ali@polya.STANFORD.EDU (Ali Ozer) (02/28/88)
----- Saw three ex-vaporprograms in one day at HT Electronics (a local dealer) --- Jet, Shakespeare, and Return to Atlantis. And at least a half a dozen new titles since the last time I was there, about two weeks ago. Good to see all that stuff out there! Anyway, my girlfriend and I bought Ports of Call and spent most of the day playing it. Fun game, well worth the $39. It's a strategy game, where you have to make business decisions buying/selling ships and shipping goods around the world. The graphics are very well done (for instance, they have out-of-porthole views of all the cities the game knows about, and good water graphics, done with color-cycling). There is little arcade action; when you enter the port or when you encounter obstacles you have to do some manuevering against the clock. Make sure you have a good mouse pad 8-)... We played for four hours, and even near the end unexpected things were popping up --- So the game doesn't get old quickly. No gurus or other technical problems, although there were some instances where we weren't sure if what happened made sense (for instance, although my girlfriend lost all her ships she ended up winning the game!). Do buy the game if you're into decision making games that can take hours and hours. By the way, it looks like the game is really most fun when played with multiple players --- The computer doesn't play against you when you're playing solitaire. Upto four can play. Too bad there isn't a over-the-phone-line option; it would've worked well... Oh, the game is copy-protected. But --- and this is really wonderful --- it seems to cache the graphics & such, so that on our machine (with 2.5 Megs) the game went real smooth after the first few minutes of play. Ali Ozer, ali@polya.stanford.edu