Greek gives a wishbone flash
Half-term was busy, and Son had several friends to stay. They allarrive with a toothbrush, sleeping bag and pillow, of course. But thesedays more bring their latest computer games than pack cuddly toys.
Does this mean they're growing up, or have we just established a reputation for being computer nuts? Either way, we're not going to complain about the chance to try a few more titles.
Our young friend from over the road (Snes and Sony Playstation) brought copies of Worms and Worms: Reinforcements on CD-ROM, along with the news that his dad had bought a fast new Pentium PC. I wished he'd brought that as well, because lack of performance wrecked our attempt to play Palladium Interactive's Wishbone and the Amazing Odyssey, a new CD-ROM adventure for ages eight and up.
For those who don't know (including me), Wishbone is an endearing canine who appears on Nick, the Nickelodeon cable/satellite TV channel. The CD brought forth cries of "way cool!" etc, but loading it was a disappointment.
The graphics look great, but on machines as old as Son's, it runs slower than a three-legged dog in treacle. The recommended hardware is a Pentium with 16Mb or more memory for the high-resolution mode, but it does run OK on a fast 486 or a memory-deprived Pentium in low resolution mode.
Wishbone's Odyssey is based on Homer's epic, and much of the humour comes from the introduction of contemporary artefacts and expressions. When an ancient Greek crew member bends over, for example, you discover he's wearing boxer shorts. But younger members of the target audience may well need help from parents to get through the adventure or, in my case, vice versa.
Palladium Interactive has also come out with a game that is less suitable for children. It's called P.Y.S.T., and it's a parody of Broderbund's graphical adventure, Myst. Apparently about four million people have bought Myst, where players start off on a mysterious island. P.Y.S.T. shows the same island after four million people have trashed it.
The "game" (it's not one) presents a series of picture postcards, and things happen when you click on "hot spots". For example, a dog pees, and a squirrel rotates on a spit over an open fire. It's juvenile stuff, and - although there's a song, and a P.Y.S.T. site on the world wide web - there's really not much more to it than that. Now you've heard the story, you've had the best of the joke.
In the US, P.Y.S.T. is probably cheap enough at $14.95 to appeal to people who have been frustrated by Myst and want to see its pretensions punctured.
But the game was not such a hit in the UK, so fewer people are likely to care enough to buy the parody.
One new game that will attract lots of fans is Microsoft Flight Simulator for Windows 95. I haven't got the final version, though I've been playing with the pre-launch (beta test) code.
Flight Simulator first came to fame in the early 1980s as a test for IBM PC-compatibility. Microsoft had licensed the PC version from Bruce Artwick's company, subLogic. However, when I played subLogic's Atari ST and Amiga versions, they were generally a lot nicer. In particular they had faster frame rates, which made the graphics smoother.
Earlier this year, Microsoft bought BAO, the Bruce Artwick Organisation.
Most of the development team moved to Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, near Seattle, and Artwick retained his involvement as a consultant. Flight Simulator for Windows 95 is the first fruit of the new set-up.
It's a huge program and takes up a lot of disk space: the recommended installation is 85Mb, the other options being "compact" (40Mb) and "expert" (140Mb). I expect this will give a few people problems. It's not that long since PCs came equipped with 40Mb drives, and people used to complain about Windows taking most of that!
FS6 for W95 improves on version 5 in many respects, and it has some great sound effects, but it also has limitations. The most disappointing aspect is that, as far as I can tell, it won't go bigger than 640 x480 pixels, which means those of us using higher resolutions can't get it to fill the screen. The graphics are often "blocky" and also fairly jerky on my Pentium P75-based machine. Still, it is great fun to cruise over London, buzz the Houses of Parliament, and fly through Buckingham Palace.
I was going to add that the frame rate for the Windows 95 version, which uses DirectX, doesn't seem much better than we enjoyed on the Amiga 500 almost a decade ago. And that was with a Motorola 68000, 1Mb of memory and no hard drive, not a Pentium with 16Mb and a CD-ROM! But this is something I've never forgotten. My Amiga 1500 is gathering dust, but Son's A500 is still set up next to his PC, and when they are both running programs with moving graphics, all too often the Amiga still looks better.
But sad to say I suspect we've seen the last of the Amiga. VIS Corp, an American company, planned to purchase what was left of it from Escom, its previous owner, which went bust. Unfortunately I haven't heard of any progress for quite some time, and a lot of former Amiga owners have now switched to or added PCs. But even if no one brings out any new titles, it will be quite a while before we're ready to dump all our old Amiga games.
Jack Schofield is The Guardian's computer editor.