JANUARY The Hyper Quake Champions revealed: Win stuff NINTENDO SEGA PLAYSTATWfN PC MAC ARCADE INTERNET Nintendo's epic racing a takes fight to the streets (INNER The future of PC adventure garni jff (f %M Toca Touring Cm The Playstation's super realistic rah 771 320 74 5 001 Conquer the galaxy through military action, diplomacy or covert operations. With Star Wars Rebellion™, those are just a few of the ways to impjement strategy and tactics on a grand scale — with control of the Star Wars galaxy as the prize. Command the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire. Engage in spectacular battles. Earn the loyalty (or resentment) 6f some 200 planets. Play in real-time, in single play mode or two player nrfode over a network, the Internet or direct conrjegj^fe the Force with you? Discover for yourself. JH *GENERAL (8 YEARS & ONER) LOW LEVEL ANIMATED VIOLENCE Proudly distributed fry "V/ ROADSHOW INTERACTIVE "Heavy Gear is looking AS THOUGH IT WILL LEAVE THE MECHWARRIOR SERIES IN THE DUST." - 6am i ng Age Online. September 1997 THE PRODUCERS OF THE //l - SELLING. 3-D COMBAT SIM OF ALL TIME PRESENT THE NEW BREED. 1 1 r i ♦ w -IS* lEAVY Gear will be a "mech" experience like no other on the market .. .Heavy Gear is one of the most accessible titles of the "mech" genre ever! Even die-hard FASA fans will have little trouble converting to THIS NEW WORLD OF GEARS!" - Grendel 's Gaming Lair, October 1997 http://www.interactive.village.com.au HEAVY AVAILABLE NON David Jones, Myer Grace Bros, Big W,Toys R Us, Dick Smith, Officeworks, Harvey Norman, Brashs, Chandlers, Archie Martin, Billy Guyatts, K Mart, Blockbuster Music, Electronic Boutique, Target, Key independent retailers nationally. Tech Support-1902 96 2000 (calls charged at $1 per minute, higher from mobiles and public phones) V The most •%. * anticipated fame \ of the vear * • Internet play has 200 Deathmatch Capability * Larger, mission based levels Fullv interactive environments • Superior enemy AI • Futuristic (sci-fi) setting V J ‘"With Quake II, id Software goes hack to its roots in what promises to he the sequel of the year - and perhaps id’s greatest game ever.” - PC Games, November 1997 “Unquestionably the most eagerly awaited game of 1997, Quake II stands a serious chance of also being the best of the year.” - PC Gamer, December 1997 AVAILABLE NOW Vu,tuil\ dutributfit try ROADSHOW INTERACTIVE http-J/www.intflractive.village.com.au PC CD-ROM AcWisiON www.activision.com.au David Jones, Myer Grace Bros, Big W,Toys R Us, Dick Smith, Officeworks, Harvey Norman, Brashs, Chandlers, Archie Martin, Billy Guyatts, K Mart, Blockbuster Music, Electronic Boutique, Target, Key independent retailers nationally. Tech Support-1902 96 2000 (calls charged at $1 per minute, higher from mobiles and public phones) m R 5 ■ | "."i *T| fffi [■Kji Mj". S/Oifl Bo ;®E IAKE COMP RESULTS Putili\ifpr Phillip Keir (dilur: Ddti Icihsp A rt Director Steve Sc oil llppuly Idiior: Him lisle Cover: Bunqie National Sales Oireiior: Sipvp Watson Advertising Manaqpr: [art Poplpu Advrriisinq Assistant Imma RpcK Ph: 07 9110 Ml [ax: 0? 9110 7017 Victorian Ad Manaqpr: loannp lockarl Ph: Ot 9H66 3144 fax. 01 9866 3799 Circulation Manaqpr: Paul fox Group An mint,ml: Ihpo fatseas Subscriptions Inquiries: Rachel Pirip pic 07 9110 mi fax: D?9Ji0im email: subsdnpxt.com.au fontribuiors: Max Autohpad. David Wildquose. fivn levy. Ren llupk. March Slepnik. Georqe Arqy, Ross flarksmilh Printed by: Wilke Colour Separations by: Prestiqe Colour Distribution by: S00 Ph 9IS19911 All copyrights rpserved by Next Publishing Ply Ltd AIK 007 647 64S ISSN 1170 MSS WRIH10 HYPTRI 78 Rpnwick Si. Rpdtern. NSW 7016 fax: 10719110 MIS f mail: Ireakscpneonext. com.au «5 « : 5 c ui y ■ o ui o e 5 I 5 & 3 CO f £ I* I - v S n a o S V K> ^ — on O _ «. % > c n E • “ 'C E * * E * 3 O * ? k E £ o 5 o 5 * tu £ ? 5 a SB C o a o mj QC 2 OC UTUFC OF UIFIR D-RR-K REIGN RNNlfllLfl TE5 THE CDmFETITIDN” TOTAL UNITS DARK REIGN ■H N Nl-Hl L-HT1D N Unit IYIorphing Y€5 NO Decoy Units Y€5 ND UNLimiTEO NUITlfiEfi OF UNITS IN FI GAME Y€5 ND TUJO COITIFLETELY DIFFERENT 51DE5 Y€5 NO Unit -Editor allows players to create INFINITE NUMBERS OF UNITS Y€5 NO EASE m-HN-RGEMENT Decoy Buildings Y€5 NO Urgrroe Buildings Y€5 NO IYIosile Bases Y€5 NO fY11551DN5 Training IYIissidns Y€S NO Flayers crn create Neuu Single -Pljayhk IY1i55ion5 Y€5 NO Flayer5 can create Neui (YIultifle Flayer fYlissioNS Y€5 ND ■Editor rllquj5 flayers to create custoiyi -Rl Y£5 NO N-EUU nf1l5510N5 AVAILABLE ON UJ-ES51T-E YE5 NO CDIYIB-HT Terrain Affect fYlovEMENT Y€5 ND User Definable -HI Y€5 LimiTeD Ability to Steal -Enemy Tecanology Y€5 ND Ability to 5ry on Enemy Y€5 ND MDV€M€NT Underground Unit Travel Y€5 NO Complex UJayfoints Ye 5 NO Unlimited Number of Units in a Grouf Yes \m NO r-i-RTl n M cr IYI AX1MUM NUMBER OF FLAYERS WITH ONE DISK ■4 3 fREE Internet -Flay Yes ND Instant Action Yes NO AT in IYIultiflayer Games Yes ND fYl afeoitor/Construction Kit Yes ND David Jones, Myer Grace Bros, Big W, Toys R Us, Dick Smith, Officeworks, Harvey Norman, Brashs, Chandlers, Archie Martin, Billy Guyatts, K Mart, Blockbuster Music, Electronic Boutique, Target, Key independent retailers nationally. Tech Support-1902 96 2000 (calls charged at $1 per minute, higher from mobiles and public phones) Pntuiilx distributed hy PC CD-ROM ROADSHOW INTERACTIVE 4URAn http://wwwmtefactiveviUage.cofD.au “ AVAILABLE NDW AcTiYisio* www.activision.com "Hexen II is bloody amazing." - PC PowerPlay Nov '97 i MULTIPLAYER CAPABILITIES TO DIE FOR CHOOSE YOUR FATE "Hexen II has set a precedent. It looks great in software and m GL. The others had better follow its lead." - PC Zone Sept '97 "The graphics in this game are absolutely stunning" - PC PowerPlay Sept '97 If MIND-BLOWING ENVIRONMENTS "Simply nothing short of fabulous - 94%" - PC Zone Sept '97 David Jones, Myer Grace Bros, Big W, Toys R Us, Dick Smith, Officeworks, Harvey Norman, Brashs, Chandlers, Archie Martin, Billy Guyatts, K Mart, Blockbuster Music, Electronic Boutique, Target, Key independent retailers nationally. AcliVisioK www.activision.com.au PC CD-ROM Proudly distributed by " V/ ROADSHOW INTERACTIVE http://www.interactive.village.com.au Tech Support-1902 96 2000 (calls charged at $1 per minute, higher from mobiles and public phones) 10 »HYPER / NEWS & Our last issue cut before Christmas, which is ► both good and bad for ua. Good because quite frankly, we've been getting too much of a good thing lately and we're all about to OD from too , marry games pepping up everywhere. It's bad for us because next month is traditionally the month that the release schedules all of a sudden look like ghost towns, with no sign of life due to all the titles being crammed in for Christmas. Well, if you're a racing game fan, prepare ta spoege, because this issue we have eightMg reviews on racing titles, across jtfibo platforms. I \ For those of you that have bdea^athgidg for y - y more Saturn games, Sega/have come to the , party in time for Christmas/and the showing ^ isn't too bad at all. Farther good^rtewsfor Sega t an s> Quake, /s sch^Atxled yo be released ™ mid December'for theyatum. Whilst the/Fna/Sta/tion di month, thlsywas cenainlyr/duiet one tor the ccmparewto theidst few /months. /it would seem/SanyRanted to Ch/istmaytitleslwere^erdt there before the ristmas rush. TOC A T ^ URIN Champions h i p wasyff{/pick^^ uneflj, bring the mcspa^urat/drivirfgsi a console yet. llAuntilrecently, ^thefe^hadjtf bj acing games to chpFse front on all fourfuU reviews thiyissue surprise, Dl&DY KONC as the best of the/lot, bpmg^efen Mario Kart witty the sipgte ppuy< evCryCpi t a s cj/tasAn/ltipla Pjc gamers/will be/the prst in tl i joy the/next generation(of A coming/ fr^mrySydney ywe d nnderpfand the enthus you ye happy, looks like th tinje^strtfteg^ thle office ccunpry\U) Sjame y, which t quite £m for, hrfi we're dlad gaptF lodkA goad too. \YTH fAt step towards takipgtl genre intcvjD, and/veryone/ln herp^lc vea\it/lcts. Biggest disappointment for us pn/i^suewas th QUaJce--^slipped abcptic daysj/Fsc/WKxl thi$ isn't so badyfer you bjeFausejtAntCans yculJbe^abfe to bilyA^righpaBcut now, it thatM^mi^saxtour deadline, so - - - -- we re hanging to get our paws on it. Oh well, next issue... Anyhow, Merry Christmas and all that guff, and we hope you get in all the gaming you possibly can in this very silly season. * Dan New Mystery Console! One of the big-wigs at Sony, Bill Rehbock head of Research 8 Development, has left the company to join VM Labs. Why? To help develop some new gaming hardware, that’s why. VM Labs are already shouting from the rooftops that they will be a direct competitor to Sony, Nintendo and Sega - so it seems they have some hot shit hardware to tackle the gaming industry. Can it be? A new company entering the hardware wars? Wow, it’s a gutsy move that’s for sure, so no doubt they’re pretty confident of the technology that they’re hiding! The words from their very mouths, is that it’s "Mario killing hardware”. Two names bandied about for the project are Merlin and Project X, but it’s real name will no doubt be kept under lock and key until the launch. Programming legend Jeff Minter (creator of Tempest 2000, Defender 2000, Llamatron, and Revenge of the Mutant Camels) has also joined the team, along with some other ex-Atari employees. Minter was also spotted recently wearing a 3D "X” badge which shows a puddle of blood with Mario’s hat lying next to it! Rehbock even stated that he’d seen what Sony were working on for their next console and that the VM Labs hardware impressed him more. Sheesh! Scary stuff. We don’t have any specs yet, but supposedly the machine will be announced sooner than expected. So who is the manufacturer? VM Labs have told us that they approached a number of big mutha companies like Sony, and that one of them has signed on the dotted line, but it’s a deadly secret as to who owns the rights to this new machine. The programming tools for this new hardware are also said to be mighty impressive. Rehbock stated that the PSX tools were good, but that what VM Labs have their hands on has been written from a game programmers perspective, making them ultra-user friendly. What does this mean? It means that as soon as developers see this hardware and the software "tools” written for it, they’ll be climbing on top of each other to make games for it. So start saving up those pennies, because it’s going to be one damn expensive end to the century! e f LET THE GAMES BEGIN! WOLF INTERACTIVE A DATAFLOW COMPANY FOR ALL THE WILDEST ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCTS. TELEPHONE: (02) 9417 9600 FAX: 9417 9676 A HASBRO Interactive BERKELEY Microsoft WINGMAN WARRIOR WARCRAFT WINGMAN EXTREME DIABLO STARCRAFT MONOPOLY STAR WARS TRIVIAL PURSUIT FROGGER MONOPOLY YOU DON'T AGE OF EMPIRES RIVEN KNOW JACK FLIGHT SIMULATOR'98 MYST TAKE NO PRISONERS 1 ARTDIR 8036 HYP/ 12 »HYPER NEWS PLAYSTATION jUbijU JJJuyzjtijjyjj Sony in Japan are about to release a new model PlayStation (No, not the PSX 2) which will not only be bursting with some funky new features, but will retail at a cheaper price! The new model comes with one of the new Dual-Shock Analogue controllers which delivers varying degrees of feedback - even in the left or right side of the controller. Cool! This means that in racing games for instance, if you take a corner badly and your car hits the left wall, you’ll feel it in the left hand of the controller! The other new function is the inclusion of a Sound Scope, which is basically just that thingy which will display psychedelic patterns on your TV when you play a music CD in your PSX. They've just made it a bit more crazy and made it a permanent feature. There is no word yet as to whether this new model PSX will be released here in Australia, so we’ll just have to wait and see. ef Straight from the Frog's Mouth Infogrames, the french company behind the Alone In The Dark series and the now famous V- Rally, recently made an Australian visit in the form of Stephane Baudet, Came Designer 6 Development Manager. We got Stephane to give us the word on V-Rally and the low-down on V- Rally 2... Hyper: I guess the burning question on everyone’s lips is - what happened to the analogue control?! Stephane Baudet: It came down to having to release the game on time. The work that was needed to get the Analogue Controller working properly was too difficult for the time-frame, and we didn’t have time for it in the end "***■ which was disappointing. We were told by Sony that this was the first * v game which would support the ' Analogue Control, so they sent us prototype pads to work with, but every few months we would be sent another prototype analogue pad which would not work or perform differently than the last. Even now, the Japanese, European and American analogue pads all have different mechanisms inside them, and we didn’t have time to cater for each one. Even though it was working well in the Beta, there was no calibration and Sony didn’t want the Analogue Control in the game if it wasn’t going to be 100% correct. In the end we decided to drop it because it was becoming too much of a headache and we had to get the game out. I hear they are going to be bringing out a new pad which will be the new standard, and will have better force feedback technology. Hyper: There was also going to be a Track Generator in the game, what happened there? Stephane Baudet: I think it was a case of us being a little too ambitious, and we unfortunately had to drop this from the game too, simply to get V-Raily finished. We just didn’t have the time to test it. Because of the way the graphics are generated on screen, it was too difficult getting the „ randomly generated ^ |C I tracks to all be displayed properly. We will include a track generator in V-Rally 2 though, and you will be able to specify the country, driving conditions, lay of the track, the environment etc. In fact, we used a track generator to come up with some of what you actually see in the final V-Rally. Hyper: Did you say V-Rally 2?! Stephane Baudet: Yes, we are in pre- production right now and we are determined for it to be a completely new game, not just a "V- Rally ’98” where you just get more of the same with a few new options. We are completely re¬ writing the code, and are using the new development kit from Sony which allows you to watch what your routines are doing and optimise your code. This kit has been used to make games like Rapid Racer and Colony Wars - 60 frames per second and high resolution. We’re not sure if we will use high res though, because we’d like to include a lot more detail this time around. It ends up being a bit of a trade off. We want V- Rally 2 to be more "alive’’ with more animations on and around the tracks and in the environment, like maybe people running out onto the track and taking photos of you as you drive by. You can achieve better car handling when the game is running at such a higher frame rate, so we’re looking forward to making V- Rally 2 something new and special. Hyper: What else are you working on? Stephane Baudet: There are games we are working on that I can’t tell you about, and we are concentrating on V-Rally 2 and V-Rally for PC with 3DFX etc. But there’s stuff other than racing games on the way. I enjoy switching from one genre to the next, it keeps things fresh and it can actually provide you with original ideas when you begin working on a new game. Ideas which you developed for one game, can then be used in another totally different game to help create something unique. TAKE TOUR MARKS. GET SET. SHOOT LIKE HELL. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF PLAYSTATION 14 »HYPER In recent times many an Australian Saturn owner is becoming miffed over the lack of Australian releases. We thought we'd do a bit of research in the fighting game genre this month, to see what it is the Australian market may be missing out on, so if you have a chance to get overseas and shop around, what you can hope to find. On the Capcom front, there is one title coming out soon for Saturn, and that's Marvel Super Heroes, which apparently runs slightly better than the PlayStation version, so there is one hot fighting game to look forward to. Here’s the bad news Street Fighter III, Vampire Saviour, Street Fighter vs Marvel Heroes and Street Fighter vs X-Men are all without an Australian distributor (no word of European releases either). Main reason being 4MB cartridges are required for all these titles, and the extra costs involved make them a harder product to market out here. Word is that these games won’t even be released in America, so if you’re after these games, time to start brushing up on your Japanese. The Japanese market still seems to be supporting the Saturn very strongly, but the lack of sales out of the "Mother land" seems to have scared conversions and distribution in the west. We’ve had a lot of questions regarding the breast fixated, Dead or Alive, which has been released for Saturn in Japan, and should receive an American release. We’ve got a Japanese version in at Hyper, and it’s a fantastic conversion of the arcade version, using the VF2 engine (or perhaps a slightly improved one). Another fighting game that has a small army of followers (okay, more like a portion of a jP* platoon) is Samurai Shodown 4, which has Ok also been released in Japan, and is A reportedly another outstanding conversion (I’m doing everything in my fji W power to own the game). K The scariest prospect is the lack of a Virtua Fighter 3 conversion for Saturn, Bjpr which whilst not confirmed, is looking like it may just be put off for the next Sega console. The word down the grapevine is that the new Sega machine will be able to handle Model 3 arcade conversions quite easily. Latest rumours on the machine are a US$299 release price and a simultaneous Japan/US release around the end of next year. Development for games has definitely started, even by 3rd parties, and this could mean sneak peak previews of the starting lineup at next year’s E3. Things are looking up this month for Saturn owners, especially compared to the last couple of months. With titles such as Panzer Dragoon saga and Burning Rangers coming in the next couple of months, then it looks like Saturn owners won’t be having to put their machine up in the cupboard just yet... there’s still some life in her yet, but no where near as much as overseas, particularly Japan. overflow Dead Or Alive is coming to the PlayStation early in *98 and will feature 2 extra characters as well as 5 extra fighting moves for each current character, which sorta makes the Saturn version look a little under done. Hmmm. PlayStation owners can at least rub their hands together in anticipation of the gravity- defying action, and we hope it will kick. The latest word on Sega’s Dural console is that Super CT has been given the flick for a new racing game which has been specifically written for the hardware. Though Super CT was shown to developers to show off Dural’s grunt, it’s said that this new racer is far superior... Sony Pictures Imageworks are celebrating the release of the bug¬ zapping movie, Starship Troopers, with an online VRML game. The URL is http://www.starship troopers, com/ and if you’ve got a decent PC, then you can check out this nifty idea. It’s essentially a 3D shooter that uses JAVA to keep track of your health and ammo. Keen! News on the Wing Commander feature film, is that 20th Century Fox have picked up the rights and that Mark "Blair" Hamill and Tom "Maniac" Wilson will not appear in the film. All the space battles will be completely CC, and it will be set around the time of Wing Commander 1... CT Interactive have started developement on a real-time strategy game based on the H.C. Wells masterpiece, War Of The Worlds. It will contain a 3D engine, support multiple resolutions and have 2-player network play. Let’s hope they capture the menacing atmosphere of the original story. Ultima Online has sold an incredible amount since it's September launch... 65,000 copies of the game have been snapped up by gamers, though you'll never find that many online! In fact, those that have been using the service have grown so dissatisfied with player-killers, downtimes and server crashes that a huge petition has been started on the Net. Players insist that the game was too buggy to be released and that they shouldn’t have to be paying for a service which doesn’t work... MULTI-RACING CHAMPIONSHIP RUMBLE COMPATIBL Eight high performance, folly customisable vehicles • True 64 bit visd 9 ^d$f^* 0 n and offroad terrain Tfl • Alternative 1 ouLl!H^)u weary course •^ROADSHOW V INTERACTIVE www lnt*ractlvw.VttUgr can.au © 1997 Genki Co. Ltd. © Imagineer Co. Ltd. Nintendo ®. Nintendo 64. and PAL VERSION are trademarks of Nintendo Co., Ltd. INEWS 1 NINTENDO 64 If anyone out there is dying to get "radical” on their Nintendo 64, then you won’t have to wait much longer because there are a whole handful of Snowboarding games on the way! Probably the most exciting news is that the team of programmers who brought us the stunning Wave Race 64 are working on one called Vertical Edge Snowboarding! If they can pull off the same fluid realism which we saw in Wave Race 64 in this title, then we’ll all be a bunch of happy chappies. Also on the way is a Snowboarding game from Midway called Twisted Edge, which will be full of stunts and tricks. Twisted Edge also has an impressive team behind it - the folks who made Top Gear Rally, so things are looking extremely good in the N64 powder department!! There are even more snow-based action games on the way, so skiing/boarding fans will be well supplied with N64 action. ef Powder Hounds Top Gear in Gear! Whilst doing my review of Multi Racing Championship this issue, I used this spunky new peripheral from Logic 3, the Top Gear analogue steering wheel and pedals. It really is a lovely piece of work, with a good, solid, thick, leather-clad wheel which is mapped with all the appropriate buttons. Similar to the Mad Catz, it has the gear stick on the right and a set of pedals to make your racing experience complete. The underside of the Top Gear wheel has the largest suction cups known to man, so there’s no slipping and sliding whilst you drive. The response is great, and there is even another steering mode with greater sensitivity than the default. A slot exists for your N64 memory cards too. The wheel is also compatible with the PlayStation and the Saturn (yes, all three adaptors are on the one cable), so anyone can enjoy this excellent piece 'o hardware, and it ’aint too expensive neither (RRP $130). Driving freaks rejoice! ef ir is We received these Quake 64 screen shots on deadline and just had to put them in to show you how it’s looking... nice huh? PLAYSTA TION 1. Final Fantasy VII 2. Colony Wars 3. G-Police 4. Croc 5. Ace Combat 2 6. Formula 1 '97 7. Rapid Racer 8. Oddworld 9. V-Rally 10. Die Hard Trilogy SATURN 1. Dragon Force 2. Resident Evil 3. Duke Nukem 3D 4. Sonic lam 5. Jonah Lomu Rugby 6. Mega Man X 3 7. Madden '98 8. Fighters Megamix 9. Virtual On 10. Fighting Vipers NINTENDO 64 1. Diddy Kong Racing 2. Top Gear Rally 3. Goldeneye 007 4. Lylat Wars 5. MRC 6. Fi Pole Position 7. Int. Superstar Soccer 64 8. Mario Kart 64 9. Wayne Gretsky 3D Hockey 10. Doom 64 PC 1. Riven 2. CSC Aftermath 3. Need For Speed S.E. 4. Total Annilhilation 5. Age Of Empires 6. Close Combat 2 7. Constructor 8. Jedi Knight 9. Dark Reign 10. Quake KONAMi Symphony \ of the night GT Interactive Software Australia Pty Ltd PlayStatio »HYPER Profle Latency Page Whtspef Muzzle Hoonq Hoonq Rossie 5* Hoonq J Rossie Hoonq Hoonq ■v ^ Rossie Baz r ;! : J Hoonq Rossie this interface rocks' ' What's the “Death House"/" The death house is the game im running at the moment, your welcome to join if you like cool - sounds like fun )' You can create lots of different games with this software, just dick on create and there are heaps of choices for you do you play a lot of Ouake? I play a fair bit of quake, never on anything like this before What's your favourite level? «EEf The Death House | Shareware not allowed ; The Bad Place j 15 Player Game | No Frag Limit No Time Limit ! Team play 2 deathmatch 1 Online Gaming Goes Nuts The state of Australian online gaming has taken a bit of a turn. Wireplay has appeared on the scene utilising the mighty Telstra network to supply subscribers with a fast, reliable gaming service. Currently they’re offering some cool games like Jedi Knight, Age Of Empires, Duke Nukem 3D and Daytona Deluxe, but there’s no Quake!! It’d be a shame to waste such a fast network on a Quake-less service. To play on Wireplay it costs an initial joining fee of $10 and then $25 per month for 5 hours with $5 per hour after that. Hmmmm. Stupidly expensive we think! Meanwhile, the folks over at Multiplay have merged with TEN bringing Australia it’s first ever online gaming ranking system, along with the clever TEN technology. Subscribers must login in to their own ISP and then use the client to login over the Net, meaning that only people using top-notch ISPs will get good ping times. They do have a deal going with Access One, so you can sign up with them if you want to get good pings all the time. Multiplay/TEN have games like Quake, Red Alert, Shadow Warrior and Diablo and when you play, your performance gets analysed and put into the database on the server for anyone to check out. If you’re getting your ass kicked and want to know why, you can peruse your opponent’s stats like their Kills Per Minute for instance. Cool stuff. The only problem with Multiplay/TEN at the moment is the need for a blistering ISP to get what you’re paying for. It’s pretty cheap at $29.95 per month for unlimited usage, but that’s not including your ISP charges. The choice is yours gamers... we recommend just waiting a while to see which takes off. ef ««® Multiplay Pure Power Reading HYPER nowadays can be depressing for a PC owner, seeing all these shit hot games that look ridiculously gorgeous if you have a 3DFX card... well if you’ve got the dosh, and are ready to hit the shops - drool spilling out of the corners of your mouth - then woah there Nellie and read this. Let us just give you a little tip, the HYPER crew currently recommend the Canopus Pure 3D 3DFX for your acceleration needs. Why? Well the Pure 3D has 2MB more RAM than the other 3DFX cards on the market, making it a whopping 6MB. That’s 4MB worth of memory for handling textures alone, with the other 2MB free for other duties. Any game which has stacks of detail, will now render smooth as silk. But the big deal-sealer for us, is the Pure 3 D’s funky TV-Out! Yes! You can just plug a cable into your Pure 3D and stick it in your TV to play any of your 3DFX enhanced games on the family box! This means things like CLQuake on a mother-huge TV - and you can videotape your sessions! Lovely! One thing though, unless your TV does NTSC, you can’t view your desktop or anything 2D on the TV, so you’ll need your monitor connected simultaneously. You’ll need around $399.00 buckaroos though - but get it if you can. er m Competition Winners 00 Ahhh, we had some seriously funny entries this month, but most of them were unfit to print. Street Fighter Ex Owen Vandenberg, NSW Michael Lyn, SA John Rittmeir, Qld Rick Anderson, Qld Darren Hui, Vic G-Police Alex Dullard, Vic Yad Carewal, ACT Cam Shea, NSW S. Banister, NSW Brian Smith, WA Fighting Force Final Fantasy VII Ion Kerney, Vic Paul Ruiz, NSW Tristan Webb. Qld Felix Bowman-Derrick, Vic Daniel Denton, Qld Matt Bennett, Vic CHECK OUT KStGRBT ms FOR AlLTf FAMIDT1 Buy any two Hasbro titles & get a FREE Orbix electronic puzzle valued at $ 39 . 95 * *Qoes not ttv I-****' THE WORLD'S LEADING FAMILY BOARD GAMES ON PC CD-ROM AND PLAYSTATION. Available from ELECTRONICS BOUTIQUE, DAVID JONES, HARVEY NORMAN, KMART, MYER/GRACE BROS, OFFICEWORKS, TARGET, THE GAMESMEN, THE GAMES WIZARDS, TOYS R' US. WOLF Ahk HASBRO Interactive ARTDIR 8037 HYP 3D Shooters Adventure Alien Trilogy Blood * Dark Forces 2 Duke Nukem Atomic Descent II Colin Descent Infinite Abyss * Hexen 2 Final Doom Hexen Heretic Hexen Data Disk •* Mageslayer MDK Outlaws Quake Quake Missions 1 & 2 Pack 429.95' Quake 2 489.95 Redneck Rampage $49.95 ' Redneck Rampage Exp Pk. $49.95 * Shadow Warrior $79.95 Time Commando $49.95 Tomb Raider $49.95 * Tomb Raider 2 $89.95 * Unreal $89.95 Ultimate Doom $59.95 $49.95' 1179.95 889.95 849.95' 849.95 v 859.95' 889.95 859.95 829.95 829.95 829.95 $89.95 $49.95 ' 889.95 $29.95 1 9 Ar8chimedean Dynasty * Battlesport f ♦ Battlestations Bedlam > Bladerunner Croc Crusader: No Regret Cyberspeed Deadly Tide Die Hard Trilogy Exhumed * Extreme Assault * Fallout Fire Fight Fragile Allegiance > G Police Grid Runner Guts n Garters Hardwar Hellbender $89.95 $89.95 tba $49.95' $89.95 $89.95 $29.95 $79.95 $79.95 $89.95 $89.95 $89.95 $89.95 429.95 > $79.95 * 1 89.95 89.95 79.95 89.95 49.95 Hunter/ Hunted $89.95 1D4 $89.95 * Meat Puppets $79 95 Necrodome $49.95 ♦ Postal $89.95 c* Rascal tba ♦ Respect, Inc. tba Re-Loaded $69.95 * Rebel Moon Rising $79.95 Riot $29.95 Rush Hour $89.95 Scorcher $49.95' Scorched Planet $79.95 Tiger Shark $89.95 Sandwarriors $69.95 Scarab $29.95 Sentient $29.95 ** Shadow Master tba * Shadows of the Empire $89.95 cT Shattered Light $79.95 c* Swagman $89.95 Syndicate Wars $29.95' * Terracide tba Terminator Skynet * Vette AjWar Gods * Waterworld * Worms 2 * X-Men Children /Atom XS s 2PC 9.95' afe 79.95 69.95 79.95 469 95 $79.95 $49.95' Alien Earth **' Amphibeous Atlantis The Lost Tales The Beast Within Betrayal at Krondor * Betrayal at Antara * Black Dahlia Blue Ice Broken Sword Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon City of Lost Children * Curse of Monkey Island CyberJudas * The Dark Project * D-Day 99 Discworld Discworld 2 ' Duckman Legend / Fall Dragon Lore II * Dreams to Reality The Dig Ecstatica 2 Full Throttle * Harvester * Heart of Darkness * Incubation * Island of Dr Moreau The Lost Adventures * Kings Quest Collection 2 Leisure Suit Larry 7 Lightlpuse * Light and Darkness * Mask of Eternity * Mangia Mission Critical The Neverhood Pandora Directive Phantasmagoria 2 Primortals Rama Sam & Max Hit the Road Shannara Shivers Shivers 2 * SWAT 2 Spvcraft * Star Trek Generations The Quivering > Riverworld Ripper , * Third Millenium * Tex Murphy: Overseer Timelapse Twinsen’s Oddyssey .* Ubik Versailles Yoda Stories k Zork Grand Inquisitor Zork Nemesis *9.95' 179.95 189.95 189.95 189.95 159.95 189.95 179.95 >29.95' 189.95 >89.95 >89.95 >89.95 >89.95 69.95 69.95 69.95 69.95 79.95' Amusement 3D Pinball Creep Night $69.95 * 3D Pinball Time Shock 3D Ultra MmiGolf Muppet Treasure Island Powerchess Python Holy Grail Ar carle ■yf Atomic Bomber * Bug tool * Comix Zone Daytona USA Formula Karts Hyperblade Sega Rally Sonic CD .95 79.95 79.95 79.95 79.95 $49.95' $79.95 $79.95 Sonic 3D Blast ** Tomcat Alley Vlrtua Cop Virtua Fighter laFia $71 15 5 879.95 1179.95 889.95 879.95 9.95 29.95 89.95 79.95 79.95 $89.95 $39.95 $89.95 $39.95 $99.95 tba tba $89.95 $79.95 $59.95 $89.95 $89.95 tba $89.95 $89.95 $79.95 $79.95 $89.95 $89.95 $89.95 $89.95 $29.95 459.95' 59.95 89.95 89.95 9.95' 89.95 $79.95 $89.95 $29.95 $89.95 tba 49.95 89.95 89.95 79.95 29.95 $89.95 $49.95' * Virtua Tighter 2 Super Bubsy Compilation LucasArchives #1 $69.95 LucasArchives #2 $79.95 ' * LucasArchives #3 $89.95 * X:Treme Velocity Pack $79.95 Driving * Andretti Racing ‘98 * CART Precision Racing Carmageddon Destruction Derby Destruction Derby 2 Formula 1 * Formula 1 ‘97 Grand Prix II Grand Prix Manager 2 GT Racing Hard Core 4x4 IndyCar Racing 2 Interstate 76 * Monster Trucks * Moto Racer Nascar 2 Need for Speed SE * Need for Speed 2 S.E. Pod Power FI Road Rash Screamer 2 Speedster Street Racer * Streets of Sim City Test Drive Off Road Test Drive 4 Wipeout * Wipeout 2097 * X-Car 89.95 89.95 89.95 29.95 89.95 89.95 89.95 49.95 79.95 69.95 89.95 89.95 $49.95 $89.95 $89.95 $89.95 $29.95 $49.95 $89.95 79.95' 29.95' 79.95 89.95 49.95 89.95 69.95 tba $29.95 $89.95 $99.95 Hints Doom Unlirrifted Hints Unlimited 1 Hints Unlimited 2 Hints Unlimited 3 ♦ Hints Unlimited 4 ♦ Levels Unlimited Meclis Big Mech Battlepack ♦ Earthsiege 3 G-Nome ♦ Heavy Gear ♦ Kill Suit Mech2: Mercenaries Shattered Steel TerraNova Air Warrior II Apache A-10 Cuba A-10II Silent Thunder ♦ Aces X-Fighter ATF Gold AH64-D Longbow AH64-D Longbow Gold ★ AH64-D Longbow 2 Comanche 3.0 ♦ European Air War ♦ Falcon 4.0 ★ F22 Raptor F22 Lightning II * F22 Raptor * Fighter Squadron Fighters Anthology * Flight Simulator ’98 Flight Sim WA Experience Flight Sim Big Melbourne ♦ Flight Unfimited 2 Flight Flying Corp Gold ♦ Flying Nightmares II Hind Jetfighter III Longbow Korea Expansion ♦ Pilot Companion ♦ Pro Pilot ♦ Red Baron 2 SU-27 SuperEF2000 Win95 ♦ TFX3 O i Jj :1 K 9 f ulation ■$79.95' $79.95 $49.95 49.95 89 95 9.95 29.95 89 95 89.95 89.95' tba tba $79.95 $49.95 $89 95 $89.95 $89 95 $79.95 $99.95 $79.95 $79.95 $89.95 $89.95 $79.95 $79.95‘t $ 29.95 $59.95 $89.95 $89.95 $49.95 $44.95' tba i ■: $9.95 1 19.95 19.95 29.95 29.95 tba $49.95 889.95 $49.95' tba ! 89.95 49.95' 29.95' 29.95' Role Playing Albion Daggerfall Deathtrap Dungeon Diablo ♦ Descent Undermountain ♦ Die bv the Sword Dragon Dice Forgotten Realms Archives ♦ Fiellfire (Diablo Add-On) Iron & Blood ♦ Lands of Lore 2 Legacy of Kain Magic Gathering Battlemage ♦ Might and Magic VI Nemesis Wizardry Adv. Quest for Glory Anth. ♦ QFG 5: Dragon Fire RoA: Shadows Over Riva Realms of the Haunting ♦ Return to Krondor Stonekeep ♦ Ultima IX: Ascention Wizardry Gold $89.95 889.95 889.95 889.95 889.95 tba 169.95' 189.95 9.95 79.95 89.95 79.95 79.95 89.95 89.95 59.95 89.95 89.95 49.95' 79.95 59.95 79.95 $79.95 Rea, *SftS.esw * Age of Empires Beasts and Bumpkins Birthright Blood & Magic C&C for Win 95 C&C: Red Alert Bundle Counterstrike Close Combat * Close Combat 2 Dark Colony * Dark Reign Dominion * Dungeon Keeper Enemy Nations Fantasy General Gene Wars Heroes of Might & Magic $89.95 $79.95 $69.95' $49.95' $69.95 $89.95 $49.95 $69.95 889.95 879.95 879.95 879.95 889.95 849.95 849.95 879.95 859.95' Heroes of Might & Magic II $89.95 HoMM2 Exp. Pack Krush Kill r N Destroy * Lords of Magic Lord of the Realm 2 Lord of Realm 2 Exp. M.A.X. * Netstorm Populous The Third * Rebellion -5* Sid Meier’s Gettysburg Settlers II Settlers II Mission Disk * Starcraft Theme Hospital Warcraft II Warcraft II Mission • $49.95 $29.95' $89.95 $89.95 $59.95 $49.95' $79.95 tba 189.95 189.95 189.95 139.95 ^ 189.S >79.9 18995 149.95 / r a* Warcrafl Adventures: Lord of the Clans $89.95 Warcraft Battlechest $129.95 Warwirtd $49.95 Strategy ♦ 7th Legion tba ♦ Achtung Spitfire $99.95 ^-Africa Korps $89.95 Afterlife $49.95 <**Age of Ironclads $89.95 Age of Sail $89.95 Age of Rifles $49.95 Anvil of Dawn $79.95 ♦ Ardennes Offensive S49.95 * Wing Commander 5: Prophecy X-Wing Trilogy * X-Wnq VsTIE Fightei Battlegrounds 1-9: ea. Blitzkreia Caesar II Cave Wars ^►Cave Wars 2 Civilization II Civ II Scenario #1 * Civil War 2 <+> Cyberstorm 2 * Conquest Earth Conquest New World Deluxe * Constructor Capitalism + Destiny Deadlock * Emperor l Fading Suns Great Battles Alexandria History of the World Imperium Galactica JA: Deadly Games Magic: The Gathering Master of Orion 2 S89.95 $99.95 $89.95 ! 99.95 99.95 49.95 29.95 ! 89.95 89.95 89.95 49.95' 79.95 $79J^ S7&95 $19.95* $9 95 S79.9W $99. 95^ S69.95 $89.95 $89.95 $89.95 * X-Wing VsTIE Fighter Tanks & S 688i Hunter Killer > Armored Fist 2.0 Harpoon *97 iM1A2 Abrams * Nuclear Strike Silent Hunter Silent Hunter Patrol Disk ^Subterrane Tank ^Tank Resistance 2024 $89.95 $59.95 $49.95* Mission Force: Cyberstorm $69 95* ♦Outpost 2 $89.95 Over the Reich $99.95 ♦ Pacific General tba ♦ Panzer General 2 $49.95 ^ Sim City 3000 $89.95 Star Control 3 $49.95' Stars! $89.95 Star General $49.95 Steel Panthers 1 Exp. $39.95 Steel Panthers 2 $49.95 Steel Panthers 2 Exp. $39.95 ♦ Steel Panthers 3 $49.95 a* Strategy Pack $39.95 Third Reich $99.95 Wages of War $69.95 <^War Inc $79.95 Wooden Ships & Iron Men $99.95 ♦ X-COM III Apocalypse $39.95 Sport Actua Soccer * Adidas Power Soccer Cricket ‘97 Ashes Tour FIFA Soccer ’97 > Frfa *98 Road/World Cup FPS: Baseball 98 FPS: Football 98 * FPS: Golf Bundle FPS: Golf Black Diamond Baseball 3D Har dball 5 * Legends of Football 97 Madden NFL '97 ^ Madden NFL ‘98 NBA HangtimP^^ NBA Jam Extreme^^^ NBA Live ‘98 NHL Hockoy ‘97 > NHL Hookey ‘98 Premier Manager 97 Soccer * Triple Play‘98 Trophy Bass 2 ^Trophy Rivers Virtual Snooka^^^ $79.95 $89.95 $49.95 $49.95 $89.95 579.95 $79.95 $79.95 $49.95 tba $79.95 589.95 $79.95 ■$£9.9 5 $49.9$ * $49.95 * $89.95 $49.95 $89.95 $39.95 $79.95 $79.95 $89.95 $39.95 $89.95 A C&C Red Alert * Constructor * Croc Crusader No Remorse D yv f r 7 Darklight Conflict Descent Descent 2 Dark Stalkers Die Hard Trilogy Disrupter Draaonheart Earthworm Jim 2 Excatibur Fantastic Four Fifa Road to World Cup 9 r* Formula Karts Grid Runner Independence Day Iron & Blood Iron Man X/O Man of War Jupiter Strike $89.95 >89.95 >89.95 $89.95 $89.95 $89.95 149.95 149.95' >49.95 189 95 >49.95' >79.95 $49.95 $89.95 $89.95 $89.95 $89.95 $89.95 $89.95 $49 95* $89.95 $99.95 Tunnel B1 $49.95* VR Baseball $89.95 V Tennis $89 95 Virtual Pool $89.95 >Warcraft2 $89.95 Wing Commander III $49.95 Wing Commander IV S89.95 Worms $49.95 ' Wrecking Crew $89.95 Wrestlemama Arcade $59.95 Ac c e I erator: Creative 3D-Blaster VL-Bus $89.95 Jurassic Park Lost World$89.95 Golf Actua Golf * British Open Golf* * Davis Love 3 Pinehurst #2 Course * Links LS ’98 Oaklands Park Course * PGA Tour Pro Win ‘95 * Valhalla Course jk ocalypse $39.95 > Agent Armstrong ' Alien Trilogy I: Playstation ★ Agent Armstrong^H^ $69.95 Alien Trilogy ^ $49.95* <** Batman and Rcoin $89.95 Killing Zone Lands of Lore 2 * Lifeforce Tenka Lost Vikings 2 * Marvel Superheroes Mechwfcrrior II A > Madden NFL *98 A ^ Magic Gathering Battfl ^ MDK M s* Motor Mash ■ > l t ^fl Ra cer JB Nanotek Wa raar ■ Nascar“98 NBA Jam Extreme ^NBAUv?9MjP Need for Speed r Need for Speed 2 NFL Quaterback ‘98 NHL Breakaw# 98 a- NHL Hockey a Nuclear Strike Overblooi^^ * PGA a>ur^8 Poweag|iBtfve Psychic Forco Resident Evil Rll. Evil Directors Cut f^ffiven fHoad Rash w/* Rock n Roll Racing2 ^ Screamer 2 r*;*.. o r\ru\ Creative 3D Blaster PCI £ Canopus Pure 3D Canopus Total 3D Diamond Monster 3D Hercules Stingray 128 ^ Matrox m3D Matrox Mystique 220 Orchid Righteous 3D Sierra Screamin 3D Maxf Gamer 3D 329.95 379.95 179.95 379.95 499.95 tba 399.95 379.95 399.95 395.00 Joysticks $89.96 CH Jetstick CH Flightstick $4•95 E Logitech Cyber nan 2 Sim City 2000 Soviet Strike Skeleton Warri Battlecruiser 3000AD Darklight Conflict <**Epic Space Marine Privateer 2: The Darkening <0* Privateer 2: The Darkening Soecgipr Rebel Assault (l * S.T. Starflee;Academy TIE Fighter ^ * Wing Commander: | l.ie Kilrathi Sag^ivM ' >79.95 Battlestations >29.95 Bedlam >79.95 Black Dawn $49.95 Blastchamber Breakpoint; $79.95 ^ Bubble Bobble 2 $59.95 Bubsy 3D 389.95 Burning Road $89.95 ^ Bust a Move 3 Cheesy 559.95 Command and Conquer 9.95 * Skeleton Warriors 9.95 P Skull Monkeys 9.95 Space Jame 9.95 star Gladiators 9 95 Street Fighter Alpha 2 9.95 < Street Fighter Ex Plus 9.95 * Super Puzzle Fighter 2 9.95* Syndicate Wars 9 95 Theme Park 9.95 Tilt $49.95*1 Time Commando Total Driving Transport Tycoon True Pinball 189.95 189.95 $89.95 $59.95 589.95 149.95* $89.95 ! >49.95 i 589.95 $89.95 889.95 $89.95 389.95 889.95 i 889.95 889.95 889.95 899.95 $89.95 S 9.95 9.95 I 88995 ,>89 95 $99.95 $89.95 $49.95 $39.95 $49.95* $49.95 $69.95 $89.95 $89.95 $8995 $29.95 $49.95 $49.95 ' $89.95 $69 95 $89 95 |79.95 fmls tba $249.95 ■249.95 $249.95 $199.95 $59.95 $89.95 tba " MadCatz Steering Wheel $139.95 MasterPilot $39.95 JMicroSoft Sidewinder Force Feedback $289 0C Microsoft Sidewmder Pro $79.95 Microsoft Sidewinder Pad $99 95 SpaceOrb 360 $99.95 Suncom FI 5E Hawk . $79.95 Suncom F15E Raptor $109.95 Suncom FI5E Talon 1 $134 95 Suncom : Fx 3000 $49.95 SpaceOrb 360 Suncom F15E Hawk Suncom F15E Raptor Suncom FI 5E Talon “ SuncomFX 3000 ThrustMaster: F16FLCS F22 Pro ATFC Formula T2 , > Formula Pro T3 Game Card (ACM) GP1 Wheel S32&95 $369.95 $249.95 $349.95 $84.95 $149.95 > Millenium Digital 30 $199.95 Pinball Controller $99.95 M a Rage 3D Gamepad * Rudder Cfchtrols TopGun TQS ;*orF16) WCS MK2 X-Fighter A Wingman Extreme Digital $109.95 S299.95 $89 95 $319.95 $259.95 $124.95 The secret decoder wheel * nAcates 3 r ecent or imr-r^ release .••tjHe " tne release da*.e dquW be 4 odt there" somewnere :) Watch xrt for ojr > jpnee drops? To check the date on any upcoming titles call our Information Line: 1-902-291*007. All orders over $80 receive FREE OVERNIGHT DELIVERY via An sett! Subscribe to our FREE CATALOGUE by emailing your name, address., and platform (PC, Mac, PSX or N64) to catalogue@popcom.com.au or snailmailing your details on the back of an envelope to: Popcorn Entertainment, Shop 104 Westpoint, 396 Scarborough Beach Rd, Osborne Parfc, WA 6017* Prices may change, and some titles may not have beer leased To ensure that you get them as soon as they #e available, reser/e yonir copy Tech support call (08) 9242-1421 and have your Popcorn receipt handy. Other entries calf (08) 9242-4205. v • • i; 2 2 »HYPER Get cut the intravenous black ccMee, it's time to browse the night away with Eliot Fish.. TOTAL ANNIHILATION Shaking up the world of Real Time Strategy gam¬ ing and going head to head with Dark Reign, is this beauty from Cavedog. If you have web access and have the game, then bookmarking the official site is an absolute must. Not only will you get the latest patches, but you’ll be able to download new units and other phunky add-ons for the game The site will also keep you up-to-date with online comps, the latest TA news and anything else even vaguely TA related. If I only had a spare life to play all these time-consuming games 1 Argh http://www, totalannihilation.com/ com¬ plete ^ conversion by Zero Gravi¬ ty called X-Men: The Ravages Of Apocalypse, with new graphics, sounds and missions - all in the true Mar¬ vel style. You can download the 8MB demo from a number of sites, but it makes sense to visit Marvel Interactive direct and get the info. This looks hot. and you'll be up against mean-ass characters like Wolverine and Storm - all looking like they stepped right out of the comic. I’m off to have a play now! http://www.x-men.com/qsw.html A LINK TO LINK The Legend Of Zelda series has brought many of us tears of joy. frustration and love with it’s brilliantly designed puzzle-filled world As we all quiver in anticipation of Zelda for the Nintendo 64. it’s inter¬ esting to look back and see where it all started. This ultra-cool unofficial Zelda homepage has detailed info on every Zelda game from the NES to the SNES, Came Boy and N64. It’s a great looking site, and will keep any Zelda fanatic wrapped up for hours. We salute you Mog, whoever the hell you are! http://www.dragonfire.net/Mog/Zelda/ LYLAT SHHYLAT 1 can't but help call it Starfox 64 like the rest of the world. Anyhow, there is now a Starfox website floating around on the internet which is handy for those of you who need to find out more about the game's inner workings There’s quite a bit on each mission for those of you who are stuck and need hints, so it’s a good place to start. You can spend hours listening to the vocal samples taken from the game anyway, pretty funny stuff. Nicely organised and chock full of pics from the game if you’re still making up your mind http://www.starfox64.com/ brand*" 0OW* 0M, S IIISSIOW COHTWOl X-MEN QUAKE Yep. you read that right, Marvel Interactive have officially approved a Quake TC that’s been created to thrust you into the world of the X-Men. This is a SUBSCRIBE Nintendo 64 and Diddy Kong Racing!! Ho ho ho, and all that crap, it’s Christmas!! Nintendo Australia and Hyper have held hands and generated warm fuzzy feelings of goodwill by putting together this awesome giveaway... One lucky person who subscribes to Hyper this month (or re-subscribes) will have a Nintendo 64 console and a copy of Diddy Kong Racing stuffed into their stocking. How’s that?! A subscription to Hyper of course guarantees that you’ll get your issue sooner and cheaper than anyone else out on the streets, so with the chance of winning a Nintendo 64 in there too, I’d drop everything and subscribe to Hyper right now...! To save you wearing out the buttons on your calculator, if you subscribe for 12 months you’re getting Hyper 370/0 cheaper than at the newsagents... and if you subscribe for 24 issues, you get Hyper for 440/0 cheaper ! That’s almost half price damnit... Hey, which gimboid made that offer? Oh well, our loss... your gain. Co on, you know you want to. October Subscription winner First Prize Mark Ives, Qld Prize: 1 Nintendo 64, Lylat Wars, Rumble Pak £ 3 extra controllers! Runners Up: Ken Smith. Qld; Susan Knaggs. WA. Michael Tran. ACT. Shane Rc Prize: Lylat Wars £ Rumble Pak! How To o Cut or copy the form and post it with a cheque or money order, or your credit card details, to: Hyper Subscriptions Reply Paid 634, 78 Renwick St. Redfern, NSW 2016 e Fax a copy of the completed form, with credit card details, to: 02 93101315 o Subscribe email your name and address with credit card details to: subsa>next.com.au If you're not sure about something give us a call on 02 93101433 or email subsa>next.com.au Allow 4/a weeks for ist delivery Fill out this coupon and mail it to HYPER, Reply Paid 634 , 78 Renwick St. Redfern, NSW 2016 Name_ System G)CI?(132> 0031 Address _ Suburb/Town Postcode Enclosed is my cheque/money order, or debit my credit card for $79.95/$44.95 J 2 years/24 issues ($79.95 saving 44%) | [ 1 year/12 issues ($44.95 saving 37%) Bankcard □ Phone Number (_ J_ Mastercard □ Visa □ Expiry Date_ Card No Signature 24 »HYPER Super Gem Fighter [IJlini fJimJ cmam The super cute and super deformed characters witnessed in the Tetris inspired Street Fighter Puzzle Fighter are back in a self parody of that mother of all fight sims -Street Fighter. The fighting is like SF life, with only 3 buttons (punch, kick and special- each with their own power meter) But what the game lacks in fighting complexity, is definitely eclipsed by the games totally over the top comic humour. The regular dragon punches and hadokens are used from SF are still utilized, though the power system is ripped directly from puzzle fighter. Knock a char¬ acter hard enough and a coloured gem falls out. Collect it and your corre¬ sponding 3 level power meter goes up, allowing access to more powerful moves, which in turn, knocks even larger gems from your opponent. Each character (Ryu, Ken, Sakura, Chun li, Zangief, Morrigan, Hsien Ko, Felicia, Tessa and Ibuki), although possessing the standard SF moves have the funniest multiple combo attacks ever witnessed in any fight sim. For example, Zangief turns into a gridiron player, then a Viking then a burning branch wielding cave man. Felicia dons a nurses outfit and runs down the opponent with a wheel chair, while Chun Li’s finishing move is delivering a love letter and totally decimating the opponent with the power of love??? Special attacks accessed by the Special button are equally hilarious. Ryu rips out a stop sign from nowhere and clobbers his opponent, while Chun li conjures up multiple waves of bicycle riders who proceed to run the opponent into the ground (see background cycle riders in original SF II) Traditional joystick accessed special moves also vary in intensity depending on which power level the character has attained due to gem collecting. For example, Ibuki the ninja girl throws a small knife (level 1) or a large shurikun death star (level 2) or as a level three power she throws high-speed whirling cow. Each fight location background is adorned with characters from the SF series in some humorous pose or action. Other characters from other fight¬ ing games also make brief appearances. Monkey and Pigsy (from the cult mythological Japanese TV series Monkey) can be seen flying around on clouds and if you knock them off, they will pro¬ vide you with assorted bonuses such as time bombs or laser beams that will turn your oppo¬ nent to stone. Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix is a welcome addi¬ tion to the fighting game genre and with any luck will provide some of the more surly game players with a laugh. x x x x 1 / 2 Final Furlong nmm Giddy up horsy, faster faster. Yee haa, yee haa. Don’t make me whip you. Good horse. Not getting tired are you? lust think about the carrots waiting for you at the end of the race. No glue factory for you my fine filly. Final Furlong (furlong = eighth of a mile) is a novelty horse racing sim that is guaranteed to make you shed several pounds as you physically propel a horse like interface in a cyclic motion to power you down a three dimensional multi player racecourse. After choosing one of three racetracks, which vary in length, it’s time to choose your horsy. Each horse (eight to choose from) has its own area of specialization such as front runner, mid pacer or strong finisher. Bang! You leave the gates. For each race your horse only has so much energy (as represented by 5 carrot icons in the bottom right of the screen) If you push your horse too hard too soon, a picture of a burnt out horse will appear warn¬ ing you to ease off the throttle. The trick to the race is to stay in third or forth position and then in the final furlong, with the remaining carrot power, give that horse some extra encourage¬ ment with your horse whip (button located on horses head). Watching people make the ’final furlong 'is one of the funnier things you'll see in the arcade this year and is definitely not for the unfit or the self-conscious. REMEMBER - RHYTHM IS THE KEY. X X X (x) An extra x for the interface Roads Edge snh In the market for a new 30k ♦ 4WD? Always had a desire to take that 4WD off the showroom floor and give it a very extensive test drive over jumps, through mud and a few 4 wheel brake lockups into a few i2okph corners. Ever wanted to see the colour scheme on your vehicle on a 3 dimensional scaled model prior to purchase? Well for all you Tonka Truck 4WD loving people out there all this and more is available on SNKs latest 3D 4wd racing sim. Your high-speed adventure in your Toyota Hilux, Mitsubishi Pajero, Range Rover or Field Fox ute will take you through 3 different courses locat¬ ed in America, Asia and Europe. Each track starts off in a city environment and quickly weaves its way through tunnels over jumps up a few hill climbs and into an off road country track. All this action takes place on the one stretch of track, which is repeated by a long turning circle. As this means that there is at some stage a fork in the road, other vehicles may choose an alternate direction to your own, therefore forcing you to travel into oncoming traffic. Mastering the cornering will take a little getting used to. Approach the corner at full speed, hit the apex, flick the wheel and then slam the brakes to bring the back of the vehicle around. Finally, dump the accelerator and you will find the vehicle doing a neat slide around the corner. Another feature of the game is the inclusion of reactive steering which shivers and shakes accord¬ ingly to the road surface below your vehicle. Although no Sega Rally, Roads Edge is bound to keep 4WD buffs entertained for a few games. XXX > > Ui £ THC tiyPCR CREW CHOOSE TO GAME AT TIMEZONE. WHO HAVE THE LATEST AND GREATEST SELECTION OF ARCADE GAMES IN THE COUNTRy. A BIG THANKS TO TIMEZONE! test driver i Download the demo today at www.accolade.com Sega*Ozisoft W PTY LIMITED A C.INI 056 032 476 TESTOfWM \ rrni \ nr r\c.L.utnuL: "Test Drive 4 is the clear choice for vf^/ BEST RACING GAME OF 1997!" Official E3 Best Of Show Awards -Gamepen PC CD-ROM Available NOW For Sony PlayStation and PC CD-ROM! Test Drive and Test Drive <♦ are trademarks of Accolade Inc. 1997 Accolade. Inc. All rights reserved developed by Pitbull Syndicate. All other trademarks are of their respective companies. 3Dfx is a trademark of 3Df* Inc. Power VR is a trademark of NEC Inc. Rendition is a trademark of Rendition Inc. Dodge Viper Dodge Challenger Dodge Charger. Plymouth Cuda and the Plymouth GTX are registered trademarks of Chrysler Corporation U.S.A. and are used under license. Chrysler Corporation 1997. Nissan" and the ' 300ZX are registered trademarks of Nissan. Reproduced by permission. The word Jaguar the leaping cat device and the characters XJ220 are the trademarks of Jaguar Cars Ltd. England and are used under license. Chevrolet Chevelle Camaro and Body Designs are trademarks of Chevrolet Motor Division General Motors Corporation used under license to Accolade Inc. Pontiac GTO and Body Design are a trademark of Pontiac Motor Divisions General Motors Corporation used under license to Accolade Inc. Shelby Cobra' and associated logos and symbols are used under license. TVR is a trademark of TVR Engineering Limited. The TVR Cerbera and 12/8 are under license. The animated Series What a dream run Capcom have had with Streetfighter 2. The Streetfighter series is without a doubt the most successful game concept ever, responsible today for the huge explosion of "Beat ’em up" fighting games. There have been many clones, but the original has weathered the test of time. The best thing about the Fatal Fury animes were that they were treated as Animes. Sure it was a licensed concept, but it was absorbed into the medium with a passion. The more I watched Fatal Fury, the more I wanted to watch. Imagine my absolute joy to discover that FF the Movie was 100% beat-em up entertainment. SF2 The animated series follows this mould. Since the basic premise of Streetfighter is that there are all these awesome fighters around the globe beating the crap out of each other, it doesn’t leave much room for an engaging story. However, what the series does, is concentrate on History. SF2 the animated series starts with both Ken and Ryu at the age of seventeen. There's RYU, training on an island off the coast of Japan, eating "Meatloaf". He’s busy training against a tree, when he receives a letter from his old sparing partner Ken. Ryu, attracted by the possibilities of new challenges, sets off to meet his friend. Arriving in San Francisco, Ken enters a world alien to his own. So there’s Ken, waiting at the airport, itch¬ ing for another match with Ryu and eager to show his pal his world. They’re a cocky pair of fighters, beating up rednecks at bars...until they meet Someone bigger and better, someone from the air force. Being soundly beaten, both Ken and Ryu discover an underground world of powerful warriors...the Streetfighters. They are called to adventure, since to develop their skill, they travel the world looking to bat¬ tle any streetfighter they are fortunate to meet. Fan? Then get ready to cream SF2 the series hardly resemble the old and clunky animated movie version; namely that the series is writ¬ ten with a sound and plausible narrative, with better ideas, better animation and better acting! This is the shit people, and the sooner you get a copy into your video at home, the better off you’ll be RATED MIS*. DISTRIBUTED BY SIREN Unit ran Defender of the uniuerse Cetting this Anime was a trip back in time. I used to race home every afternoon to watch this show. Man. back then, Voltron was the bees knees. I even saw a Voltron toy in the store once...this US/Japan co-production made a minor splash, and now it’s being released as a series here today!!! So what is Voltron? Voltron was the greatest robot who ever lived...the defender of our universe. However, tricked by an evil witch who disguised herself as an angel. Voltron was split into five parts. These five parts landed on a distant planet, where legend states that for those who discover the secret of Voltron, will give him life again. Crash cut to today, where the evil serpent empire is poised to take over the universe. Will none stop these das¬ tardly fiends? Wait...here come the Space Patrol...five wholesome young men...could they discover the secret of Voltron, and thus lead to the destruction of the serpent empire? Ho hum.... It’s always a bit of a disappointment looking back at past anime favourites. Memory does strange things, because I remember Voltron as richer, vaster and bigger in scope than it actually is. As a kid. I was glued to the TV set, mouth open and line of drool hitting the floor. Now? Well.... This is old kiddie’s fare people. It's funky in a retro kinda way, and if you’re an old fan, then this is an opportunity to relive (or destroy) those old memories. It’s not Chost in the Shell, but hey, your little brother or sister might dig it. 4-/1D RATED PG. DISTRIBUTED DV SIREN ENTERTAINMENT 1 ALL ENTRIES CLOSE JANUARY 7TH 1998 Urgh. Really, that’s a mental picture I don’t want to conjure up. Microprose really want you to get some though, so don’t blame us... in fact, they dropped around for quick cocktail or two the other day, and in the Hyper swimming pool a whilst lying on the inflatable banana, we came up with the idea for this Worms 2 competition. We’ll give you a Worms 2 pack containing a T-Shirt, Mouse Mat and copy of Worms 2 for PC, and five of you will have to successfully answer this question... Name another famous computer game Worm It’s not that hard, really! Put your answer on the back of an envelope and send it to: I’ve Cot An Itchy Bum, HYPER, 78 Renwick St, Redfern 2016. oc CL >• 00 CM 0 > ■ % 1 1 | B ' 9 J * tWk ¥ a H ( jyp&lJ ~ f ft-* 1 - mjr I ^ Wfi km If any of you Saturn owners are partial to smacking people over the head with large bits of wood, then you may been keen to get some practice in with Last Bronx. It’s a wonderful display of outright gratuitous violence from Sega, and Sega Ozisoft said we could giveaway three copies to some lucky Hyper folk. To grab one of these games for your Saturn Summer gaming sessions, answer us this... It you went tor a walk in the Bronx, would you A) Not get out alive; B) Get sore fleet; C) Beat up on a street gang with a piece 0 fl plywood; or D) Get lost? I Scribe your answer on the back of an envelope and send it to: Have At You, HYPER, 78 Renwick St, Redfern 2016. Feeling lucky? Play Courier Crisis". Then come back here Still feeling lucky? You should be. You just survived a 3D urban cycling, merciless gauntlet of hurt. You must be lucky. GT ARROWHEAD FS 7000 series aluminium GT triple triangle frame design with ^ front suspension forks. 21 speed Shimano shifting \ system keeps you ahead 1 of the pack. DYNO COMPE The most popular freestyle bike Radical tricks and big air on — ramps - this mean machine is built to take it all. Just fill in the details and answer the question on the coupon below. Name:.Phone:. Address:. .Postcode:. In fifty words or less, tell us about your ultimate fantasy environment/destination if you were to design the sequel to Courier Crisis:. OOWOmONS Of ENTRY Intomabon on how to ttta lonns part d these conMorc d mbry. H» a » gime d *4. tra ctwnce day* no part In delwminwg 9* winners Winners be fudged on ort*ndity and creabwty Wne* dost tost mad ?1« January 1998 Winners ml be fudged 22nd January. 1998 at GT Interact** Software Australia PtyUd, 39-4? Albany Sired. Craws Mest NSW 2065. TUe ennners will be notified in wnbng and in •» PiAic Noices Secbon ot The Australian Newspaper 2*tft January 1 998 Promote rs GT Interact** SofUrire Australia. 39-47 Albany Street. Crows Nest NSW 2065 Total vitae ot pnrw SI .900 00 Pntes are not transient* or eicfiangeabte and amot be taken as cash Tlw fudges decoron « *nal and no correspondence will be entered into Entry ts resblcled to Austrahan resideres onty LON IRQ. AWtoTOmr-tr Now stretch your luck to the breaking point. Find out how lucky a couple of punks can be. I OT* THE HILL DEVOURING ° 1 GT ARROWHEAD FS.™ . THE MOST RADICAL TYPl Tift OF MOUNTAIN BIKES. EXCLUSIVELY FEATURING MACHINE THE ONLY PlayStation Proudly Distributed By GT Interactive Software Australia Pty Ltd www.gtinteractive.com PlayStation Cowes Costs-©1997 New level Software The New Level logo ts a trademark of New Level Software Used under license from BMG Interactive International, a unit ot BMG Entertainment The Wtogosa trademark of BMG Music. AllSfSrSjrn T |ID Interactive Software Corp ts not affiliated with GT Bikes GT rs a trademark and tl»e GT Logo «s a regtsteied trademark of GT Interactive Software Corp. PlayStation and the PlayStation Logo are trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment. Inc. Sega and Sega Saturn are trademarks o! SEGA ENTt R ROESED. L D 30 »HYPER PREVIEWS I CJ I 1 » Voshi's Stow ^ Nintendo 64 RURIIRBU. 1ST RUHRITS _ [rmohV: pirtforritr PIRVIRS: 1 nanism: mnunna Yoshi’s Island was a minor hit on the SNES, a great game which didn’t get the attention it truly deserved. Nintendo have decided to stick to the 2D platforming concept’ for this "sequel”, Yoshi’s Story on the new beefy N64. Graphically the game is looking like no other platforming game we’ve ever seen, with gor¬ geous renders and other spunky eye candy effects tit¬ tering the screen. As far as the gameplay is concerned, the tried and true adventure-soaked platforming that was present in Yoshi’s Island is back in spades, so look forward to tonnes of secrets, hidden levels and clever puzzles. Without seeing the game in motion, it’s hard to fully appreciate the realism of the colourful graph¬ ics, and in fact the game isn’t strictly 2D, with some 3D effects revealing themselves throughout the game. Yoshi’s Story will be packed with all those Nintendo characters you’ve grown to love as well as providing us with some familiar, fun action. When we all first envi¬ sioned the sort of games we’d be playing on Nintendo 64, it included big, lush, beautiful, rrv ly long platforming games which is what Yo§J is shaping up to be. Sock it to me Mr. Miy< F-Eero H Nintendo 64 RURIIRBU: 1ST HURRTTR *SB ? [RUCOBV: RRTIRO CJ 1 PIRVfRS: TBR 1 PUBUSHIB: RIR TEROO a Continuing their tradition of bringing their old classics into the world of 64-bits, Nintendo have been working on F-Zero X, the sequel to F- Zero which appeared on the SNES. F-Zero was one of the first SNES games to use Mode 7, and it’s fast futuristic racing inspired many, possibly even Psygnosis’ Wipeout. One squizz at these screen shots is enough to tell you that F-Zero X is now probably borrowing from Wipeout, so the favour is returned. Yes, Shigeru Miyamoto (not him again!) has been fiddling about with this one, so you can be assured that this won’t just be an out and out racer. The tracks are looking very outlandish, with big long loops and sweeping curves and the vehicles will range from classic F- Zero designs to new hovercraft thingies. Nintendo promise that the game will power at 60 fps and that’s with multiple cars on screen at once, so yippee! This could mean that F-Zero X will be the fastest racer yet seen on the N64. The only other N64 racing game to possibly compete with this is Extreme G, so we’ll keep our finger on the pulse. ef ■i AS SAFE TO (a© BACK JUST WHEN YOU THOUGL v ON your! PSYGNOSIS PlayStation J6> * and PlayStation" trademarks ol Sony Computer Entertainment Inc : 1997 Psygnosis Limned. ALL RIGKTS RESERVED Overboard 1 . Psygnosis and the Psygnosis logo are trade marks or registered trade marks C 1990-7 Psygnos«s Ltd. 32 »HYPER PREVIEWS s> HIM mythologies: Sub Bero jj. Nintendo 64 1 ^ RURHRBU: 1ST CLUHR UR ‘98 i [IIUCOHV . RCUOn/ROUlRTURE i pluwS: 1 I PUBitsm mwujRv The Mortal Kombat series kicks on. MK Mythologies is actually a sort of prequel to the MK fighting games that we know so well, letting the gamer discover more about the origins of the MK characters and how they met. You play Sub Zero, and the gameplay looks like more of a platforming beat ’em up than a fighting game. Your aim is to explore eight huge worlds and defeat various enemies who wander into your path - much like classic scrolling fist-fests like Double Dragon. Unfortunately, this is no longer really the sort of stuff which excites and honestly, it’s a genre which is thankfully long dead - but hell, we'll see if MK Mythologies can pull one out of the bag. Midway have stuck with the digitised sprites for now, so the game has that immedi¬ ately identifiable MK look, though the backgrounds will be much more impressive. On some levels, the camera will zoom in and out of the action, depending on what you’re attempting to do. Most of the fight¬ ing moves from the MK games should be included, so most of you will be able to just pick up and play. A MK action/adventure game - who would ever have thought? e f Jet moto 3 PlayStation HUHIIHBU: JRRURRV tnuconV: Rncino pi WHS: 1-8 puBiism sonv let Moto was a nice surprise on the PlayStation, coming hot on the heels of Wave Race on the Nintendo 64, it proved to be a pretty stable piece of water-based racing action. Of course, there was room for improvement, with some gamers being disappointed with let Moto’s murky graphics. Well, Sony got the whips out and beat their programmers into coming up with a better sequel... and in January we will know for sure if they did a good job. Jet Moto 2 is looking pretty tasty at this stage, with 10 new tracks to fling your hoverbike around, and some cleaner visuals. There are more jumps, and the environments have been made a tad more exciting, including overpasses, tunnels and a bunch of new hazards to avoid. What Sony haven’t messed around with too much, is the excellent gameplay of the original, though the han¬ dling of the bikes has been given a tweak or two. It’s not looking like a brand new game to jump up and down about, but Jet Moto 2 is certainly look¬ ing like a very worthy sequel, and probably a must-have for those of you who absolutely loved the original. ef «»#*/ Proudly Distributed By GT Interactive Software Australia Pty Ltd www.gl i n ter active .com 34 »HYPER PREVIEWS Point BlanH PlayStation HUHLLHBLE. JRRURRV (RUCORV: 5H00TER/RP0 pmvws: i pubiish(R: n ruled Bizarre. Point Blank is probably shaping up to be the first ever RPG-style shooting game! Though primarily a complete conversion of the arcade machine, there will be an adventure mode where you guide your characters around a map and enter random battles wielding your Namco Guncon. Sounds pretty cool, eh? Well, it’s only really an alternate "mode” to the standard game, but still it’s a very interesting addition. If you played Point Blank at the arcades, you'll be aware that this is more of a "gallery” shooting game, rather than an action/story shooter like Time Crisis. Essentially, you’re shooting at targets which pop up around the screen, like cardboard cutout gangsters, balloons, ducks, targets and quirky japanese-style characters. Over 50 levels have been promised, and they will range from basic target practice, to the solving of puzzles with the use of your itchy trig¬ ger finger. The aim here is to perfect your accuracy and reflexes, rather than you taking on the role of some sort of macho cop or Zombie hunter. It may sound too cute for your liking, but frantic shooters like Point Blank can become VERY addictive! Not only will it be nice to have another shooting game to use your Guncon with, but the addition of the strange RPG mode is a major plus, and we’re pretty keen to see how it pans out. ef * m j* B • r s> Space Station _ Silicon Ualleii & " " Nintendo 64 I HUHIIHBIE : 1ST nUHRUS SB 0 (HUCBRV: RDUTRTURE/PLRIFORmfR 3 PIHVEBS: 1 1 PUBLISHER: BR1C IR TER RE TIUE The Solar System is in danger! Evil beings have cap¬ tured a space ship packed full of fancy technology which is needed by the good guys to build special self-repli- cating evolving robots. Who gives a shit? Well, your character EVO does, and you’ll have to take the reigns and lead him to victory in this new N64 platformer com¬ ing our way. To successfully navigate your way through the 3D levels, you’ll have to go head to head with a vari¬ ety of Nanobots which have evolved into an array of mean animals. Animals with attitude. From Llamas with chainsaws to Foxes with rocket launchers, these bad ani¬ mal robots will try and stop you completing your 50 level quest. Graphically, the game is looking quite spesh, but we weren’t able to actually play through some levels, so all we can do for now is ogle at the pics and hope that Space Station Silicon Valley comes through with some kick-arse gameplay. DMA, the developers behind the game, are the folks behind Grand Theft Auto and the upcoming Tanktics - so let’s hope their first Nintendo 64 game is a doozy. ef “Superbly playable... more fun than V Rally”- PlayStation Pro B.HOWie rSAUAN g* FIVE TYPES OF DRIVING TO EXPERIENCE INDY, SPORTS, DAKAR, ROAD RALLY & BUGGIES. 36 tracks with 42 cars ^ 4 player split screen option via link cable Buy Total Drivin & you could Win a trip to either the German. French. British. Monaco Or Australian Grand Prix’s. plus $30,000 worth of instant prizes including T-shirts. Intencity passes. Movie Passes. Civic Video game vouchers, cashbacks & Kodak Disposable Cameras PtonJk JutnfmtrJ by & ROADSHOW / INTERACTIVE Limited. All Rights Reserved. The ML" logo and “PlayStation" are trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. www.interactive.vttlage.com.au © Ocean Software Limited 1997. Developed by Eutechnyx 1 36 »HYPER Red Rsphalt PlayStation HumiHBii: m (hucohv : mmc/iouiBHi PIRWS: l-B PUBlISHfB: mUBPlHV Remember Rock And Roll Racing on the SNES? Well the sequel has transformed into Red Asphalt on the PlayStation and it’s looking like a hit. The developers stress that whilst Red Asphalt looks visually impressive, the most important thing was retaining the fun gameplay that made the first Rock And Roll Racing so popular. Sure, this is a completely new polygonal engine with bucket¬ loads of sexy effects, but the emphasis here is on gameplay. You know the old Interplay tag-line - "By Gamers for Gamers”, well it may be that Red Asphalt is a prime example of this statement. So what’s in it? Cars and guns!! Choose from 6 differ¬ ent vehicles and take to the futuristic streets of 5 different worlds to battle it out to the death on 25 circuits. Besides each car being upgradable in armour, weapons, tires and horsepower, there are six different drivers to play with. Each driver receives experience points which can be used to improve your driving skills, tactical mind or aggression. OK, so this doesn’t sound terribly orig¬ inal, but word is that Red Asphalt doesn’t play like any other Racing/Combat game on the market. Two friends can play together using the PlayStation’s link cable mode, and you can choose between all-out deathmatch or a co-operative mode which is a nice change. The game also features 20 minutes of fully rendered FMV, because egads there is a plot! Draenek, an evil galactic overlord (don’t you just hate those guys?), is threatening to take over the world, so somehow this big bad dude and six other heroes end up racing each other to sort things out... How democratic! Except of course for the planet-sodomising weapons mounted on the front of each car. All the environments seem to be quite impressive, from underwater worlds to barren landscapes, and it’s obvious that plenty of long nights and bleary mornings have gone into produc¬ ing a racing/combat game to stand tall amongst the current offerings like Twisted Metal. Fans of the original Rock And Roll Racing needn’t get too excit¬ ed though, because though Red Asphalt started out as Rock And Roll Racing 2, it really is dramatically different to the original. Frankly this is a good thing, because Red Asphalt is looking very cool indeed, e f Myth: The Fallen Lords is the first fully 3D realtime strategy game, where epic battle rages across a richly detailed fantasy world. A multimetric game, Myth: The Fallen Lords gives gamers complete freedom to view their forces and the battlefield, orbiting around their heads or zooming in for a close-up of a melee. Mastery of formations and disciplined movement of hundreds of units is critical to survival, where large scale maneuvers end in the fury of hand to hand combat. It features cross-platform networking, while Bungie's server, bungie.net, makes playing over the Internet as easy as over the office LAN. Myth: The Fallen Lords includes maps designed specifically for network play, and alternate Distributed Exclusively by networking scenarios like Assassin and King of the Hill. Interactive Pty. Ltd Phone: (02) 9674 7399 Fax: (02) 9674 7398 ANTICIPATED MAI 5+ R AT I N G BUNGiE FOR MAC & PC CD-ROM For information on playable demos, check out our website: www.impact.com.au s> The Gatherer ■ PC RumtHBii: mnnrH [HUODBV: 1ST PTRSOn PI WHS: 1-mUL II PUBUSm 7TH l TUTl The Devil finds work for idle hands to do. That’s what they say... and in the Gatherer from the 7th Level team, it’s absolutely true. You see, you’re working for the dude, and he don’t take no shit. The year is 2203 AD, and you are a soul burning for all eternity in Hell. Cheery, eh? For your freedom, you must find a number of rogue demons who have scattered themselves throughout time. Mr.Pitchfork wants you to personally hunt them down and this is where the adventure begins. From ancient Egypt to Medieval times, this is a bit of an action/adventure hybrid which allows the gamer to play in either first person or third person modes. The task may be rather difficult, but thankfully you’ll have the use of over 40 weapons and a variety of innocent objects to fiddle with. 70 3D characters populate the game ready to tear your throat out, and there’s a nifty replay feature so you can watch your grizzly death over and over again. It’ll be interesting to see what the censors think of this one, it being all dark and evil like, however Satanic imagery certainly didn’t hinder Doom, Doom2 and Quake. The multiplayer side of things is a bit of an unknown quantity at the moment, but the fact that each world is set in a different time means that the technology could be different each time you join a game, so immediately that's a new challenge. We’ll keep an eye on this one. e f Chameleon Twist Nintendo 64 rururbU: tbr Qj 6 [RUOBHV: PlRTFORfnrn 1 PIRVIHS: 1-* 1 PUBUSRIR: sun SOFT 1 Some strange games are on the way. From the minds of some freaked-out Japanese program¬ mers comes Chameleon Twist, a 3D platformer with a most unusual hero. In the neverending search for new mascots, Nintendo may just have stumbled onto one by mistake in the form of this Chameleon man. His primary weapon is his deadly tongue! It can grab and squeeze, be used to swing around on, be used for pole vaulting or just as a simple blunt weapon. Oh, the things I could do with a tongue as versatile as that! Yes... well anyway, it certainly makes for some interesting gaming. Though the explorable world is no great step away from Super Mario 64. the original character approach may just be enough to elevate Chameleon Twist head and shoulders above it’s challengers. As usual, the game is looking exceedingly cute at this stage, so like Mario, it’s going to have to have some killer ideas to win over an Australian audience. ef Proudly Distributed By GT Interactive Software Australia Pty Ltd wwwgtinteractive.com INTERACTIVE www bmgmteractive.com PlayStation iuoLU-o-meter [PREVIEWS Hagan a Winter Olympics N64/PSX/PC TuniLRBK: JRRORRVTER 38 [RTfCORV: SPORTS pinms: l-t pubiisheh: Piano mi Konami have ventured into this genre before with International Track 6 Field, which was loved and hated by gamers everywhere. This time around with Nagano Winter Olympics '98, the gameplay and visuals are looking far superior to any other multi¬ event sport title on the market. Featured events are luge, snowboarding, bobsled, ski- iing, ski-jumping, speed skating and curling (which may sound like something you'd have done in a hairdressing salon, but is actually a game similar to bowls played on ice), with there being 12 events in all. The game will be slightly different on each spe¬ cific platform due to the hardware, like the Nintendo 64 version for instance will fea¬ ture more Snowboarding and the PlayStation will have more ice-skating, and the PC will probably have everything and 3DFX support too. There will be an Olympic mode and a championship mode, with each player being ranked on their performances and in-game commentary. All the athletes will be motion captured, texture mapped blah blah blah and you can be guaranteed it’ll look spunky as hell and the N64 version will have some surprisingly good MIDI sound. When you factor in the simultaneous four- player mode, then Nagano Winter Olympics could be a surprise hit. e f a> Hu to Oestruct ^ PlayStation hururbu. , JonuoRV [RUCOHV: or non PIRVIRS. 1 PUBIISHIR: TIE TIRO on ORES Did you think Twisted Metal lacked in variety? Did you feel that Felony 11-79 was over too soon? Well, stop sniveling, because EA are bringing Auto Destruct to the PlayStation and it looks like com¬ bining the best elements of both games to give you more bang for your buck. You play the part of a retired racing champion whose beloved wife and child are cruelly murdered by an evil cult called the Disciples Of Lazarus. Hell bent on revenge, you sign up with a mysterious "agency" oc lii Cl O and take to the streets in a deadly set of wheels. The game requires you to race around the streets of some of the world’s most famous cities, inflicting extreme vengeance on any cult follow¬ ers you can find. The game is mission based though, so you’ll have to take orders and com¬ plete a variety of tasks from escorting vehicles to seek and destroy type affairs, whilst keeping an eye out for cult members. All the ingredients are here for some rockin’ action, with big beefy weapons and some rad cars, so EA have a win¬ ning combination here. ef PREVIEWS Steep Slope Sliders Saturn HURIimi: FEBRURHV (nUOOHV: SPORT PimRS: 1 PUBlISHfH: JUT The Saturn is soon to receive it’s very own "cool board¬ ers" style snowboarding game. Currently tagged Steep Slope Sliders, things look quite similar to the Sony shred test. One noted difference is that Steep Slope Sliders seems to have a bit more of a "go anywhere" feel which is whatcha whatcha whatcha want whatcha want. Excuse that sudden Beastie Boys outbreak. As you tear down the hill, you can choose to maybe take a shortcut over the rooftop of the lodge or whatever. The polygon characters look a bit dorky and flat, but hey we've said a thousand times that graph¬ ics do not maketh the game, so SSS could in fact be a killer piece of fast furious fun. Performing tricks is again the focus of the game, so how this is to be achieved we're not quite so sure, but it makes sense that it'll be similar to Cool Boarders in this respect also. Sega currently have Top Skater at the arcades, and possibly this snow boarding game will take a few ideas from that. We’re just happy to see a cool new Saturn game on the horizon! ef nut > 25»26 CK Pfli 306/3 In Age of Empires, your challenge is to develop one of 12 ancient civilisations from tribal beginnings to the machinations of world domination in 10,000 years of real-time evolution. But only a brazen attitude and well crafted strategy will get you there. With rich 3-D graphics, advanced multi-player capabilities and detailed scenario editor - Age of Empires is the most involving strategy game ever created. To locate your nearest stores call 1900 1700 59 and quote Microsoft Where do you want to go today?* www.microsoft.com/games LBC&M MSG 0009/B Higher rate from mobiles and payphones. 42 »HYPER A The Hyper Quake Champion awards, with your host Armand (Dan). Well, this is far and away been the most entertaining comp for us at Hyper ever. It's been the first time you've been able to record a demo of the game and send it in on a fioppy disc, and it has been a wonderful success. We saw TONS of entries, with most of them all being for the fastest time on level €iM6. This turned out to be my biggest "Doh!” of the year. Unlike most of our entrants I failed to realize you could simply jump across the lava pit in front of the gold key, either by a rocket jump (yes, the bottom of the lava pool was that close), or, as our fastest entrants discovered, by a grenade blast from that ogre waiting underneath you. Essentially the only thing that put Luke ahead of the competition in the end was taking near perfect lines, as we saw a bunch of 12 second entries. There actually was another u second demo from Brian Cowan, but Luke mailed his entry off a week soon¬ er (hard luck Brian). If you get the demo off the Hyper@ctive web site, and you were one of the folks who got around 12 sec¬ onds, you’ll be kicking yourself for not having run the exact edge of each of the door frames. NAME: TIME: Running straight to the lava pit that guards the gold key might not have seemed like a good idea .. f Luke turns his back to the pit as he lands and is immediately struck by a grenade... Luke has jumped at the same time and as a result ends up flying across the pit and onto the key. Now he starts forward again and jumps across the lava pit, which is only possible this direction. As Luke lands, he starts heading towards the door on the right, strafing away from the ogre. The door opens to reveal an ogre. Since Luke, puts in a shot, it puts the ogre on his arse. This proves to be invaluable, as it makes his path to the next room clear, saving precious time. Luke simply heads in a straight line to the switch on the floor... Running in the dark, Luke passes an unwary shambler and falls into the exit. All this in nsec! Proudly Distributed By BT Interactive Software Australia Ply ltd www.gtinteraclive.com their mpertire rrmpunn’t. >U97 Count I»u L V 1 If w *11 In HH 44 »HYPER E2M4 - The Ebon font This level had the least amount of entries, and it’s easy to understand why, as it is far and away the longest of the three demos to do, and the easiest to die in, making recording a successful demo a much more difficult task. Even the best demos for this level saw the player near death at some stage. The key to completing this level in a good time had to do with firstly, being able to do clean rocket jumps that caused the least amount of damage to yourself, and sec¬ ondly, to choose the best time to apply that skill. THE WINNER Ryan’s entry was extremely gutsy near the end, where he came extremely close to dying whilst getting past the sham- NHMF• P r ' I p' bier on the bridge, near the end of the level. To shave further time off this demo would require maybe an extra rocket fVJVmff: Jtyc. j um p somew h ere> simply to move along a corridor faster, or perhaps to get across the slime pool... in any event, to beat TIME: 1.04 Minutes \ Ryan’s time would require some true freakiness! UlSpi After dropping down the first chute, He swims in and takes the passage to Firing a single shot into the ogre at He sprints into the hall ahead. Ryan starts swimming to the keep. the left, preparing to get past the ogre close range distracts it from firing. Note the holes up above. ■ ■ illri sflp \\|P irmsusl I, i 5 Ryan grabs the rocket and the His first rocket jump aims for the He turns right into a new corridor armour, which he’ll be needing... hole on the right we saw before. which ends in a lift overlooking slime. Ryan fires two rockets off as he jumps into the slime. ■ I* sr • . /a * A k ■' . 1 Ryan swims around the other side Crabbing the rockets from the ogre, The jump takes him over a fiend where he can climb to the dead ogre, and some health, he rocket jumps. above, and to health and the key. Ryan runs past the fiend, collects more armour, and heads back. B£» Si t ♦ § " * A . •'» " » 1 v A IS9K§9LwlHE9Br 1 w After jumping across the slime, he Ryan is confronted with a long But he saves time by rocket jump- runs back past the hole and to a door, ramp up to the top of the room... ing up to the right. Landing, turns to head up the ramp, past a shambler. WmHI P-V'. V He ignores the shambler, runs back- which opens the wall behind him, Once at the bottom, he grabs health wards, firing at a switch... revealing an ogre, and a lift down, and does a backwards R-jump to. Put him out of reach of the fiend, so he hits the switches and finishes. 1 Ht MW PROUDLY AUSTRALIAN OWNED & OPERATED WE KNOW OUR GAMES OPEN 7 DAYS ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED TUNZ A GAMES: BORONIA VIC Shop 18 Dorset Square Ph: 03-9761 0722 Fax: 03-9761 0935 MOUNT GAMBIER SA 127B Commercial Rd West Ph: 08-8725 4499 Fax: 08-8724 7222 ALBURY NSW 439 Macauley Rd Ph: 060-415 521 Fax: 060-415 523 PORTLAND VIC Shop 3, 53 Percy St Ph/Fax: 03-5-521 8077 WAGGA WAGGA Shop 19, Sturt Mall Ph: 069-31 7417 Fax: 069-31 7319 SHEPPARTON VIC 181 Corio St Ph/Fax: 058-313 834 GAME MANIA: RINGWOOD VIC G42A Eastland Shopping Cntr Ph: 03-9879 7793 Fax: 03-9876 0021 BRIGHTON SA 500 Brighton Rd Ph: 08-8377 2766 Fax: 08-8377 2155 KILKENNY SA Arndale Shopping Cntr Ph: 08-8345 4848 Fax: 08-8345 3493 ELIZABETH SA Elizabeth City Centre Ph: 08-8287 1699 Fax: 08-8287 3897 GAME GURU: MODBURY SA Shop 63, Westfield Tea Tree Plaza Ph: 08-8396 5444 Fax: 08-8396 5594 NOARLUNGA SA Shop 31, Colonnades Shopping Centre Ph: 08-8384 5524 Fax: 08-8384 5825 This level only got a few more entries than E2M4, and that didn't surprise us much either, as to get a really good time requires the ability to perform grenade jumps, which most people would never even think to try. What impressed me is that a couple of entrants used grenade jumps in a different place to where I did, taking a more immediately painful, yet faster all round path (gutsy stuff). NAME: TIME: Tom showed that he’s researched grenade jumps to a fine art, as he actually uses his opponent’s body to trigger the blast as he jumps, which looks pretty spectacular... and I’d kill to see it used for a practical purpose in a deathmatch. Other than that, Tom just made sure he didn’t stop for anything, and his time would be extremely difficult to beat. *2 Tom heads straight down into the This room with an ogre, whom he Tom gets the grenade launcher, There’s another zombie there, but water on his right, the swims to... promptly ignores, and heads on. and takes out a zombie in his path. Tom just runs past into... A a large sloped room with Tom runs to a zombie near a ledge He jumps at the same time, giving onto this ledge, whilst taking the several zombies. of to the left, and pops a grenade. him the height he needs to get up... zombie out... bonus! & The ledge leads to some health He rounds the corner, and sneaks He runs along the bridge, shooting Tom enters a chamber with a rotat- which he now needs after the blast, past a stupid ogre. an equally stupid death knight. ing nailgun trap, hitting switches. t He moves around the chamber, whilst finishing the sequence and Tom sticks to one wall, then strafes Nearing the exit, Tom heads for a avoiding nails and the guard... opening the gate to the next area. as a fiend jumps at him, and runs on. switch to unlock all the doors. s The doors lower, and Tom gets ready He then moves to the other side of This unlocks the gate at the top of Which reveal the exit... and help Tom to blast the zombie and hit a switch. the room and repeats the process. the stairs... win his ID Anthology... Woohoo! Command 3 TriE^tEirs ar EiUtife Jly mix or spacs combat, planetary assault and oovert basa infiltration \ 3 Epic Cri zjptsrs j sjparaia storylines iniarty/ine within •Jo scenarios to tell iiie epic saga yia universe on trie brink of ddaSuctmu ouuerful forces in th Battle alone or challenge up to 8 players with one-click, free access Jgplpal®?! Edijtoc. Create ftpHmpaigns trom custom __i/ietr5ry conditions^jgflfflffl^gg^ and much, mucruTwSr From.the Creators of fl|M995 and 1996 Games of the Year ■ * |, L * /SH Jn 48 »HYPER REVIEWS PLAYSTATION Test Drive Known for being too stingy to buy anything, willing to test drive Accolade’s latest racing game. was only The Test Drive series must be in the running for the "most videogame sequels” award, with plenty of versions seen on other con¬ soles, but none of them really managing to capture the feel of hooning cars around at ridiculously high speeds. Most of the time the so called high speed cars drove like Volvos towing a 50 tonne brick, and the graphics in these earlier versions didn’t make up for the half-arsed gameplay. Well this time Accolade seem to have done a really good job of Test Drive. The cars moves at high speeds, they handle much better than they ever have before, and the graphic engine is one of the best seen on the Playstation, and hey those high speed bloody bril¬ liant smashes don’t hurt either. Cars available in this racer include the Jaguar XJ220, the Nissan 300ZX, the Cheverolet Corvette, the Plymouth Cuda and the Dodge Viper, as well as a few other lesser known speedsters. Each car has slightly different handling, and great styled looks that really scream out "SPEED”. The cars are modelled very well graphically and look very much like the real thing as they hurtle around the courses. Finer details like wheels that can be seen spinning and turning, brilliant texture mapping on all surfaces of the car (even underneath which is quite visible when the cars roll over and over and over), and light sourcing effects really make the cars look like some of the most impressive ever seen in a Playstation racer. On top of this they leave really thick black lines all over the road whenever the cars spin their wheels (which is quite often), and the temptation to fang your car all over the road is often too hard to resist. Pot Luck? Five courses are available to race in the various championship modes in the game, and they range from the bustling streets of San Franciso to the long sweeping country roads of Switzerland. Some of the courses like San Francisco and Washington DC are crowded with traffic travelling in either the same or opposite directions, and even have side streets that allow traffic to flow across your vehi¬ cles path. This, of course, results in some very nasty high speed collisions, which are often the highlight of the game. One such section in San Francisco has you driving down the a hill riddled with crescents and huge drop-offs in the road, where you can get airborne for over 300 meters before landing and colliding with some punk-ass driver trying to cross a intersection in the road. Others will see you driving along a huge straight in a mountain road doing over 280 Kms where another stupid driver will just pull out right infront of your car. This will make you either scream or laugh at the carnage the mongrel just caused, as it often comes down to pot-luck whether you make it through some intersections, but in the end it’s all good fun. Idict Drivers The AI of the computer drivers ranges from smart to stupid. Often when driving side by side with you, the computer driver will nudge your car purposely causing you to hit the wall and roll repeatedly, and other times you’ll watch them drive head on into accidents that Stevie Wonder could have avoided. The unpre¬ dictability of the computer drivers makes the game even more fun, as your car has really limited manoeu¬ vrability at high speed, and because of this you must really keep on the look out for idiot drivers. Many times you’ll just slide through a six car pile up while doing over 300 kms, amazed at how you managed to do it, but given time you'll be pulling off these moron-evading manoeuvres all the time. Speaking about the cars han¬ dling... there isn’t anything you’ll find in here that isn’t done better by the likes of Porsche Challenge, although the games sense of speed really makes up for this. Powreslides are in there, but they often result in too much speed loss to be effective, and considering that many of the courses are mainly straights with the occasional tight corner, you may not find the power- slides all that useful. One really annoying feature in the game is the cop cars. Even though you drive the state of the art in high speed driving, the standard issue pig trucks still manage to overtake you EVERY time. Occasionally you’ll send their dog-ass into a wall, or another car, but most times they catch you and this really slows you down. Although Test Drive 4 dosen’t present anything new to the racing genre, what it does have is quite enjoy¬ able. It’s really the Test drive game that we should have had in the first place, and if you’re a petrol head, or just like racing (and crashing!) really expensive cars then Test Drive 4 could be the game for you. AVAILABLE: NOW CATEGORY: RACING PLAYERS: 1-2 (LINK) PUBLISHER: ACCOLADE PRICE: ?79.9 5 RATING: G FREAKOMETER Hey, it’s a test drive.. .It’s Hot like you’re smashing real cars.. .Have a gol HYPER» 49 50 »HYPER REVIEWS PLAYSTATION Castlevania; Symphony of the Night Ai icon cm this arrived at the cfffiice. We didn't want to go anywhere near I Memories... like the corners of my mind... ahhhh, the old Super Nintendo, what a joyous time I had. I was a bit of a Castlevania fan even from old NES days, so as soon as I heard this was coming to the PlayStation I was stoked. The intro to Symphony Of The Night lets you take control of Simon Belmont and re-live the final moments of the last Castlevania game which appeared on the SNES - what a trip! Classic stuff. As soon as you do away with the old codger, the screen warps into a burning photo and you’re given an update of what has come to pass. Belmont has not been seen, and the mysterious castle has once again appeared. You must now play the part of Alucard (read it backwards), half- human/half-vampire who decides to head off into the castle to destroy it once and for all... Fang6 for the memcrie a... Regardless of it’s 32-bit platform this time around, Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night hardly looks or plays any differently from the old SNES days. At first you may be disappointed that Konami didn’t make this 32-bit sequel a visual masterpiece, but honestly, I don’t think it would have suited the game. Look at it this way... this is the continuation of a classic series and the game is primarily for fans of the previous games. Polluting the game with lens-flares and other sexy effects may have compromised the game in other areas and detracted from what is essentially a 2D platform¬ ing adventure. There are moments though when something incredibly phunky happens in the graphics department, but pounced on it and started growling strangely . him for the majority of the game, you’d think you were using a SNES. But who cares! When the gameplay is addictive and fun as this, you get sucked in away. If you ever played Super Metroid on the SNES and thought it rocked, then you’ll love and adore Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. If you’ve never played a Castlevania game, nor enjoyed classic games like Zelda 2 on the NES, then maybe you’ll find CSOTN dated and dull... who knows. What I do know, is that I was hooked till the very end. It’s simple, very old school and 1 love it! 1a that a stake in ycur pants? CSOTN has more RPC elements this time around than any pre¬ vious Castlevania game. Your character Alucard has everything from hit points, stats, items to equip to various parts of the body, spells to perform, magical items to use and familiars to conjure. As you adventure around the castle in true 2D plat¬ forming style, you’ll stumble across armour, shields, cool weapons and even money to spend at the library - not on over¬ due books you twerp, on stuff for your inventory. Like Super Metroid, the castle is huge and there are secret rooms and pas¬ sageways that are NOT on the map. It’s up to you to hit the walls with your sword to see if they crumble, revealing items you wouldn’t otherwise find elsewhere in the game. There is also a clock ticking away and a per¬ centage rating, so there’s incentive there to find everything and as efficiently as you can. During your stay, you’ll obtain certain orbs which can give you different powers, such as turning into mist, a wolf or a bat. Other orbs will tell you your enemies names and hit points as well as providing you with extra powers. Performing spells, requires you to pull off tricky control pad moves ala Streetfighter, which is a very cool idea. In the heat of a battle, it really ups the challenge. The bosses in Castlevania really are excellent - they look great for starters, and in true classic style, they all have a variety of attacks and there is a definite pattern to figure out if you want to beat them successfully. Finding everything in CSOTN will take you ages, as the castle is huge and your path is constantly blocked by bigger and badder creatures. The beau¬ ty of the gameplay lies in finding items which allow you to backtrack and get past something which was previously baffling you. Addictive and entertain¬ ing, with nice detailed animation and awesome music and voice acting - this is a winner. Lovers of classic SNES games like Super Metroid absolutely MUST buy this game, and the rest of you should at least check it out, it may be what you’re looking for... classic gaming. HYPER» 51 52 »HYPER REVIEWS PLAYSTATION Fighting Force Traditionally a lover of games that involve hurting people lots , Hahoutd have loved Fighting Force. TOOL SQUAO ARF GO' The first real venture into the 3D fighting game on the console scene was Die Hard Arcade which was pretty cool, suffering only real¬ ly in that the game was not long enough. Core Design, best known for the fabulous Tomb Raider, have leapt upon the opportunity to create the first game of this kind on the PlayStation. The basic theory was to go further than Die Hard Arcade, by giving the player more freedom of movement in a 3D environment, and give them more interactivity with the environment. The aim of Fighting Force is as simple as it gets, simply beat up anyone in your way. Creating a 3D environment for a beat em up is perhaps a slightly easier task than for a game like Tomb Raider, in that you're not restricted to using a block based engine. Nevertheless, Core have come through with a decent looking battle arenas for you to tonk through. The subway level actually looks like a subway does, etc. The characters in FF also look pretty good, with animation that isn’t quite up to par with your average 3D fight¬ ing game, but consid¬ ering that the game is also keeping track of a 3D environment and more than just two combatants, it is under- takes away some of your energy. Regardless of the options available, you’ll mostly end up button mashing. Now the main focus of these sort of games is gen¬ erally pure, simple fighting fun. The fun is usually generated by giving you a variety of moves, and opponents of varying levels of difficulty to battle on through. This is where Fighting Force really suffers badly, as the AI in the game is so miserably bad, and the amount of damage that the opponents cause when they hit you is so small, that pretty much anyone could play through the game in one sitting. To further emphasize this, I was being attacked by three punks, and then drew my atten¬ tion away from the screen to open an envelope with my left hand, whilst 1 just kept button mashing with my right... When I’d finished opening the envelope, there was only one opponent left alive, and he was half dead. Put simply, there’s really no inspiration to play a game where you win without trying. Just a few simple tweaks, like ensuring enemies attack you in unison, rather than waiting their turn would have made the game challenging enough to be far more interesting. Fighting Force ends up being a game which is really fun at first, and has lots of nice little fea¬ tures thrown in, but after ten minutes you get sick of doing the same thing over and over, and the lack of a growing challenge makes the efforts in the “novelty’’ features a bit of a waste. Maybe more fun for a non-gamer. standable. If anything, Fighting Force ends up looking funny, as the way attacks end up coming out sometimes look a little uncoordinated. Always hilarious is the way that neither the bad guys nor the characters have any particular reaction before being hit by a heavy object, like... an engine block for example. There are some "special” effects like streaks behind a few of the more powerful attacks, but they’re not of the same sort of stan¬ dard as those in a game like Soul Blade or Last Bronx. One area that really could have used some work is the sound effects, which quite frankly were about as poorly thrown together as it gets. Considering that Core were so generous to include so many items that you can pick up and throw at your opponents, surely the idea of putting in a few different sound effects was not so obscure that you’d overlook it? Throwing an engine block at someone causes the same sound effect as throwing a briefcase or a tyre, which is pretty lazy. Break atujf... its tun1 Core have managed to include more breakable items in Fighting Force than other beat em ups we’ve seen in the past. Or perhaps I should say the environment reacts better than previ¬ ous games. If you start beating up a Coke machine... a can pops out, and yes, you can drink it! Other funky destroyables include the turnstiles at the subway (haven’t we all wanted to kick crud out of those?), and cars (which produce tyres to throw once tonked). One of the best things in Fighting Force is the inclusion of four characters which whilst having different attacks, all use the same control method, which is kind of good on one hand in that you can use any character once you learn how to use to use one. Your attacks include kicks, punches, turning punches (for rear attacks), grabs (which you can turn into four different attacks), and a special move that gets you out trouble, but All that’s required here is an interest in hitting things. MULTIPLAYER Noninspiring. Unfortunately, multiplayer makes it even easier, and thus less interesting. Maybe beating each other up might be fun... OVERALL b 5 Fighting Force had the potential to be great, but a lack of difficulty and variety in challenge made it fall a bit short HYPER» 53 54 »HYPER REVIEWS PLAYSTATION TOCA Touring Car Championship Not contusing this with the other Touring Car Championship which is a pile of smelly underwear, ^ took to the track... There are driving games and then there are driving games. TOCA Touring Car Championship is a driving game, and probably the most realistic racing game on the PlayStation. In fact, it's absolutely punishing. TOCA is still excellent fun though, and if you stick with it you’ll be incredibly satisfied by the time you've mastered the tracks and proclaim yourself king of the hill. TOCA may even drive you to the point of fanaticism, where you’ll lock the family out of the house, push everything off the coffee table, drag the fridge into the living room and strap yourself into the couch for a serious session. It's raining, it's tailing... The graphics in TOCA are just that little bit better than great, and all the camera perspectives on offer are excel¬ lent. How often can you say that the internal camera view is actually playable in a racing game? Well, not only is it drive seriously. This really is a game for racing nuts who like their games to be as anally realistic as pos¬ sible. Having said that, Codemasters still made room for some cool crashes and wreckable vehicles, with your car's windows popping out and bumper bars falling off with any high-speed altercations on the track. Only the straight up championship is on offer (though you can race a time trial or single race if you’d like), but there are a number of nice cars to choose from. The Honda Accord is here, along with an Audi, Volvo and others including some which you’ll have to unlock. In 2-player split-screen mode, unfortunately there are no computer controlled cars in the race with you, but it works very nicely and the computer will help bad drivers "catch up’’ which keeps things nice and competitive. When you play TOCA, promise me one thing, turn off that infernal dance music and listen to the incredible sound effects in the game... the engine noises are amazing, as are all the environmental effects. If you drive manual, it will actually help to listen to the engine whilst you drive. Codemasters haven’t really put a foot wrong here, and this is an excellent driving game for all the petrol heads out there. AVAILABLE: NOW CATEGORY: RACING PLAYERS: 1-2 PUBLISHER: COOEMASTERS PRICE: $89.95 RATING: G FREAkOMETER Yep, you really gotta love the smell of petrol fumes MULTIPLAYER The 2-player splitscreen is a treat, and if you’re both good, then it's great an BE BE Bb A wonderful driving game for those who love getting the best out of their four-wheeled friend playable in TOCA, but it looks very cool too. You can actually see your polygon arms gripping the wheel and changing gears. If the weather is bad, then you’ll have the windscreen wiper stroking the windshield in front of you too. The weather effects in TOCA are definitely some of the best seen in a PSX racing game, with rain drops whipping into your face, snow pelting down and even foggy, stormy and of course sunny conditions to make the racing that tad more unpredictable. Using the cockpit view with an analogue wheel in stormy weather quite simply rocked my world, and I was engrossed to the very end. If you’re stuck playing with the old digital pad though, don’t panic, because the game’s options give you the opportunity to adjust the sensitivity of the d-pad as well as configuring the buttons. Like Fi from Psygnosis, TOCA has a rear camera view which you can flick to if you think cars are closing in on you, which I’ve never really bothered to use in other racing games. Here I used it often, as the whole experience is so realistic that you do start to get extremely competitive in your driving. The cars also look hot coming burning down the track behind you! Handle with care The physics model and car handling in TOCA is top notch, and certainly right up there with the best. You’ll find that pow- ersliding is incredibly hard - possible, but bloody difficult without totally spinning out - which is quite true to life really. You have to dex- trously apply your brakes, shift gear and slowly arc the wheel to achieve the desired results here... there ain’t no willy- nilly corner cutting or on and off accel¬ erator work possible in TOCA. lust imagine you’re there, and HYPER» 55 »HYPER REVIEWS PLAYSTATION/PC Nuclear Strike The Strike series continues.. was a bit of a Soviet Strike tan, so we rostered him on tor this mission... It’s back! The Strike series rocks on with it’s second PlayStation game, though it’s been rolling on from SNES and Megadrive days. Soviet Strike was a game which initially confused the hell out of you, and the graphics engine was a bit of a chugger, so many gamers gave up on it early which was a bit of a shame. Soviet Strike was, and still is, a piece of hard¬ core action gaming with awesome presentation and tough-as-nails missions which was stupendously rewarding when you nutted it out. Well, I have great news to deliver... Nuclear Strike is not only just as good, but the programmers have gone away and tidied up their code to bring us the best looking and best performing Strike game yet. Push the button! Nuclear Strike seamlessly carries on from Soviet Strike, with the same "team" briefing you via the well-produced FMV, and exactly the same menu lay¬ out and control system. This is good, because they all rocked in the first place. What has been changed is the graphics engine, which is now craploads smoother than Soviet Strike ever was, which will make it immediately more playable to a lot of gamers. Though the first mission isn’t easy, it is certainly a lot easier than any of the Soviet Strike missions, with more fuel and armour around the place to help you through. There is also a lot more going on this time around, with all sorts of side-missions on top of your given objectives. lust when you think you’ve com- o pleted one of your objectives, something will go horribly wrong and you’ll be sent off to retrieve somthing, save someone or blow something up - and then you have to return to what you were doing before time runs out. If you found SS way too hard for your liking, then you may feel a little more at home in Nuclear Strike. It’s easier to a degree, making the learning curve a little less steep, yet it still requires the gamer’s every atten¬ tion. A better targeting system has been introduced too, so you can tell which enemy craft you’ll hit if you fire off your missiles. This helps greatly when the terrain is a bit hilly, you’ll know if you have a direct line of fire or not. Yay! There was nothing worse in Soviet Strike, than lining up a tank, firing off your rockets to have them pound into the hill next to you because you couldn’t tell if your helicopter was at the right altititude. awesome action in 800X600, so you’re in for some dribble¬ worthy visuals if you can sup¬ port this. That said, the game still looks bloody good regard¬ less, so everyone is happy! Woo-hoo! The same wicked sense of humour is present in Nuclear Strike too, with enemy soldiers yelping silly comments when you nail them, as well as funny graphics in some areas of the map (who could forget the sunbaking tourists in Soviet Strike!?). You’d be hard pressed to find another action game which is as engrossing as Nuclear Strike this summer, so if this sort of covert military stuff is up your alley, then you can’t really go wrong here. It seems obvious that the game’s programmers took what they had in Soviet Strike and fixed up all the bits that the gamers complained about, put together some cleverly thought out enter¬ taining new missions, and packaged it all nicely to make this the best Strike game ever!! Rejoice!! Duck and cover With jungle Strike, there was the odd mission where you would have to leave your craft. Well, it didn’t work too well in Jungle Strike, but this idea has been utilised correctly in Nuclear Strike. At some stages during missions, you get to switch between helicopters or even command a hovercraft for instance. This is a nice variation in the gameplay, and adds to the feeling that the map you’re flying over is well and truly alive and exist¬ ing regardless of your presence. Using your map and mission info may at first seem complex, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be using it regularly to check up on the whereabouts of enemies, the status of mission objectives and the location of that last remaining ammo pack. The game looks great on the PlayStation this time, with beautiful environments and smooth frame rates. On the PC, you have 3DFX support for some truly »HYPER REVIEWS SATURN Cl Worldwide Soccer ’98 The only guy keen enough in the office to shell cut over $icc for a soccer jersey is Was he dribbling over Sega’s latest soccer sim? I DON'T ENVY THE GUY WHO HAS TO CUT THE GRASS Soccer sims have proven to be the most popular sports games, with our readers survey results proving this point • with International Superstar Soccer 64/Pro taking the prize for best sports game. Most everyone who played Worldwide Soccer ’97 were pretty amazed, and the game generally got a very good wrap the whole world around. With follow up games, it’s important to ensure that you give the audience something new to look at or be accused of just churning out an update. WWS ’98 looks really nice, with the players being well ani¬ mated and thus making gameplay very clear, which is essential in a game where your players come into contact with one another. Players do things such as step over the ball in a realistic manner, and the fancy footwork is very cool to watch. The stadiums also look cool, and the effects of stadi¬ um lights casting multiple shadows around the players is a very nice touch. There are four camera angles, and three lev¬ els of zoom, but like most sports games, only one camera angle is any good, and only one level of zoom lets you see enough of the field whilst letting you see the detail. The "up and down the pitch” view is the playable one, although when you’re running down the screen, it’s a bit hard to know what’s coming up unless you watch the radar closely, which does make avoiding defenders more difficult. Good calls ... Although it’s pretty much considered mandatory nowa¬ days, Worldwide Soccer ’98 has running commentary, and it’s by Gary Bloom and Jackie Charlton, whom if you don’t know much about soccer, are commentators in real life. Whilst the quality of the actual sound is no more impressive than any of the other soccer games we’ve seen in the past year or so, the actual calls always seem to be right, which is almost unheard of in a soccer game till now. Even FIFA '97 which had awesome commentary, made really stupid calls like suggesting the game would be drawn when one team is 5 goals in front, so hats off to Sega for being the first to get it right. The full title of the game is actually Worldwide Soccer '98 Club Edition, which is basically because Sega have gone to the trouble of including all the players from the English, French, and Spanish soccer 1st divisions/premier leagues. Unfortunately you only get to choose from the teams that match the language you choose to play the game in, but that shouldn’t upset many people. More unfortunate is that whilst all the player names are there for the club play, the International teams are not given the same treatment, although you can alter the names, it would take an awful lot of spare time to do so for multiple teams. Sega have included International friendlies, club exhibition games, a club league, the World Wide Cup, and an International cup tournament. This is all very nice, but be warned, to save your game/league/cup requires lots of free memory on your cartridge or system memory. Schmeichel you schmuk! The actual controls are pretty much identical to WWS ’97, and as a result, are very easy to get a grip of, and the whole game is very playable. The 'mly player that ends up behaving particularly stupidly is the goalie, whom despite claims by Sega to have had an improved AI, does things like hang out somewhere other than in front of the goals. I had a goal scored against me because my goalie (P.Schmeichel) took a few steps back as he caught an easy lob... Unfortunately he was stepping into the goals, and as a result, turned a sitter into an easy goal. There’s one main feature that WWS ’98 is missing that is kind of taken for granted nowadays is a practice mode. Sure, you can just start a 2 player game without having a second player, but you really shouldn’t have to do that in this day and age. Worldwide Soccer '98 is a very good soccer game, but if you’ve played ISS 64/Pro, you probably won’t get too excited about it at all. Sega-only gamers who did pur¬ chase WWS ’97 will possibly be equally unmoved, basi¬ cally because the only real major addition is the inclu¬ sion of European club teams, which whilst is great if you’re an English, French or Spanish soccer fan... is oth¬ erwise no big deal. Sure, there’s new stadiums, but you never actually notice them once you’re playing, so it doesn't really matter. Bottom line, newcomers to the game that own a Saturn will love WWS '98. Die-hard fans of WWS ’97 will like it, because that’s what die¬ hard fans do, but they won’t be wowed as they were before. Those who also own N64S or PlayStations would be best advised to give ISS a whirl. WWS 98 VS ISS 64/PRO Some may call this comparison unfair, but for those of you out there that own a Saturn and either a PSX or a N64, you probably want to know. Basically WWS ’98 is not as visually impressive as ISS 64, due mostly to the fact that the Saturn just isn’t built to handle 3D graphics anywhere near as well as the N64. More importantly, the gameplay in ISS is bet¬ ter, with things like through passing on one button producing a far more realistic flow of play than in WWS ’98. However, other than ISS 64/Pro, WWS ’98 is the best soccer game around, make no mistake. y * - % W — * •;^V: ... " - HVPER» 63 64 »HYPER REVIEWS SATURN Sonic R Saturn owner has been hanging tor the true big Sonic title. was one oj those hangers... sc we handed him Sonic R... is it the one? Cverx Considering the Saturn is in its fourth year of soft¬ ware development it’s quite a surprise that it has taken Sega all this time to release a fully 3D game containing the company’s mascot, Sonic. Without Sonic, the Megadrive would never have never achieved the recognition it received, and to Sega’s credit they have tried to keep Saturn owners happy with plenty of arcade conversions and the brilliant Nights. But the company’s failure to release a 3D Sonic game has always loomed over their head... until now that is. Sega is hoping that Sonic R will revive the Saturn’s somewhat inferior reputation as a home con¬ sole, and to a good extent Sonic R does this. Tre a Sonic... From the moment you power on the console you’re hit with that typically bright and merry Sonic music that some people love and others hate. Nevertheless it sets the Sonic mood, and from here the graphics don’t disappoint either. Using an advanced graphic engine seen previously in Sonic Jam, Sonic R by Saturn stan¬ dards, is nothing short of amazing. What instantly strikes you is the texture detail in the courses, which are amazing, and combined with the game’s bright colour palette, gives the game a very polished look that’s highly reminiscent of the old 2D Sonic games. But now everything’s 3D and the camera angles take full advantage of this, with the replays being espe¬ cially impressive as the camera rotates around your characters giving plenty of dynamic views. Each of the characters are very well drawn in 3D and don’t fail AVAILABLE: NOW CATEGORY: RACING | PLAYERS: 1-2 PUBLISHER: SEGA PRICE: s69.95 1 RATING: G FREAKOMETER M Anyone can pick up and play this racer MULTIPLAYER Pop up is a little harsher, but it still has the speed and playability of single player racing VISUALS | B 4- I SOUND | BD | GAMEPLAY | B □ | OVERALL BE A good racer, but it I still isn't the 3D sonic you're waiting for to do their 2D versions justice, as in their 3D form they look great running around each of the courses. Special mention must be given to the programmer’s use of lighting and trans¬ parencies in the game. That’s right transparencies... another so called impossibility on the Saturn has been achieved, and it’s use in the final level creates some really remarkable visuals on the Saturn. Haven't I been here before? There are five stages in the game and they are modelled on some of the levels seen in the various Sonic games, like the first stage, Resort Island closely resembling the Green Hill Zone in the original Sonic game on Megadrive. By collecting gold rings along the way, players open up multiple routes that their char¬ acters can travel through, with some serving just as shortcuts to cut lap times, and others leading to the valuable chaos emer¬ alds which are scattered around each track. Sonic R also allows for full 360 degree movement and this really calls for you to explore the whole area on which the track is laid out, as on some courses it’s not really obvious which path is quickest. Often you’ll find yourself way off the track swimming through a river, or even wandering aimlessly through unfamiliar areas with only the occasional marker to set you in the right direction. Needless to say, Sonic R will take some time to master. Outta control! This leads to the control system, which as a matter of fact, will probably take even longer to master. For some strange rea¬ son you’ll initially have a lot of trouble getting Sonic to run in a straight path around a course. This seems a little funny at first, as how can you expect Sonic to have any trouble running, that is his area of expertise after all... To move Sonic you push in a direction on the pad (not push a button like most racers... but hey, you are racing a hedgehog after all), and his movement must be constantly adjusted on the pad otherwise he is very likely to go off your intended path. This ideally makes Sonic R a game for the analogue pad, and if you don’t have one and you really want this game then it’s suggested you fork out the extra dosh as Sonic R is quite hard to deal with on the standard Saturn controller. So exactly where does Sonic R fall down? Well nowhere really. The game has over 6 different characters, who all have different methods of racing. Some run like Sonic, while others drive in cars or fly like Tails, and have differ¬ ent handling as a result. It also has a great two player split screen option that results in little loss of detail while still maintaining a smooth frame rate. The control is a little weird at first, but with a little practice you’ll be powersliding Sonic (powersliding a hedgehog?) around the courses in no time. But even with the game’s merits it still has two small faults that do its credibility some damage. For starters it only has five tracks, and even though they are complex and have many different paths, it still is only five tracks, and that comes off really bad when compared to another cutesy type racer reviewed this issue. Secondly it’s a racer... If you're expecting a Mario killer then you’re going to be disappointed. For some strange reason this isn’t the Sonic that many people where expect¬ ing, it’s still a good racer, and an original one at that, but you may be wondering why Saturn owners still haven’t been given the FULL Sonic treatment. HYPER» 65 66 »HYPER REVIEWS SATURN Last Bronx Teenagers beating the crud out of each ether with street weapons... no it’s not Cabramatta, it’s Last Bronx. cracks some skull. ES Sega have a very strong grounding in the 3D fighting game arena. They were the ones who set the ball rolling with Virtua Fighter, which led to VF2, then the armour-clad Fighting Vipers. To take the genre somewhere else, Sega introduced weapons and Last Bronx was born. The game did not draw the same sort of numbers in the arcades as its pre¬ decessors, but that may have had more to do with the diffi¬ culty of the game rather more than anything else. Sega have endeavoured to bring Last Bronx to the Saturn as best they can, and they’ve done a rather sterling job. It’s odd that the word "Bronx” appears in the title, since the whole game is set in Tokyo, but who gives a stuff, really? Last Bronx is another one of the AM3 fighting games, with a variety of young beweaponed punks going one on one, in a game that ends up being more faced paced, and brutal than the previous Sega fighting titles. PAL better than NTSC? Those of you out there that get import titles from Japan will be used to getting something a little different, and this time around the PAL (Europe and Australia) version is a much more solid looking game, although it definitely runs a bit slower than the NTSC version. The NTSC version of the game suffered from frequent polygon flickering and breakup, so rejoice Australian Saturn owners, for once, you got the better end of the deal. Although once the bout is over and the cam¬ era pans elsewhere, expect severe breakup. The resolution of the characters is high and the frame rate looks faster than 30 fps. A couple of moves seem to hurt the frame rate though, which is really odd since there doesn’t seem to be any obvi¬ ous reason why these moves would push the processor any harder than the others. The backgrounds look like true 3D environments at a glance, but are actually very cleverly HERE WE SEE KUROSAWA EXPLAINING drawn, multi-layered 2D parallax scrolling backgrounds, which don’t strain the Saturn anywhere near as much as a true 3D environment would. Stages that include a low ceiling look par¬ ticularly cool, and it’s safe to say that the backgrounds look far better in Last Bronx than in any prior Saturn fighting game. There’s really only one gripe to be made with the visuals of Last Bronx, and that’s the ugly oval shaped shadows that sit beneath the characters. It probably would have looked better with no shadows at all. Like most of these games the music isn’t anything to write home about, with a couple of the tracks being fast and tense, set¬ ting the mood just right, and others being totally forgettable. The sound effects are adequate and unremarkable. The one bit that is done really well is the speech, which sounds like it was sampled really well... shame we don’t understand a word of Japanese. Cancel that Combo Wether or not you like Last Bronx will come down to one thing, and that’s wether or not you believe that being able to cancel a combo and start a new one is a good thing or not, because that’s the main difference in Last Bronx as opposed to all previous Sega fighting games. What this does is open up the scope for some seriously heavy combos that really decimate your enemy. Firstly, the damage is way too high in Last Bronx, and doing a pissy kick then pouncing on your adversary takes around a third of their energy away, so adjusting the life meters is practically a must. Back to the ability to cancel, this means you can do things like take to swipes at your foe, then hit guard to stop, and then go straight into a throw, meaning your adver¬ sary has to stop your assault with a hit of their own, rather than block it out and wait for an opening. It all comes down to taste... do you like fast and relentless, or do you like calculated and strategic, because that’s the way you’d describe Last Bronx and Virtua Fighter respectively. To truly master Last Bronx sim¬ ply requires learning all the cancel combos, because once you do, if you can land one, your foe is history. There are eight characters with one secret character to unlock. Kurasawa, the guy in the casual suit, wielding a wooden sword is perhaps the coolest fighting game character from Sega yet. Cotta love his arrogant "multiple face slap" move. In terms of game features, there are anime FMV endings (sub¬ titled), although they’re so brief that they’ll pose more ques¬ tions about the characters, and you have no way of finding the answers, which is really annoying. For those into practice modes, good news and bad. The good news is that it includes a list of all the cancel combos for you. The bad news is that it doesn’t include the basic moves... arghh! That includes throws, so good luck finding them all. There’s also the stock standard time attack and survival modes as well. One can’t help but think that the overall polishing with Last Bronx could have been a bit better, with a decent practice mode, like we saw in Fighters Megamix, and perhaps with slightly longer ending scenes to help satisfy those that are into the characters of the game, rather than just tease them. As a game it’s great fun, but perhaps a little too much emphasis has been placed on the need to learn cancel combos, which means you’ll be winning bouts in pretty much two runs of attacks once you’ve got the moves down. Lacking the variety of moves that the VF games have offered, this will probably be more suited to the Street Fighter EX fans that love cancelling supers and going into new supers. AVAILABLE: DECEMBER CATEGORY: 3 D FIGHTING PLAYERS: 1-2 PUBLISHER: SEGA PRICE: *69.95 RATING: Ml5 | FREAKOMETER | 1 ilium Immediately playable, but only an expert will get everything out of it. MULTIPLAYER Good multiplayer, however if one person can do cancel combos and the other can’t, it’ll be a very short fight ia BH- Bb Last Bronx is the best looking of the Saturn fighting games thus far. A fast furious fighting game that’s depth lies in the ability to come up with lots of combos, it’s just a shame that’s where all the depth lies HYPER» 67 68 »HYPER REVIEWS NINTENDO 64 Diddy Kon It’s sc cute it’ll make you wanna puke, brave fjace and took the chimp ter a You now have another reason to buy a Nintendo 64. Diddy Kong Racing is a beautiful game, etched out of pure magic. It’s total eye-candy with bitchin’ gameplay... Yes, it kicks major arse! Regardless of DKR coming from Rare, this is like Nintendo’s sequel to Mario Kart 64, there’s no doubt about that. DKR ini¬ tially looks and plays just like MK64, but after playing through in the single-player Adventure Mode, you realize that DKR is a whole new experience and unlike MK64, a fantastic single-player game! I forget how many times my jaw hit the ground, stunned by the smooth high res graphics. DKR is an incredibly well designed game, with some tracks taking you on a ride you'll never forget. Don’t try and compare DKR to MK64, there’s no point. You want both. Monkeying Around DKR is really quite strategic. This time around, weapons are scat¬ tered throughout the levels in the form of coloured balloons. Each balloon has a different power and the more you collect of one partic¬ ular colour, the more powerful that particular weapon will become. For instance, picking up one red balloon gives you a rocket, two red balloons upgrades it to a homing rocket and if you collect three red balloons you will receive ten rockets to fire at your will. This radical¬ ly changes the way you race, as you’re constantly keeping an eye out for a specific balloon whilst avoiding balloons of other colours and all the other obstacles. At various points on the track there are "zip¬ pers", striped arrows which give you an instant turbo as you drive over them. Bananas are lying about the place too, but in DKR they have an entirely different purpose than they did in MK64. The more bananas you collect, the higher your top speed, and if you collect 10 bananas then it prevents the other players from increasing their top speed any further for the rest of the race or until you drop some bananas. You lose bananas when you get hit by a weapon, so in effect, bananas also provide you with a kind of buffer from attacks. Whilst you’re coping with all these elements during the race, you’ll also have to keep tabs on the actual track itself which can become wildly tricky, incorporating multiple paths and wide-open spaces. All the tracks are designed to be completed with using all of the dif¬ ferent vehicles on offer. Yes, it isn’t just kart racing that you’ll have to master. There is also a hovercraft and an aeroplane to get the hang of, and in multiplayer mode you can choose the craft of your choice to race with. When you consider that all of the different characters have varying skills like handling, top speed and acceleration and factor everything that I’ve mentioned above together... maybe you’ll come close to imagining how tricky and strategic the racing in DKR can become. Spanking The Monkey DKR is best in single player Adventure Mode. Yep, this game is more satisfying on your own - it’s true! Though Multiplayer is fun (and we’ll get to that later), DKR is like a strange hybrid of Super Mario 64 and MK64, combining hot racing with the quest for hidden objects, secret levels, big bosses and magical worlds. Once you successfully come first on all the tracks in the first world, you must face that world's boss character in a show-down race. If you win, you then must race all the tracks in that world again, but this time you have to collect all hidden silver coins on each track AND come first. Do this, and then you face the boss again for a tougher face-off. Beat him and you move on to the Trophy Challenge for that world. Variety, variety, variety. All this and there are 5 different worlds too. There is also a key hidden somewhere on one of HYPER» 69 70 »HYPER NINTENDO 64 The Five Worlds The five worlds in DKR are amazingly varied in design and all loof: spectacular. Here’s a run down... Dino Domain Huge dinosaurs lumbering across the track, ptero¬ dactyls swooping at your noggin - this is racing in the dinosaur era along mountainous tracks, through lava pits and into caves... Snowflake Mountain This world has the cheesiest music in the game - you’ll piss yourself! Frozen lakes, loop-the-loops, snow fields and huge rolling snowballs must all be passed. Sherbet Island Sparkling waters, dunes of sand and a variety of sea-life will hin¬ der your racing here. Pirate ships and a pirate treasure cove are here to be explored too. Cool stuff. Dragon Forest A bit medieval¬ ist you’ll be tearing past a huge castle, through a village and haunted woods. Like something straight out of a Disney cartoon feature... Future World You’ll only get here after finish¬ ing the game, but these tracks are some of the coolest on offer. Spaceships shoot lasers at you while you race, and there’s a trench which is suspiciously Star Wars. Spooge!! the tracks in each world, which you must find to unlock the Challenge Mode. The challenge mode for each world, has a different objective and plays similar¬ ly to MK6Vs Battle Mode. On Fire Mountain, you must pilot the aeroplane and collect eggs from the centre of the arena and return them to your nest. Once placed in the nest, your egg will start to hatch, but it’s highly vulnerable in this state and can be stolen by your enemies. The first player to hatch three eggs wins the round. In the other worlds, the challenges range from collecting 10 bananas first and returning them to your "base” or outright battle to the death, where it’s last standing wins. Once you unlock these in single-player, you can then play them in Multiplayer mode which rocks the house. Cashin’ Inycur Chimps Nintendo are clearly going to rake in the dosh with this one, and deservedly so. It’s games like DKR which show just what the Nintendo 64 can provide with a bit of clever programming and lot of clever thinking. There’s so much fun packed onto this cart, it’s got to be illegal. Did I mention that DKR also supports the rumble pack? Well there you go. It does. So the single player game rocks, we know that now and it’s a wonderful thing. So what about the multiplayer game? Ok. Our first impressions were that it wasn’t as elegant as MK64. It looks shitloads nicer, and the tracks are cool, but it did feel harder to see what was going on this time around as some tracks are much more open and losing your way is easier. Unlike MK64, there’s no strict path, so sometimes you can stray away from the race, and not even realize you’ve done anything wrong until you hit a wail and notice that you’re suspiciously alone. There are more tracks here than there were in MK64, though you have to unlock them in the single-player adventure mode before you can race them with your friends. Only the first track from each world is accessible from the word go - so there's yet another incentive to play the single player game! The handling in DKR feels radically different, and you’ll have to learn new tricks to control these vehicles proper¬ ly. The controls are similar, but the R button no longer jumps - instead you powerslide in the car, hop in the hovercraft, and the plane can do barrelrolls and loops. In the car, you’ll have the master the hop-turn where you press all three buttons and do a 90 degree turn. The framerate maybe isn’t as fast as MK64, but this illusion soon fades as you get into the more tactical side to the racing and hit some of the faster tracks. The option to race each other in dif¬ ferent crafts is ultra cool, as they all have their strengths and weaknesses, with different paths being accessible depending on which you choose to use. All up though, this is a much harder game in both single player AND multiplayer, and the four-player mode is not as elegantly simple as MK64, though the 2- player game rocks harder. A fine line, really, and maybe it just feels this way because the single-player game is do damn amazingly good. Diddy Kong The chimp with the mostest. Drumstick f JgM The hidden rooster. ' Jflk. K ■■ P Jr i-. ■ ... + -» , ^ Tiptup ■■ He s a turtle. Hmmm... This croc was once called Crash... Who'* The Bom? Once you complete the four tracks in each world, it’s time to face the sub-boss for that area. These guys are beyond cool, and each has a particu¬ lar weakness which you'll have to fig¬ ure out. The Dragon in Dragon Forest is tough as nails, and Dan and I stayed back here at the office until midnight, determined to unlock the final world. Once you beat everything in the four worlds, you must face Wizpig. Being the main boss dude, he is of course a bastard to beat. But it is possi¬ ble, as the HYPER crew nailed him after many a good attempt. We won’t tell you how to reach the final fifth world, we’ll let you figure it out for yourseif. You can take a squizz at the grabs we got on these pages to satisfy your curiosity of course. Drumstick the rooster has to be "unlocked” too, and all we’ll say is that it requires you to squish some wildlife once you’ve unlocked the rest of the game. Heh heh. T.T. Is the stopwatch who wanders around the lobby of each world. If you beep your horn at him, you can enter the time trial mode. For those of you who have never been one for time-trials (I haven’t), you now have a big incentive. You'll have to beat T.T. at his own game in the fifth world, and he’s as fast as a bloody rocket. The more we played Diddy Kong Racing here at the office, the more we fell in love with the awesomely addictive gameplay. This is what it’s all about... I haven’t heard Dan yell that F-word so many times whilst playing a game! DKR is one of those games which niggle at you to just have one more go until you get it right. The AI in DKR is especially good too, and you’ll find in the later stages of the game, that these little fluffy animals can get quite nasty. They drive aggres¬ sively, and won’t think twice about pipping you at the line with a turbo they picked up earlier. Pipsy the mouse is annoyingly fast, and you’ll soon learn to hate her with a passion. Juicy Banana* With around 30 levels in the game, it’s safe to say that DKR is one of the best N64 games yet. Once you get into it, you'll forget Mario Kart 64 altogether (unless you’re up for some simple hard-tonking multiplayer racing). I promise you that once you sit and play DKR for a while, you’ll start to develop strange fuzzy feelings for it. You’ll be sitting up until all hours of the morning trying to beat those damn infernal bosses! You’ll get hooked, and you won’t stop until you’ve cracked everything wide open and defeated Wizpig multiple times. Those of you who rent it and play it for a night, probably won’t be giving your¬ selves enough time to settle in with the different controls, slower but more strategic circuits and you probably won't get to see much of the game. If you loved Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64 or any other classic Nintendo games then you’ll be wanting to know that DKR has that same magical spark, and you should rush out and buy it straight away. When I finish writing this review, in fact, I’m going to go and finish off Future World... Have at you, Wizpig! The Dinosaur The Walrus This Triceratops challenges you to race him to the top This dude takes you on a downhill ride, full of slip-slop of a mountain. He slows down towards the end, so if you sliding. He slides on his belly, and you’ll have to turbo can hit him with rockets, you’ll pip him over the line. after him to catch up. Watch out for trees!! The Dragon Occie, is majorly cool, but a pain in the butt! He drops Possibly the hardest sub-boss. He blows fireballs which bombs and then bubbles in your path, which are hard to tool you over in the caverns. Hit him with homing rockets, avoid. Hug the inside of corners to beat him. and hug corners to catch him. Learn the course!! AVAILABLE: NOW CATEGORY: RACING PLAYERS: 1-4 PUBLISHER: RARE PRICE: $?? RATING: G FREAKOMETER Fum for everyone, but gets quite tricky further in... MULTIPLAYER Rocks da house, but not as much as Mario Kart. DKR’s strength lies in single player mode VISUALS SOUND BD CAMEPLAY Bb OVERALL =15 Rare have outdone themselves. Wonderful stuff. It'll grow on you like a fungus. Ewww! HYPER» 73 REVIEWS NINTENDO 64 Top Gear Rally 4r4c « VI rJ ■ I vi i MiiraiW bounces oft some stationary cars during a thirty-three point turn, drives absent mindedly through a red light, and boons off down the freeway in the N64’s best rally racer... CL > Okay. Right. What was one thing really lacking on the SNES? Realistic racing/driving games (due to horsepower of course). What’s one thing that isn’t lacking on the 32bit systems out there today? Realistic racing/driving games. Why? Simple - we love em and we play em to death. So Nintendo have decided to make a bit of a show of racing games on the N64 (of course, if they want to compete with Sony’s massive range for exam¬ ple) with a whole batch of red hot screaming carts coming our way over the next few months. Top Cear Rally is, surprise surprise, a rally game! Early comparisons have labelled this one as Nintendo’s answer to Sega Rally. Top Cear Rally looks superb. Boss Came Studios have got this game looking absolutely stunning, and run¬ ning even better. Each car is made up of oodles of polygons, with the pop up of scenery in the distance is virtually nonexistent, all at a gor¬ geous frame rate. Detail is such that you can see the wheels of your car turn independently to the direction of the car, see the reflection of the sky in small little puddles of water along the track, and even see the type of bumps and scratches on your car that would make any panel beater give that demonic kinda grin. You can also visit the Paint Shop and customise your car with the paint and decal job you want, which can be saved to the controller pack for later use. In other words, Top Cear Rally looks a damn treat. This one requires patience and perseverance. MULTIPLAYER Fun, though nowhere near as smooth or addictive VISUALS qp SOUND IB CAMEPLAY BB OVERALL B1 No cheap thrills. This one is a rally racer with the lot. If multiplayer rocked, the stamp would have come out... Fogged split screens... For your driving pleasure there are 5 tracks (three must be unlocked by competing and winning in the Championship mode, with the final prize being the exalted mirror mode option), 9 cars to choose from (2 initially) and 4 game play modes. Time Trial is the standard "do your best time" race against the courses ghost racer. Practice allows you to hoon about the tracks with absolutely no pressure, and is vital in learning how to control the different cars and take the corners. Two Player is via the split screen way, and is a pure one on one race through the course. The rather frustrating little trick of fog¬ ging out some detail is used here, to keep the frame rate run¬ ning high and detail looking okay. Those wanting a four player bash are not accommodated here - the N64 is powerful, but not THAT powerful. Last and definitely not least is the Championship mode. This is what TGR is all about. Twenty racers, you at the complete other end of pole position, and three laps to get to number one. Playing through race seasons and winning, unlocks more cars and tracks, and is a lot trickier than it sounds. This is also where the real challenge lies. Okay, so the options are fairly satisfying. Options are not what racing’s all about though. The driving engine is. Does it handle like a wonky shopping trolley or like a dream machine that only exists in the mind or mechanical engineers every¬ where? And for the most part, TGR feels likes it handles like a real rally car would. Oversteering is a common problem at first, but once you get the hang of it, you can really pull of some neat tricks that real rally drivers use. The powerslide is naturally the players best friend in TGR, as is sound knowledge of the track. The feel though, is really quite spectacular. To this end (and here’s that option word again), you’ve got some further options to chose from when about to hit a race. Forecasts suggest changing settings... Steering sensitivity, tyre type, suspension, and either a manual or automatic transmission. They all make a difference, and the successful use of these is vital in TGR. The standard race tracks are fairly testing as is, and in the first racing season, all have favourable weather conditions. As you start to get further, you come across fog, rain, and snow - which really affect the way your car handles on the road. If you don’t learn to change your car’s settings, don’t expect to move on to the next round. However, there are still some unfortunate discrepancies. Okay, I may never have driven like a mad hoon in my life (my driving is a bit more absent minded than most), and thus, have had no accidents, but the trouble with TGR. is that some of the stacks your car takes just feel wrong. A little bump here, and your car goes flying. You can drive up walls, roll over and all that. It just doesn’t feel right though. In TGR’s favour however, it really pushes some thoughtful driving, rather than the "gas gas gas what the hell is a brake anyway?" driving mentality. Like the real thing, you’ll actually need to think and build up some skill at driving. Only through practice too. TGR is a very classy rally driver. It also feels very realistic, and behaves just like that real thing. That doesn’t mean it’s fun though. The two player mode is kinda boring, and the real challenge of the game seems to be staying on the road and finishing, and sometimes even coming first. The 19 other racers are all evenly spaced apart, and passing them is not that compelling. The other frustrating thing is that even though you finished first in the last race, you start at number twenty the next race. Horrible? You bet. If you don’t really want a 2 player racer, and can for¬ give the wacky crashes and horrible start placing, then you’ve got the best rally racing game for any console system. And a realistic one at that. HYPER» 75 76 »HYPER REVIEWS NINTENDO 6i, Fi Pole Position 64 By the end ct thiA have enough gold trophies to till the Q€2. Once again, he straps on the helmet... Fi Pole Position was a popular SNES title, giving all the Fi nuts out there some 16-bit action whilst still retaining a certain level of arcade fun for the casual gamer. Now those Fi nuts who stuck true to Nintendo are being rewarded with a 64-bit sequel, and it looks like Ubi Soft went to the bells and whistles department of their nearest shopping complex and slapped down some cash. F1PP64 is still incredibly reminiscent of the SNES game and what made it fun to play, yet the graphics and options have been pumped full of the latest computer game steroids. At the heart of it though. F1PP64 is probably no longer realistic enough to satisfy the new legion of Fi racing fans who may have cut their teeth on Fi from Psygnosis or Crand Prix 2 from Microprose. Schumacher and the elves F1PP64 is extremely customable to your needs and wants. If you’re after 10 laps of hard, knuckle-down slog then you can turn all the "realism” options on and give it your all. You can of course, however, make it as easy as pissing in the toilet if you so desire, but in this mode the game gets very boring very quickly. Racing simulation fans will be chuffed to know that there are 16 of the world’s top courses here, from Melbourne to Monaco, and each has been carefully reconstructed for the game. However, the courses are not really that realistically accurate, though they "look” right. In fact, you could apply this criticism to the entire game. Everything looks right, but the game doesn’t feel at all realistic. Even when you have all the realism options turned to hard, and you’re having to pull into the pit and change your tires, re-fuel and have your fins nailed back on, the game still feels like an arcade game out on the track. The steering is jagged, the acceler¬ ation stupidly fast and despite the graphics, the soul of this game still feels stuck somewhere in Super Nintendo territory. The sound, for instance, is quite spew-worthy. As you play, your mind ends up creating images of... well... hordes of elephants being forced into a blender. I did like the pit crew radio guy who offers you advice through the race, though. Checking your Pole Position So what’s on offer, eh? Well, you have World Grand Prix (which will take you around the world), Battle (not 2-player, but a race of your choice) and Time Attack (y'know, getting the fastest lap and stuff). The omission of a four or even two player mode is unforgivable, as it’s multiplayer options which can add so much to a game’s longevity. Though you can configure F1PP64 to be stu¬ pidly hard, there comes a point when racing against the computer just becomes predictable and dull. You can choose to be Schumacher, Alesi, Hill, Coulthard, Berger - you know, the usual bunch - and drive the classic Fi cars. When you enter the Grand Prix, you have the option of qualifying for a better position on the grid, or even going for a free run around the course to familiarise yourself with the turns. There are a few weather changes throughout the game, but they don’t seem to greatly affect the actual driving conditions. You can, of course, adjust your steering resistance, tyres, downforce, transmission, suspension, fuel load and all those other freak-boy Fi settings, or let your N64 do it for you and just concentrate on the race. There’s a nice array of camera perspectives, and all of them are usable bar the "nose grinding’’ perspective which looks horrible. The frame rate is always flying by beautifully at around 30 fps or something, but the physics on display here are almost non-existent. Sometimes you’ll feel like you’re trying to break the sound-barrier, not driving an Fi vehicle. There is defi¬ nitely something here for N64 owning Fi fans to get their teeth into, but only true fans of the sport will stick with it. The rest of us who enjoy the odd racing game, or those who just enjoy a good game regardless of it’s genre, will probably just get a bit fed up with this one. F1PP64 doesn’t know wether it should be a sim or an arcade game, and ends up being average at both ends of the spectrum. HYPER» 77 78 »HYPER REVIEWS NINTENDO 6 1 , Multi Racing Championship It's best Eliot Fish is kept ctt the streets, so we sat him down and gave him MRC to review... The Nintendo 64 is still yet to find a killer driving game, not counting Mario Kart 64 which is more of a "racing” game - I’m talking sexy cars and winding roads, smooth handling and competitive action. Lamborghini 64 was almost a win¬ ner, Top Cear Rally fell a little short and everything else is a tad average, so I was really hoping MRC would turn out to be something special. Well, it wasn’t much of a surprise I guess, but again what we have here is a driving game which starts out well, yet somehow leaves you feeling a bit cold. Probably more so than Lambo 64 or Top Cear, MRC is an attempt at the Sega Rally style of driving game, but it just lacks the excite¬ ment needed to bring it on home over the finish line with champagne corks popping and girls in bikinis waving their arms about. Oh well. Wiggle ycur Stick The car handling in MRC seems to swing from being terri¬ ble to feeling quite good, depending on how long you stick with it. Certainly it’s quite realistic, but as soon as you think you have it sussed out, a car will clip you and send you fly¬ ing into the air... realism? Using the N64*s analogue stick is of course strange at first, but ultimately the best way to play, unless of course you have a swanky wheel and pedals to plug into your console. If you do, then it certainly improves the gameplay, as it probably would with any racing game. Though there are three camera angles to choose from, the mid¬ dle perspective is barely any different than the initial third-per¬ son perspective, so you’ll either drive using the chase cam or the interior view (which at least provides you with a nice rear- vision mirror). When you set up your first race, you’ll notice that all the usual options are here - Championship, Time Trial, Practice mode and Versus Mode. Then you can choose from a good variety of cars, ranging from speedy little buggers to chunky 4-wheel-drives - the latter probably being the best choice to successfully complete the circuits with, though it’s really up to how you like to race. Do you prefer to powerslide or take to the dirt in some off-roading? Ok, so you’re ready to race. You can, of course, choose between an easy, normal and hard circuit, and you will be required to complete first place on each to unlock the remaining three tracks, which unfortunately are simply mirror versions of the three tracks you played in the first place. Argh! This is the first area in which MRC comes up short. Three tracks? Is that all? Yeah, yeah, the mirror tracks make things different blah blah, but really this leaves the gamer with very little replay value, and it won’t take you an eternity to get first place on each circuit either. Hmmm. altering your brakes, suspension, engine power - whatever. I found the solution is simply to let go of the accelerator and glide around the corner, maybe tapping it a few times to keep your grip. The next thing you’ll notice, is that the track branches out at various stages of the race, giving you the option to go off-road and maybe pick up a few seconds on the leader. As you play the game, you’ll eventually fig¬ ure out the which turn-offs are shorter and which car best suits the track. It’s usually always the off-road bits which are shorter, so the 4-wheel-drive wins in most cases. The tracks are quite well designed, and the environments look exceedingly nice in spots and bog-ugly in other bits, but all up the three circuits on offer here are very entertaining. There is also the old "Hard Left, Easy Right” Sega Rally element in there too to give you a helping hand. In split-screen mode, the playing windows shrink slightly to retain a healthy frame rate without sacrificing too much of the solid backgrounds. MRC doesn’t look nearly as nice as the other N64 driving games though, at times just looking a little too blurry and the camera angles are not intelligent enough for my liking. MRC is fun though, and once you finish it, you’ll wish it had lasted longer. OVERALL “1 4 - MRC is solid and a good challenge, but doesn’t look as nice nor last as long as other N64 racers HYPER» 79 80 »HYPER REVIEWS PC m ► °P* c Blade Runner Often being confused with a human , we sent off to hunt replicants. The phrase "Interactive Movie” has been thrown around now for quite a while, but when it comes down to it, the so called interactive movie is little more than an adventure game with some semi realistic graphics. A good example of this was Under a Killing Moon, which turned out to be a disappointment if it was purchased purely for that movie theatre feeling. Blade Runner has also had the interactive movie phrase thrust at it, almost from conception. Well the final game found its way onto a computer recently and the verdict is nothing short of Wow! Setting the scene Blade Runner, very similarly to the original movie, starts with a fully digitised flight over a very dark, evil looking city, with huge chimneys spurting flame, and impossibly high buildings forming the megatropolis of Los Angeles in 2019. Then the scene changes to a futuristic looking pet shop, run by an annoying little man. Two shady looking characters turn up, give the annoying man a throttling (Yay), and waste all the animals (Oh No). The scene changes again and we finally meet the hero of the story, McCoy. Surprise surprise, McCoy is a Blade Runner, a special type of cop who tracks down and retires replicants. For those of you who have not seen the original movie, a replicant is an advanced type of robot that is almost human, and the way to retire them is with a bullet. In 2019, after the third terran war, there are very few animals left, and anyone who would think of killing one, is not likely to be human. So now there is a Blade Runner on the scene, and a crime that has most likely been committed by a replicant. The only problem is that our Blade Runner McCoy has never had a job harder than watering the chief’s pot plants, so he needs no end of direction by the player. Westwood Studios, the kings of real-time, were responsible for the creation of Blade Runner the game, no mean feat as the owners of the licence have been happy to wait 15 years until they found someone who could do it right. Not being satisfied with having intro¬ duced real time into strategy, Westwood have intro¬ duced the concept into the adventure genre. So while playing the game, every thing that the character does or does not do, affects the whole flow of the game. So if you follow dud leads, you might be responsible for McCoy missing a chance meeting with a suspect. Also if you get stuck, the best thing to do is send McCoy home for a which the box claims to be, directional, colour, volumetric, attenuated and ani¬ mating. Well all those things sounded pretty flash, but what do they mean Mr Dictionary? In non geek terms this means that all the lighting has a source, and a level of brightness, so as things move around in the light, they become brighter, cast shadows and reflections and it is all constantly changing, just like in real life. The camera angles are all well thought out, and movement from scene to scene would be worthy of an Oscar for cinematography. With all this having been done for over 100 scenes, including some copied from the original movie, there is no surprise that this game is very movie like. There are some really cool features within the game, including the ESPER, which is a machine for zooming in on and enhancing pho¬ tos, which is one way of finding clues. Another tool is the KIA, (No, not a ugly looking South East Asian car!) which stores clues including pictures and sound bites, which are able to be reviewed at any time. Probably the best sidetrack to the game is in police headquarters. The practise target maze. This mini game is similar in play style and look to Virtua Cop, but naturally has much better graphics, it has its own scoring system, and is loads of fun to play while waiting for something to happen in the main game. There could be three reasons to buy this game. If you are a technophile, that wants to be up with the latest develop¬ ments, this game is like a guide to modern graphics tech¬ niques. Alternatively if you enjoy a good detective who¬ dunit, Blade Runner has a detailed story line and an intu¬ itive style of play. The last reason is for those people who dedicate their lives to the worship of a certain movie and its associated paraphernalia, but if this is you for Blade Runner, then you have probably bought it already. sleep and check to see if he has any messages on his answer machine. This also means that although the game is basically a "point-and-click” adventure, it is non-lin¬ ear, and can be different every time it is played. Better than bad , it'd good! The graphics in this game are almost indescribable, and for once the screen shots on the box don’t look as good as those in the game. There are a couple of reasons for this. Every screen is constantly being animated, so whether it is a flickering television, in the background, or the strange abundance of really big fans slowly rotat¬ ing, there is always something moving. Probably the most important part of the visual effects is the lighting, HYPER» 81 82 »HYPER REVIEWS PC/MAC Myth - The Fallen Lords Just when you were getting used to the new wave of real time strategy games, Bungie have taken the next step forward atready!^S|2 ; is called to arms. Real time strategy games have been a popular thing ever since Dune 2 wowed the cerebral gaming world out there, and games like Warcraft 2 and Command 6 Conquer took this genre to the top in the online gaming community. This year’s E3 saw an entourage of Command £ Conquer clones, with a couple such as Dark Reign and Total Annihilation capturing the vast majority of the audiences. There was how¬ ever another very impressive strategy title in the making at E3, and unlike most of the other real time strategy games on show, this one’s new features were obvious to all. Bungie, best known amongst Mac gamers for Marathon, have essentially taken RTS (real time strategy) wargaming, and put it in a 3D engine, in a medieval fantasy world, and called it Myth. Myth - The Fallen Lords is set in a fantasy world where a war is raging between the humans and their allies, versus the hordes of undead minions. Rather than follow the current trend of involving resource management and building as the key to success, Myth is a straight up tactical wargame, where you start each mission with a bunch of troops, and they have to see you through to the end. The most impressive thing about Myth is the visuals. Unlike a lot of strategy games around, Myth doesn’t require any sort of abstract thought to follow what's going on, because everything looks so much more realistic with the 3D environ¬ ments. Whilst the environments are 3D, the units in Myth are 2D sprites, although they’re well drawn, and since they’re direction specific, they fit into the 3D environment just fine, although they could have been ani¬ mated a bit better. The environments look second to none in the strategy genre, and look pretty enough that you’ll feel guilty for spilling blood all over them. Having a pretty hill does not sendeth the jaw dropping FIGHT THE UNREAD HOnRES AND TAKE THEin SEASON LIFT TICKETS Meet the family however, but watching a molitov cocktail sail through the air (smoke trailing of course), bounce at what looks to be a very realistic path off the side of the hill ahead, and then blow your opponents arms and legs off in a shower of limbs, blood and shrapnel, is pret¬ ty darn cool. Everything is calcu¬ lated very accurately, so an explo¬ sion looks real in that it affects its surroundings in a realistic man¬ ner. Naturally things look best if you've got a 3DFX card, but the game runs pretty well without one too, so you don't have to shell out for a card as well if you don’t own one. Sounds good... Thank Cod Bungie have realised what you need to do with sound to give a computer game extra character, because Myth has the most outstanding use of amusing speech samples in a real time strategy game to date. Essentially, Myth has taken the Warcraft 2 approach to use of speech samples, with units coming up with comments that ooze personality, not only when you click on them, but also when something happens to them in the game. The dwarves are particularly hilarious, as they grumble about having to walk somewhere, complain if you’ve got other troops standing in the way, and even mumble an admittance to accidently blowing up friendly units with their grenade attacks. Myth also includes extra speech in the single player missions which make the missions seem far much more cinematic. For example, the second mission involves you hunting down a traitor to your side, and your band comes across a farmer who knows where the traitor is. Fie verbally beckons you to follow him, complains when you aren’t following him, and reacts to enemy attacks as well (although not in a way that makes saving his life any BEEN nunniNG HIS FEET ON CAnPET FOR AGES... HYPER» 83 84 »HYPER Myth Vs DR 8 TA Now it must first be pointed out that Myth is a different style of game to Dark Reign and Total Annihilation, but it is another strategy game that’s been released not long afterwards, so for those of you still to purchase your strategy game for this year, hopefully this will help. The main difference in terms of gameplay is that Myth does not include resource manage¬ ment, and as a result, your tactics don’t revolve around building up a force that is sufficient to defeat the enemy, then do it. Instead Myth is about pure battle tactics, and this may appeal less to those that enjoyed the building element in older RTS games. Myth is definitely a step ahead when it comes to aesthetics and a physical engine, but there are elements like number of unit types and control over unit AI that have just been done better in DR 6 TA. Sometimes getting your units to do exactly what you want can be a drag, and on the whole the interface is not as good. However, as a raw strategy challenge Myth is much tougher going than either DR or TA. For those that have little time to play games and are wanting the multiplayer game that gives shorter games, Myth’s set number of units ensure battles can’t last forever. In the end Myth is not better or worse than DR or TA, it’s just different. easier). The music (what little there is), is at the better end of the ambient fantasy music spec¬ trum. In terms of advancements, Myth is really only a ground breaker in the fact that the game uses a 3D engine. Essentially, the camera angle is fixed at a particular angle to level ground, and you essentially just move the viewpoint around the battlefield. The camera can be turned left and right, and can also be made to arc around the centre of the screen... so for example, if you were looking at the back of a pillar, and wanted to see the front, you could pan around to do so. Now there are good and bad things about the way the dynamic viewpoint works. On the good side, this method of viewing the battle enables you to check out the terrain very quickly, and in Myth, using the terrain to your advantage is essential to victory. On the down side, and this is more of an interface issue than anything else, but you sometimes have difficulty moving the camera around if you’re near the edge of the map, as the camera doesn’t want to pan over an area that isn’t included, so whilst looking at most of the map is really easy, the boundaries can often only be viewed one way. The 3D engine not only gives us a bet¬ ter view of the battlefield, but also affects combat directly with the amaz¬ ingly accurate physics. The terrain has a huge effect on the outcome of a battle, and elevation is most important with projectile weapons being far more effec¬ tive when used from higher ground than the target. When planning a battle, even paying attention to the slope of a ditch in the ground can be important, because if a grenade were to bounce on a surface, the angle of impact will determine where the grenade goes off. If you expected Myth to include dozens of weird and wonderful medieval warriors and monsters then be prepared for disappointment, as the game only has sixteen unit types, which really could have been improved to make longterm appeal greater. However, there are some cool fea¬ tures which balance out things like this. Firstly, units that sur¬ vive the mission are kept track of, and you can end up taking them in to later missions (even the next mission). Units that have more combat experience will fight better, so keeping track of unit health can help you ensure you save your big guns for when you need them. Many units also have a special ability, for example, the Journeyman can heal friendly units, and your dwarves can place explosive charges (which when used effectively is an awesome tactic). Huh-huh, He said hard There's one thing that should be pointed out about Myth before the casual gamer runs out and buys the game... it's bloody difficult. Now don't get me wrong, the general gist of playing the game is quite simple, but the key to victory lies in careful planning and rather anal organisation of your troops. This is one of those games where saving frequently is necessary, since you may spend ages getting your units to a certain spot on the battle field, only to screw up by forget¬ ting to stop your dwarf from blowing up all your infantry once the battle begins. Myth may have instant appeal with those that aren’t into strategy games normally, simply because the game looks so good. If you do play the game, and get wiped out straight away, don’t walk away in dis¬ gust, because you were probably just one click away from victory at one stage. Besides managing your units carefully, constantly checking your surroundings is a must, as units such as the wight explodes upon death, taking out anyone nearby as well. The undead minions can also hide underwa¬ ter, which makes for some very nasty ambush attacks. The comical edge that gets added to Myth due to the common situation of accidently killing your own troops makes the game amusing in multiplayer, especially on a LAN (Local Area Network), since you can hear your opponents cursing and swearing as they spend more time killing themselves rather than you... it’s great. Players can choose from a host of heraldic shields, and use practically any colour combi¬ nation to make themselves look distinct. There are many types of game to choose from too, ranging from last man standing, through to a scavenger hunt where you have to locate balls (yes, balls) around the map, with the interest¬ ing twist of being able to move them around the map to make things tough for your oppo¬ nent. There’s also king of the hill, capture the flag, and a few variations on the ball games, so there should be plenty of multiplayer variety for everyone. Some may be scared off by the difficulty, but it's so easy to learn how to play, and looks so good, that most will dig it MULTIPLAYER Great. Makes for fun multiplayer gaming, but two or more cautious players will be sitting there all day OVERALL RE Myth is simply pure tactical warfare with the best visuals in a strategy game yet... it's great HYPER» 85 86 »HYPER REVIEWS PC CART Precision Racing Now the International video game racing circuit has a newcomer , team Microsoft. pulls on the cigarette advertisement suit and takes Cart for a spin. CART is Bill’s latest attempt to win our support/cash and quite a bloody good racing sim to boot. The comparisons this game will receive to F1CP2 are inevitable, so I won’t get into them here. One thing I will say though is that the ’’garage”, where you customise your car, is so full-on that even the most colonically irrigated F1CP2 fan will seriously consider turning to the dark side. You can mess with everything from your shocks, brakes, aerodynamics, tyres, mir¬ ror angles and even how many CD’s you can stack in the car’s audio system ... OK, maybe not, but that would be cool too. It’s a real pity that you can’t design your own car colours though, as they depend on which racing team you select at the start. After you’ve completely hammered the car’s performance, you can ask the engineer what he thinks of your pathetic efforts and he gives you some rather good advice like ’’tyre pressure affects your cornering ability”, so you get to learn a bit about indycars and racing. Weekend warriors... There are three race options to choose from, depending on how serious you are about the game. Quick Race is just that - you choose a track and team and then jump in the cockpit and put your foot down. The two more in-depth options are Race Weekend and Full Race Season. Here you are actually competing in an attempt to improve your overall standing and statistics. To complete a full race season would take you days of gameplay as you have to race over 3 ’’days” on each track (Friday Practice all the way to Sunday’s Race) with about 2 races per day, and each track is about 25 laps - with 17 happily like this until I went over a mate’s place who had two thrust- master wheels set up. After racing like this for a few hours with the sound way up I felt frightfully inadequate. Novices need not fear too much, as the game features many variable difficulty and con¬ trols levels to help you learn how to play. There are various "driving assists” like auto-shifting, spin control, non-skid etc to help you out, and if you turn them all on the car drives itself around the track to show you how a real pro would handle it. But there’s a flip- side - take all the driving assists off and you have to be Fangio to even think about controlling the damn thing. Of course, what would any rac¬ ing game be if you couldn’t let your mates kick your ass, and that is exactly what CART lets you do - via LAN, modem, serial cable, Internet or Microsoft’s Internet Gaming Zone. There’s also an in-depth online help, racing tips, track guides and heaps of videos presented in the form of a "racing school” where some hotshot speed-demon gives you some tips on wall avoidance. If this is the calibre of Microsoft games to come, then their plans for world domination are heading in the right direction. tracks and 17 authentic teams from the 1997 circuit to choose from, that’s a helluva lot of jolt and Doritos. MS have also spent a lot of time in faithfully recreating the circuits - on the Surfer’s Paradise track I could have sworn I zipped by the hotel I spent schoolies week in, but at 30okph anyone can make mistakes. The graphics in this sucker are pretty darn amazing. With a 3DFX card (and what hardcore gamer doesn't have one of those babies?) you actually get a sense of travelling ball-tearingly fast as the track whips past at a silky smooth frame rate (and it just wouldn’t be Microsoft if the sponsors’ logos on the grand¬ stands weren’t hi-res bitmaps). There’s a trade-off, though - the tracks take ages to load and the game hogs most of your system resources and needs at least 16MB RAM to run, but man, it’s worth it. CART also has Direct 3D support which isn’t bad at all, and also 640x480 and 320x200 mode for those who still think Doom is cutting-edge technology. The sound effects are everything that you’d expect, from the whine of the engine to the skidding around corners and collisions with cars, walls and spectators which I did unfortunately a little too often. Pump it up loud and be happy, but ditch the music option - late 8o’s soft cock guitar rock is not my idea of a "cool sound¬ track, man”. Loss of control ... The only real complaint I have with the gameplay is the con¬ trols. Firstly, put away any thoughts of controlling this game with the keyboard - you’ll find yourself smashing into so many walls you’d keep a virtual panel beater in business for eternity, joystick is the way to go for us gamers not quite hardcore enough to fork out the dosh for a wheel, and I was playing quite AVAILABLE: NOW CATEGORY: RACING PLAYERS: 1-8 (LAN) 1-4 (NET) PUBLISHER: MICROSOFT PRICE: *79.95 RATING: G FREAKOMETER Probably too complex and difficult for novice gamers OVERALL 5 □ A great racing game that would be better if you didn't have to own a steering wheel to control it properly. Great for racing freaks HYPER» 87 88 »HYPER REVIEWS PC Take No Prisoners H takel no prisoners in thii bloody action romp... cm that ain’t the aim of this game. Doom created way too many clones, and Quake looks to have done the same thing. So when someone tells you that Raven are doing another action shooter in a 3D environment, your hand almost involuntarily prepares to slap your fore¬ head as you say ’’Not another Hexen game already?!”. No... far from it actually. Ravensoft have been exploring the idea of using a top down view with a 3D engine, to bring you something that for lack of a better way of describing it, is Cauntlet with a 3D engine, or souped up clone of PSX shoot¬ er, Loaded. The main similarity between Take No Prisoners and the id software 1st person shooters is that you control the game just like Doom or Quake, but it just looks different. TNP is set in post apocalyptic San Antonio, where society, has suffice to say, become a tad chaotic, and mutants and punks rule the streets by force. Unfortunately, the radiation is going to wipe out even the toughest gun toter, and your mission (should you choose to accept it or not) is to infiltrate "the Dome” which is a man made shelter from the radiation that you need the secret to so you can ensure your survival, and the rest of your buddies. Bird's Cye View Raven used this engine for another recent release, Mageslayer, but instead of just having a top down view that simply moves up, down, left and right, TNP also allows you to fix the view from slightly above and behind your char¬ acter (Slade), and since the controls are just like in Doom (turn, move forward and back, strafe, etc), the game essentially is like Doom in that you turn around to see what's coming from a different direction, except you also see yourself in the shot (like Tomb Raider, except with the camera from almost on top). The sprites for the characters are kind of simple, and the animation isn’t wonderful, however if you’ve got a 3DFX card, the smooth tex¬ tures and the coloured lighting make the game as a whole look great. There’s transparencies with windows and water, and of course with weapon effects. The way creatures die in an erup¬ tion of blood and flying limbs is very cheesy and over the top, but quite satisfying. Duke Nukem 3D earned a lot of fans due to Duke’s smart arse remarks, and TNP also delivers in this department. Slade even sounds a bit like the ol’ Duke, so it’s obvious where the inspiration for the character design came from. There’s plenty of samples for pretty much every sort of event which happens in the game. Smarter than the average monster In typical Ravensoft fashion, the level design and first person play has obviously been worked upon with great care and attention, and compared to your average first person shooter, the monsters are a little more intelligent. Sure, a good Quake or Doom player will be able to zip around and take down most monsters quite easily, but there seem to be more situations where avoiding enemy attacks are difficult, making combat generally more nerve wracking than Quake for example. It’s not all just about blowing things up though, as the game is essentially all about you getting into "the Dome” and retriev¬ ing a certain crystal that will ensure you and your corporate buddies can set up your own Dome and survive the holocaust, etc. This means you’ll be travelling from zone to zone around San Antonio, and with twenty different zones to go to, you really do get a sensation of being in a big city. There are different means of transport from zone to zone, including a truck, the subway, and by boat in the sewers. The only thing annoying here is that you’d think that once you had a truck, you’d be able to drive wherever you wanted, but unfortunately it doesn’t quite work like that, and to figure out how to get to a particular zone may take a few trips by all sorts of means. There are also "in level” vehicles, which you can use to run over your opponents, which saves you heaps of ammo and frustration. From computer terminals around the city, and from the corpses of your fallen enemies you can obtain computer files including personal logs which help give clues as to where certain things are hid¬ den, and passcodes to give you access to new areas. There’s also funky things like operating a crane arm in a far off room to do things like pick up a faulty laser cannon and use it to wreak some havoc and destroy a part of the room that you don’t otherwise have the power to do. You’ve also got a wrist mounted computer which you can use to get info on all the weapons you col¬ lect (all 2i of them!), all the items you can find (22 types), the enemies you have encountered (22 types), the various maps you get from computer terminals, and also look through all the files you have collected. The game also includes a variety of multiplayer modes, including capture the crystal (flag), straight deathmatch, assassin mode (you have a particular player to kill), and more. Take No Prisoners is a pleasant break from the generic first person shooter games that are coming out nowadays, but with that tried and tested first person style control method. If having to explore and go back through old levels drove you nuts in Hexen 1 6 2, you may get peeved with TNP, but oth¬ erwise it is a decent action title with enough puzzles and variety to keep most gamers entertained. AVAILABLE: NOW CATEGORY: ACTION PLAYERS: 1-8 PUBLISHER: RAVENSOFT PRICE: $89.95 RATING: MA15 + REQ: P90, WIN 95, 16MB, 2 \ CD-ROM FREAkOMETER inim Tricky enough to control to possibly scare off the novice gamers. OVERALL B1 Whilst not overly original in some ways, Take No Prisoners does offer a change from the entourage of 1st person shooters, whilst still playing like one HYPER» 89 90 »HYPER REVIEWS PC Incubation _ He’s net known ter sitting on eggs or anything, we just thought might like Incubation. Those crazy German guys at Blue Byte have developed a fine reputation for creating rewarding and accessible strategy games. Through the likes of The Settlers and the Battle Isle series, they have removed many of the more arcane aspects of hardcore titles and delivered resource management and wargaming fun to the mainstream gamer. With Incubation they’re doing it again. Only this time it is turn-based, squad level combat that receives the Blue Byte treatment, and instead of using cuteness and accessibility everything looks decidedly sci-fi and scary. You play Corporal Bratt, a space marine based on the planet Scayra. During your stay, the energy shield that safely encloses your research colony from the Scay'Ger, Scayra’s peaceful inhabitants, fails and a human virus is released into the atmos¬ phere. The normally friendly Scay’Ger end up mutating into fan¬ tastic killing machines plucked directly from the Alien films, and so decide to kill you - as mutants generally do. As Bratt, you lead a troop of fellow marines (you usually have about five or six under your command) to protect the colony and allow time to escape Scayra. Score some AtimulantA... The thirty or so missions are structured in an interesting man¬ ner. From the map screen, which shows the threatened colony, you can select an area to enter from a choice of two or three. Most will transport you to a proper mission (in which you will have to eliminate all Scay’Ger, find an object, reach a certain room or door, or just survive for a certain length of time, among many others), while a few will occasionally take you to scenes of other battles with the Scay’Ger (these give you the opportunity to pick up items that your fallen comrades won’t be needing any longer). The one location constantly available is the supply shuttle where you can upgrade weapons (from assault rifles to flamethrowers) and other equipment (from medikits to jet packs and, urn, "stimulants”). Initially, Incubation appears a little daunting to play. I suspect this is mainly due to the slightly confusing interface and the fact that I got absolutely whipped on the first mis¬ sion I undertook. Barely half an hour later though, the con¬ fusing interface was really becoming rather helpful and I was contemplating my next move midway into the third mission. Once l had settled in. Incubation proved to be a bit on the easy side. R&D funding withdrawn ... For a start, there’s no research or technological develop¬ ment to worry about (as in X-Com or even Syndicate), leav¬ ing you to concentrate solely on combat itself. This would be fine if there was more to the combat - but it is too basic and lacks variety. You can’t kneel, crouch or lie down, for example. You can’t exchange weapons, ammo, or items between your men during a mission. You can't start even moving one person, switch to another, then return to the first - you have to either complete their move first or switch before you start their move. Disregard for these actions doesn’t ruin the gameplay, but it does noticeably limit your options. Against that, something I originally considered a flaw (that is, the inability of your men to carry more than one weapon each), actually becomes a big plus. It forces you to specialise the members of your squad (you’ll have heavy and light units, those equipped for brute force or as medical units, etc) and really plan ahead. It also contributes to their personality - something that is developed more in Incubation than most other games, thanks to the cut- scenes, briefings, and mid-mission speech. The most telling failing, however, is the rather simple-minded enemy AI. They are dumb, to be honest. As an unfortunate conse¬ quence of their stupidity, your own tactics are often reduced to a similar base level. But Incubation isn’t really aimed at the veteran strategy or war-gamer. Its excellent graphics (with plenty of blood-soaked action amid dark, gloomy architecture) are instantly appealing, and the numerous views (both third and first-person) ensure that you’ll feel fully immersed in the Scayran universe. Despite the faults mentioned above, the gameplay does get addictive and ultimately, while never scaling dizzy heights, creates a good, solid and sat¬ isfying game. I Hang on, just what is "turn-based, squad level combat”? Incubation provides a great introduction to the charms of this genre, so I figured a bit of an explanation might be in order to tempt all you TBSLC novices to take the plunge. Well, the turn-based bit should be obvious - you move your little blokes around, then after¬ wards the computer (or your mate) get to move his little blokes around, and so on. Each member of your squad has a certain amount of "action points” to do things with each turn. Moving, shooting, collecting or using items, even opening doors, all drain your APs. A vital tactic is to utilise what is called "opportunity fire”. This means that rather than using up all your APs in your turn, you instead set your little bloke to stand guard - perhaps at a door, or an important cross¬ road. Then, if any enemies move within range, your little bloke can shoot at them during your opponent’s turn. Also worth bearing in mind is that line of sight is crucial. Despite the fact that you can see the layout of the whole level, you can’t see enemies until your little blokes can see them. This means that the direction they are facing at the end of their turn is hugely important. If it sounds somewhat complex, believe me, it isn’t. Once you’ve mastered this, you’ll be ready to take the step up to more demanding TBSLCs like the great X-Com Apocalypse. - •mm l«Mwr (II riMtfftf I r < V .. f • r f SIR. THEY RE LIGHTING THEIR FARTS AGAIN! /** • IW* i. Un». I T ■U 1 ' f ■ f* . , f f ' ^ ********* THE HYPER OFFICE ON MONDAY MORNING V SOMEONE TURN ON A LIGHT! AVAILABLE: NOW CATEGORY: STRATEGY/ACTION PLAYERS: 1-4 PUBLISHER: BLUE BYTE PRICE: *79.95 RATING: MAI5 4 REQ: PENTIUM, 16MB RAM, SUPPORTS 3BFX Turn-based strategy isn't for everyone, but this really is very easy to get into OVERALL HR Incubation is a more than decent game and, with the seductive bonus of some gorgeous visuals that rival most 3D action games, is a perfect entry-level strategy title HYPER» 91 92 »HYPER REVIEWS PC Worms 2 I loved the original Worms and the idea of a sequel is some¬ thing I have been quite looking forward to. One doubt had crossed my mind though - that was, how could Team 17 improve on the first game? They would have to tread a fine line between making Worms 2 different enough for it to be worthwhile buying again and yet not so different that it completely ruined the appeal of the game. Well, judging by the presence of a certain Big Rubber Stamp somewhere on this page, I think they’ve done it! To get you into the spirit of this fantastic game, let me describe an incident that occurred while my friend and I were playing. Both of us started this particular map with a worm placed on a high ledge. I had first turn, so I selected an Uzi and pumped a full round into my hapless opponent, leaving him half dead. For his turn, my friend decided to be a bit tricky. The plan was to hook a rope to a ledge above, shimmy halfway up, drop a stick of dynamite next to my worm, leap off the rope onto another nearby ledge and scamper clear of the blast. It went well, until he jumped onto the ledge, landed on a sloped section, slid off and landed back where he started. Next, the dynamite exploded, sending my worm flying into a wall on the left and my friend’s worm to the right. Unfortunately for him the explosion dislodged a landmine that flew across the screen and settled at the feet of one of his other worms. It then blew up, sending this second worm spiralling through the air to land next to - guess what? - another landmine! Hahahahahahaha! At the end of his turn, my friend (I can’t name him, cos it’s too embar- rassing) almost managed to kill one of my worms, but in doing so had actually killed two of his own! I still haven’t stopped laughing - hahahah! See? New ways to kill worms... So, Worms 2, then. Each player has a team of worms (between one and eight) randomly scattered over a landscape roughly two screens wide, and an arsenal of ludicrous guns and things with which to kill each other. In addition to the original weapons (bazookas, air strikes, Streetfighter-style punches, various guns, etc) are several very cool new ones. The mmi-gun is absolutely brilliant, since it can tear a huge whole through any obstacle that separates you from your target and does masses of damage. The homing cluster bomb is great - it explodes once, splitting into five shells that home in on the desired worm. Less traditional weapons include the old woman (who wanders around chatter¬ ing until she blows up), the sheep (it leaps around going "Baaa!” until detonated by you), the postal strike (a plane flies overhead dropping five highly explosive letters), the banana bomb (it truly is the ’’soft fruit of doom”), and a priceless Ming vase (it, urn, explodes as well). There are also plenty of others (gotta love the petrol bomb), plus several extra special ones not even mentioned in the manual. Also useful are the parachute and bungee rope for negotiating those haz¬ ardous cliffs, as well as girders and drills for a bit of on-the-spot map renovation. A bad case off wind... When it’s your turn you have the opportunity to select which worm to use. Then you have sixty seconds to move them around, pick a weapon, fire, and make your escape. Most weapons (grenades, bombs, bananas and bazookas) will require you to aim them using a little cross-hair that floats about an inch away from your worm, then hold the spacebar to determine the power of the shot or throw. Others, like the air, napalm, postal and super sheep strikes, need targeting - you click on a worm and the plane will try its best to drop its load on them. Making life difficult for all of these weapons is the wind. This is indicated by a little bar at the bottom right of screen. Paying attention to this is vital, because ignoring the direction and strength of the wind can mean the difference between firing your bazooka right over the hill or having it turn in mid-air and head straight back at you. Everything in Worms 2 is able to be customised. There’s a team editor for you to create, name and give voice to your own special worms. You can select which weapons (and how much damage they do, when and where they explode, etc) you want to take in the weapons editor, as well as the occurrence of new weapons appearing in "crate drops” during a game. The ter¬ rain editor allows you to randomly generate a new map or design your own with the simple paint program. Best though is the options editor that covers everything from the fuse time of landmines to the land sink rate in a sudden death match to the starting hit points for each worm to the amount of time you have to find cover after firing a weapon to whatever you want, basically. Just go in and have a fiddle, that’s my advice. The great thing about Worms 2 is that you’re initially drawn in by the silliness of the weapons and the cuteness of the worms. But after a while, what keeps you playing is the superbly subtle strategy and planning that goes into becom¬ ing good at it. And even then, it remains a very silly and very cute game, too! 94 »HYPER REVIEWS PC When Riven was first released in Australia a large retail chain organised for three Baby-Boomers to enter the Guiness book of records for the longest single game playing session. Forty hours later when all of their eyeballs had dried out and they were still trying to figure out what that mouse thingy was for, the Guiness book informed them that they were cut¬ ting back on stupid achievements, and would not be enter¬ ing the feat into the book. Now if they wanted a record they probably should have found someone who could finish the game within forty hours, any GenXer would have done! The reason for choosing fogies for this attempt becomes more and more obvious the longer one plays Riven. The game very quickly dumps the player into various levels of utter frustra¬ tion, boredom, and tedium, and only a morbid thought that one day the game could be completed drives the player on. Riven does have some very redeeming qualities, but it is the strong willed player that will finish this game. ATyat 2? Riven is the Sequel to Myst, a game that became famous for islands filled with bizarre puzzles, beautiful still pictures, and a storyline that becomes more warped as time progress¬ es. The story follows on directly from Myst, where on return to the mad scientist’s study he sends the player on a quest to the land of Riven. The land of Riven has some remarkable similarities to the land of Myst. There are more islands than you could poke a stick at, the puzzles are even more devious and there are still loads of absolutely gorgeous still frames. However Riven seems much more alive than Myst ever did, due to a couple of factors. Firstly there is the occasional person wan¬ dering around, not that it is possible to interact with them, but they add to a storyline. Secondly there are quite a few anima¬ tions, especially when moving from one island to the next, which puts Myst’s single animation to shame, but is still not nearly enough. The interesting thing about Riven as opposed to Myst is that, Myst gave the player a run down on the story as it went along. Whereas Riven seems to put the story secondary to solving puzzles, and it is a long way into the game by the time the player is given any clues as to what is going on. It seems as if the designers realised that the game was purely puzzles when they were play testing, and decided they should put a storyline in at a late stage in development. Riven has many parts that give it a feel of exceptional quali¬ ty. For those who have a four-channel surround sound system hooked up to their sound card, prepared to be totally blown away. Apart from the clanking, whirring and hissing of the lever puz¬ zles, there are ambient sound of insects, water and wind. The rich imagery that assaults the eyes of the player in just about every screen is incredible. Riven takes off from Myst, with a lush tapestry of pretty scenes, a weird conflagration of devices, and a cartful of strange transportation vehicles. The water scenes are spectacular, with some of National Geographic’s photos looking less realistic. Net just stills? The introduction of animation in Riven when moving around the islands is a welcome step up, and players should try and hold off from just mov¬ ing backwards and forwards on the wood hopper, which is truly a joyous rollercoaster ride. There are other bits of animation added purely for effect, like the annoying little bugs in the forest. This does help punters to feel that they are actually playing a game rather than being frustrated by a beautiful picture book. During setup and installation, which is a fairly easy process, Riven gives the player the chance to set the brightness and contrast to the best level. Unfortunately the monitor used in reviewing the game did not have enough range to properly adjust the settings. This left the reviewer wishing for a Gamma correction facility built into the game, especially on those screens which were dark and used loads of dark brown and black. Deciding whether to give Riven the thumbs up or doom it to an early release as a nice price game, with the thumbs down result was a difficult deci¬ sion. The final thought was to give it a slight thumbs up and recommend that if the idea of a puzzle game sounds sort of interesting then it would be a really good present for one of your par¬ ents. The theory being that you would get loads of good karma for giving, and it would be you that reaped the final benefit from having the game in the house. Of course if Myst is one of your all time favourites, then you should be rushing out the door now on your way to find the nearest 24 hour games shop. Which prompts the question as to why the local Food Plus doesn’t sell that game you absolutely have to have at one am on a Sunday morning? AVAILABLE: NOW CATEGORY: ARVENTURE/PUZZLE PLANERS: 1 PUBLISHER: RER ORR PRICE: $99.95 RATING: G REQ: PI00, WIN 95, 16MR RAM, 4XCR ROM On one hand, overly challenging. On the other, it’s the perfect mainstream market game. Either way, only freaks will finish. OVERALL BE A stunning game, even if mostly utterly confusing . If you liked Myst, you’ll dig it HYPER» 95 REVIEWS PC AFL 'o8 Perhaps the most hotly anticipated sports title in this country, B bounces up to review AFL '98 QC lil CL >■ Z o Okay, here it is. You’ve all been asking for it. For as long as I can remember, Hyper has been receiving let¬ ters demanding to know when a decent AFL game is coming to your particular gaming system. So, after a pretty good stab at Rugby League, EA have turned their attention to this country’s other major football code. Now it’s finally here, and I think they’ve done another pretty good job. I ought to make clear from the outset that we received a nearly complete beta for review. This meant that, for instance, we could only play Exhibition matches between Adelaide and Brisbane (which is why they're the only teams in the grabs!). Nor were all the players' names and photos totally accurate. Obviously these "beta features’’ won’t make any difference to the gameplay, and EA have assured us they will be fixed up. Every other feature of the game, however, is open to praise or criticism like any other game. We have to assume that the copy we’ve been sent is very close to the final version you’ll see sitting in the shops. When we do get our hands on a boxed copy I’m sure we’ll update you on any further improvements. Just like on TV One thing that certainly won’t need any improve¬ ment is the graphics (even though a 3DFX patch would be very welcome). Each game takes place in a vast and spectacular stadium. This monolith is definitely of MCG proportions and really does provide that "big match atmosphere” so important to sports titles. I’m not entirely convinced by the overly large patch of grass between the boundary line and the fence - at most AFL grounds it’s only a few metres, except here it’s closer to thirty! The animation and player movement is just about spot-on. The basics are right - running, kicking, and handballing (although 1 have noticed that occa¬ sionally a player will appear to handball in one direc¬ tion, but the ball will go in another - something that rugby games do all the time). More sophisticated movements will surprise you from time to time - bril¬ liant one-handed marks are most impressive, players get taken out off-the-ball, some get up injured after taking a mark and limp around for a few seconds, oth¬ ers stretch their leg muscles before the bounce restarts play, and I’ve even seen an opponent (an Adelaide player who shall remain nameless) shoulder charge my player right in the back, causing me to spill the ball and fall flat on my face. The sound is somewhat subdued. The crowd never really gets too worked up, unless a goal is scored. FX, featuring the appropriate grunts and the sound of leather against pigskin, are fine. And Bruce McAvaney (who supplies the commentary), after having to say the names of all AFL players in a variety of contexts as well as things like "What a brilliant goal!”, often sounds more exhausted than anything else. But he does do it well. EA have included all the options you would expect - there’s a Season play, the Final 8 semi-final series, a Pre-Season knock-out competition, and Exhibition games. All the real players are featured, you can pick your team and choose positions and tactics. There is no player draft between seasons because - bloody hell! - can you imagine how complicated that would be?! Amusingly, the weather conditions are limited to either overcast or rain with not a hint of sunshine in sight. Quite controllable Not quite as complicated are the controls. A four- button joypad is recommended, but the keyboard will do the job. There are four main controls: with the ball you can kick, handball, bounce, and use a speed burst or evasive technique; without the ball you can tackle/charge down, switch between players, speed burst or jostle, and try to win the ball in a ruck. It’s all fairly easy to get to grips with, especially useful are the arrows that indicate the direc¬ tion of your teammates so you can kick or handball to them even if they aren’t yet on screen. The only thing I found a bit tough to handle was marking against the computer. To put it simply, the computer is too good! It’s much better in a two player game where both of you are equally hopeless at it. I did notice a few AI idiosyncrasies during play. Sometimes players will quite happily run straight past the ball without picking it up, which understandably becomes very annoying. More frequent, and more annoying, is the fact that your attempts at a handball (usually when you try to play on after taking a mark) are often ignored by your teammates and the ball goes to ground. Although to be fair the computer also suffers from this deficiency as well. But, to be honest, all sports games suffer from similar AI problems - and more importantly, you never really feel cheated because it’s the same for both sides (and more so in a two player game). In all, AFL '98 is a remarkably good sim. It’s not as pol¬ ished as the best soccer games (Int. Superstar or Worldwide Soccer), but I enjoyed it far more than any rugby league or union sim that I’ve played. Needless to say, AFL fans will just peak over this. 1 ;f§ ; ' . s £■ te ■ ^ V V HYPER» 97 7th legion Fallout Ignition PC PC/Mac PC rururbu , now [huodhV: sinnucv pi urns: l-B PUBlISHfH: miCHOPHOSE PRUT TBR PRlinO: TBR bib : Pina. lBmB nnm. win as « 4 .u tiM [s 7th Legion is a real time strategy game, which for all intents and purposes is a complete Command 8 Conquer clone, with a slightly futuristic feel to it. Set on Earth, the battle is between the rich folk who left the planet once famine and pollution became way too much of a drag, and the poor folks who stayed behind, as the rich folk have returned to reclaim the planet. Compared to the last volley of RTS games we’ve seen lately, the 7th Legion looks like it had a tight budget in the art department, and whilst not butt ugly, it certainly fails to be visually attractive next to a game like Dark Reign, or to an even greater extent, Total Annihilation. 7th Legion has possibly the worst terrain navigation in any RTS game to date, with units requiring you to nurse maid them around the map, not from enemy attacks, but from things like rocks that require use of a brain to get around. There was an attempt at adding something new, with these random battle cards that have magic for you to use. Essentially all they do is detract from the idea of planning a strategy since you can either be thwarted by some random stroke of misfortune, or given the sudden opportunity to waste the enemy. The whole game seems geared towards encouraging a grunt rush... which is unanimously regarded as the biggest killer of gameplay in this genre. Not only is it simply a pain in the arse to get your units to do what you want, but the enemy A 1 is moronic, with seemingly no logical approach to taking out your forces. If you put a large force near their base, they just keep sending a stream of units to be slaughtered by your force. Heck, go and make a cup of tea once you’ve built up a force if you like. Come on MicroProse... You were behind Civilization 1 8 2, two of the best strategy games of all time. So why on earth is your first foray into real time strategy so shonky? bD “ID 5 D HUHIlHBlf : HOW [RUCW: BPS pirnns: 1 PUBlISHfH: mu op in v pb iff: so a. as nniifiS: mis* niS: pi on. win as, isms nnm Interplay have delivered a classic RPC. Fallout isn’t chock full of groundbreaking graphics or new concepts - but what it does have is some great adventuring and an original plot, making it one of the more entertaining RPGs of late. Set in a post-nuclear Los Angeles, you are a Vault Dweller who has been living inside a big tin can under the ground since you were born. When the water purifier blows a fuse, the overseer sends you out into the outside world for the first time. Can you save the inhabitants of Vault 13, or will you unwittingly bring about their doom? Haha! The character development in Fallout is top notch, with you being able to allocate a variety of skills and quirks to your player making each creation unique - thus making Fallout extremely re-playable. Your little character is also animated on screen according to what you equip him or her with, making the whole character nurturing in Fallout feel all the more ’’real’’. As you discover surrounding towns, you’ll meet a whole host of NPCs with whom you may communicate. Depending on your intelligence and charisma, your dialogue choices will vary, and it will be up to you whether you want to talk tough, be funny or charming. The game plays in real-time, and your first mission must be achieved within 150 days, though when combat is initiated it is turn based. This is a good thing. Sometimes, you’ll appreciate the ability to swap between weapons and change ammo without having to worry about losing valuable attacking time. You do have a certain amount of action points though - so use these wisely. The combat is great fun, and the variety of enemies, huge array of weapons (from sledgehammers to rocket launchers) and character skills makes this a winner. When I was meant to be reviewing other games this issue, I just couldn’t help but sit up till all hours of the morning playing Fallout. Utterly addictive! Bb mnmt: now (Ruoonv: nouns pirnns l-E PUBlISHfH: umsm PHIff: $ 73.35 HHIinU: SB* HiB: Pino, Bms nnm Traditionally, PC racing games are awfully serious. Your average PC racing fanatic is far more concerned about wether or not the driving model accounts for what happens when an insect hits the windscreen than wether or not the whole experience was genuinely fun. A serious breath of fresh air comes in the form of Ignition, which is essentially a top down racer that’s not particularly serious, immediately playable, and quite addictive. Actually of all things the view point reminds me of Mageslayer and Take No Prisoners, with that top down view and mip mapped environments that make everything look smooth and polished. Most remarkable was the fact that the game ran in 640x480 on a P166, and without use of a 3DFX card, pushed out a really polished, smooth, playable racing game. Particularly cool are the skidmarks you leave all over the track, with hairpin corners being well decorated by the end of the race. To help add that action/arcadey feel to the game, each of the courses has traps and shortcuts to make things more interesting. Depending on which vehicle you’ve chosen to drive, different traps will be more or less of a danger to you. Half the time, the courses themselves are hazardous themselves, with the potential to drive right off a cliff a permanent source of worry. If you’ve got a joystick, or a steering wheel and pedals then Ignition supports them for you, although you don’t really need them, as this is one of the only PC racing games that plays half decently with the keyboard. For those of you that want to play multiplayer, but assumed their lack of a network was a problem, you’ll be pleased to hear Ignition supports split screen gaming. With seven tracks to race, and eleven different vehicles to hoon around in, there’s enough of Ignition to go the distance, well at least for more than a couple of nights. A good simple, fun racing game for the not so anal. ? —11 SY-L 4 * i| MmR: DAN TOOSE ELIOT FISH DAN TOOSE LOW LEVEL MURDER... DEATH... KILL? Playstation. AVAILABLE NOW FOR TH htmdly distributed by Ri Midsix HI llit cruet ire www.Kiteractive.viltage.com.au THE ULTIMATE 3D SHOOTER FOR THE PLAYSTATION ftNMMTB V ) MQ PUBLISHED BY SHINY ENTERTAINMENT INC. DISTRIBUTED BY INTERPLAY PRODUCTIONS LTD. © SHINY ENTERTAINMENT INC. MOK LOGO AND ALL RELATED CHARACTERS ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS OF SHINY ENTERTAINMENT INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. tRageslager Hetstarm Resident toil PC PC PC huhiihbu ; now (HIICORV: Renan PlWHS: 1-16 pubushib: czi PBItt: TBR BHIinC: TBR HtU.PlOO. IB RIB RRm. UJIR 95 HU HIIHBIT.- now (HUB OB V: STRRTTBV pihvihs. i-mui Ti PBHt: TBR BHIIPC: c PUBlISHtB. Rt Illusion HiauiHtmtnrS: pioo. turn 95. ibrib RRRl. 1HTD-ROR1 HUHIlHBlt: nOUJ (HUCUBV: RTTIOR pihvibs : 1 PBItt: $79.95 BHTIBC: mis* PUBlISHtB: TRPTOm RiauiRimtnis .. win 95 . an RttTITHRTOH. IBRIB HRm. tHTD-ROm. I This is one of two games by Raven out this I month, probably the last non-Activision title you’ll see in this country. If you didn’t read my Take No Prisoners double page review, then do so now, because just like Hexen 2 is pretty much Quake in chainmail... Mageslayer is essentially TNP with sword and sorcery. The most obvious influence for Mageslayer was Gauntlet, with the top-down maze like dungeon romp with a choice of four different characters who battle their way to the end of each level. Unlike Gauntlet the levels actually come in groups, with new monsters in each group, although they all require the same general tactic to overcome (back away and fire). Each group also has an end of level boss, with the final objective of the game to be to tonk Lore Thane back into the pits of crap from whence he came. Mageslayer was actually the first of the two new Raven games, and as a result, has a slightly inferior graphic engine, in that you’re stuck with the top-down view all the time, which means if you want to play it like Quake with a mouse, you need to spend some time getting used to hitting forward to go a direction other than up the screen. With a 3D card though, this game still looks very pretty, but just doesn’t play as well as TNP. Problems with the game exist with very linear maps, which make the game even less exploratory than the old Gauntlet games. You can collect items for later use, just like in Hexen, but there seemed to be a surplus of them. None of the traps or puzzles are particularly challenging, and as a result Mageslayer ends up being a kinda disappointing single player game. Like in most PC games, the multiplayer options make the game far better, and Mageslayer makes for a decent deathmatch or capture the relic (capture the flag olde style) game. Not great, not bad. You have to wonder why this game ends up being released so close to TNP, which is clearly a better game. BD “lb bD Coming out with another real-time strategy game in these days of strategy game overload is a brave move. Especially for a game like Netstorm which has no remarkable new graphic engine, or new features unseen in other games. Hopefully Netstorm won’t get dusted under the carpet, as it’s a fun strategy game which cleverly combines classic gameplay ala Warcraft 2 with puzzle elements along the lines of The Incredible Machine. Sound odd? Let me explain... The game is played from atop floating islands in the sky, which means you are isolated from your opponents. To reach your foe on the other islands, you have to build bridges off the edge of your land. You do this by using pieces roughly the shape of Tetris blocks which you can rotate to your desire. Use them too quickly though, and they’ll crack and eventually fall. Not good if you’ve just sent an army across it! You have one priest who can materialize buildings and machinery to use in your war. Everything needs the power of the elements to work though, so you need to build generators for the specific element you need, like say, rain. Rain will power various devices etc. You end up having to build bridges all over the joint, to reach geysers which provide you with crystals which your priest needs to create stuff. You can send clanky helicopter things out to bomb your enemy, as well as set up defensive weapons which will attack any approaching enemy. You never actually have to tell your units what to attack as each device you create has a radius of operation. Anything inside that radius gets attacked. Thus you can see the puzzle element - depending on how you arrange your devices will determine how well you fare. If you infiltrate your enemy's island and capture the priest, you can sacrifice him and learn how to create more stuff. Hard game to explain, but dead simple to play, and a must for any gamer scared off by the intricacies of games like Dark Reign. “n nq GAMEPLAY nq It’s taken longer than expected for Resident Evil to reach the PC, but here it is... and wouldn’t you know it, the game won’t run without a 3D accelerator. That’s right, you’ll need a card which uses the Voodoo or Rendition chipsets for the game to work. Considering this, I was expecting the game to look a helluva lot better than it does. The characters have that smooth, mip-mapped look and they animate beautifully, but the backgrounds haven’t been touched from the PlayStation version. For some reason, Resident Evil on the PC doesn’t have that high resolution look that you’d expect. At times, the backgrounds looked clunky and murky and if it wasn’t for the excellent looking characters, you’d think you were still playing this on a console. Why it needs a 3D card to run, I’m not sure. The game is identical to it’s console partners in terms of gameplay - there’s nothing new here. The controls are still awkward, but the gory animation will probably keep you playing to see what’s around the next corner. I won’t even mention the voice acting. Urgh. There’s defintely something here for those of you who have never seen or played this game. The creatures are cool, and there are moments when you will actually jump out of your seat. The suspense in Resident Evil is so thick, you could cut it with a chainsaw, and when your shotgun runs out of ammo, just as that mutant is closing in... heh heh. If you never saw this on the PlayStation, then there’s a chance you’ll stay hooked and enjoy the spooky plot, but you may feel that the game is showing it’s age. DAN TOOSE ELIOT FISH ELIOT FISH Tuirt AGames PROUDLY AUSTRALIAN OWNED & OPERATED WE KNOW OUR GAMES PLAYSTATION CONSOLE THE BEST SHOOTER ON PLAYSTATION ■ Playstation,. _ $69 GAME GURU: MODBURY SA Shop 63, Westfield Tea Tree Plaza Ph: 08-8396 5444 Fax: 08-8396 5594 NOARLUNGA SA Shop 31, Colonnades Shopping Centre Ph: 08-8384 5524 Fax: 08-8384 5825 TUNZ A GAMES: BORONIA VIC Shop 18 Dorset Square Ph: 03-9761 0722 Fax: 03-9761 0935 MOUNT GAMBIER SA 127B Commercial Rd West Ph: 08-8725 4499 Fax: 08-8724 7222 ALBURY NSW 439 Macauley Rd Ph: 060-415 521 Fax: 060-415 523 PORTLAND VIC Shop 3, 53 Percy St Ph/Fax: 03-5-521 8077 WAGGA WAGGA Shop 19, Sturt Mall Ph 069-31 7417 Fax: 069-31 7319 SHEPPARTON VIC 181 Corio St Ph/Fax: 058-313 834 GAME MANIA: RINGWOOD VIC G42A Eastland Shopping Cntr Ph: 03-9879 7793 Fax: 03-9876 0021 BRIGHTON SA 500 Brighton Rd Ph: 08-8377 2766 Fax: 08-8377 2155 KILKENNY SA Arndale Shopping Cntr Ph: 08-8345 4848 Fax: 08-8345 3493 ELIZABETH SA Elizabeth City Centre Ph: 08-8287 1699 Fax: 08-8287 3897 102 »HYPER Kxmon miimi: now (BdCBBV: STBRTEOV Flaws: i-mui ti PUBIISHCH mien OS OFT paid.: TBR HHIIHC: 0 HU Z: PRO. WIR 95. IB RIB BRR1 * aUHUHBlt: ROW t canconV: brciro * PIHWS: 1-B i PUBlISHfB : SERB I PHIU: SERBS I HHIIBC: 0 Fortunately Saturn owners have always been able to boast about the great gameplay in the arcade conversions. Sega Rally, Daytona, VF2, and Virtua Cop 2 all have the great gameplay on the Saturn that almost perfectly mimic their arcade counterparts. Again this perfect arcade to Saturn gameplay conversion is apparent in the Saturn's latest racer, Sega Touring Car, but the unfortunate thing is that the arcade played like shit. Who knows what Sega were thinking of... but the cars in Sega Touring Car just don’t behave like real vehicles. Most of the time you’re playing the game it ends up being a race to see who can stay on the track, let alone win the race. The cars just will not corner at high speed... and this is made worse by the fact that when you stop accelerating the cars seem to grip the road like contact cement, causing you to spin out or lose lots of speed really quickly. This makes the race end up being a constant spurts of acceleration accompanied by the fast slam into the wall, "correct your steering and then accelerate” syndrome. Kudos are given to Sega for trying to achieve a real sense of speed in the game, as at top speeds the scenery flys by at a startling rate, but you never really feel like you’re in control of the car and this is the game’s biggest weakness. The graphics are also a disappointment when compared to Sega’s other racers like Daytona CCE and Sega Rally. Here Sega have tried to eliminate pop-up, and have succeeded, but at the cost of texture detail and a smooth frame rate that are present in games like Sega Rally. What’s on screen doesn’t look that great, and the frame rate will quite often jolt and stutter leading to much confusion on screen. On the up side, there are four tracks to race on, and the option to use the analogue controller makes the game feel a whole lot better. For a game that really had a lot of potential, all the time and effort Sega spent on cutesy racers like Sonic R could have been spent on a 3D Sonic platformer, and Touring Car, to make it a much better game than it is. ns HB HD bD PC/Mac (lose Combat B Close Combat: A Bridge too Far is ein cool WWII strategy game. It’s also the sequel to Close Combat and is Microsoft’s next foray into strategy after the immensely-groovy Age of Empires. In CC2, you replay key battles in one of the largest and most critical operations of WWII - Operation Market-Garden. You play as either the Allies or the Germans and command units of soldiers in an attempt to capture key enemy locations or complete a specific mission objective like blowing up a bridge or eating five kilos of sauerkraut whilst whistling "Ride of the Valkyries". CC2 is a surprisingly good game, when you consider the kind of opposition it’s up against. Dark Reign had the freedom to create worlds, enemies and weapons, whereas CC2 is limited to recreating scenarios that happened 50 years ago. It would be a tough job to do this without appealing only to WWII freaks, but MS have done a decent enough job. Unlike most CSC style games, unit AI is far superior with units actualy doing smart things like moving to a firing position that doesn’t have a tree blocking their shots. The mission structure also allows for going back, and as a whole, makes for a far better campaign system than in other RTS games on the market. The graphics are really impressive with highly detailed units and terrain and up to a massive 1024x768 resolution, giving you more real estate than any strategy game I’ve played, although the top down view doesn’t really let you make out the supposedly "3D” terrain. The sounds are excellent, with realistic gunfire for each weapon and different character voices, so that when there’s a massive firefight and you crank the sub-woofers any neighbours over 60 start having flashbacks. MS have also tried to build some long-term playability into the game by making it hard as all hell on the higher difficulties and letting you play as either Allies or Axis. They’ve also bundled in a battle maker which lets you make your own scenarios. BD SOUND BD B3 _ Duke nukem 30 Saturn u Sega Touring Car Saturn Rummt: now (nmw: Hciion PIHWS : 2 PUBISHIH.- 01 mifRRClIUE PHIU. $69.95 HHTinC: mni5* Duke Nukem 3D is making its way to every home console available, and thankfully for Saturn owners, this includes a great version on their own machine. For those who have never heard of Duke Nukem, it’s essentialy a Doom clone where the action takes place in cities, sewers, nightclubs, tall skyscrapers and even the odd alien spaceship. For many it was seen as the step forward after Doom as it allowed the player to jump, crouch, look up and down and fight in many outdoor areas that broke away from Dooms mainly underground levels. Of course you had a new range of weapons with which to blast all who oppose you, but it was the ability to kill enemies that were either a great distance above or below you, and the greater emphasis on puzzles and exploration that made Duke such a step forward from Doom. So the five hundred dollar question is how did Duke and its complex levels translate onto the Saturn? Quite well in fact. The team who were responsible for Powerslave have given Duke a fast, fluid graphics engine with which to explore the worlds and kick the baddies asses. On top of this they have managed some excellent light¬ sourcing that accompanies all weapons in the game. This is especially spectacular when Duke fires a rocket launcher down a narrow corridor, only to see the corridor light up brilliantly as the rocket travels down it. The game is a direct port of the PC version, but unlike the PC version it only allows the player to save their position at the end of the level, and this combined with tricky puzzles and a high degree of difficulty will see Saturn owners getting a great deal of lasting gameplay out of Duke. In fact, in many ways Duke often creates the same fear and anxiety that Doom also produced, leaving you feeling outnumbered and outgunned against your enemies, with every noise you hear setting your nerves on edge. If you have a Saturn and like this type of game, Duke Nukem really can’t be ignored. T** BD BD 1 104 »HYPER CHEAT MO Sega 1902 555 U4 Calls charged at a rate of .95c per min. A higher rate applies from public and mobile phones. Sega PC 1900 142 100 Calls charged at a rate of $1.50 per min. A higher rate applies from public and mobile phones. Roadshow Interactive 1902 962 000 Calls charged at a rate of $1.00 per min. A higher rate applies from public and mobile phones. Disney Interactive 1900 957 770 Calls charged at a rate of .95c per min. A higher rate applies from public and mobile phones. Sony Powerline 1902 262 662 Cads charged at a rate of S/.so per min. A higher rate applies from public and mobile phones. Electronic Arts 1902 261 600 Calls charged at a rate of .95c per min. A higher rate applies from public and mobile phones. Virgin Interactive 1902 220 058 Calls charged at a rate of .95c per min. A higher rate applies from public and mobile phones. GT Interactive 1900 957 665 Calls charged at a rate of .95c per min. A higher rate applies from public and mobile phones. Last Bronx SAT Alternate Colours: Press C when selecting a character to change your appearance. Anime Ending: To view the anime ending, beat the game in SATURN mode with every character, including Redeye. Each character’s anime ending should be added to the movie select screen. Faster Credits: Hold A+B+C before the credits scroll. Fight Crey: To fight Crey in Arcade Mode set all Options settings to DEFAULT then start a new game in Arcade Mode. If you can beat the first 8 battles with more PERFECTS than DEFEATS, Crey will appear after Stage 8. Random Character Selection: Press A+B+C when selecting a character in Watch Mode. Taunt Select: Hold A, B or C after winning to choose your ending taunt. MegaMan X4 SAT Special Armor: X’s R-Teammate Armor: 1. At the player select screen, highlight X. 2. Press the "B” button 2 times. 3. Press Left on the D-Pad 6 times. A.Hold L and R and press Start. Zero’s Black Armor: i.At the character select screen, highlight Zero. 2. Hold R and press Right on the D- Pad 6 times. 3. Release R, hold down the "B” button, and press Start. Sonic Jam Bonus Images: For some nice screen shots and wallpaper, place the Sonic Jam CD in your computer and look in the “Extras” folder. Bonus Mini-game: At the title screen, highlight “Sonic World” then hold A and press START. This will send you into Sonic World to get ioo rings in under 6o seconds. Cood luck! Clean Pause Screen: For cleaner screenshots, press X ♦ Y ♦ Z while the game is paused. Hidden Codes: In the Sonic World segment of the game there are polygonal versions of the power up boxes in the Sonic games. Walk up to them and press either A, B, or C to read them. Each one gives a different code that can be used on the different Sonic games. Level Select in Sonic 2: Co to the Options screen and play sounds 19, 65, 09 and 17. Level Select in Sonic 3: Start “Sonic 2” and play sounds 19. 65, 09 and 17. Now hold A and press RESET, but don’t release A. When the game restarts, choose Sonic 3. When the title screen appears, release A and press Up to reveal the SOUND TEST option. Select this to enable Level Select. View All Movies: To watch all the movies in the theater in sequence, press X, Y, and Z, and while holding these, press A. It’ll take longer to load up then usual, then you’ll watch all the movies in order. If you watch carefully you’ll notice a few that aren’t available in the theater selection screen. View Credits: To view the credits for Sonic lam, go to Sonic World, and complete all of the world missions. Once you have, go to the waterfall. You should see a gigantic gold ring. Now, go on the platform near you that goes up and down. When it’s at its highest point, jump in the huge gold ring. Bubsy 3D PSX Cheat Codes: To use these codes, select the LOAD/SAVE option, then enter one of these passwords. All codes 99 Lives All Rockets XALLDBUCCR XMUCHOLIFE XTOOROCKER Bonus Round XBNSCHTMMM Coordinates Level select XDBUCLOCNC XLVLCHTMSB ICHEAT MODE! Nightmare Creatures PSX Cheat Made: At the Password screen enter Left, Up, X, Square, Down, Triangle, Square, Down. You can now enable infinite everything (lives, weapons, etc.), play as a monster, and choose your starting level, level 2: Up, Circle, Triangle, Left, Triangle, Square, X, Circle level 3: Up, X, Circle, Triangle, Triangle, Down, Square, Up level 4: Up, Square, Triangle, X, Triangle, Square, Up, Circle level 7: Triangle, Left, Triangle, X, Circle, Left, Circle, X level 8: Triangle, Right, Triangle, Up, Circle, Circle, X, Square level 9: Circle, Triangle, Triangle, X, Circle, Circle, Square, X level 10: Circle, Circle, Triangle, Right, Triangle, Up, Down, Down Street Fighter EX + Alpha PSX Barrel Bonus Stage: Highlight Practice and press Start, Up, Up, Right, Up, Right, Up. You should end up back on practice, now push Start again. Now choose practice and the bonus game should appear at the bottom. VR Baseball '97 PSX Field of Corn: At the game option screen highlight Credits and press Square, Circle, Square, Circle, Triangle. After it returns you to the previous menu you will know the code worked if the stadium name has a green colour to it Diddy Kong Racing N64 Alternate Title Screen: Hold the Z button while selecting your player. Donkey Kong will appear and the title will say "Donkey Kong Racing. Featuring Diddy Kong and more...” Bonus Characters: When you see Diddy racing on the title screen, press and hold A. then press and hold B. If you did it correctly you’ll have new characters to choose from. Extra Vehicles: On the main screen hold the A and B buttons simultaneously. You’ll hear Mario 8 Luigi say "I’m The Best.” Next, press DOWN on the Vehicle Selection screen for four new choices. Skip the Introduction: Press and Hold the L 8 R button while the Nintendo Logo Pops up. Sound Test: Hold Z while you tum on the system. You will hear a "BOOM!!” sound. War Gods N64 Cheat Menu: On the title screen, press (on the d-pad) Right, Right, Right, B, B, A, A A new entry will appear in the Options screen. Here’s a list of functions: Came Timer: Enables/disables the game timer. Easy Fatalities: Pressing HP*LP*HK ♦LK will trigger any Fatality. Player 1 Skill: Modify amount of damage player one takes. Player 2 Skill: Modify amount of damage player two takes. Level Select: Allows you to always play at the chosen arena. Play as Exor: On the Selection Screen, press (on the d-pad) Left, Down, Down, Right, Left, Up, Left, Up, Right, Down and choose any character. Play as Crox: On the Selection Screen, press (on the d-pad) Down, Right, Left, Left, Up, Down, Right, Up, Left, Left then choose any character. Random Character Selection: At the character select screen, hold UP and press START to choose a random fighter. Unlimited Continues: When "Midway Presents War Cods" appears, press Left-C, Left-C, Right-C, A, B, Top-C, Right-C. Co to Options menu and highlight CONTINUES then press Left on the control pad until "FREEPLAY" appears. Now you can feel everything from the recoil of your own weapon to the mortal impact of being hit with the new Sidewinder Force Feedback Joystick. For a demonstration at your nearest store, phone 1900 1700 64* and quote ID Code: 1012. * Calls cost $0.50$, payphones and mobiles charged at higher rate. www.microsoft.com/sidewinder Microsoft Where do you want to go today?® LBCM MSG0011/B Age of Empires PC Cheat Codes: Type these codes while playing: DIEDIEDIE All opponents die RESIGN You resign REVEAL MAP Reveal the whole map PEPPERONI PIZZA Gain 1000 food COINAGE Gain ioo gold WOODSTOCK Cain 1000 wood QUARRY Gain 1000 stone Transforming Villagers: While playing, type "Medusa” then walk one of your villagers into an enemy. When the villager dies it will return as a Black Rider. If the Black Rider dies it will come back as a Heavy Catapult. Championship Manager 2 PC Free Players For free players, you put in a bid for the player you want, and put it high enough so the club automatically accepts the offer. Now go to the ADJUST OFFER screen, change the offer to o and press CANCEL. The player you selected will be yours for nothing. Total Annihilation PC While playing press ENTER to get the message line. Press ♦ and enter one of the following codes then press ENTER.. To deactivate a code just enter it again ATM: Increase metal and energy by iooo Radar: Acts like 100% radar coverage DoubleShot: 2X damage of all weapon fire across board Contour*: Shows 3d contour mesh; replace # w/ 1-5 Dither: Changes the gray line-of- sight to a dither NowlSee: Exposes map and turns line-of-sight off NHL 98 PC MANTIS: Gives players elongated arms, legs, and necks NHLKIDS: Mikes players kidsize HOMEGOAL: Gives home team a goal AWAYGOAL: Gives away team a goal PENALTY: Causes a penalty INJURY: Causes an injury ZAMBO: Puts the Zamboni on the ice VICTORY: Starts fireworks over the rink FLASH: Player automatically body checks an opposing player to the ice upon contact GRAB: Similar to CHECK but with a stick hold instead of a check The following codes require you highlight the credits menu. You will hear a buzz if you typed them correctly. STANLEY: Plays the end of season video EAEAO: Enables the EA Blades team Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain PC Anytime during the game, press these combinations of buttons to get the following.. FULL HEALTH: up. right, attack, action, up, down, right, left • FULL MAGIC: right, right, attack, action, up, down, right, left PREVIEW DARK DIARY: left, right, attack, action, up, down, right, left Commanche3 PC When in flight press 'R* and enter one of the following: ratz: invisible cowz: freeze ipig: overload cat9: damage dog9: weapons bat9: gps hellfires Ignition PC Type any of the following words on the title screen to toggle on/off the following effects. STRINGS: Flattens all of the opponents cars. SVINPOLE: Drops the camera viewpoint. (V.COOL) SKUNK: Displays just the wheels of your car. FILMJOLK: Constantly flips the screen. (ACIIIIIIEEED) SLASKTRATT: Gives you all of the cars. SURMULE: Gives you all of the tracks. BANARNE: Stretches the cars upward. Pandemonium PC Level codes 1. OMAAEBIA 2. NAABEBAI 3. ENAIAKBI 4. PEIAIBBA 5. KFCACICE 6 . AFICBAIM 7. NGIAIBJJ 8 . EHIIAKAC 9. NIIAIBKB 10. AHICBAJE 11. LOCACMGI 12. KACACIIM 13. OAIAIDLB 14. ELI 1 A 0 DC 15. OEIAIELJ 16. OGIAJEEB 17. AHMCBCMD 18. AJECBDEF Moto Racer PC When the system asks for a name, type in one of the following. The game will beep and ask for your name again, and you can type in your real name. CDNALSI: All tracks enabled CTEKCOP: Pocket bikes CESREVER: Reverse all the courses ISU5EO Gs\AA9AJG Si*EC9SK £. 9STS _ Shop 25a Ashmore Plaza Cotlew Street Ashmore Queensland O 1.Email: gameon@qldnet.com.au WWW: http://qldnet.com.au/-gameon/ r_ IT ^ • SUPER NINTENDO • SEGA MEGA DRIVE • *fS • SEGA SATURN • SONY PLAYSTATION • A ' ” • NINTENDO 64 • 4^ & MORE 5527 87 MAIL ORDER • TRADE INS WELCOME NEW AND USED GAMES • ACCESSORIES ! VISA i Mfem CHEAT MODEI POD PC In the option menu type VALAY, then change the difficulty level and damage level. If you want to play without collisions, all you have to do is type CRASH during a race! Total Drivin PSX For all cheats listed below you must tap out the rhythm on the Ri button, on main menu screen. Its tough (especially if you have no rhythm) but keep trying! Ding, Dong the witch is dead, the witch is dead, the witch is dead: Unlocks all tracks. Doh, a deer, a female deer: Unlocks Switzerland Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you: Unlocks Easter Island. Jingle bells, Jingle bells, Jingle all the way: Unlocks Moscow. Scotland the brave tune: Unlocks Scotland. Pipe music tune when you pass temple in Hong Kong level i: Unlocks Hong Kong. (For this tune it is best to drive to temple and turn music volume right down) Zip a de doo dah, zip a de ay: Unlocks extra split screen 4 player tracks. Super calla fragilistic expi alia doshus: Gives no time out message when car leaves main track area. Shadow Master PSX To activate these cheats start the game at Level 1 and enter the room immediately opposite the start position containing 2 red creatures. A flash will let you know that the cheat has worked. Level Select: Hold Triangle and press L1+L2+R1+R2. When you exit the game and return to the main menu there will be a level select option. Invulnerability: Hold Circle and press Li+L2*Ri*R2 Weapons: Hold X and press L1+L2+R1+R2 Magic: The Gathering - Battlemage PSX Enter any of these (or all of these) during gameplay using Player i's controller: To add mana to Player 1 hold Select and press Up, Down, Left, Right,Up, Down, Left, Right To add mana to Player 2 hold Select and press Down, Down, Left, Left, Up, Up, Right, Right For Player 1 draw card hold Select and press Down, Left, Down, Up, Up, Down, Down, Down For Player 2 draw card hold Select and press Left, Left, Left, Down, Up, Right, Up, Down To restore life to Player 1 hold Select and press Triangle, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Left, Left To restore life to Player 2 hold Select and press Square, Right, Left, Right, Left, Down, Up, Down Colony Wars PSX Enter any of these on the password screen: Infinite Energy: ’Hestas*Retort’ Select any level and access all info: 'Commander*Jeffer’ Infinite Secondary weaponry: Memo*X33RTY Stop guns overheating: Tranquillex Turn cheats off: All*cheats*off Total Eclipse Turbo PSX Level Select: 1 Go to Password in the Option screen. 2. Hold Select and press Triangle, Li, Square. 3. Release Select and press Triangle, Li, Square, Triangle, Li, Square. 'ROUND equal one’ should appear onscreen. Press the directional pad left or right to select your round then press START. Extra Lives ♦ Weapons: Pause during the game, highlight options and press START. When you get to the Options screen press Triangle, Square, Circle, Square, Triangle, Square, Li, Nothing captures the adrenalin rush of racing like Cart Precision Racing. t h e reality of racing • Plus each circuit exists and has been Let’s race through its components. Authentic dashboard and chassis ^ •, electronically surveyed to an accuracy of I Ocm using Global • Realistic scenery incorporating the latest 3-D and MMX technology i fJS P 03 ' 1 * 00 '"? (GPS) Technology. Go! Go! Go! To locate your nearest • Multi-player option • Force Feedback technology so you can feel stores call 1900 1700 63 and quote ID code 1012. Calls cost 0.50c! LBC&M MSGO0I0/B Higher rate from mobiles & payphones W.W.W.WmWmW.WW.W.WW.W Microsoft Where do you want to go today?” wmv.microsoft.com/garnes * Ri♦Li, Square, Triangle. If done correctly you should get kicked back to the game with 10 lives, 10 plasma bomns 8 10 continues. Level Codes: Magna Prime: X, 0 , Triangle, Square, X, X, X, Square Soloris Centuria: Triangle, Triangle, 0 , X, Triangle, Triangle, X, Square Polaris 5: 0 , 0 , 0 , Triangle, X, Triangle, Square, Square Sun Dagger: Square, X, 0 , Triangle, X, Square, Triangle, Triangle. Fantastic Four PSX Activate cheats: Co to the Options screen, Highlight training mode and press Li, L2, Ri*R 2 You will now have the following cheats. . . Level Select: Turn this on then press Li, L2, Ri*R2 while playing the game. Up and Down will change levels, Triangle or X will select the level. START will reenter the game. Invincibility: )ust turn it on to be invincible (really?!?). Big Boys: 1: characters are small 2: characters are normal size 3: characters are large Freeplay: Turn it on for loads of credits. Rapid Racer PSX Enter any of these as the ’Player name’, you need to enter them in Single Player mode before they are active in other gae modes. (space)BOA: Access to all boats (space)QAK: Ducke mode HURR: Use the Hurricane boat (space)STR: Plays all streams (space)DAY: Access to all daytime tracks (spac)NlT: Access to all night time tracks RRIM: Access to all mirror tracks FRAC: Access to all fractal tracks WINR: You win when you quit. Daytona Championship Edition SATURN Mirror Mode: To play any track in reverse, hold X ♦ Y ♦ Z while selecting a track. Play as Daytona Super Car: At the main menu, hold R ♦ X ♦ Y ♦ Z and then press C to select your game mode. If you’d prefer to earn the Super Car, place first on all five tracks in Normal mode. Play as Uma: At the main menu, hold L ♦ X ♦ Z and press C to select your game mode. If you'd prefer to earn this vehicle, place first on all five tracks in Hard mode. Play as Uma2: At the main menu, hold L ♦ R ♦ Y ♦ Z and press C to select your game mode. If you’d prefer to earn this vehicle, use the Uma to finish the game in Normal mode. Drive a Hovercraft: Hold Up ♦ R at the "Gentleman start you engines” screen. Extra Lightning Choices: When the "Gentleman start your engines" screen, hold any of the combination below Lighting effect: Morning: X*Z Dusk: X Night: Y Streetlight: X + Y Summer: Z Make Jeffrey Spin: In the expert course press X while selecting a track. Slot Machine: When you see the slot machine on Three 7 speedway, press X to stop the slots. If you score three 7’s or three bars you gain extra time. Abe’s Oddysee PSX Enter in either of these on the main ^ ~ menu screen while holding the Ri button: Level Select: (unfortunately it starts you with 0 Mudokan’s saved) Down, Right, Left, Right, Square, Circle, Square, Triangle, Circle, Square, Right, Left Show all FMV’s: Up, Left, Right_ PROUDLY AUSTRALIAN OWNED & OPERATED WE KNOW OUR GAMES NBA '"im M15+ PlavSr OPEN 7 DAYS ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED MAIL ORDER AVAILABLE THE LOST WORLD —\ JUBAUXRM* / - 1 G8+ PlayStation WE SELL, HIRE, TRADE! LARGE RENTAL & SECOND HAND RANGE GAME MANIA: RINGWOOD VIC G42A Eastland Shopping Cntr Ph: 03-9879 7793 Fax: 03-9876 0021 BRIGHTON SA 500 Brighton Rd Ph: 08-8377 2766 Fax: 08-8377 2155 KILKENNY SA Arndale Shopping Cntr Ph: 08-8345 4848 Fax: 08-8345 3493 ELIZABETH SA Elizabeth City Centre Ph: 08-8287 1699 Fax: 08-8287 3897 GAME GURU: MODBURY SA Shop 63, Westfield Tea Tree Plaza Ph: 08-8396 5444 Fax: 08-8396 5594 NOARLUNGA SA Shop 31 Colonnades Shopping Centre Ph: 08-8384 5524 Fax: 08-8384 5825 TUNZ A GAMES: BORONIA VIC Shop 18 Dorset Square Ph: 03-9761 0722 Fax: 03-9761 0935 MOUNT GAMBIER SA 127B Commercial Rd West Ph: 08-8725 4499 Fax: 08-8724 7222 ALBURY NSW 439 Macauley Rd Ph: 060-415 521 Fax: 060-415 523 PORTLAND VIC Shop 3, 53 Percy St Ph/Fax: 03-5-521 8077 WAGGA WAGGA NSW Shop 19, Sturt Mall Ph: 069-31 7417 Fax: 069-31 7319 SHEPPARTON VIC 181 Corio St Ph/Fax: 058-313 834 _ Ml * "'** -i LETTERS For all you budding space aces out there WING COMMANDER PROPHECY should be out right about now! Full review of the latest chapter in Origin’s super sci-fi saga NEXT ISSUE ’S A DIFFERENT GAME www.multiplay.com.au HYPER Letters 78 Renwick St. Redfern, NSW 2016 Fax: (02) 9310 1315 E-mail: freakscene@next.com.au TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE7 Dear Hyper, Everyone knows that you’re a great mag so I’ll get straight to the point. In the mags I’ve been reading, including yours they say that Tomb Raider 2 is not coming to the Saturn. But when I asked HiTech World they said it will be coming out early next year. I am very confused. Please tell me that it is coming out on the Saturn! Please!! Or I’ll have to commit suicide. ANTHONY ROBINSON A confused Saturn owner Dear ccnfuzzed. Cere have announced in a couple of interviews now that they weren’t doing a Saturn version. Apparently they claimed that they wanted to do things with Tomb Raider 2 that the Saturn couldn’t handle (or words to that effect). which seems a bit odd to ua. considering the game looks like it uses a virtually identical engine, but perhaps appearances are deceiving. Regardless, it’s not on the Sega-Oziscft release schedules, sc that’s farther confirmation that it’s not coming to Saturn. We recommend auto-erotic asphyxiation as your prefered means of suicide it you’re really that keen. But don't kill yourself. you’ll miss out on all the cool games coming up... INSTINCTIVE To the guys at Hyper, I think your mag is the best and it kicks ass. 1 read it all the time and I really enjoy it. Now I have a couple of questions to ask you guys. 1. Do you recommend KI Gold to be one of N64 best fighting games? 2. Can you use the rumble pack on KI Gold? 3. Does N64 have a mag on their games because I’ve searched around and I can’t find one. If you already did a review on KI Gold I probably didn’t get Hyper that month. LOUIS Dear Louis. 1. We acknowledge KI Gold to be one ot the ONiy N64 fighting games. None ot us spend any time playing it. 2. The game was Pre-Rumble. 3. Lock out far N64 Gamer, a new Nintendo magazine coming out right about NOW! TRIPPING GAMERS UNITE! Dear Everyone, I have to applaud your choice of "letter of the month” for issue#49. Patrick of SA’s letter "Star Farter" was the funniest thing I’ve read since sliced bread. But one thing I’ve got to mention is that, like Patrick of SA, I was also wondering if there will be a Parodius 64. You didn’t answer the main question of Pat’s letter, so answer this one. HELEN LUTESSA NSW Oh yeah... sorry bout that. Unfartunately not... at least ifl there is. no one has announced it. CORPORATE SLAVE? Dear Dan, By virtue of the fact that I habitually spend $5.95 each month, for the dubious pleasure of having my face smeared with the fetid ejaculate of PSX and PC "overflow" (bearing in mind that Next Publications, publishers of Hyper, also devote resources to platform- specific publications for both PSX and PC owners)- and that my money is as good as the next PSX- or PC- owning "chumps ”-1 wish to take umbrage with one aspect of your editorial ministration. Re your contention (as stated in Issue #49), that ’’HYPER only does Byte size reviews of games like Resident Evil for Saturn (because) it’s generally our policy to only do a small review on a game we’ve already reviewed on another system”, quite frankly smells of a whore’s knickers (or a PSX owner’s palm)! I now refer you to Issue *46, in which Mortal Kombat Trilogy (for Nintendo 64) received a generous TWO-page review, despite it’s not- so-generous 60% rating. Juxtapose this with Issue#39- wherein the SAME GAAAE (for PSX) also garnered a lavish TWO pages, despite it’s mediocre score (I.e 75%)- letter of the month Dear Hyper, Hi. You guys rock. We just thought we'd write in to let you know our sickly fantasies concerning Jin Kazama the 100% babe out of Tekken 3. We think he's a hot sex machine and we want his body REAL bad. Yum Yum. Enough of that, now I have some questions to ask: 1. When Tekken 3 comes out, could you do a character profile thing like you did for Tekken 2? That was cool too. 2. You said that Devil was fin’s father, but all the other mags tell me it's Kazuya. Which one is it? 3. Is Heihachi in Tekken 3? 4. Eliot Fish is a legend, (no sucking) 5. Will the PSX be able to handle the game without any backup or upgrade thingo? 6. Could you please put in a poster of Tekken 3 (preferably Jin, we are female). Mac news coverage too please From US Hey ycuse, Well, this has to be a first... don’t think we’ve ever had a male fighting game character groupie letter befare. We’re trying to imagine what’d happen if your boyfriends got jealous of the attention you were paying to the game characters that they were playing as. you’ve succeeded in making us chuckle lots... thanks far that. 1. yeah. there’s enough story behind the game to warrant it. It’s one of those games we don’t bother asking about much anymore, because whenever we ask Sony about a release, the answer 1 \ either foggy, or completely different to the last answer. \c mayji&p littlf while off yet. 2. Um. no... we implied it was affected Kazuya. and also sho wed up tojtjry and claim the ch il d ffln ). Days of cur Lives material here. 3. yup, srey hair and 4. Oh lock what you've 5. That remains to be seen, really present any technical advancements or anything. 6. Pester when the game Mac news, a Mac be covering Mac games WHEN YOU LAY IT ON HE NET Hit our web site and see for yourself. It's all there in living colour. Hours of Quake, Shadow Warrior, Duke Nukem, Diablo, Red Alert, Total Annihilation, Dark Reign and much more. Just think how much sleep you'll lose, dates you’ll break, pizza you'll eat, and for only $29.95 (for the gals in marketing) a month. Get into it. NSA/MUL042 12 »HYPER LETTERS JUSH THEOIIORSEN MIPS SF NO IN G III ARTWORK... AMR AS iONG AS Hf KfIPS Si NOI NG IN SIIIM LIKE IHIS, WEIL KEEP PRINTING IT. ANY OTHER TAKERS? Now juxtapose this with the Byte Size "mention” of Resident Evil (for Saturn) appearing in Issue *49- which incidentally scored higher than EITHER version of MK Trilogy- and you have an editorial "phallacy”. Or a turgid reminder of why so many (or so FEW) Saturn owners are forced to "swallow" the fetid ejaculate of corporate reasoning. That reasoning being that Saturn- with it’s diminished user-base and declining third- party support (despite its wealth of solid, upper-tier games-like Resident Evil)- just isn’t "worthy" of the big write¬ ups, or the big scores. Well, to coin an oft-used term at Hyper, "have at you (big business)"!!! Saturn owners may be wallowing in their own (ecstatic) jism of sweat, relishing each and every Saturn release as if it were their last, but at least we are getting BIC value. Who can argue with Sega’s decision to slash prices on Saturn software (if only to move stock)? At least we are getting a "slight, slow trickle" of BIC games, without being spoiled for choice. One last thing: PSX owners, when will YOU be playing Quake on your beloved console? I thought so. Enjoy the taste of corporate semen. STEVEN WRANGELL Silkstone QLD Steve. I recall commissioning In the double page review tor MK Trilogy ter N64. It was only because a game that we were expecting tor double page review (Shining the Holy Ark) did not arrive in time to make deadline. Despite what you think, we really wanted a Saturn title in that issue, but as is otten the case, nothing shewed up. MK Trilogy was a Byte Size, but got upped to a double page simply because we had to till the two pages, and it came down to a choice ot either Crusader No Remorse on PSX. or MKT on N64 (as these were the only two scheduled Byte Size that we hadn't already laid out), both c t which had been given a double page review on other systems. The PlayStation already had more coverage in the issue at this stage, so we gave it to MKT. This is the last ot the Saturn coverage bitching letters we'll print. because they're getting tiresome. I’m one 0 1 those people that own two Satums, and go to the hassles ot getting import stutt that doesn't come out here, because it’s the only plattcrm that gets the best 2D fighting games... Just a shame they don’t all make it here. Because the Saturn gets less releases, we actually choose to review the Saturn version ot a game if we get it at the same time as the PlayStation, but that happens so rarely it's not tunny. We’re no happier about the lack ot distribution support tor the Saturn in this country than you are. as we (me in particular) like the system gobs, as any tan ot Jap RPGs or 2D tighting games would. Sometime soon I'll do an article on the 2D tighting games that we've got in trem overseas, because we know the interest is cut there (you’ve only got to walk into a video arcade to see It). One last thing. PSX owners will be playing Quake on their beloved console next year, and considering the PlayStation's superior performance with 3D graphics and the advancements made in the graphics libraries, it'll no doubt be better than the Saturn version. Thanks for your letter, it was the coolest paper and envelope we’ve seen In... um, since I’ve been here anyway. WHO-DO-CHEAP- VOODOO? Dear Hyper. I’m writing to you to talk about the 3DFX cards. I know they rule, but aren’t they just a bit too much money? I mean, $300 for something that’ll give you unreal graphics. But that’s money a lot of PC owners can't afford!! Already there’s games that won’t run without a 3DFX! I know only one person that owns a 3D accelerator, but it’s not a 3DFX. Now, a few quick ones... 1. Is there a decent 3D card for around $200 2. What is the cheapest genuine 3DFX? 3. Quake 2 rules, huh? OK Cya NASH Jamberoo Nash. Investing in technology is always a scary prospect, because you can be assured that what you get will be cbselete in a year or two, but if you want the best, you gotta fork out the bucks... that's life. 1. No 2. The cheapest we’ve seen available was around $250 (Helios if memory serves me right), but you’re better oft saving a bit longer and getting a better card like the Canopus (see news). Of course VooDoc 2 chipsets will be out next year, and they'll smoke all over the current cards, I mean stupidly fatter. Like GL Quake running at 90 frames per second! We’ll talk about V00D00 2 more when it’s not so far away. If you can’t afford a 3DFX card now, why not start saving for V00D00 2 instead? They could cost about the same. 3. Wish we knew, the game wasn't complete for our deadline... ARGHH! The engine looks great though, although we hope the shotgun blasts don't cause players to fly around so much in deathmatch unless it's the death blow, because otherwise it’ll make for some very stupid gaming. THE MASSES SPEAK To Hyper, I’m writing this letter to congratulate you on the good come back from the whining lady, Mrs Price from issue 49. She complained about Hyper teaching her 3 snotrags to swear. 1 think that lady is full of shit! That's right I’m swearing like every other person in the world! Do you expect your kids to grow up like Ned Flanders? I’m sure that this mag is aimed at people my age (15). If you don’t like the mag then don’t buy the bloody thing!! $5.95 won’t matter to Hyper! Do you think Hyper got where it is today being nice? I don’t think so. I didn't learn to swear from magazines, I learnt from my shitface dad! So leave Hyper alone and shove your 3 little snots up your m*8 r*S! Here’s some questions: 1. When is Resident Evil 2 coming out on Playstation? 2. Is Time Crisis on PSX as good as arcade or close? What colour will the gun be? Keep up the good work G.F.B Okay, now while G.F.B’s letter is a bit nasty to point where it's uncalled for... this was one of the most tame of about 50 or so anti-Mrs Price letters, and considering the volume of mail devoted to the topic, we thought we’d print one (that I didn’t have to censor to death). About the $5.95, those that stop buying the magazine in some sort of attempt to spite us... sorry, but you only hurt your local newsagent financially, not us. PUSHING THE 486 Dear Hyper First of all, I’d like to say your magazine is great. Anyway, I’ve seen that Dark Reign can run on Pentium 60 MHz. Does this mean that I can run it on a 486 computer with 66 Mhz? Here are some questions, 1. Does Dark reign have navel units? 2. Are there any cheats for Red Alert? (I’m not asking for the cheats) 3. Like I said, I've got a 486/66 MHz computer, but somehow I can run games like Privateer 2, LETTERS Kknd and Outpost 2 perfectly. What‘s wrong? MICHAEL CHANG Michael, Bad news mate... A pentium performs better net just because of generally improved clock speeds. but also due to things like the way it handles floating point stuff (and other technical crap). 1. No. but it does have units that can move over water, and due to the nature of the code, it’ll only be a matter of time before you can download naval units that people make up and put on the net. 2. No. it’s actually one of the things the game was noted for. There is however secret ant levels, but no "Make me all- powerful” cheats. 3. Nothing’s wrong, but the performance you get would most likely be pretty much unnaceptable compared to what the games were designed for. ARE WE SATISFIED? Dear Hyper, C’day mates, I’m just writing not to suck face, but to tell you that I entered a competition a few months ago, to do with Nascar Racing on Playstation. Ever heard of it!? Now here’s question time 1. When's Resident Evil 2 coming out? 2. One day I’m thinking of buying a new CD-ROM for my computer, and what do you think is the best, as I’m thinking also of perhaps buying a new computer all together but I’m sure a CD-ROM by itself is much cheaper. 3. Do you reckon Phantasmorgia the sick, twisted, PC game is coming to PlayStation? 4. How do you think people can satisfy women with video games. (Tough question!) 5. Have any vacancies for jobs? Thanks for your time SEXY QLD Dear Sexy. 1. At this stage there’s no concrete release dates. Our guess at this stage is a March release in Japan, and expect the game March to April next year. 2. Buying a new CD ROM won’t solve many problems for you. unless you either don’t have one. or you own a double speed CD ROM (or single...ack!). you’re better off just getting a new one with your next computer purchase, as it’s usually cheaper when you buy them as part of a package. 3 - No 4. The common complaint/question I get from my female friends is how does a woman get her boyfriend away from video games? So video games are often the cause of a lot of women being disastified it would seem, one way or another. As for an answer, other than some crass juvenile remark about the use of a rumble pak or a force feedback joystick which is best left alone... It’s really too hard to say. simply because as scon as I think that some obscure fighting game I like would be an instant source of boredom for a female. I see some young woman grabbing the controller, going the tenk and have a ball. Other women just like cute games, and others love adventure games. Cven titles like Quake attract the odd femme here and there, sc it's probably just as much of a case of ”What sort of women are satisfied with games” as your question. 5. Full time no... when we need new contributors, we’ll announce it in the mag. or on Hyperactive. PUSHING THE 486 Dear Hyper, 1 must admit, I do agree with Mrs Price #49 ,1 think she raised a good point, and hope that you listen to people like herself. The ”F” word, not only sounds disgusting but is very degrading to your magazine. Now for some questions, 1. Don’t you think you rated Rapid Racer a little low? I think the game is awesome and think it should have been marked higher. If I was offered to play either Wave Race 64 or Rapid Racer, which one would I choose? Rapid Racer of course, and 1 think many people feel the same. 2. Will there be a Porsche Challenge 2? If so, when will it be out? 3. When is V-Rally 98 due out? Thanks Heaps JAMIE #1 Rapid Racer fan QLD Jamie. Thought we should print one of the few letters that backed up Mrs Price. just to show we’re not just printing favcurable/suck up mail. As I said to Mrs Price, it was a case of me forgetting to do the find/change search for the F word, as opposed to me going, yeah... let’s leave It In!”. 1. 90’S too low for you? I’m sorry... we’ll start giving everything that locks pretty good 90% from now on and give the really good games like Rapid Racer 99%. diet’s comment retrospectively from behind my shoulder was that he was perhaps a little too generous after having spent more time playing the game now. It’s a great game, and any game that earns a big rubber stamp can’t be accused of being a low score for a game. There are also a lot of people that don’t like Rapid Racer at all. and think Wave Race rips the shit... it’s all down to personal taste. 2. There’s been word on a PC2. Pascal (the guy behind Porsche and Rapid Racer) indicated they wanted to do something different each time, so didn't sound like he was into the idea of a PC2. 3. Cliot spoke to Stephane from Infogrames this issue and he told us that there would be no V-Rally 98. What there will be in it’s place, is an entirely new game called V-Rally 2 which will be programmed from scratch to improve upon everything they wanted to do in the original V-Rally. It will include a track editor too! K SINGH. FROM QUAKERS Hill SENT US THIS KING OF FIGHTERS ARTWORK. TRES SPIfFY STUFFI • PLAYSTATION • NINTENDO 64 • SUPER NINTENDO • SEGA MEGADRIVE • SATURN + FULL RANGE OF ACCESSORIES AND MORE BUY-SELL-SWAP AND EXCHANGE GAMES FOR $10 EACH Mail Order Available HOME PICS 329-333 Parramatta Rd. LEICHARDT Ph: 02 9S602666 Fax: 02 95608733 ItniPBrmart FOR SALE Sony PlayStation (PAL), with memory card, two extra controllers, one standard, the other is the analogue controller, also V-Rally, Rage racer and Darklight conflict. All are only two months old and are in immaculate condition for $400 ono. Call george on PH (02) 9597 3425 Came Boy, Booster Boy, NBA Jam T.E and FiFa. All in excellent condition. $100. Brisbane and Caboolture area only. PH Curtis (07) 3408 9862 N64 games- Star Wars- $80 NZ , I.S.S. 64- $100 NZ, or swap. Ring JAX in New Zealand on (64 9) 576 3849 2 PlayStation games, both are PAL versions. Die Hard Trilogy selling for $60 ono and Time Commando for $40 ono. Both are in excellent condition and have hardly been used. Call Marcus (02) 9534 2253 (Sydney Only) Wave Race for N64. $50 call Julian (02) 6680 1055 Nintendo 64, excellent condition. 2 games Mario 64, Mario Kart 64 and 2 control pads. $350 PH Angus (03) 6428 7388 Need for Speed 2 on PC, $70. Phone Andrew (02) 6281 0353 Atari Lynx. Excellent condition, 5 games, S.T.U.N Runner, Basketbrawl, Kung Food, Robo- Squash, Batman Returns. $20 PH Angus(03) 6428 7388 Playstation Games Resident Evil and Street Fighter Alpha. Both are in good condition and work fine. $50 each o.n.o. PH Mark (02) 6258 4975 Super Came Boy $65, Game Boy $60, Kirby’s dream Land $25, Tetris 2 $30, Super mario Land $50. All instructions incl. Total Value $305. Will sell all for $225 ono. Will also sell separately for given price. All ih excellent condition. PH (02) 66 884 386 after 5pm. (Postage not incl) Atari Lynx, two games and power adaptor $65. PH: (02) 62810353 and ask for Andrew. Sega Megadrive 2 comes with 2 controllers (3 button, 6 button), manuals, 9 games. $200 for the lot or $20 a game. Will swap for playstation. PH Alex on (08) 8552 5621 after 4.30pm Hexen, $25. Deathkings of the Dark Citadel, $10. Cricket’96, $10. Rally Championship, $20. Dune 2, $15. Hunter Hunted, $10. Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries,$30. Duke Nukem 3-D (Atomic Edition), $40. Or will swap for any game that can work on a crummy 486DX. If interested call Robin on (08) 9305 1916. (WA preferable) Sega Mega Drive-2 and Sega Mega CD-2. Two controllers (3 and 6 button). All manuals- leads and original boxes. 9 games- Sonic 2, Toughman contest, Pirates of Dark Water, Rise of the Robots, Sonic Spinball, Super Monaco CP, Road Avenger, Skitchin, Jungle Book. As new condition $250 ono. Call Troy on (02) 4455 5127 PSX games for sale- Micro Machines V3- $50, Power Move Wrestling- $30, Star Gladiator- $30. Contra L 0 W-$ 6 o, Jet Rider- $40, Loaded-$20, Die Hard and Gun-$ioo. Contact Mike or Dave on (02) 9649 8048 (Sydney only) SWAPS I will swap my Super Nintendo plus Nigel Mansell, Donkey Kong Country, Star Wing, Wario Woods, Super Mario World and a joy stick for Wave Race and Shadows of the Empire on Nintendo 64. Call Danny Byron on 9982 8625 Advertising in is free for private advertisers, and make sure you include your phone number (inc. area code). Send them to: HYPERMART, 78 Renwick St, Redfern, NSW 2016 I will swap my N64 with 2 controllers- Super Mario 64. Mario Kart 64, Lylatwars 64, Wave Race 64, Pilot Wings 64, Turok Dinosaur Hunter for a Sony PlayStation with 2 controllers and 4 games. Call Cary on (077) 438 892 (Mt ISA- Qld) after 6pm. Will swap my Killer Instinct SNES for Sim City or Sim City 2000 or Sim Earth. Ring (07) 5495 7703 ask for Joseph. I really need a copy of Twisted Metal 1 for PlayStation (pal version). Must be in good condition. 1 will swap Broken Sword, MK Trilogy and Blood Omen Legacy of Kain. All in good condition, except Blood Omen's book (photocopy taken). Call Dean on (03) 5460 4771 after 5 on week nights or any time on weekends. SNES with 1 control pad, 2 great games - (Mario Allstars and Tetris 2) plus instructions and cheats. All in great condition for only $125. Call Mark on PH: (07) 3359 5894 Sega Saturn- 8 months old. Swap Sega Saturn with 2 control pads, plus 3 games including : Need for Speed 1, Daytona Championship Circuit edition, Alien Trilogy and one demo disk, for a Nintendo 64 with 2 control pads and with or without games. Also total package available for $275 ono. Call (03) 5277 9259 after 4pm weekdays, ask for Chris. (Melb / Geelong area only) I will swap 3 Sony PlayStation games, Micro Machines 3, Tekken 2 and Destruction Derby 2, 5 demo CDs, an extra control pad and a Sega Megadrive with Sonic 2, for a Nintendo 64 with no games. PH Peter on (02)4932 5229. WANTED Sega Came gear with 3-4 games for approx $6o-$70. I will also pay extra for the TV connection if you have it. Preferably platform games eg- Sonic and Tails and I would also like NBA JAM. Other games are O.K as well. PH Leigh (08) 8396 1377 (S.A only) Sega 32X Came-; Virtua Fighter, Megadrive games-: Rob to the Rescue, Rainbow Islands and King Salmon Fishing. Ph Andrew (07) 5485 4418 A Megadrive copy of Jurassic Park Rampage Edition. The following hardware is also wanted. 15 pin vga monitor, hard drive with cosmos settings, 1.5” floppy drive and power supply cable. Prices to be negotiated. Please contact Grant Dixon on (08)9063 2173. Will swap Sega Mega Drive with 7 games. [Sonic 3, Mega Games 1 (Super Hang-On, Columns X2, World Cup Italia 90’) Sonic 1, and Alex Kidd]* Sega Master System 2 with 5 games, Alex Kidd (built in), Sonic 1, Lemmings, Pacmania and Mickey Mouse Castle of Illusion (also 1 controller for Mega Drive and 1 for the Master System). All this for a N64. Will discuss games and controllers on phone. PH Doug on : (02) 4422 1539 (school days 3.30-7.oopm and weekends 5.00-7.30pm). Goldeneye (N64). Will pay $40- $50. Call Simon (52) 434837 between 4.30-7.30pm I am desperately after the PC Game "Betrayal at Krondor", preferably boxed with instructions. I will pay a reasonable price, call Michael after 5pm weekdays on (08)8737 2321 PENPALS I’m a girl. Diversity is my middle name. Write to me. Replies to all guaranteed, wether to tell you to get f#$%d or to write again, you will receive a reply. Lei. 48 Estramina Road, Regents Park, QLD 4118 Hello, my name is Alex and I’m 11 .1 own a 64 and I’m looking for a penpal, any age,any sex and aged over 11. Interests are Metallica, 64 and Movies. Reply guaranteed. Write to me P .0 Box 260, Bellara, Bribie Island QLD Hi, my name is Peter Harvey and I want a penpal aged 10-15.1 like music and surfing the net. Please write to me (M/F) at consta@mailcity.com. Demolition Man on the Super Nintendo with booklet and box all in good condition. I will pay a reasonable price for it. So call Jamie (03) 5439 2639 Hi, my name is Nick. I am 11 years old and in year 5.1 am looking for a penpal between the ages of 10-12. M/F. I have a SNES and a PC. I enjoy playing Roller Hockey and Baseball. 1 like listening to techno, rap and some I grunge. Write to 181 Annandale St, f Annandale, NSW 2038 i4yr old female looking for 14- i6yr old male penpal. Has PlayStation, PC CD-ROM and SNES. I Will talk about anything. If you're I interested write to: Amber Pratt, 8 f Condos Crt, Wantirna Sth, Vic 3152 1 Hi, my name is Jesse. I’m a cool 15 year old male looking for a girl [ penpal from the ages 13-17.1 will write about anything and I am very reliable. Write to me at 14 Windich Way, Bunbury WA 6230 StarBlade Alpha and Galaxian 3 for PlayStation. NTSC preferred. PH Michael (02) 9516 2543 or e-mail maxam@geko.net.au Hi my name is Kishore Bhindi. If you want someone to write to and talk about the latest PC Games, please write to me at 41 Kate St, Shorncliffe, Qld 4017. Age must be between 9 and 11, preferably a boy. Hi there people!!. My name’s Ryan and I’m a huge Sega fan. My | favourite games are Daytona USA CCE, Virtua Cop 2 and Sega Rally. l| own a Mega Drive and a Saturn. Any Sega fan out there write to Magga, 4 Worendo Place, Banora Point NSW 2486 If you’re a strategy nut, Like Warcraft 2, CSC and configuring Win 95 to the last possible detail then e-mail me at Trevburk@tpgi.com.au. Multiplayer is my favourite way to| play games so if you want a challenge, or just a penpal pick up your keyboard and start writing. Hello, I’m Johnno and I like wrestling, Footy and Nintendo 64! | I want a penpal - male or female any age. I will write back to everyone! PROMISE. Write to Johnno, 31 Fornax St, Mt Isa QLD 4825 WE BUY AND SELL all computer games «The largest range of new and used games • Huge titles • • NINTENDO • SEGA • IBM • CD • GAMEBOY • SONY PSX • SATURN ACCESSORIES • • A BIG VARIETY OF RPG • FIGHTING • ADV • OLD & NEW • Nintendo * 4 CASH MONEY FORYOUR GAMES. SEND YOUR USED CARTRIDGES. MAIL ORDER FROM ANYWHERE IN AUSTRALIA Located near the Station 99 OLD TOWN PLAZA BANKSTOWN 2200 Phone / Fax (02) 9793 TTO-F THIS IS WHERE CHALLEI1GE UI/ES noui you cap really ehperiepce the ehcitemept of onuns multiplayer bamipe at/OTTM be p/vrr of it? SPECIAL IHTRODUCTORY OFFER: LKTUTED TITHE ORLY! LOCAL CALL - (HELBOURDE / SYDREY - 1300 654 981* TO RECEDE YOUR FREE CD ROIH UMTH COnnECTIOn SOFTWARE, thultuhedia ojalhthrough ACID EHCLUSH/'e PLAYABLE DEIHOS. LUIREPLAY - GREAT FEATURES - SUPERIOR PERFORfHAflCE - THIS IS HOT THE RET. UJUJUJ.lUIRePL v4V.com. AU \ * Calls for mobile phones at applicable mobile rates Calls from outside Sydney and Melbourne local call zones at applicable long distance rates Wireplay and the Wireplay logo are trademarks of British Telecommunications pic used in Australia under exclusive liscense by Telstra Multimedia Recommj Steering Whe PlayStation STRUT playStation 2 Analog Foot Pedals Digital, 2 Position Stick 8 Digital Action Buttons Distributed by Home Entertainment Suppliers Pty Ltd. 4/92 Bryant Street Padstow NSW 2211 Ph: (02) 9773 0044 Fax: (02) 9773 0069