
Shareware Reviews
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

   >> Dragon's Bane: Mahjongg II
          Tackling the Tiles

   >>  Fire & Ice
          A Game That Really Goes to Extremes

   >>  NetSpades v1.1
          Trump and "Bonk" Other Players Over a Modem!

  >>  Vinyl Goddess From Mars
          A Thong Bikini, a Lady and Lotsa Monsters
          
                                 -=*=-

                  >> Dragon's Bane: Mahjongg II  <<
                         Tackling the Tiles

   Nels Anderson's Mahjongg wasn't the first shareware program I 
discovered, but it was the first one that reeled me in, hook, line and 
sinker. How I loved it when I won and got to see the fireworks 
celebration!

   Probably every PC user on the planet is familiar with Mahjongg, so I 
won't belabor the points of the game. Namely, you tag and remove 
matching tiles from a stack until you remove them all -- if you can. A 
little bit of luck and a lot of strategy are involved.

   Anderson has updated his board-game classic with Mahjongg II. 
Actually, it's called Dragon's Bane: Mahjongg II, in honor of the 
"dragon," which is the term given by the Chinese to the traditional 
pyramid shape of the tile pile.

   If you liked the original Mahjongg game, you'll love this update. It 
has sound! It has animation! It has VGA support (actually, it requires 
the VGA graphics mode)! It has a medieval theme! It also has a voracious 
appetite for hard-disk space. While the original Mahjongg could fit on a 
360K floppy disk, with room to spare, Mahjongg II gobbles up more than 
2MB of disk space. That's to make room for the sounds and the animations 
that play whenever you succeed in matching tiles (and you can turn off 
sound and animation if you like, which is good, because they do slow 
down game play somewhat).

   Like the original Mahjongg, you can choose to load different tile 
sets. Several medieval-themed tile sets are provided (lots of knights, 
shields and axes), along with a Chinese tile set as a salute to the 
game's ancient origins. Also included is a tile editor that lets you 
create your own tiles or modify existing tile sets. This is fantastic! 
The editor includes line, circle, rectangle and fill tools -- and it's 
even fun to just doodle around in.

   Unlike the older Mahjongg, Mahjongg II lets you venture beyond the 
traditional "dragon"-style layout to many others. It even lets you 
design your *own* layout. Lots of other bonuses are built in: tournament 
modes, statistics (to keep you apprised of your success "battling the 
dragon") and a timed option.

   It was as much fun to discover and play Mahjongg II as it was the 
original game. Of course, user expectations regarding interface and game 
play are rather higher now -- but Anderson has risen to the challenge. 
Great game! Play it!

   Mahjongg II requires 640K of RAM, DOS 3.0 or higher, extended memory, 
and VGA. Registration is $16.

              | Software Shopper Ordering Information |
              | Dragon's Bane    HD0144   1 Disk   $8 |

                                 -=*=-

                        >>>>  Fire & Ice  <<<<
                 A Game That Really Goes to Extremes

   Life around here has been torrid and steamy. Hey! I'm talking about 
the weather! So it was an extreme pleasure to stumble across Fire & Ice, 
a hot (and cool!) platform-style arcade game from Streetwise software. 
When the game loaded I found myself in the Arctic circle, turned into a 
character named Cool Coyote. Not only does he live in an igloo, he can 
spontaneously generate and lob ice pellets at will.

   That's a handy talent for him to have, because throwing ice pellets 
is the only way he can defend himself against the bad buys (little 
Eskimos and Penguin-esque creatures). To kill a bad guy, you freeze him 
with an ice pellet (some enemies require more than one dose); then when 
he's frozen, you bounce on him to shatter him. (I know, that sounds kind 
of drastic -- but if the bad guys win, their leader, the evil Suten, 
will destroy the earth with fire.)

   Like other 2-D platform games, including the popular Commander Keen 
series and Jazz Jackrabbit, Fire & Ice has great animation and graphics, 
and it gives you hidden objects to find and use. Lots of jumping, 
running, shooting and grabbing. My favorite things to do in a game! Fire 
& Ice also has moving platforms -- and puppies! If a puppy is around, 
it'll follow Cool Coyote and launch ice pellets whenever the Cool man 
does. (Talk about hero worship!) There's lots of humor in this game, 
from the puppies, to the crane that takes away the sun and puts the moon 
in place, to the nice clouds that shower down "snow bombs" when you hit 
them with an ice pellet.

   There are supposed to be some "Scottish" levels in this shareware 
version, but I haven't encountered them yet -- the game starts in "Ice" 
mode, and I haven't gotten too far along. (I think it's a subconscious 
desire to beat the heat. I'm taking a dive to stay cool!) I like this 
game; I find myself playing it more and more as the thermometer courts 
the 100-degree mark.

   You'll need EGA or VGA, and a hard drive, to play. Registration is 
$29.95.

              | Software Shopper Ordering Information |
              | Fire & Ice    HD0146     1 Disk    $8 |

                                 -=*=-

                      >>>>  NetSpades v1.1  <<<<
             Trump and "Bonk" Other Players Over a Modem!

   Tell me, the last time you and your pals got together for a friendly 
game of cards, did somebody scream? Push someone else out of his or her 
chair? Give everybody lots of cheerful hugs? Turn into an alien? Hmmm. 
These bizarre "things" seem to happen around me with great frequency: 
when I'm on the computer -- usually when visiting BBS chat rooms. People 
are always screaming, rolling on the floor laughing, or getting bonked. 
on the head. Things like that are happening now more than ever since 
I've installed NetSpades from Synthetic Reality. And I *LOVE* it!

   NetSpades is the classic four-player card game done up in Windows -- 
but with the full chat treatment. Not only can you play a challenging 
game of Spades, you can also trade insults (or warm hugs) with up to 
three other human players over a modem or network. (If you can't find 
four humans to warm the seats, "robots" will fill in.) The programmer, 
Dan J. Samuel, has obviously spent a lot of time in chat rooms. It shows 
in the beautiful interface that lets you make a face or bonk somebody 
with a single mouse click.

   Yes, NetSpades is a chatter's delight. A toolbar at the top of the 
screen gives you 14 buttons you can use to express yourself. Seven 
buttons feature yellow smileys, but only one of them is smiling! The 
others wear sad, angry, rude, malicious, drunk and coy expressions. When 
you feel yourself breaking into the appropriate mood, press the button, 
and you'll see the change reflected in your picture onscreen -- a little 
cartoon representative of you next to your cards. If that weren't 
enough, you can click the Face Editor button to custom-configure each 
picture from among hundreds of possible combinations. (You can turn 
yourself into an alien when you're angry, if you like.)

   The other seven buttons store action phrases; you can put a phrase 
"at the ready" any time simply by clicking its button. To put a phrase 
in action, just place your mouse cursor over someone else's "face" and 
do a right click. The action is typed into the scrolling chat box at the 
right of the cards. With human opponents, the commentary can get quite 
lively. When you're playing solo, you'll have to settle for bonking the 
robots. The seven default action phrases include such things as:

   [] <Ricky's> hair stands on end as <Lucy> emits a piercing scream!
   [] <Wilma> and <Fred> help <Barney> from the floor, after <Betty's>
          attack.
   [] <Clark> gives <Lois> a warm and cheerful hug.

   The <Names> represent names of the people playing the game! That's 
cool. If you click on the Action Editor button, you can type in your own 
custom phrases.

   Sound effects! We must talk about the sound effects! This program 
stocks .WAV files aplenty. Each action or event in NetSpades is 
accompanied by a humorous sound, whether it's a snick, a crash or a 
springy boing. When you change your expression, you hear it. (Try being 
angry just to hear the anguished yell. <G>) When you deliver an action 
phrase, you hear a sound effect too.

   The game play lives up to the excellence of the chat features. Try 
solo play and you'll see that the "robots" play a tough game. Here's a 
refresher on the rules of Spades for those who have forgotten how to 
play or never learned:

   The deck is dealt out to four players so that each holds 13 cards. On 
a play, someone leads with a card. Everyone else must play a card of the 
same suit. Say that someone leads with an ace of hearts; the others lay 
down a 10, 9 and 6 of hearts. The person who played the ace "takes the 
trick" -- earning 1 point. The high card wins the point, and aces are 
high. If one doesn't have a card of that suit, he or she may play a card 
of another suit. If he or she lays down a *spade* on, say, a pile of 
hearts, he/she "takes the trick" (earns 1 point), because spades are 
trumps. Even a lowly 2 of spades can take an ace of hearts -- or clubs 
or diamonds too, for that matter. But a higher spade always beats a 
lower spade.

   Let's back up to the point just after the cards are dealt: that's the 
bidding time. Bidding takes place before any cards are played. "Bidding" 
just means to estimate the number of tricks you think you can take, 
looking at your hand. You can bid from 0 (Nil) to 13 (though it's highly 
unlikely that you'll take all 13 tricks). The more spades, aces and high 
cards you have in your hand, the more optimistic you can be. Bidding is 
important, because scoring depends on it. Say you bid 5 tricks, and you 
win 5 tricks. Lucky you -- you get 50 points! Yep, that's 10 points for 
each trick won. What if you bid 5 tricks but win 6? You'd get 51 points, 
not 60, because "overbid" points count as 1. Woe be to you if you don't 
match your bid. If you bid 5 but take less than 5 tricks, you *lose* 50 
points. (NetSpades' computer opponents, and most human opponents too, do 
everything in their power to try to keep you from meeting your bid.) 
It's not unusual to see players in negative-point situations. Game play 
proceeds until somebody wins 300 points.

   A lot of strategy goes into winning Spades -- knowing when to play 
high cards, when to hold off trumps. NetSpades makes things interesting 
by letting you adjust the rules with "Nil" and "Overtricking" clauses. 
If you bid 0, or Nil, and manage to meet that, you'll win 100 points! 
(Of course, everyone else will throw out their low cards to try and make 
you take a trick.) The Overtricking rule counts the number of tricks you 
win over your bid. When you rack up 10 "overtricks," you're docked 100 
points.

   NetSpades also gives you the option of playing two-on-two; you and 
your partner bid as a team (but without being able to discuss your 
cards, unfortunately).

   I can't recommend NetSpades highly enough. It's a great game of cards 
all by itself. When you add in the chat features, the sound effects and 
the unpredictability of other players, it becomes a delightful circus. 
It won't take you long to use up the 10 hours of evaluation time you're 
allotted in this shareware version. After 10 hours, you must register 
($22.95) to receive your activation code in order to get back.

              | Software Shopper Ordering Information |
              | NetSpades     HD0147     1 Disk    $8 |

                                 -=*=-

                  >>>>  Vinyl Goddess From Mars  <<<<
              A Thong Bikini, a Lady and Lotsa Monsters

   The game Vinyl Goddess From Mars has been sitting in my IN box for 
quite a while. Something about the disk label, with the picture of the 
scantily clad woman holding a knife in a provocative manner, put me off. 
But on a recent expedition through the depths of software awaiting my 
attention, I picked up the disk again and actually read the letter from 
Union Logic (the publisher) this time. Then my sense of humor got the 
better of me.

   Describing Vinyl Goddess From Mars as a "sexy" platform game, the 
publishers gave it this scenario: "While en-route to the esteemed 
intergalactic B movie festival, the Vinyl Goddess crash-lands on a 
strange planet. Help Vinyl recover enough storage capsules to fix her 
ship and reach the festival in time."

   So, a platform game. Here I was envisioning all sorts of lewd cyber-
orgies, and it's a platform game (I *love* platform games!) -- with a 
sense of humor. When I loaded it up and began to play, I found that 
Vinyl Goddess From Mars looks and plays a lot like Epic MegaGames' Jill 
of the Jungle. It's pure platform action: running, jumping and shooting. 
(Oops! Make that "knife throwing" instead of "shooting.") Yep, and it 
also adds elements of vine-climbing, ducking, trampoline hopping, bad-
guy-fighting, moving-platform timing, hidden-area finding and 
goodie/health-device-grabbing.

   The 256-color graphics are spectacular. The animation, which Union 
Logic states is at 70 frames per second, is about the smoothest I've 
seen. The interface really clicks. You'll get caught up in the action as 
you jump around looking for your red storage capsules -- and having to 
fight off the green pod creatures and other meanies that fire energy-
sapping globs at you.

   To play youll need a 386DX or better CPU, 640K of RAM, a hard drive 
and VGA. To hear the digitized sound effects, youll need a Sound 
Blaster or compatible. Joysticks and GamePads are supported.

   (Yes, I get the reference to Leather Goddesses of Phobos. But since I 
havent played that game, I cant compare them for you. Sorry.)

           |    Software Shopper Ordering Information    |
           | Vinyl Goddess From Mars  HD0153  1 Disk  $8 |

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