From: adrian@cs.hw.ac.uk (Adrian Hurt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: Elite 2 , where is it ?
Date: 25 Jan 93 13:56:51 GMT
Organization: Dept of Computing & Electrical Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Scotland

In article <1993Jan18.181744.8558@prime.mdata.fi>, jarnis@mits.mdata.fi (Jarno Kokko) writes:
>In article <1993Jan18.164607.2857@dct.ac.uk> misb3crs@dct.ac.uk writes:
>>   Has anybody out there heard anything about the current position
>>   of ELITE II / FRONTIER... ?
>
>It was set for december release in autumn, and then pushed to january,
>and as there's no longer pressure to release it for xmas, I belive
>they will release it when it's ready. I'm willing to wait even 6 months
>extra, if the game is 1000 times better. There's been too many examples
>of basically good games spoiled by rush and lousy playtesting. Epic,
>F29 and few others spring to mind..

Epic's big problem was that it was over-hyped.  What we were promised was a
great space adventure, the equivalent of "Wing Commander".  What we got was
a 3-D shoot-'em-up, and as such it is a nice game.  If you consider that it
was originally going to be called "Goldrunner 3", and treat it as such, then
it is not that bad.  There's a lesson there for "Frontier" fans - don't let
yourself be fooled into expecting too much from the game, only to be
disappointed when it shows up.

As for "Frontier"; a TV show here about computer games, called "Gamesmaster",
had a preview of it recently.  Well, "Gamesmaster" is mostly about consoles
like the Sega Genesis/Megadrive and the SNES, and the preview was rather
short and grotty, but I did get some useful information out of it.  They
claim that "Frontier" will be released this March - and if you believe that,
I'll sell you a copy of the sequel to "Frontier" for $20.00. :-)  I saw the
game in motion for the first time, as opposed to static screen shots in
magazines, not that there was much difference - if there was something large
and detailed on the screen, e.g. a starship or space station, you could say
"frame, frame, frame" out loud and be doing a good impression of what I saw.
Hopefully it will be smoother if you set it to a lower detail level.  One
screen shot, shown briefly and analysed by me with a freeze-frame VCR, showed
a list of ships for sale, mostly various forms of fighter.  The prices seemed
to be trade-in prices - some were negative, some were positive and the price
of the Cobra III was 0.  My guess is that you can only own one ship at a time,
and when you buy a new one you sell your old one.  A couple of the fighters
had price tags of KCr-250, meaning (I believe) that if you trade your Cobra
for one, you get 250,000 credits back.  You could buy an Adder for KCr-200;
I don't know if this is the good old Adder from the original Elite.  At the
other end of the scale, there was an Imperial Attack Craft for KCr500 and a
Puma Shuttle for KCr650.  These seemed to be available from Titan; I expect
that other stations will sell other ships.  Another screen shot showed a list
of equipment for sale, which I compared to a similar list I had seen in a
magazine.  Gone are the old pulse, beam and military lasers - now you can
buy beam lasers of different power ratings.  You don't just need money, you
need room in your ship (the magazine screen seemed to be informing a player
that there was no room in his ship for the biggest laser).  Some of the
equipment sounded intriguing - you can buy staterooms, or life support for
the cargo bay, which means you can carry passengers.  There was a "radar
mapper", whatever that is, and a "hyperspace cloud analyser".  There were
also different types of missile, and different types of ECM.  The list in
the magazine was not the same as the list on "Gamesmaster", so I expect that
once again, different stations will sell different kit.

Well, that's what I've found out so far.  Here's hoping for, but not expecting,
that release date of March to be accurate!

-- 
 "Keyboard?  How quaint!" - M. Scott

 Adrian Hurt			     |	JANET:  adrian@uk.ac.hw.cee
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