing. God bless the clever programmers at Papyrus who developed this out¬ standing driving model, it’s a real gem. Your car responds and handles just as a real car would, a real Indy car that is. A delicate hand and enor¬ mous skill are required to win at the highest difficulty levels. During prac¬ tice sessions it’s hard enough to put in a few consistent fast laps without hitting the wall on every second cor¬ ner, and in a race situation when the heat is on, every win will be a thoroughly deserved one. A light¬ ly sprung joystick with lots of range is the right tool for this job. I use and recom¬ mend the Gravis joy¬ stick, but however you choose to control your car, this is a game that is so diffi¬ cult, yet so addictive, that it will drive you on to a very satis¬ fying perfection. Although your various difficulty options allow you to set the race to match your abilities, the computer driven opponents can be reliably expected to give it their best fight every time. This is a very pleasant change from the parades we are used to, these guys will block you, take spectacular risks with passing moves, and happily, screw up and spin off regularly. Sponsors & Billboards Visually, IndyCar is a feast. Each car is richly detailed with even the sponsor names and ads included. Splies, struts and even the Goodyear name on the tyres make the cars look fabulous, and they whip around on precisely modelled tracks fes¬ tooned with a huge variety of great look¬ ing billboards, which surely brought in some extra cash for Papyrus. Naturally, all this detail being moved around in such quantities places huge demands on your system, so fast 486 owners will have the biggest smiles on their faces. Even so, lowly 386ers will not suffer too greatly due to selectable detail lev¬ els and sharp programming tech¬ niques. It’s time to trash those crappy free speakers and plug into some decent amplified hardware - Indy screams, wails and roars with the most hormone-tickling engine sounds ever heard. The cars sound meaty and powerful and the sounds provide essential feedback for car control. The most sensational expe¬ rience, though, comes from entering a swarm of enemy cars: they Doppler effect you from all direc¬ tions in a frenzied cacophony of screaming power that will bring a big dumb grin to your face. Soundcard essential, play loud. IndyCar is a stunning package, whether you are showing off your dazzling skill on the best replay facil¬ ity I’ve ever seen (just like watching TV and it makes you look really good!), being mesmerised by the hypnotic effect oval racing can have on you, or giving it 100% at the very Bathurst style Laguna Seca track. A must for all racing fans. HYPER» 61 REVIEW » Sam Sam & Max is the adventure & Hj| game that promises to put lllcLX hair on your back. This is a Hit The Road good thing... or so DAVID WILDGOOSE tells us. Sam: “I can't think of anything more relaxing than being locked in a moving car with a delusional psy¬ chotic like yourself, little pal.” Max: m That’s really sweet Sam. I may weep openly ." LucasArts can’t put a foot wrong at the moment, can they? Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis, Monkey Island 2, Day of the Tentacle; they all were the best adventures you could get at the time of their release and are all still wonderful games. Now, there’s Sam & Max — Freelance Police: Hit The Road (but I think I’ll just call it Sam & Max) and it is at least as brilliant as the others. Charmingly Endearing one of the many great things about LucasArts games are the plots, and Sam & Max is no exception. Sam (the charmingly thick dog) and Max (the endearingly sadistic rabbit) are members of the Freelance Police force and have been assigned to investigate some bizarre occurrences at a nearby carnival. It is revealed that both star attractions of the carni¬ val, Bruno the Bigfoot and Trixie the Giraffe-necked Woman, have gone missing and you must get them back. Solving the case will take you across America as you visit every tacky tourist attraction know to man (er, and dog and rabbit), from the World of Fish to Mt Rushmore via the World’s Largest Ball of Twine. Max: “Gratuitous acts of sense¬ less violence are MY forte!” Sam: “ You’re such an adorable urchin , Max ." Since Day of the Tentacle, the LucasArts team have bought some new clothes for the interface. Now everything is hidden off-screen and the icons can be cycled through using the right mouse button. An inventory box is located at the bottom left and a full display is shown when you click on this. Besides the obvious slickness, the most notable improvement from this is that the graphics now take up the whole screen. HYPER» 62 Dirty & Weird Speaking of the graphics, aren’t they utterly fabu¬ lous? The same style of lunatic architecture used so effectively in Day of the Tentacle is present here, but in a much dirtier and plain weirder way which borders on Ren And Stimpy-e sque surrealism. (In fact, the whole game had a kind of Ren and Stimpy feel to it, for some reason). The animation is of an astonish¬ ingly high quality and much of the humour is derived from the hilariously detailed range of facial expressions and bodily movements of the charac¬ ters. Witness the dumbly innocent look on the face of the carnival fire- eater as he accidentally burns your investigation authorisation papers. Or when Sam thumps Max on the head while playing a game of Wack-A-Rat in one of the sideshow tents. You will laugh, I can assure you. Sam: m You're looking hale and hearty, HT buddy.” Max: “Tm a coffee achiever, Sam ." Combine all of the above — the groovy plot, the superb graphics and the slick ‘n’ intuitive interface — and you've got the perfect adventure game, right? Well, not quite, there’s still something missing - “Atmosphere". Yep. that’s right, it's “atmosphere" (you have to whisper when you say it) that makes or breaks a game and, naturally, Sam & Max has got it in bucket loads. And then some. Cute, Cooly Unfashionable & Funny Some of it (the “atmos¬ phere", that is) undoubtedly comes from the main characters. Sam and Max are two of the most appealing and downright lovable characters in gaming history. They’re cute, they’re coolly unfashionable and they’re most definitely extremely funny — what more could you wish for? The biggest portion of the “atmos¬ phere" though, is created by the fan¬ tastic music. There’s a different tune for each location you visit, but they’re all played by this really cheesy-sound¬ ing organ-type instrument and sound simply excellent in an appropriately retro kind of way. The whole game looks, sounds and feels like you’d expect a greasy Amer¬ ican roadside diner to... well, look, sound and feel like. Not surprisingly, you can visit one in the game. It’s called “Snuckey's" and I’d swear that the assistant is Bernard from Day of the Tentacle after he'd grown a mo. Sam: "Computer games are your best entertainment dollar value ." Max: "Go buy some computer games right now. Especially those funny LucasArts ones ." Cheers, Max. I couldn’t agree more. c available D C NOW category ADVENTURE players j r i ) publisher LUCAS ARTS ) price $89.95 visuals ( Utterly fabulous. Brilliant cartoon graphics with truckloads of humour and personality. sound One of the games best features - the | tune changes for every location. 3 H3 gameplay m Fantastic 1 adventuring in the I winning LucasArts I style. longterm You’ll be playing | this to death until the next LucasArts release (Can this company do i wrong?). overall Arguably the best adventure on the market. If you liked Day of the Tentacle or Monkey Island, you should buy this immediately. 13 ’/. HYPER» 63 REVIEW » Rebel Assault is the latest in a long line of Star Wars games from LucasArts, and is their first title exclusively designed for CD- Rom. JULIAN SCHOFFEL gazes in awe at one of the most visually stunning games to hit the PC. - * - Perhaps the first thing I should say about Rebel Assault is that it’s bloody hard. It took me ages just to get through the training missions and this was in easy mode! But hey, I'm not complaining, because the game is so good that I didn’t mind being stuck on it for hours, k It is essentially an arcade game with absolutely magnificent graphics wid sound. You take on the role of a Aokie pilot flying for the Rebel Alliance ^■this 15 level extravaganza. You fly a\ariety of vehicles from the Star Wars ^■verse, including a T16 Skyhopper, ^^^wspeeder, an X-Wing and an A- ^^Band take on the wicked Imperial fbrc^in a variety of locations, like TatOfl«p, Hoth, the Death Star and, of coqfc, deep space. Som^ifferent Perspectives The gameplay is viewed from four different perspectives. The first is third-person flight, where you view your ship from behind (similar to a chase plane camera view), then there is third-person bombing, where you view your ship from behind and above. You also get the standard first-person flight perspective, where you are in the cockpit. And finally, third-person shooting, where you view yourself from behind as you run through passages frying Storm Troopers with your hand-blaster. While this creates varied gameplay, it also N \ makes it damned difficult to get used to piloting a ship. I found myself successfully completing a level in the first-person flight per¬ spective, only to get nailed in the next level because-l had to re¬ familiarise myself with control in I third-bombing perspective. This is especially irritating when you only acquire the passcode to a game- section every four levels or so. Another slightly annoying aspect of Rebel Assault is the Inca -like con¬ trol of your ship. For those of you who played Inca you’ll probably remember how frustrating it was to find yourself in a gorgeous space- combat sequence, only to discover that you had little or no control of your craft. Rebel Assault suffers from the same malady. In one level wherl you have to take out a Star Destroyer, you find yourself doing a huge sweep around the enemy ship, while everything looks stun¬ ning, just try moving your ship out of the set flight path; you get little or no response. This is bearable until you have blown up all of the Star Destroyer’s defences except the two shield generators on the top of the ship, you then have to endure long periods where absolutely nothing happens until your X-Wing completes another complete circuit of the Destroyer. Star Wars Strikes Back By far the most impressive features of Rebel Assault are the beautiful graphics and sound. Some of the animated cut-scenes will leave you gasping in awe! There are also full screen video clips from the movie, which although slightly grainy, add a lot of atmosphere. But it’s the in¬ flight graphics that really count, and they are more akin to a movie than anything previously seen in a I • PC game. Just check out the detail of the asteroids, canyon-walls and Tie-Fighters! The sound of the game is also incredibly atmospheric, with plenty of crisp speech and orches¬ trated music straight from the Star Wars movies. The game can be controlled with a mouse or joystick but I would def¬ initely recommend the latter. I was using a Flightstick and found it to be a little too loose when navigating an X-Wing through a tight canyon. Control would probably be a lot easier with a slightly stiffer joystick like the Gravis Analog Pro. Being a CD game, you must own a CD-Rom drive to run Rebel Assault (Doh! -Ed). If you want to get the most out of the game you should also have a good sojund-card and a joystick. But you don’t need a 486; Rebel Assault chugs along nicely on a good old 386. If you want a solid, stunning-looking arcade game" which will make your friends jealous as hell, then Rebel Assault definitely fits the bill. PC/CD-ROM available c NOW category L ARCADE/ACTION 1 players C 1 j publisher c LUCASARTS j price c $99.95 ) visua. They don’t come I any better than this. Absolutely mind-blowing! sound You’ll think you’re i in a Star Wars movie, gameplay Control is often | fairly limited, and is reminiscent of the I game Inca. longterm The graphics and sound alone will inevitably keep you coming back for more. overall You must see this game! A state-of- the-art title that bodes well for the future of PC games on CD. TO 1993 YEARB99K ISSUE If you were out of it in ’93, then get into the Rolling Stone Yearbook. On Sale Now «u MAKE MY VIDEO: INXS MEGA CD Available: Now Category: Video Editing Players: 1 Publisher: Digital Pictures Price: $140 Just like the previous Make My Video attempts (Kriss Kross, Marky Mark, C & C Music Factory), this CD is basically a collection of digitised video sequences masquerading as a game. And like the previous duds, if you’re not into the band’s music you won’t get more than an hour’s enjoyment out of this (and consider yourself lucky if you get an hour). The story (if you can call it that): Two girls playing pool in a bar challenge you and a collec¬ tion of bar-room losers to edit an INXS video. These women are strutting around in their swim¬ ming cossies, playing a shot occasionally to show a bit of cleavage for the camera... Ves, you guessed it, this is one of those weak-as- water teenage titillation games. The approximation of a professional mixing desk shows three screens with a constant stream of cool and trendy images to choose from, as well as a variety of special mixing effects like strobing, slicing and running the words along the bottom of the screen (minus the bouncing ball). The only incentive offered to do well is the girls’ promise of affection, including appearing “in a whipped cream bikini". But why would you want them to when the Mega CD’s video quality is as dodgy as ever. There are just three songs included: Heaven Sent, Baby Don’t Cry and Not Enough Time. I’ve never liked INXS and having to listen to them over and over was hell. The badly acted bar¬ room sequences and speech get boring very quickly. Some of the images included are spec¬ tacular. but never innovative. You’d hardly give them a second look if they were on Rage. If for some reason you still find the concept interesting, go to your local video store and hire an INXS vid and something B-grade along the lines of “Porky’s". That won’t even cost you ten bucks. Simon Vandore SD BLADES OF VENGEANCE MEGA DRIVE Available: Now Category: Platform/Slash em up Players: 1-2 Publisher: Electronic Arts Price: No RRP t* //ffy > W/j Us 1 ” , j ~oT ir^r 1 ' --•> - tl r , - oom ? >L *y, Blades of Vengeance is a platform/hack em up that was coded right here in Australia by Beam Software. As for the storyline, I have no idea. It’s bound to be one of those Good vs Evil in a far away, mystical land thingies. All you have to do is push the Start button for a one or two-player game, choose one of three charac¬ ters, and start slashing all over the place. It’s that simple. Actually, it’s not quite that simple. We may have been a tad harsh when we previewed this game last issue. We said that all you had to was keep walking to the right and kill a few crea¬ tures on the way. Fortunately, there’s a bit more to it than that. You have to go up and down too and you may even need to backtrack to the left occasionally. Plus, there’s bosses to beat, lad¬ ders to climb, hazards to negotiate and heaps of secret passages and rooms to discover. The three characters (your standard Warrior/Amazon/Wizard) all have their own strengths and weaknesses and you get loads of magic to play with too. You can find the potions in chests or buy them at the end of a level if you’ve got enough silver (which you collect as you go). The graphics are almost good. The sprites are big, detailed, and the animation is smooth. As for the backgrounds, the further you get into the game, the more impressive they start to look. But, and the same goes for the sound, there’s nothing very special about any of it. And that’s where things start to go wrong. If it went to a high school formal, no one would ask Blades of Vengeance to dance with them because it’s got absolutely no personality. It’d be left sitting in a corner all night. Sure, it looks alright and anything you can play with your mates is bound to be fun for an hour or so, but it’s slow and generally very dull. However if fan¬ tasy romps and Golden Axe style slash ’em ups are your thing, then Blades of Vengeance might just be what you’re looking for. Andrew Humphreys C/1 —I C ZD 75 bfl b4 bb HYPER» 67 THE ADDAMS FAMILY MEGA DRIVE Available: February Category: Platformer Players: 1 Publisher: Acclaim Price: $119.95 S * 11 410 Clt» (I Up till now, Mega Drive owners have suffered the humiliating and painful misfortune of not having an Addams Family game for their system. They've had to sit back and watch their SNES owning friends have all the fun with the original Addams Family and the excellent Pugsley’s Scavenger Hunt. But now, thanks to Acclaim, the Addams have hit the Sega console. And guess what? It’s a carbon-copy of the SNES game. Here’s the (tenuous link with the film of the same name) plot: Morticia has been kidnapped, and it’s up to Gomez (that’s you, meathead) to rescue her. Regular HYPER readers will know that this can only mean one thing - a platform game. And that's exactly what you get. Gomez runs around, exploring the platform-packed Addams Family Mansion and its grounds in search of his beloved ‘Tish. Of course there’s a lot of jumping and climb¬ ing to be done, heaps of enemies to overcome (like his son, Gomez favours the bum-jump as a weapon), and bosses to beat too. Gomez can also pick up some useful items to help him in his quest, like the Fezi-copter (a flying hat), swords, and golf-balls (handy for throwing) - all of which help to break-up the usual platform monotony. The graphics are good (some sections are actually very good), the music is nice and ooky and the controls are fine too. As for gameplay, well, it’s just the same as it was on the SNES: a good, challenging platformer that should keep you entertained for a while. But, just like the SNES game, it’s nothing special. If you haven’t been there, done that by now you might like to think of taking up another hobby. To my mind, The Addams Family is just too old to make an impact on Mega Drive gamers. It’s overpriced too. Rent it if you must. Andrew Humphreys AD < & ^rr 7b Ckl UJ E— O loft Available: January Category: Puzzle Players: 1-2 Publisher: Sega of America Price: $99.95 * * IP .I DR 4 * * C-■••v- v V *■» *&§ * #v • v 5 III ■*§*$< 5 n ?•?•■*.< Vi?4f>T5v •• S*. Yes, it’s another Sonic spin-off game - this time it’s a puzzler starring Sega’s own Merv Hughes lookalike, Dr Robotnik. Robotnik and his minions are planning to use their mean bean¬ steaming machine to turn the peaceful little beans of Beanville into robot slaves. What is it with this guy and robots? Did he have a nasty but maybe slightly pleasurable experience with an automatic pool cleaner as a child, or what? The game itself is a simple, but nevertheless involving, puzzle affair. If you’ve played Columns (and who hasn’t?) you’ll know what you’re in for. As the beans fall into the chambers on either side of the screen (you compete against the computer or a human opponent), you have to arrange them so that four beans lock together. It doesn’t matter if they’re not in a straight line - they only have to be touching each other. Once they’re grouped, they lock together and disap¬ pear. If you don’t liberate the beans, then your chamber fills up and you lose. The graphics are nothing fancy (although the presentation is excellent) and neither is the sound but there’s a lot of gameplay hiding under the surface. The one-player mode actually has an aim (ie, beating all 5 of Robotnik’s henchmen and finishing the game) and the two- player mode can be fiercely competitive. Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine is not an original concept - it’s been around for ages in Japan under the name of Puyo Puyo (Sega added Robotnik and other characters from the new Sonic TV series to help it sell outside of Japan) - but it works. For some reason (and I have no idea why) the simple gameplay is strangely compelling. If you’re the right type of gamer, it can be addictive and a lot of fun. But if you hated Columns , you’ll hate this too. Andrew Humphreys DR ROBOTNIK’S MEAN BEAN MACHINE MEGA DRIVE HYPER» 68 HOOK CLIFFHANGER MEGA DRIVE Available: Now Players: 1 Category: Platform Publisher: Sony Imagesoft Price: $89.95 Remember when there were only two certain¬ ties in life? Well, it would appear that those hardy perennials, death and taxes, have been joined by crap video games which accompany blockbuster movies (I’m exempting, of course, Aladdin and SNES Jurassic Park). It’s becoming a popular refrain, and I’m not bucketing capital¬ ism per se, but games ain’t cheap and you would hope that the merchandising boffins spend a little more time on the games than they do on the lunch boxes and erasers. The evi¬ dence seems to suggest otherwise. Take Hook, for example - a left to right scrolling platformer - phew, those boys really went out on a limb there, didn’t they? Sure, it has a Hook logo on the box but Julia Roberts, Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman (or their rea¬ sonable digital equivalents) are nowhere to be seen. Yes, we’ve got Pan, Wendy and a motley selection of Lost Boys, but they actually look more like the top 15 players from Davis Cup World Tour for the Mega Drive than anyone who ventured onto the Spielberg lot during the heady days of Hook filming. Here, you join our moonlighting tennis pros as they comb through Neverland, fighting pirates and laying waste to blue porcupines (must have slept through that bit of the movie) in their quest to save Peter Banning’s kidnapped chil¬ dren. There’s eleven levels of action, each one designed to simulate a different part of the Island of Neverland and, as Peter Pan, you’ll be relying on your sword, jumping, your sword, swimming, your sword, Tinkerbell’s magic dust and your sword to see your children and yourself to safety. This is not a dead loss by any means, the problem is that it’s just another example of a functional but completely unoriginal platformer tarted up to cash in on the success of a movie that was designed more for its ability to sell bonus Coke cups than to entertain. No wonder Peter chose not to remain a boy for ever. Stretch Armstrong M ID (X) H 70 73 71 cx Ld E— 57 _ _ *»;> A ^ V* ^ * ' * * *rJm. % Well here’s a twist - a dull licence of an even duller movie! These bad reviews of movie-to- game conversions must be becoming a little tedious. Maybe you’re wondering how they fitted all that world weary cynicism into just one per¬ son, but hey, here at HYPER we calls ’em as we sees ’em. First, it’s pretty hard to get excited by a game based on a movie that you thought was com¬ plete rubbish. Gary Oldman, labouring under eight pounds of latex and calling himself “Drarcooola” in an accent of unknown origin, Keanu “English accent? No problem!’’ Reeves and the increasingly insipid Winona Ryder romp¬ ing around in period costume, desperately in search of a plot, is not my idea of a good night out. But if you were able to discern some merit in the film, then perhaps your view of the game will be different. Perhaps also, Erik von Danniken was right and the pyramids were constructed by aliens. But I digress... as with Hook, this is not a completely worthless game. It is, however, a reasonably dull, excruciatingly predictable plat¬ former with just enough tenuous links to the movie to allow the makers to slap on a trade¬ mark, stick in a digitised move style opening and, fingers crossed, ride the hog to merchan¬ dise heaven. If you like platform games you may very well like this - it looks okay, there’s quite a few lev¬ els and young John Harker (the Keanu charac¬ ter, as opposed to the leading Sydney rugby league caller) has a nice turn of phrase with a knife. You’ll be trying to save Mina/Winona from nothing less than she deserves. Of course, this will involve walking, jumping, killing things and fighting large bosses (Francis Ford Coppola?) a the end of each level. As I said, it’s okay, but I need more than rats and howling wolves to con¬ vince me this should have Bram Stoker’s name on it. Stretch Armstrong on < =D (XI H Z>J 70 MEGA DRIVE/SNES Available: Now Category: Action Players: 1 Publisher: Sony Imagesoft Price: $89.95 I can remember speaking to a friend just after he’d seen Cliffhanger. After a mournful “What was I thinking?”, he perfectly encapsulated one of the great dilemmas of Hollywood in the 90s, as studios pursue franchises instead of art: “Why,” my friend asked, “would anyone spend $40 million on special effects and scenery, and 12 cents on a script?” This may seem a roundabout way of beginning a game review but, dear readers, if we can successful¬ ly plumb the mentality that has made Sly Stallone a respected Hollywood player, we’ll be a long way to understanding why movie licenses are usually a load of bollocks. All of which makes it a pleasant surprise that Cliffhanger is the best of the sorry lot of movie games. It’s not great, but at least an effort has been made to create a “plot” which coincides, at least vaguely, with that of the movie. As a beat ’em up, it’s no Streetfighter but there is a reasonable array of moves and a bunch of extras too. As the well built, well hung, well tough and not particularly well educated Gabe Walker (Rocky Mountain rescue ace) you must rid your beloved mountains of the dastard¬ ly Qualen, find a bunch of moolah and save your crit¬ ically injured soulmate Hal. Despite the fact that you are Gabe “Strength of Ten Tigers" Walker this will be no easy task, as you will be faced with a never end¬ ing stream of Qualen’s morally bankrupt henchmen, not to mention chasms, avalanches, rabid bats and kung fu experts. I expect that this game is not endorsed by the Rocky Mountains Tourist Authority. The game is quite well drawn and animated and although the fighting action can become monoto¬ nous it’s a pretty good frolic, especially the realistic knife swishes. You also have to jump ice chasms and indulge in some enjoyable climbing action, com¬ plicated by ugly brutes trying to shoot you at the same time. There’s seven levels of play and even if the movie added nothing to the sum of Western thought this is a better than average movie tie-in. The bad news is that the average movie tie-in is unusually lame, but here Sly has. to a qualified extent, come up trumps. Stretch Armstrong o t/4 O _ bfl _ HYPER» 69 ALIEN VS PREDATOR DUNGEON HACK LAST ACTION HERO SNES/MEGA DRIVE Available: Now Category: Pile of Poo Players: 1 Producer: Sony Imagesoft Price: $89.95 TRCK SCORE: TIME: x®3 162900 \ '-I ENERGY : — . r' — There’s a very good reason why this game was in the shops before any magazine in the world had a chance to review it: fear. The logic must go something like this: we’ve got an absolute stinker of a game on our hands here - how the hell are we going to flog it? It’s not as if we can rely on the movie to flog it for us - that was a bomb too. Our only hope is to sneak it onto the market and hope some idiot buys it. One thing’s for sure: we can’t let those scrupu¬ lously honest, no-bullshit types at HYPER get their hands on it - they’ll murder it. Which is exactly what I’m about to do. Sadly, this warning may come too late for some of you, but here goes nothing: Last Action Hero is one of the worst games I’ve ever played. It's a hopelessly dated, utterly pointless farce of a beat em up that should never have been made. Actually it’s more than just a crappy beat 'em up - along with 5 of the most excruciatingly slow and painful levels of punching “fun’’ I’ve ever had the misfortune to come across, it’s got 2 ball-numbingly dull car chase levels too. That’s what I call value. As if the pissy number of moves (you can punch - but only if you’re standing up, kick, crouch kick, jump, and do a ridiculous jump- straight-up*and kick with both feet move), the sluggish controls and the pedestrian pace weren’t bad enough, it's full of glitches too. You can walk through enemies and they can’t hit you, you disappear when you’re hit, and the best strategy is to stand at the edges of the screen and keep punching - that way you can kill the bad guys without needing to see them. Don’t buy, rent, steal or even look at this game - you’ll go blind. At the very least, you’ll lose your faith in the wonders of video games. Andrew Humphreys _ □A LJ E— kD □4 a I.OT O ■ SNES Available: Now Category: Beat ‘em up Players: 1 Publisher: Activision Price: $119.95 The “Alien” and "Predator" movies are two of my favourites in the sci-fi action genre, and I must admit to getting a tad excited when I saw this game on the release schedule. Mind you. I didn’t get that excited, because knowing the history of movie-game conversions and the relatively sad effort that was Robocop vs Terminator , Alien vs Predator was almost bound to disappoint. And unfortunately it does. But like Robocop vs Terminator, if you’re a fan of the characters, you’ll get a few hours of enjoy¬ ment out of the game before you chuck it. It looks good and plays well, but you just can’t get away from the fact that the style of gameplay (scrolling beat 'em up) is so tired and dull now that it really needs something special to liven it up. And Alien vs Predator has nothing special about it. You are the Predator, hunting alien skulls on the human colony planet, Vega 4. The screen scrolls to the right (mainly) and you punch, kick and shoot your way through the hordes of prowling xenomorphs. You have a laser which you can charge up, and if you manage to charge it high enough, the orbiting Predator mother-ship sends down a blast that will knock out all aliens on the screen. There are extra weapons like spears and discs to pick up, as well invisibility. You would think that being invisible would be very handy, but unfortunate¬ ly you can hardly see where you are (because of the dull backgrounds) and more often than not you run into aliens, rather than launch surprise attacks. The aliens come in many different forms and are impres¬ sively large and gruesome, especially the bosses. They have different attacks, like spitting corrosive acid, or biting out with their double jaw, but the face huggers are the most annoying, and should be killed quickly with a sliding kick move. As I’ve said, the controls are responsive, the graphics are good (the backgrounds are uninspir¬ ing though) and you’ll have a bit of fun if you like beating up extra-terrestrials. But it’s all been done a thousand times before. Stuart Clarke 00 AD 7 A 7 E 0^ kD LD 71 Available: Now Category: RPG Players: 1 Publisher: SSI Price: n/a Dungeon Hack gives a new twist to the Eye of the Beholder series. Basically it allows you to gen¬ erate your own dungeon, tailoring it according to your likes and dislikes. At the start of each game you get to choose the level of difficulty of the dun¬ geon you are about to face. This can be done either by selecting the easy, moderate or hard settings or alternately, you can customise your own. I must admit Dungeon Hack looks suspicious¬ ly like SSI trying to squeeze a few more dollars out of the aforementioned EOB series. Luckily for them the EOB game engine was very good, even if it is a little long in tooth by today’s standards. If you choose to customise your own dungeon you are presented with a myriad of options. You can dictate monster and treasure frequency, decide whether you want illusionary walls or magical traps, along with just about any other detail you can think of. Now comes an important question; does this justify playing what is essentially another EOB game over and over again. After the three original games I was quite happy to lay the series to rest. The gameplay of Dungeon Hack is identical to EOB except that they have at last included an automap feature. Why didn't they do this earlier? I certainly would have given EOB 3 another couple of points if it had included an automap feature. You control one character in your quest to survive whatever the computer decides to dish up. Thankfully Dungeon Hack contains none of those inexplicable pauses in gameplay which plagued EOB 3. Graphically, it is fairly primitive, using the stepped movement of its predecessors, and because it doesn’t really contain a storyline, it lacks something in the atmosphere stakes. The sound-effects are straight out of EOB 3. My advice is to wait for Twin Dolphin’s Forgotten Castle or Interplay’s Stonekeep. Don’t fork out the cash for yesterday’s leftovers served up as today’s dinner. Julian Schoffel oo Q/ 70 LJ l — O o SO _ < O' L_ > 50 HYPER» 70 ACES OVER EUROPE B-WING PC Available: Now Category: Flight Sim Players: 1 Publisher: Dynamix Price: $89.95 * > '«£ Aces Over Europe is the new holder of the Kellogg’s Just Right award in the Flight Sim cat¬ egory, and just like its predecessor, Aces of the Pacific, it has an all too rare combination of true challenge, painless accessibility and mad fun. This time it’s the Battle of Britain that needs your attention. The RAF, US Air Force and the Luftwaffe all beg your services, and your weapon of choice comes from a collection of the finest war planes the Big One ever produced. Having carefully memorised half a dozen key¬ board commands, take to the air. If you feel acrobatic then go on a Fighter Sweep in the beautiful Spitfire, or perhaps the phenomenal Focke-Wolfe 190 D-F is more to your liking. Including variants, there are 16 aircraft for your pleasure, each with a flight model that displays a dynamic accuracy with the real thing. It won’t be long before you discover your personal favourite. There are either stand alone missions or a campaign mode to choose from. The single mis¬ sions let you bomb, strafe or rocket to your hearts content, or try a dose of air combat, dog¬ fight an ace or take out a formation of bombers. Campaign mode will come as a disappointment if you have come straight from Falcon or any other serious sim. Randomly selected missions are repeatedly thrown at you with no tactical regard, although the final outcome is dependant upon a winning streak of achieved objectives. Still, it’s great fun and a pleasant challenge, and that’s what Aces is all about. A sour point is the lack of a linked-play option, modem or direct cable. This is an ideal game for two players and hopefully Dynamix will rectify this with later scenario disks. But Aces is satisfying fun at whatever level you choose to play it. Everything non-essential in a flight sim has been left aside, and all that’s left is an addictive package of fun that will continue to test you until the next scenario disk. Ben Mansill PC Available: Now Category: Flight sim/shoot 'em up Players: 1 Publisher: LucasArts Price: $29.95 X-Wirtg fans have good reason to be happy; new scenario disks continue to arrive, and more are being developed to further enhance this deservedly successful game. The B-Wing Tour of Duty disk adds 20 new missions and a hot new fighter, as well as lots of very attractive in-between graphics. It’s a quality enhancement to an already brilliant game. Space combat in X-Wing has traditionally been extremely challenging, even with the Force with you. This is no arcade shoot-em-up; sharp dog-fighting skills and cunning tactical planning are the only tickets to success in this universe. B-Wing holds faithfully to these admirable yet frustrating values. To actually finish a Tour of Duty is a great achievement and by the time you get there you’ll have played certain killer mis¬ sions countless times. The invulnerability/unlimited weapons option must be turned off during missions, or you won’t advance. This may seem a little harsh to some, but it forces you to work very hard for success, so when it comes, it is enormously satisfying. In the process you will become awesomely profi¬ cient at X-Wing combat and will yearn hungrily for more, which is why LucasArts keep pumping out the mission disks. The B-Wing fighter is a tasty combination of the best features of the other (X, Y and A) Wings. It has meaty firepower that exceeds anything previ¬ ously seen and it can almost turn with an X-Wing. The B-Wing is good for any job, like heavy assault against a target heavily protected by escorting Tie fighters, which is as hard as it gets. One of the sin¬ gle missions, which are available any time (and are the only opportunities to use the indestructible mode!) lets you fly the legendary trench run to destroy the Death Star and the B-Wing has just the speed, firepower and armour to do the job. Just. Everything about X-Wing radiated quality, the sen¬ sational music and effects, dazzling graphics and a lavish variety of missions designed by Nazi war crimi¬ nals, and happily B-Wing is more of the same. Ben Mansill No doubt you’ve already taken a peek at the miserable rating that this game has received, so if you’re still reading this I can only assume that you are: a) a Beverly Hillbillies fan, b) a com¬ plete sadist, or c) incredibly bored. If you fit into the first category, stop reading now and try to forget that this game ever existed. If you answered b), stick around you might enjoy it, and as for c), well. I’ll do my best. Cynical, cash-in and crap were the words which sprung to mind after I'd been playing The Beverly Hillbillies (TBH) for about, ooh, two min¬ utes. During this time I had witnessed the open¬ ing titles (complete with an awful rendition of the show’s equally awful theme tune) and had been dumped into the game without a clue as to what I was supposed to do. This didn’t worry me greatly as after a further twenty, maybe thirty, minutes of intensive play-testing I had almost completely lost my will to live. TBH is bad. Very, very bad. The control inter¬ face is so stupidly basic that it removes the need for the player to actually think about the puzzles in the game. Solutions are generally stumbled upon by randomly clicking the mouse on the few objects which the player is allowed to use. I hate that. Many of the objects displayed cannot be used at all. Like, when you enter your house at the beginning there are two open doors (apart from the front door) but, inexplica¬ bly, you can’t go through them. Why? The graphics are laughably primitive. Jed. himself, looks like a cardboard cut-out as he wobbles from side to side to give the illusion of animation. The “jokes’’ are corny, unfunny and hideously all-American. But this is to be expect¬ ed, I guess, as the show itself lacked any degree of humour whatsoever. Look - just don't buy the bloody thing, okay? David Wildgoose flD < *— CL _ ED u o EM — CL Ld El < EE LJ LD o E5 _ < CL Li_ r> ED HYPER» 71 Play Guide If things get too tough or even if you just don’t want to start at Level 1 every time, use this handy level skip. Play the game and PAUSE it. Then hit these buttons to skip the level: A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A. 1. Look before you leap. Remember you can scroll the screen up and down if you’re not sure what’s above or below you. 2. Throw them apples. Sword¬ fighting is butch, but apples are a good distance weapon. 3. Collect all the gems you can, but save them up to buy Wishes (continues), not extra-men, at the Peddler’s. If you can’t get through this, you need more help than we can ever give you. You need all three pieces of the scarab before you can exit. Start Looking! Look for secret passages and jump on the tops of the palm trees if you’re stuck. Stand behind the Goofy column and jump up to get to a Peddler. The last two pieces of the scarab are near the exit - one’s to the left, one’s straight up. V2& Find the flutes you fool! You shouldn’t have too many prob¬ lems with this one. At the end you’ll face the Thief. Just stay on him and madly swing your sword and you’ll get him in no time. When he’s gone, you’ll get the scarab and a flute. Ride the rope to the Boss. To defeat him, stay on the top platform, jump over the barrels, and hit him with apples (there’s more down below if you run out). You’ll need to throw them at the top of your jump. It’s dark and cold and it’s starting to get tricky! Watch out for bats (they can be hard to see at times) and exploding skeletons - get them before they can get you. Most of the hazards, like the swinging balls and the disappearing plat¬ forms, are all timing. Make your way to the bottom right hand cor¬ ner and go up the disappearing stone steps. All the way at the top is the exit. “V From the streets of Agrabah to Jafar’s * f - Palace, it’s HYPER’s Aladdin Play Glide for the Mega Drive’' Level 1: Agrabah Market Level 2: The Desert Level 3: Agrabah Rooftops Level 4: Sultan's Dungeon Level 5: Cave of Wonders Hit the statues. There’s lots of bats around, but there’s also lots of hearts too - be sure to take them. Don’t forget you can hang from the ceiling! There’s an Abu bonus symbol to collect in this level - it’s to the left of the falling rocks. A bit further on you’ll come to a halt: a wall blocks your way to the right. Head up and left and you’ll find the statue you need to hit - jump from the cable and swipe. There’s a Peddler to the right of the apple-throwing statue. The Boss is easy. Just run back and forth and stand under the two pedestals. When he appears, start swinging. Take the magic carpet for a spin. When you land, jump right on the stones in the water till you hit solid ground. The lamp is at the top. MS O O - ^ i* * * Level 6: The Escape This could take you a few attempts to get right. When the first rock chases you, keep run¬ ning. When you come to the edge, JUMP! At the second set of rocks, you’ll need to jump over two holes (so the rocks fall down) then Level 7: Inside the Lamp Another tough level - if you do this one on your first go you’re either very good or very lucky. All I can say is you’ll need perseverance and timing to finally reach the exit. Take your time and remember you can float around in the blue bits. Level 8: Sultan’s Palace Jump on the flamingos - but be careful a fish or parrot doesn’t knock you into the water. Ride the rugs and free Abu from the cage (stand underneath him and jump up). Follow him down and drop down the hole to face lago. lago is the first kind of tough boss. The easy way to beat him is to run to the right, jump up and stand on top of the ladder. Jump up and throw apples at lago. When the lightning strikes turn into ghosts (they should be just in front of you), swing that sword! across to a ledge. When you come to a fork in the tunnel, go down - if you go up, you’re dead. When the last rock starts to chase you, run like crazy and jump off at the end - don’t worry, a magic carpet will catch you. Have fun with Rug Ride! Stay on the platforms to avoid the pesky fire. At the end, drop down and head to the left. Be careful not to slip off any of the platforms (they’re slippery). Take the rug up and head right. Drop down the rope and you’re almost there. Head left to the rug that will take you straight to Jafar! Jafar is incredibly tough. Stay away from his vacuum and chuck apples at him until he turns into the dragon. Now you need to carefully time your jumps over the flames and throw apples at the dragon. Stand close to the edge of the first platform. It’s very easy to get burnt, so concentrate. If you run out of apples, you’ll need to jump up the platforms to get them - but if you do you’ll get burnt UNLESS you keep moving and jumping in the same direc¬ tion! Keep chuckin’ and you’ll do it! ( f J C k ZOMBIES ATE MY SNES LEVEL PASSUORDS Level 05: FHRX Level 09: NBGW Level 13: RFCR Level 17: RKYL Level 21: PXBG Level 25: XYLZ Level 29: XLZG Level 33: WJQK Level 37: BZVG Level 41: BRPK Level 45: VLHX ZOMBIES ATE MY MD LEVEL PASSUORDS The beginning will no longer be at the start, if you get my drift, when you enter these passwords for this slice of horror/humour: Level 05: CYZQ If you think you’re a bit of a game master, then send your best cheats into Hyper for national and maybe international recognition. (What this really means is that we’re not giving out prizes or any¬ thing, but we’ll credit you with sending us the juicy hint.) After making sure it’s correct and that we can follow the instructions, send your cheats to: HYPER Cheats PO BOX 634 Strawberry Hills NSW 2012 MEGA DRIVE Stage 2: REISOR Stage 3: ETLBUD Stage 4: TEKROH Stage 5: ELPOEB Stage L: LILITH Stage X: GOFMTS Level 09: GBRS Level 13: DCFK Level 17: BMLK Level 21: PQBR Level 25: LLNN Level 29: QNKR Level 33: SDHM Level 37: BKVR Level 41: BZPM Level 45: BNYZ CREDIT LEVEL: QSDZ SUPER BOMBERMAN Vi SHRINKING CODE Want to be small? Really small? Your charac¬ ter will be tiny if you move the cursor to the pass¬ word option on the title screen then press start, entering 5656 as your password. Go to normal or battle game. In the battle game, use the Tap to reduce all contestants. MEGA CD SPIDERMAN VS THE KINGPIN MEGA CD STREET FIGHTER II SPECIAL CHAMPIONSHIP MEGA DRIVE WAYNE’S WORLD SNES you’re at the Capcom logo screen: DOWN, Z, LEVEL SELECT To help you get past the harder levels in this excellent CD blaster make sure you press these buttons in order when the demo/cinema screen appears: DOWN-, DOWN-, UP-, UP-, RIGHT-, LEFT-, RIGHT-, LEFT-, A-i B. Now press START and there will be a third menu option called STAGE SELECT. Select it to gain access to any level of the game and all the cinema sections. m - ONLY USE SPECIAL MOVES This is a cheat for people who actually want to make the game harder for themselves! If you’ve got one of those tricky 6-button control pads, press these buttons in order when You want the passwords to relieve your frustration, Spidey fans? You got ’em L eys ! 2; EL ECTRO Le vel 3: wallaby Level 4: GALLON66 Lev el 5: FALCON499 Level 6: HELPINHAND Level _ 7;_P U. B L1Q45 Level 8: KIDNEY2 Level 9: PENCjLG LEVEL SELECT Bored? Thought you might be. Well cheer up, because you can select any stage to start on with this secret code. Press START and go to the title screen, where you should wait for Wayne and Garth to start singing. While they croon along, press X, but¬ ton L and button R together, let go of them and hold UP, Y and B at the same time. Some white numbers rep¬ resenting levels and stages will appear along the bottom of the title screen. Use the SELECT button to cycle through them all. Choose the one you want and press START to begin at that level. UP, X, A, Y, B, C. When you hear Chun Li say “Ya Tai”, you can choose Game Start and you can play a game with one or two players where only special moves or throws work. SAHE CHARACTER IN GROUP BATTLE Another cheat for those with a 6-button control thingy. Choose a Champion or Hyper game and then a Group Battle. On the Battle Mode selection screen, press the following in order on control pad #2: DOWN, Z, UP, X, A, Y, B, C. After Chun Li says her stuff, choose Match Play or Elimination, then the number of characters. At the Match Play or Elimination Screen, you can choose the same character to fight for you and against you in battles. Very interesting, and very equal. SNES STAGE SELECT You’ll need 2 control pads for this one. Go to Config Mode and press START. UJhen the option menu appears, take control pad 2 and hold the top L and R buttons, X and R at the same time. Keep them held and press START on control pad 1 to gain a new menu that allows you to choose leuels with control pad 1. HYPER» 75 MORTAL KOMBAT SNES GAP1E GENIE BLOOD CODE! Don’t get too excited - this won’t give you all the arcade fatalities. What it does do is turn all that white “sweat" a lovely red colour - just like BLOOD! You need a Game Genie and you need to enter this code: BDB4-DD07. Z'J'JO fJ'Jurl 37rtf«T B.O.B. SNES MAXIMUM PObJER UP Go to continue and put in 196420 as your password. The game will tell you that this is an invalid password but don’t listen to it! (It’s only a machine after all). You’ll start the game with all weapons powered up fully and all your remotes filled to nine. T T I * » v TINY TOON ADVENTURES: BUSTER BUSTS LOOSE SNES At the password option, press START and put Plucky Duck in the first box, Babs Bunny in the second one and Bookworm in the third. Now, if you run out of lives, you’ll have infinite continues to play with so you can keep goin’ and goin’ and goin’, so to speak. CASTLEVANIA: THE NEW GENERATION MEGA DRIVE v> INVINCIBILITY AND LEVEL SELECT We've only just reviewed the bug¬ ger but still we manage to uncover a hot cheat for you. How do we do it? Who knows - just brilliant I guess. Here’s the cheat. Plug it in and press Start. On the screen that reads Player 1/Password/ Options, press these buttons in this order: UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A. You’ll hear a sound to tell you it’s worked (if you’ve done it right) and at the top of the screen you’ll see an 0 (for the level), which you can change by pressing button A. One slight problem - we’re not exactly sure what number takes you where, so you’ll have to experiment a bit. You’ll also be invincible when you start the game! N^Mv c::: S IM(»h j S( .« 4 VOO > mi ' hNhHV MMMMMMMM S PRINCE OF PERSIA 2 PC To start up this wonderful action/adventure in its cheat mode, type PRINCE YIPPEEYAHOO instead of PRINCE and you gain access to features like these during play: + (plus) adds a minute to the timer - (minus) subtracts a minute F6 makes a line appear and follow your movements. K is for... KILL, destroying every bad dude on the screen and resur¬ recting them with another press. SHIFT-R gives the number of the room you’ve reached PRO ACTION REPLAY CODES MEGA DRIVE SHIFT-W plays a tune. SHIFT-B switches the backgrounds on and off. SHIFT-1 makes you stand on your head (press it again to restore nor¬ mality). SHIFT-T adds a health bottle, while SHIFT-K drops one. ALT-D is probably completely use¬ less to you, but it dumps a file called DUMPO.TXT to your POP2 directory, with data about memory and byte numbers. Tech talk, that. X-MEN MEGA DRIVE LEVEL SELECT On the title screen (where it says ‘Push Start’) on CONTROL PAD 1 hold Buttons A and C and DOWN on the control pad and push START. When Magneto appears, press START on CONTROL PAD 2. Choose your character with control pad 2. You will use control pad 2 to play a one player game. In the Danger Room, there’s eight panels and six tiles on the floor (to the right of the hero selection screen). Each of the large floor tiles represents a level. To start at the level you want, stand on the tile, pull down on the control pad and press button C. SIDE POCKET FFC09400XX Balls in stock. (XX ranges 0-10). FFC0A200XX Total score X100 SPLATTERHOUSE II FF00F70004 Unlimited life FF00F80003 Unlimited energy TERMINATOR 2 FF80CA0004 Unlimited lives FF80190025 Unlimited missiles for player 1 THUNDER FORCE IV FFF2DD00FF All weapons FF80030001 Gives you the claw FF80040001 Gives you the shield TINY TOONS FFFB0B0003 Infinite energy FFFB090002 Infinite lives. FFFB0F0032 Gives 1 special helper each time you pick up a carrot (1 carrot = 50 carrots). Switch the Action Replay off at the end of level and back on at the beginning of the next one. FFFB110009 Pick one special helper up to get infinite helpers FFFB0B0002 Infinite hearts FFFB110002 Infinite mates FFFB11000X X can be replaced with 2-E to give lots of power PRO ACTION REPLAY CODES SNES BUBSY 7E02-0D08 Unlimited men 7E00-DF59 Infinite time 7E00-A104 Invincibility (NB: Turn on then off dur¬ ing game to become invincible) 7EG0-281X Change colours of Bubsy (where X is 0,2,4,6,8) i.e - 7E00-2812 - Bubsy’s grey with a green “!" - 7E00-2814 - Bubsy’s now black STREETFIGHTER 2 TURBO 7E05-30B0 Infinite Energy Player 1 7E07-30B0 Infinite Energy Player 2 7E1C-880E Super Turbo Edition SUPER BOMBERMAN 7E0D-7D09 Unlimited Bombermen Player 1 7E0D-BD09 Unlimited Bombermen Player 2 Thanks to Kingsley Caplick for the SNES codes HYPER» 77 K. ! George Clinton Hey Man Smell My Finger The fat Pharaoh of funk himself, America's REAL presi¬ dent, Mr George Clinton is back in the house again, and he wants you to take a deep sniff of the funky syrup he's been dippin his notorious groove finger in. This LP, whilst not being the most heavyweight of GC's career. Hardware VARIOUS Yes, it’s techno compi¬ lation TIME AGAIN. THERE ARE SO MANY OF THESE DISCS AROUND, IT’S KIND OF HARD TO KEEP TRACK. THE CLAIM TO FAME OF Hardware is that it is LOCALLY COMPILED, AND FEATURES BOTH INTERNA¬ TIONAL and Australian acts. The CD IS NAMED AFTER A SERIES OF PARTIES CALLED Hardware, organised as fundraising events by TRY Youth and Community Services in Melbourne, WITH THE HELP OF LOCAL DJS AND MUSICIANS. THE PARTIES WERE SUCH A SUC¬ CESS, THEY DECIDED TO MAKE A CD (A BOOK AND MOVIE ARE IN THE PIPELINE). THE CD IS A COMPILATION OF SOME OF THE BETTER TRANCE AND TECHNO AROUND. THE INTERNATION¬ AL ARTISTS INCLUDE DJ HELL, VISIONS OF SHIVA, Orbital and Cosmic Baby. Our local representa¬ tives are The Spiritualist, Third Eye and Hybrid Icon, among others. The CD works WELL AS A COMPILATION, BECAUSE THE TRACKS ALL HAVE A TRANCEY, SPACED out feel. Worth checking OUT. 7.5/10 Jad Me Adam still drops bombs by the standards we use to judge normal artists. With Clinton's almost unparal¬ leled influence on the evo¬ lution of Funk, Hip Hop and other innovative urban musics, some of the artists Clinton has inspired have helped out on this LP. Ice Cube, Chuck D, Dallas Austin, Flavour Flav, Dr Dre, Yo Yo, Digital Underground and others too numerous to mention, drop some flavour on the Clinton sound system, with devastat¬ ing effect on tunes like Rhythm and Rhyme, Dis Beat Disrupts, and the outstand¬ ing Paint The White House Black . OK, so it's obvious that I love the man, but I have to make one small critical point. Clinton's alliance with Prince's Paisley sound seems to have slightly diluted the toxic shock funk meltdown that normally accompanies a Clinton jam. To this effect there are at least two limp ones on the LP, the House cut (The Big Pump) and the love ballad (If True Love) . These both stink by Clinton's stan¬ dards. Still, on the whole I reckon your nostrils should be flared in anticipation, 'cos y'all needs to whiff where that rigid digit has been! 8/10 Steve Polak TPFfWl FTHAI INJECTIOh ICE CUBE LETHAL INJECTION When Shaquille O’Neal chose who to play with on his Australian tour he chose Ice Cube. Above all else. Ice Cube has major credibility. This latest release, Lethal Injection, proves why. Ice Cube has moved in many new and different musical directions on this album. If Cypress Hill can slow the beat right down and hold it together, Ice Cube is not one to scoff. My guess is that Mr Cube has realised that the straight, bare, hard core rap act wears a little thin after a spell. There is a heap of room for broadening and developing the rap genre. Again, Cypress Hill have shown us that you don’t have to be fully aggressive to get it right. And now Ice Cube is beginning to experiment with it too. There are two outstanding tracks on the album. There’s the single “Really Doe" which dares to explore some female vocal sounds against an eyrie back beat: And there’s “Bop Gun (One Nation) Featuring George Clinton” which it does. Basically, it’s a cover of Parliament’s classic “One Nation Under a Groove”. Lethal Injection didn’t shake my tail feathers, but it is an important step in the rap movement and should not be ignored. 7/10 Sarah Longhurst Before Shaq’s live Sydney performance He looked down a long, long way at me, upset about something and said, “Who’s this littl’ white babe anyway?”. Man was 1 scared and I bet when he walked into Jive Salt ‘n’ Pepa \cr\ \ecessar\ Since their success with Push It , the classic hip-pop track of a few years ago. Salt *n’ Pepa have been about the raunchiest thing in rap. That hasn't changed with their new CD, Very Xecessttry. They come across like En Vogue on a hor¬ mone rush, with track titles like no one does it better , somma time man, stem me up and sexy noises turn me on. They rap about sex, men, sex, AIDS, sex and sex again. It works pretty well, pro¬ viding a welcome antidote to the bragging and sw aggering of a lot of male hip-hop. Amidst all the raunch, it's easy to overlook the music. To do so however would be a mis¬ take, as the album has some great tracks, including the two best known. Slump and 11 hat to man. Salt V Pepa arc at their best on tracks such as these, where they rework already sexy funk guitar into their ow n irre¬ sistible thang. With 15 tracks on the album, the majority based on this formula, the album is either gonna grab you or get boring, depending on your tastes. 7.5//0 Jad . Me. \dmn Records and said “Hey you, one of my dreams is to be a rap star”, IVIr Jive was scared too and signed him right away. And why not. 1 mean hell, this huge black basket- bailer has got to be one of the most saleable items of all time. At first he hung out with the Fu Schnickens and they appear on the album “What’s Up Doc”. But now Shaquille’s gone solo and 5liag Diesel is his first album release. Credibility? Yeah there’s some hard core stuff here, but the cold wet fish- across-the-face is the fact that as a rapper, he’s a great basketball player. To his credit Shaq has written the lyrics, which are based on his life expe¬ riences rather than the usual angry socio-politi¬ cal rap perspective. Some of the rhymes are pretty cool. The sampling, pro¬ duction and mixes are great. Highlights of the album occur when Shaq ups the pace on the rap¬ ping front. Wave your hands in the air for the tallest rapper ever recorded! 6/10 Sarah Longhurst Ren and Stimpy have their own CD so it’s only natural Beavis and Butt-Head, America’s favourite dysfunctional teenagers, have demanded one too. It features bands they think rule (and so do we). If you’ve heard Beavis, Butthead and Cher crooning “I’ve Got You Babe” and thought this album was a whole heap of golden oldies “helped” along by the boys, think again. This is not a novelty number: it’s a compilation CD with some real heavy duty tracks. You can’t single any one number out for special atten¬ tion, but the Megadeath track is a personal favourite. Bands include Aerosmith, Anthrax (doing a Beastie Boys cover with their new lead singer), Primus, Sir Mix-a-Lot, Run DMC and White Zombie. Nirvana offer an out-take from In Utero and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have cov¬ ered an Iggy Pop number, “Search and Destroy”. Beavis and Butthead chat away during the breaks in their now famous fashion and when they invite themselves onto Anthrax’s tour bus it makes for a sidesplitting couple of min¬ utes. Their own number, “Come To Butt-head” is a throw away, but as there’s only one, what the heck! 8/10 Sarah Longhurst Machines of Loving Grace Concentration The press release accompany¬ ing this CD is a little on the scary side. It talks of the bands chaotic visions of suffering and a search for transcendence in this modern life. It announces that the band creates infectious music with the soul of a serial killer, which isn’t a bad line really! Yeah, well, I don’t know about all that psychological stuff, but what I do know is that Concentration catches your atten¬ tion and is an interesting addi¬ tion to the CD collection. Their single, “Butterfly Wings”, is receiving deserved attention. It’s a fair indication of the talent of the band and the general feel of the album. They mix fairly harsh driving guitar sounds with key¬ boards, which is not the norm these days. The resulting sound is quite industrial with splatter- ings of grunge pop and as a whole it’s strangely inviting. This is dead set serious stuff and there is certainly nothing to suggest these boys ever enjoyed a joke, not even a puerile dick or fart number. But if you’re into taking music seriously or you just enjoy a challenge then Concentration is worth the effort. 7/10 Sarah Longhurst HYPER» 79 Striking Distance There will come a time when Bruce Willis is too old to make action films - someday soon he’ll have to admit that a fast-balding man with a paunch could hardly rescue the world from terrorists without a little help. That time hasn’t come yet though, and Bruce is still the biggest action hero we’ve got after Arnie. This time, Willis plays a policeman whose father is murdered by a serial killer. While a man is behind bars for the killings, Bruce doesn’t believe that they’ve caught the right man - he thinks it was another cop that did it. He goes a bit mad and is demoted to working as part of the water police and con¬ tinues his fight along with his new partner, Sarah Jessica Parker, but when the killings start again, this time it looks like he might be the man responsible - someone is out to get him! So it’s good cop/bad cop time and you just don’t know who to believe, as bodies are dredged up from the river and boats go whizzing along the waterways in spec¬ tacularly cliched chase scenes. Still, it’s all rather entertaining and I had a great time watching it. But then again, I saw it for free, didn’t I?! 4/5 »all reviews by Amanda Hugginkis OK, so it’s a movie about chess. Yes, I admit I had my reservations - let's face it, chess isn’t exactly a thrilling spectator sport - but Innocent Moves turned out to actually be OK. I mean, hey, this is no Terminator, but it has some great moments. In America, this was called Searching For Bobby Fisher, but they changed the name of it here because, I guess, they thought that people wouldn’t know who Bobby Fisher is. So let me tell you - he was the young chess champi¬ on who one day just disappeared, came back to win a championship a couple of years ago and then just disappeared again. Riveting stuff. People in chess circles (imagine those parties - whoo!) have been looking for him for years and looking for someone to take his place as a young chess champion. This film is the story of a young boy called Josh Waitzkin, who is a chess genius, just like Bobby Fisher was. The very first time he plays chess, you know he’s good, and the film follows his progress as he learns from a guy on the street (played by Laurence Fishburne) and his chess teacher (Ben Kingsley) how to win and win well. It’s one of those films that kind of creeps up on you - soon you are really interested in how well Josh is doing, even though the thought of telling your friends about a film about chess is kind of hard to imagine. 3/5 Innocent Moves 1 Beverly Hillbillies One day Hollywood will GET TIRED OF MAKING FILMS TAKEN FROM “THE SERIES OF THE SAME NAME”, BUT UNTIL THEN WE'LL HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THIS KIND OF THING. NOT THAT Beverly hillbillies is bad. in FACT IT’S OFTEN QUITE AMUSING, BUT LET’S FACE IT - ERIKA Eleniak just isn’t going to win ANY OSCARS FOR HER “RIVETING” PORTRAYAL OF ELLY MAY Clampett. Still, she didn’t WIN ANYTHING WITH BAYWATCH EITHER. BUT WE STILL LOVED HER ON THAT, SO WHO CARES WHAT I SAY? HER HAIR, IT MUST BE SAID, LOOKS ADORABLE IN PIG TAILS, AND THE FUN THAT JED CLAMPETT HAS SEARCHING FOR HER HUSBAND IS VERY ENTER¬ TAINING. BUT SURELY THERE IS SOMETHING IN THIS WORLD BET¬ TER TO LAUGH AT THAN A BUNCH of Tasmanian potato farmers? Oh, HAVE I GOT THE RIGHT FILM? 2/S Heart And Souls A feelgood movie if ever there was one, Heart And Souls will have you weeping buckets, chortling to your¬ self and having a fairly good old time in the cinema. Robert Downey Jr. plays a fairly nasty yuppie bloke called Thomas, who was bom at the exact same time as four other people died in a bus crash. Each of them was killed before they had fulfilled their lives, and so they are left hang¬ ing around Thomas as his spiritual guides from the moment he is born. After realising that they are a distrac¬ tion, they make themselves invisible to him, and he grows up pretty nor¬ mal, although not very nice at all, especially to his long-suffering girl¬ friend Elisabeth Shue. However, one day they find out why they are hang¬ ing around him - to resolve the lives they left unfulfilled - and they quickly get him to help “finish” all of their lives, even though he doesn’t really want to. Of course, in the tradition of all the best feelgood movies, this turns him into a much nicer person and we all learn something from it. Great performances from Kyra Sedgwick and Alfre Woodard make this a very watchable movie and you will once again be amazed by Robert Downey Jr.’s cleverness. Here’s a tip - buy a big hankie and take someone you want to snog. 4/5 Hard Target Jean-CIaude Van Damme is always a good thing - I always say that if Jean-CIaude is in a film. You should see it, because otherwise he might come looking for you. Hard Target , it must he said, is the best JC film I’ve seen for ages - probably because it was directed by the martial arts film guru John Woo and therefore looks bloomin’ spectacular. The story is pretty irrelevant - hey, this is Jean- CIaude - it’s basically about a drifter called Chance who drifts into the life of a young woman when she is look¬ ing for her father. Chance is a mer¬ chant seaman (and we all know that women and seamen don’t mix) who needs money to pay his union fees, so when she offers him a tidy sum to help her, he can’t refuse. It’d be a short film, I guess, if he did. Turns out her father is one of many home¬ less men who have been hunted by a group of rich businessmen for a bit of a laugh. Of course, it’s up to Chance and his uncle Douvee (who came up with these names?) to put an end to the games and they do it with a mix¬ ture of groovy high kicks, explosions and sundry other effects that’ll leave you gasping. The photography is amazing - very MTV - and some of the effects are stunning, so it’s worth seeing if you’re a Woo fan, although most of the people who’ll go and see it will be either the blokes who love a bit of a rough stuff and the gals who want to see JC’s butt. Sorry girls - it doesn’t get a look in. 415 Tombstone It’s the new era of Westerns. Soon our screens will be flooded with more gunfights than you can poke a stick at and it’ll all be pretty sad. Until then, though, they are still a bit of a novelty, and novelty value alone is a good enough reason to go and see Tombstone. After all, it’s got loads of spunks in it - Jason Priestley (moving to a different zipcode for a minute), Val Kilmer, Billy Zane and, urn, Kurt Russell - and it’s about the most famous gunfight there ever was - the shootout at the OK Corral. Russell plays Wyatt Earp, Kilmer plays Doc Holliday and apparently, the gunfight against the Clanton and McLaury brothers left a bit of an impression with young Earp. Tombstone tells us what happened and why. Jason looks very dusty as he plays Billy Breakenridge, a young deputy sheriff, and Billy Zane just looks weird playing Mr Fabian, the “flamboyant" star of a travelling the¬ atrical troupe.Well worth checking out, urn, pardner. 3/5 HYPER» 81 c _ The Prizes A Lenny Kravitz special tour pack, twenty Ice Cube "Lethal Injection" CDs, ten NBA Jam Session videos and 6 EA Sports T-shirts. 0055 65304 [Maximum call charge 50c] Lethal Ice Cube Our friends at Mushroom Records have kindly given us 20 copies of Ice Cube’s slamming new CD, "Lethal Injection” to give to you! So if you want the latest from the ex-NWA frontman and star of “Boyz in the Hood” just call us on 0055 65304. Hot NBA Jam! The hottest NBA players jammin’ to today’s hottest music. Thrill to the sights and sounds of chart topping hit music and spectacular NBA footage. From Festival Video (who also sup¬ plied our spunky NBA Jam poster), the NBA Jam Session normally sells for $24.95, but we have ten copies to give to HYPER readers who call 0055 65304. Universal Lenny If you haven’t already heard, Lenny Kravitz will be hitting our shores in February, and to mark this rather fabulous occasion, we have a very special Lenny Kravitz "Universal Love Tour” pack to give away. Inside the pack you’ll find: » a limited edition Lee denim official "Universal Love Tour’’ jacket a limited edition Lee V-neck Lenny T-shirt a copy of Lenny’s CD “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” » two tickets to see the show If you would like this pack (and £3\SPDRTS ELECTRONIC ARTS Sporting E.A Electronic Arts make some of the hottest video games around, and none hotter than their famous sports titles. John Madden Football, FIFA International Soccer, EA Hockey and PGA Golf are just some of their big winners. Robyn from EA has kindly given us 6 of their limited "EA Sports" T-shirts so you can show everybody the games you like to play! To win call 0055 65304. ELECTRONIC ARTS Play the '94 NFL season with 80 teams and 72 new plays. 4 Way Play Compatible. 16 MEG FIFA, INTERNATIONAL SOCCER ■ IMOACMWf - The most realistic soccer game to date featuring 40 international teams. 4 Way Play Compatible. New hard hitting action with over 25 new features. 4 Way Play Compatible. If it's on the tour, it's in the game. Includes 7 courses and 5 tournaments. IF IT'S IN THE GAME IT'S IN THE VIDEOGAME WATCH OUT FOR NBA SHOWDOWN '94 COMING SOON Licensed by Sega Enterprises Ltd. for play on the SEGA™ MEGADRIVE™