                         ķ
                                Amazon      
                          Guardians of Eden 
                         Ľ
                             by Tony Curro


    Back in the, 1950s, every Saturday morning kids would flock to the
    movie theater to see the latest chapter of: The Perils of Pauline,
    Flash Gordon, The Lost City, Rocketman, and many others. Many of you
    may not remember the serials.

    It is, 2:06 A.M. on August 10, 1957. Allen Roberts, your brother, is
    in the, Allister Research Expedition Base Camp, in the Amazon Basin.
    A boat makes its way down the river. The camp is attacked. Some, are
    stabbed, others shot. Allen disappears and his whereabouts are
    unknown. What happened to Allen will change your life forever. You
    are Jason Roberts. These events are, for you, the start of a
    perilous journey, wrought with adventure, and alas, even death.
    Danger lurks everywhere, and many cannot be trusted. Do you have the
    resourcefulness to survive, and to rescue Allen? So begins Amazon by
    Access Software.

    Amazon, is a new type of interactive adventure, the serial. Amazon
    is divided into 14 Chapters. Each chapter ends on a cliffhanger. You
    can complete one chapter at a time. It is  a type  that will make
    you keep returning to finish another chapter.

    Installation requires approximately 9.6MB hard disk space. It will
    run in 'basic' or 'SUPER' VGA.

    Minimum hardware requirements:

    286/12Mhz, hard disk, 640K RAM (540K available), VGA, Mouse.

    Recommended hardware requirements:

    386/20Mhz (or faster), Super VGA, Sound card, others as stated above.

    Amazon features a full sound track and digitized speaking
    characters. To use Super VGA mode, you card has to support the VESA
    standard. The game comes with drivers for many popular cards, and
    most cards already have VESA drivers as part of their utilities
    disk. Amazon will set this up for you.

    You see the game from first or third person perspective. In the
    third person, you actually move on the screen. In first person view,
    you are looking at things. There is also an interlude called
    Meanwhile. These are flashes about what is happening elsewhere in
    the story.

    For those who are familiar with this type of game, you will recall
    using a hint book, or calling for game hints. Amazon saves those
    steps. It has a pop-up on-line Help window. It is also configurable.
    For those experienced gamers, you could opt for no hints. Those with
    some knowledge can choose up to 3 levels of help, from a little to
    very detailed. The choice is yours.

    The opening of the game is just like the old movies. You see a
    countdown, followed by the name. You now start your adventure. The
    game starts in VGA mode. If you have a VESA driver installed, you
    can hot-key using ALT-V, to go into Super VGA mode. This gives you a
    tighter screen, which gives you more options on screen at once. For
    example, in Super VGA, mode, there is a strip running across the top
    and bottom of the screen. At any time in the game you can click on
    one of these and recap that chapter. Of course you have had to
    complete the chapter before you can review it.

    CD-ROM versions for the MPC and VIS standards are under
    construction. There is limited speech in the disk based version,
    otherwise you would not have a hard drive big enough to store it
    all, not to mention the cost of the program. However, the CD-ROM
    version will have much more speech, and other added features.

    This Interactive Cinema Adventure, called Amazon, has been selected
    by ComputerTalk Magazine as one of the Editor's Picks for 1992. It
    is in the vein of other games out there like: King's Quest, Space
    Quest and so on. While those are also excellent games, Access does
    thing a little differently with the serial-type format. In essence
    you are playing 14 games in Amazon. Each Chapter is a complete
    adventure that can take up to four hours to complete. This makes you
    want to keep returning, just as you did years ago each Saturday, to
    find out how this weeks' adventure will end, and how your hero will
    get out of the predicament he got into last week.

    Three cheers for Amazon, and I hope to see more wonderful games like
    this from Access.

    As a sidebar, Access is a three time winner at CTM this year. Along
    with accolades for Amazon, they also won for Links 386 Pro, and they
    also helped developed the excellent golf game for Windows, Microsoft
    Golf.


                    ķ
                         Product Information       
                    Ķ
                                Amazon             
                          Guardians of Eden        
                    Ķ
                          List Price -- $69.95     
                    Ķ
                         Access Software Inc.      
                     4910 W. Amelia Earhart Drive  
                       Salt Lake City, UT 84116    
                             801-359-2900          
                    Ľ
