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Ly Be r Every time | go to an arcade (which

isn’t all that often really), there’s a new game that just bl ll excited and spend a small fortune, while shouting

to my friends “Come on, we’ve got to stay and pi s here - there’s no way they can bring this home”’. (Usually they’ve already walked away and are pretending not to know me, but hey, | can cope with that). Six months or a year later though, and

almost without fail, I’ll be playing that same game on my Sega or Nintendo ana getting excited all over again.

The latest arcade conversion that’s got me feeling all funny inside is Virtua Racing. You won’t believe how well the Mega Drive handles it, and the much-hyped DSP c hip seems to be the way forward for Sega 16bit gaming. The speed is incredible. another incredible game is Clayfighter for the SNES, which uses claymation to produce one of the best (and funniest) fighting games I’ve seen. We’ve also got World Heroes and the most excellent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters as part of a mini-special on SNES fighting carts. But for what has to be the front-runner for Game of the Year so far, turn straight to the review of DOOM. This Pc masterpiece has been

on shareware for a few months, but we review the full game, and give you lots of hints and cheats, so you can go straight to hell if you want.

And there’s so much more | could waffle on about, because we’ve got another hot issue that’s bursting at the sides with gaming goodies - Sonic 3, Eternal Champions, NBA Jam Play Guide, the moves and fatalities for Viortal Kombat Li, Ground Zero Texas, Jurassic Park on mega co, R-Type Ill, Skitchin’... oh no, rm sorry,

it’s just too much for me. I’m going to have to lie down for a while. Nurse, where did you put my pills?

1 O Features

és News

Morbid Angel - grindcore gamers Game Grrris The games industry is a notoriously sexist one. Most games New Sony 32-bit system portray women as either victims or bimbos, and girls aren’t made to feel The 3Ds comfortable in the male dominated arcades. VIRGINIA BARRATT speaks out.

Sega drop Pele & Michael Jackson Atari get 3rd party developers for the Jaguar ...and loads more

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A Whole New Beast With a whole host of “super consoles” hitting the market in the next year, 16bit gaming is on its last legs. STEVE POLAK talks to Stuart Bonn, a 3D0 programmer about CD gaming in the future.

Mega Drive & Prince of Persia

Mega Drive The Moves Dragon’s Fury 2

Mega Drive Body Count

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Mega Drive Yoshi’s Cookie

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Sony

“Super Console”

After much rumour and specula- tion, Sony of Japan have now officially announced their intention to launch a 32-bit CD-based game system, code named the PS-X, due to be released (in Japan anyway) in December this year. This puts yet another big player in the “super console” war that looks set to be a doozy. By next year we will have the 3DO, the Atari Jaguar, the Amiga CD-32, the Sega Saturn and possibly the Nintendo Project Reality all competing for your gaming dollar. Obviously someone’s going to lose out big time, but Sony have lots of multi-national corporate money behind them, plus a very tasty sound- ing machine.

The specs for the PS-X are as fol- lows: the main CPU is R3000A 32- bit RISC, and this is backed by mul- tiple DSP chips and co-processors. It can display 16.77 million colours and processes images at 360 O00 oolygons per second. It is able to compress and decompress real, Tull frame video at 60 frames per Sec-

While we were browsing through our extensive collection of death metal CD’s, we came across this rather cool thank you from Florida outfit Morbid Angel’s guitarist Trey Azagthoth (he’s entitled to a funny name in his business, surely) on the inner sleeve to their new CD, Covenant. It goes like this...

..(Thanx to) Sega and Super NES - how could anyone live without both systems?

Captain N and the video game

HYPER>> 6

is Announced &

ond, while still using all 16.77 mil- lion colours. And as for RAM, well they’re not giving much away. All they will say is that it’s more than the 3DO. All this and it will Suppos- edly retail for less than $480 US.

As | think we’ve said before: the battle is on!

masters. Chun Li and Street Fighter

ll, Simon Belmont and all at Castlevania I, Ill, and 1V. Much love to the Medusas of I, Bonechuckers of |, Ill, and IV, and the most lovely mummies of | “who love bathing in the poison’.

We couldn’t have said it any better Trey.

Cast your mind back to HYPER #3. There was a game in the Preview section that had us a bit, well, confused. That game was Pele’s Soccer from Accolade. Could it really be as bad as it seemed? Surely it couldn't. They were going to take it away and do some work on it, right’? Wrong. It turns out that the horrible mess of a game we saw was the finished oroduct.

As it turns out, the boffins at sega Ozisoft were mightily unim- pressed with the game too. As a result, they won't be releasing It in Australia. A victory for common sense we Say. As for the Super Nintendo version, who knows what will become of it?

Meanwhile, Sega of Japan have been doing a little dumping of their own. They, like everyone else in the world it seems, have been doing their level best to disassoci- ate themselves from everybody's favourite accused Pop superstar, Michael Jackson.

Sega and the gloved one have a long and (we all thought) noble his- tory together, what with Moonwalker for the Mega Drive and Michael’s intros for Sega’s loca- tion-based VR machines. But plans for an update on Moonwalker (Dangerous, perhaps?) have been shelved. Not good for the company Image you know.

Once again HYPER has some FAB prizes for you to win.

Not only do we have a pair of Adidas Gazelles and an Adidas sports bag, but we also have ten CDs of everyone’s favourite meat- heads Beavis and Butt-head.

All you have top do to win is write in. To win the Adidas prize come up with the best acronym for Adidas eg. All Day | Dream About Sex (or Sega).

To win a Beavis and Butthead CD tell us which famous rock chick they do a duet with.

Put the answer on the back of an envelope along with your name address and telephone number and send it to

HYPER Giveaways PO Box 634 Strawberry Hills NSW, 2012

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Keeping up the HYPER band drop-in centre tradition, one of New Zealand's favourite bands, the 3D’s visited us at the end of their recent Australian tour. Fresh (or should | say not-so-fresh) from an all night party on the Harbour with fellow tourists, the Lemonheads, David Saunders the singer and guitarist from the band gave us the low-down on their music and Kiwi gaming habits.

The 3D’s come from Dunedin, which is way down on the South Island, but they haven't let geo- graphic isolation stop them from making some of the best indie rock around. Their influences range from Herge (the creator of Tintin), Clive Barker, a New Zealand beer called Mac’s Gold and of course their friend's Mega CD. The four mem- bers names (Dominic Stones, Denise Roughan, David Mitchell and David Saunders), as you might have noticed, all start with ‘D’ so that’s how they got their name (well, The 3Ds sounds a bit better than The ADs). In the last couple of years they've supported the likes of

Nirvana, U2 and the Buzzcocks as well as just completing a hectic tour of Australia with Evan Dando and the boys.

With this sort of frantic schedule they don’t get to play games as often as they’d like but they are seri- ously looking at getting a console to take on tour with them. Dominic is the big gamehead of the band and his favourite coin-loss at the arcades is Virtua Racing. There are far more arcades in Australia than in NZ, and David said the New Zealand game scene lags a bit behind the Australian one, but says that things are looking up with lots of indepen- dent shops opening recently.

The 3Ds have gone back to the Land of the Long White Cloud for now, but never fear, they'll be back, probably more famous and talented than ever. In the meantime check out their excellent debut album Hellzapoppin’, which a prestigious American music mag voted “the

Number 1 aloum of 1992 that you didn’t hear” and their new CD, The Venus Trail, which has only just been released.

Ken Goes to Court

Sick of crappy Street Fighter I] clones? Capcom certainly are, and they're off to court to prove it. Capcom are suing rival games produc- ers Data East, alleging infringement of SF2 copyright by a game called Fighters History. They want $5.82 million (US) in dam- ages plus an injunction!

The case is currently being fought in both Japan and the US and it could turn out to have important conse-

quences for “imitation i cS ; \ games” all twa *” over the ar -— |, world. Capcom’s President Kenzo Tsujimo is worried that the flood of imitation titles will eventually ruin the Japanese games industry. “What ever happened to originality?”, he cried (or would have, if his English was a bit better). Data East (of course) deny that they’re copy- cats. They claim to have developed Fighters History on their own and that it is sufficiently different from SF2 to avoid infringement. Hmmm, we’ll see

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bey a y “ es ? Ke a Atari Lines ‘Em Up for the Jag > Remember back in issue #2 we Interplay, Activision, Gremlin and 64-bit machine. Accolade’s chair- told you all about the Atari Jaguar? Microprose have already signed on man Big Al Miller had this to say: One of Atari’s biggest problems for the dotted line. “Atari Jaguar is definitely cool new their new system (and we told you The latest company to sign is technology that is being introduced this too) was their lack of third party Accolade. They’ve committed at a price attractive to consumers. games developers. Well, the big Bubsy the Bobcat, Hardball III, We think Atari has a real shot at bods at Atari have obviously been Charles Barkley Basketball, Brett establishing Jaguar aS a Success- reading HYPER, and better still, Hull Hockey and Jack Nicklaus ful system and we want to be part

they've listened to us (and why Power Challenge Golf to the new of that effort”. wouldn't they?). Yep, Atari have got busy and they’re starting to sign up big name publishers by the bootfull. Virgin, Ocean, US Gold, Tradewest,

After a gap of around six months, Electronic Arts are once again releasing their SNES titles in Australia. All we can say to news like that is a big “YIPEE!”.

The first cab off the good old game rack for local release will be the excellent Madden NFL 94. It’s set for a March 25th release date. But armchair sports lovers will have to wait until July before they get their hands on a SNES version of FIFA International Soccer. And if you’ve read HYPER #2, you'll know how good the Mega Drive game is. Can't wait, can you?

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One of the things that slapped us across the face like a wet fish about Clay Fighter for the SNES (reviewed this issue) was the quall- ty of the sound. The music, FX, and especially the voices, are really of outstanding quality. So how did Interplay get it to sound so good’ It’s all thanks to a new audio development system they've pro-

-duced called “ARDI”.

ARDI| (Advanced Real-time Dynamic Interplay) is supposedly “the most advanced sound devel- opment system and sound driver” for Super NES games. It’s based ona MIDI interface which allows Interplay’s sound guys to plug in to the cartridge slot and use their SNES as a playback module. How the hell this helps them is beyond us, but we certainly like the sound of it.

0055 Winners From Issue 1

Fila Shoes: G Khan NSW; P Sheriffs WA; R Wright SA; A Tait QLD; C Bowen NSW ProCDX/Mega Universal Adaptor: E Coulderon QLD; R Rankin SA; S Snadden NSW; D Faccin NSW; R Renee NT Dark Sun - Shattered Lands: G O’Neill NSW; D Lee NSW; G Gunning NSW; T Thompson VIC; A Tilly QLD NBA Jam Session Videos: M Debrocine NSW; T Melville QLD; A Wilson VIC: J Smail NSW; R Frost NSW; S Albright NSW; M Morris WA; R Privett NSW; J Morroney WA; D Mammick NSW Beverly Hillbillies Videos: S Howlett SA; B Higgs VIC: R Zallie QLD; C Northern NSW; J Hawkins SA: A Ward NSW; M Campbell NT; J Towell NSW: B Barnes VIC; M Atkins NSW.

HYPER>> 9

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Let’s leave the issue in no dou!

the games industry 1S a sexist one- Games are made by boys for boys who play with other boys- Girls very rarely get a _ look ina unless of course there's a victim who needs to be rescued or someone needs to wear bikini to cheer the macho men _ on-

VIRGINIA BARRATT (for one) is a bit peeved...

Walk into any games arcade for a therapeutic, stress alleviating dose of 12, Streetfighter or Mortal Kombat, and it’s most likely, if you are female, that you’ll be the only representative of your gender pitting her wits against the machine in this ritual male bonding space.

Some people would have us believe that there is a reason for this absence of female gamers, and that the equation is simple - it is biological- ly determined that women have, at best, an ambiguous relationship to the logic and rationality of technology and this turns into a fear of technology (which includes games). Women are also not supposed to be fiercely com- petitive or perpetrators of violence, hence their lack of identification with the basic reason for the majority of computer games - more gore.

Being a casual user of arcades and displaying a decidedly masculine tendency towards technology and object fetishism (biggest, fastest, best...) myself, | resist this easy explanation. While there is no doubt that girls are not considered a target market by the major players, and that their interests are generally not con- sidered by programmers and produc- ers of video games, it is not clear that

they won’t talk to me. | walk into Tekno City and Orbit GOO. Not a single girl. Finally | find two young girls.

Suzi, 12 and Christina, 11 are a gang of two, who go to arcades maybe twice a week. They don’t go with other girls, and they don’t know many other girls who do the arcades. They don’t have machines at home, but they know a couple of other girls who have computers.

They love the arcades, and the games, but recognise that it is a male space, where they are invisible. “The boys won't talk to us, they don’t think girls can be good at games”. Their favourite games are the racing games “You get to compete against some- one else...”, the Streetfighter karate games, and the shooting games.

They like the games which make them feel transported, as if they are really there. They like games of Skill. And they like to shoot, but feel ambiva- lent about the gore factor, believing that it “puts things into kid’s heads”.

The major dissatisfaction they felt was that there was no point of identi- fication with the female characters in the games. The characters were either submissive princesses or vio- lent superwomen, neither of which they could identify with.

companies to discuss the possibility of them regarding girls as a target market. | connected with the one industry R & D dude who had an ethi- cal streak, “Ultimately, I’d really like to develop non-violent video games, but at the moment there is a commercial imperative”. He citea Ms Pacman as an example of a character that girls could identify with - oh, and let’s not forget Sonic. He also noted the pres- ence of some female characters in the Streetfighter games, but added that he had watched many young boys choose the female as an opponent purely for the thrill of beating up a woman. | won- dered whether the company would ever develop and market a game with complex female characters who played leading roles. “Well, ultimately... (it’s that old commercial imperative again) we'd like to, we really would... but we wouldn’t develop games just for girls, that would be sexist”.

These stereotypical attitudes, and outdated representations of women are found in abundance in our devel- oping cyberculture. Anybody who is into 3D graphics will be familiar with Silver Suzi the 3D fembot, perpetually Surfing on the virtual waves of some bearded programmer's imagination.

Luckily there are some aberrant

cyberterrorist and agent of the new world disorder. ANG and her band of renegade DNA Sluts, Patina de Panties, Dentata and the Princess of Slime, are the saboteurs of Big Daddy Mainframe. They tangle with a motley crew of techno mutants and data deviants on their quest, the most viru- lent being Circuit Boy, a dangerous techno bimbo and BDM'’s sidekick. In one smooth manoeuvre our sheroes oerform a major morph on the bimbo’s extremely sizeable tool and take the shine off his texture map. Their mission is treacherous, but our sheroes with attitude find some time out for pleasurable distraction...

At the moment All New Gen is an interactive multimedia computer art installation, on exhibition in Adelaide. The installation consists of twelve lightboxes with stills of favourite moments from the game, original soundtracks, a video piece and a

They love the arcades but recognise it is a male space. where they are invis-

ible- "The boys won't talk to us.i they don’t think girls can be good at

girls actually want something that is very different from the games which are aimed at the teenage boy market. | decide to do a little field research, and go looking for girls... It’s school holidays, and in sydney’s George Street Timezone the machines are deep with gangs of baggy pants and baseball caps. The boxing station is the most popular game today - 10 deep and really virtu- al. Testosterone is running at fever pitch in this particularly primal battle of man and machine. There are a cou- ple of girls by the racing game, but

The attempts that have been made by the industry to develop games which are aimed at teenage girls have resulted in the games Barbie, Barbie Supermodel and the upcoming Belle’s Quest, which is based on Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Neither Belle’s heroic quest astride her faithful steed Phillipe, or Barbie’s glamorous world of fashion held any interest for the girls | spoke to. Girls want just as much action and excitement as the boys, just with some “sheroes” they can relate to.

| rang up one of the major games

female game-freaks and tech-heads working to liberate Silver Suzi from chrome hell, and give her her own workstation to create women charac- ters that are strong, subversive, sutsy and funky.

VNS Matrix are four women artists from Sydney and Adelaide who have been working together with this mis- sion in mind for two years. Their plan is to hijack the toys from the keyboard cowboys and remap cyberculture with a cyberfeminist bent.

To aid them in their mission they have created All New Gen, anarcho

ames”

large scale billboard displaying the subversive credo of the VNS Matrix “Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century”. The VNS Matrix plan for a global takeover by All New Gen in the near future.

So if you’re interested in what women are doing with games and technology, look out for VNA Matrix, otherwise keep an eye out for sexism in games (Sometimes it’s not that obvious) and steer clear. The sooner the game industry wakes up the reali- ties of the modern world, the sooner we'll a// be having fun.

HYPER»? Il

It's kept you happy for quite a while: but lbbit gaming is on its last legs- Everyone (and mean everyone) 1S rushine out out the biggest and baddest new console system. The 3D0 is still leading the pack in the hype and hope departments, so STEVE POLAK got one of EA's tog programmers the line to discuss software;

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Stuart (who was speaking to me from EA’s San Mateo offices) is a happy man. And why shouldn't he be? It is not every

science fiction fantasy and mod- day you can be in the position to ern computerised fact are often lead the world in a revolution, “| think if you are talking about defined by very blurry boundaries. pushing back the boundaries of CD-Rom then maybe... but remem- Yesterday's dreams are today’s fantasy with the new 3D0 reality. | ber that 3DO is played through a exciting realities, and tomorrow's asked him why he was so excited television and you are usually some worn out techno-junk. Look at the about that funny little black box. distance away from it. A screen is early home video game machines. “The 3D0 is amazing and total- not typically what you would want to They are still sought after, but not for /y unprecedented in terms of what _ read a lot of stuff on.” their technical abilities. Instead they jit can do. !/ think that it is much And why does Stuart think that are highly prized by a few eccentric more like watching television than the 3D0 is a revolutionary product collectors who are after them as playing a video game. When you in that it will bring a greater level examples of video game “antiques”! play a video game there is a cer- of adult involvement. | thought it Think of all the systems that are now _ tain amount of abstraction that is | was just kids stuff? obsolete; Magnavox, Spectrum, going on, because it is not exactly “The technology has advanced Intellivision, Atari, Colecovision, and what you expect to see if you to a point where we can market it the list goes on. Each system fell vic- where watching a football game or to anew audience. 3DO can do tim to the predatory monopolisation a motor cycle race. It is sort of so much more than a Super of the market by a newer, leaner, symbolic and if the graphics are Nintendo or Sega. The standard more capable creature. good enough you create a short of play, sound, graphics, every-

Well, it’s about to happen again. suspension of disbelief, and peo- thing is just so much better. | Bury your SNES, back the Commodore ple see things as realistic. With think that it sort of follows that if over your Amiga, and chuck the Sega the 3D0 it is so much easier you make it easier for people to off THE NEXT LEVEL, because the 3D0 because the graphic quality is so understand what they are looking and the other “super consoles” are much better, and it just looks and _ at, you are going to interest more almost here. Over the next year sounds like real television and so people, the market is going to there's going to be a glut of 32 bit the need for suspension of disbe- grow and as the market grows and 64 bit systems released, all lief is not quite so traumatic. It’s you can afford to do things competing for your hard earned dollar just a much more engaging experi- beyond a traditional game playing and loyalty - the Atari Jaguar, the ence. You don't feel quite as environment.” Amiga CD32, the Sony PS-xX, the much distance between you and And what is EA’s interest at sega Saturn and the Nintendo Project the interaction.” the moment? What will we be see- Reality to name but a few. But the There has also been quite alot ing for the 3D0 from the masters system that has got the most hype is of excitement about the ability of of sports sims and ball culture? the 3D0. Can they live up to it, or are the 3DO0O (with over 600 “Clearly we are going to do the established names going to carry megabytes of memory per disk) to some exciting sports products their market dominance over into the be used as an information stor- and give an improved audio-visual higher level machines? | had a yarn age medium, for interactive books _/ook, with improved gameplay. We to Stuart Bonn, one of the main men —_ and other education software are going to be doing simulator at Electronic Arts’ 3D0 software types. Could this be the end of games like motorcycles and jets development department, about the conventional paper books as we and so forth and use better tech- intricacies of interactive innovation. Know them? nology to improve the perfor-

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mance. We want people to feel totally immersed in our simula- tors. And we are doing kids stuff and informational products that are very like television documen- taries.”

And now to the naughty stuff. With interactive games like Night Trap causing such a stir here and abroad in terms of the levels of sexuality and violence they por- tray, what does Stuart think of adult software like the vivacious Virtual Valerie (available for Mac being produced on the ultra realis- tic 3D0?

“This kind of software is not a part of EA’s brief. We want to pro- duce clean entertainment. We are not interested in breaking new boundaries of sensibilities on this issue. Our standards are sort of like US television. If it is shown on US television before 10 pm then we would do it. Those kinds of products may find markets, but they don’t necessarily help the industry by doing so, and |

wouldn't like to see them being too common personally. The tech- nology could be put to better uses than all of that.”

So what about CD gaming tech- nology. There are some obvious problems with the use of the CD- Rom as a gameplaying storage device (put your hands up all Mega CD owners). Firstly because of the nature of the medium, access to data isn’t instant, as the CD laser has to read different tracks of data, thus resulting in times where gameplay slows down or stops altogether. Is this kind of video game, where things look great, but are fraught by pauses and periods of slowdown really an improvement?

“Well in John Madden for the 3DO we have a lot of video in it, but it doesn't get in the way of the gameplay and we have figured out lots of tricks so you aren't sitting at the screen waiting for things to happen for 30 seconds at a time. | think it depends on the product. If

Kept saying “this 1s our last Christmas” ears longer than we thought. ears tops for lbbit-

you look at Night Trap’s particular structure then things are different and there are problems. It all depends on software construction. Just like a high rise building ts built differently to a condo com- plex. It is the kind of product that you build that determines the pro- gram architecture, and some peo- ple are making decisions about the architecture they want to have that isn’t necessarily conducive to what real game players want. So those problems are a matter of good or bad software design. Better hara- ware also helps. In the 3DO the access time is in the order of half a second to get to the right place, and then it transfers at double speed so it is a 300k transfer rate. In 4 seconds you are going to get about a megabyte of data. So it’s not instant but you are not wal- lowing around waiting around for stuff to happen. ”

So on to the big question that is on every gameplayers lips. Is it like- ly that the new CD-Rom based tech-

nologies will replace carts as the storage device for video games?

“There is a manufacturing advantage. It’s a lot easier and cheaper to make CDs. Right now they are pricing CDs higher which is because people have invested a lot of money and so they can’t drop the prices so soon.”

Has the Mega CD helped or hindered the chances of the 3DO and other CD-based machines, in terms of the high cost of Mega CD games, and more importantly, the use of 16bit technology with the CD system, which is obviously fairly shabby in quality.

“It’s possible that the Mega CD has generated some bad publicity, ! mean | would not recommend it to anybody. But you must remember that the 3D0 is different. It is based on a far more open and adventurous concept, and we expect the memories of other sys- tems to fade as the 3D0 grows in strength. This is because we are trying to get the system onto the market as cheaply as possible. The 3DO is now in the $600 US range (over a $1000 Australian - that’s a new definition of cheap! - Ed). /t will probably be $100 cheaper by next Christmas. It is really too early to draw any conclusions as to sales and unfortunately software is tak- ing longer. But things will improve.”

Ahh, now we get down to it - SOFTWARE. If this isn’t good then

it doesn’t matter how hot your system is. Obviously the 3DO has the platform abilities that give it the opportunity to stand out, but there must be quality control as to what actually occupies the cyberspace on the screen. Any thoughts Stuart?

“Yes, software is critical. Our software strategies differ because if you have the ability to use high quality graphic images, you had better create them, you can’t just show shit very well. And the audio had better be great because peo- ple are buying the stuff and run- ning it through big amps and sur- round processors and they want it to sound good. So the pressure is on but we are up to it in that there will be some truly amazing things happening on 3D0O screens soon.”