Contributions > Descriptions by William Shawn McDonie (1131)

As with all games in the NBA Live series you can draft, trade and edit players. Play a full season, exhibition or just the playoffs. 96 includes 29 teams including the expansion Toronto and Vancouver teams.

Track and Field sports over 12 different events that will test your gaming mojo. From Weightlifting to gymnastics to the 100M dash, Track and Field is the successor to the Track and Field games from the 8 bit Nintendo.

High Heat 2002 is the 3rd game in the "High Heat" series. Gone from the previous two games is the Sammy Sosa title. Like the previous games HH2002 is a total baseball simulator. You can set back and just manage your team or you can get right on the field and play each game. You can configure the game in many different formats.

You can:

Lengthen or Shorten a season

Create new teams

Re-arrange the divisons

move players from different teams before the game starts

Change team settings

Create custom made players

...and generally do just about anything you want

From the swing of the bat to making blockbuster trades you have all the controls.

P.T.O. is another military sim from KOEI. In this game you can choose to be either Japan or the Allies. By managing your fleets and ordering new warships you can control many different sides of the conflict (Ship development, Base defense, Fleet arrangement, Direct battle control, Economic decisions). There are many different options of play in PTO, you can choose to play from one of many different famous battles or you can play the campaign. You can control one side or both. There are also limited controls on victory conditions.

This special release of Sid Meier's Civilization III includes:

• a tin case
• a letter from Sid Meier
• fold-out tech tree
• a bonus CD featuring making-of footage, 40 wallpapers (2 being exclusive), footage from Sid Meier's introduction to the IDSA Hall of Fame, and 53 screenshots

The European version had different contents:

• a big carton box
• the "Civ 3 Survival Kit" (tech tree, collector's manual and Quick guide)
• "Get Civilized" T-shirt
• a poster and a postcard
• a bonus CD featuring making-of footage, 40 wallpapers (2 being exclusive), footage from Sid Meier's introduction to the IDSA Hall of Fame, and 53 screenshots

In this humorous soccer sim, your players are displayed as "cartoon like figures". Like many sports sims you can draft and trade players, control formations, and finances.

Avalon Hill's Diplomacy is a game of negotiations, alliances, promises kept and promises broken. In order to survive, a player needs help from others. In order to win the game, a player must eventually stand alone. Knowing whom to trust, when to trust them, what to promise and when to promise is the heart of the game.

Flanker 2.0 is the second major release of SSI's realistic air combat simulator based on the Russian Su-27 & Su-33 Flanker. Like its predecessor, the game features a comprehensive simulation of the jets' avionics and weapons systems, with a focus on beyond-visual-range air-to-air combat. Mastery of the Flanker's various radar and weapon systems is essential to the player's survival, a task made all the more difficult by the fact that the instrumentation is entirely labeled in Russian.

Improvements for this second release include 3D accelerated texture-mapped graphics and the addition of the Su-33 naval variant of the Flanker. The main difference would be that the Su-27 is a pure air superiority fighter while the Su-33 retains a ground attack role. Beyond that, however, there is little difference between the two planes.

The game underwent several updates, culminating in version 2.51. Incremental improvements included flight model and weapons model revisions, graphic and stability enhancements, the addition of wingman commands, and the ability to fly the MiG-29 jet fighter.

CART Racing (short for Championship Auto Racing Teams) is a re-release of IndyCar Racing II, with Windows 95 Rendition 3D acceleration support, and slipstreamed with some patches. The game simulates open-wheel races with realistic physics, an official license, and extensive garage and setup options. There is multiplayer support for two players in total.

Jane's Combat Simulations: USAF - United States Air Force is a multi-aircraft simulator that is built upon the engine of its predecessor, Israeli Air Force. As with other titles using the Jane's license, the focus of the game is in creating a realistic and believable military aircraft simulation. Hence, the game's controls and mechanics are elaborate, while all controls can be mapped to a voice command. It is also possible to give basic commands to wingmen, if they are present. While waypoints and refueling can be managed by the aircraft's autopilot, all such maneuvers can be done manually.

USAF is based on 8 different fighters and bombers of the United States Air Force: the F-4E Phantom II, F-105D Thunderchief, A-10A Thunderbolt II, F-15C Eagle, F-15E Strike Eagle, F-16C Fighting Falcon, F-117A Nighthawk, and the F-22A Raptor. In game modes other than the campaign, the MiG-29 is also available to the player. Each aircraft performs differently and is meant for different tasks, and can be seen from the cockpit (with 2D and 3D views available, and the possibility to look around from the pilot's perspective), from the outside (in a behind view or one of the cinematic views), or with just the HUD visible.

The game has four campaigns, two of which are historical (Vietnam War and Desert Storm), and the other two (Red Arrow and Sleeping Giant) being fictional and set in a hypothetical future. Tutorials are extensive, while separate tutorials exist under the umbrella term "Red Flag", which note more demanding tasks and can not be reached at the lowest rank. The player's progress and rank is recorded in their profile, with each mission's success or failure affecting their score. Scoring itself can be changed by setting various difficulties and "aids", with AI help removing score percentages but making the game easier for newcomers.

Aside from the campaigns, there are preset single scenarios, as well as a quick mission editor which the player can use to manually set the parameters of a desired air-to-air skirmish (whereas the campaigns have both air-to-ground and air-to-air missions). There is also a Fly Now! button in the main menu, which randomly picks a mission from a small mission pool and puts the player in a random plane. These missions can have the same settings/landscapes as the missions in the campaigns: United States (Nellis Air Force base), Germany, Vietnam, and Iraq. The game comes bundled with a User Mission Editor application as well. USAF has a multiplayer mode available via LAN and JanesCombat.Net (which has since been discontinued).

Finally, the signature feature of Jane's-licensed games is the in-game encyclopaedia, which is present in USAF and lists and describes in detail not only the aircraft the player can pilot or shoot at, but also all other objects that can be encountered in the game, as well as missiles that aircraft can be armed with.

At the beginning of Mindshadow you find yourself on a lonely beach in a lifeless hut. With a headache and no memory.

The object of the game is to completely regain your memory. As you progress in the game a word or phrase will trigger memories of the past. Like most adventure games the fun of the game is centered on discovery of you and your surroundings.

The player can use a 'Think' command to reflect on situations which can assist in recovering your identity.

Triple Play Baseball is part of the EA Sports line of MLB Baseball sims. This edition was released in 2001 and would have been called Triple Play 2002 if they had not dropped the year off the title.

Like previous editions you can pick from any of the teams in the National League or American League. Mostly little has changed with this edition except for a world tournament that has been added. You have to win the World Series however to see this option.

Outlive is a real-time strategy game set in the year 2045 where human and robots battle each other for supremacy. Both races can be controlled through the player with different campaigns. The gameplay is centered around resource mining, building and equipping units, and investing into research to progress along a technology tree. There are three different campaign modes, a skirmish mode, matches over internet, and a map editor.

The player controls Marshal Gram trying to save the Princess of the Galactic Federation. Only the evil Vulcor stands in the way. Much like Dragon's Lair, the player has to make choices that can change the game's outcome.

The Windows version also includes a set of 3D glasses to use during play.

In the sequel to Les Manley In: Search for the King, Les is searching for his best friend Helmut the Human Bean who, along with his girlfriend LaFonda Turner, has been kidnapped from his mansion in Los Angeles. Helmut and LaFonda are not the only ones who disappeared. Recently many celebrities have vanished without a trace and without any ransom note from possible kidnappers.

Unlike the first game in the series, this game is a "point and click" adventure. There is no text parser involved but instead the player uses the mouse pointer over the on-screen objects, so they become highlighted with a question mark. Clicking on them pulls down a simple menu consisting of possible actions that can be undertaken with the objects. Items collected in the inventory are operated exactly the same way but they can not be combined all together - they can only be used with objects or people on the location (including the Les' character himself). During the conversation with other characters, the player has several dialogue lines to choose from. However, since the game is very linear, there is no possibility to fail the game by conducting the conversation in a wrong way. Later in the game the player will have control over two characters.

The game combines cartoon graphics with digitised simple animations of filmed actors and actresses. The latter are mostly used as cutscenes or during the conversations.

Part of the wildly popular Panzer General line of games. Pacific gives you command of either allied or axis forces in the pacific theater of operations. Just like Panzer General you will build a force together and try to carry it through the war, and just like Panzer you will need the benefit of the experienced units if you are going to be victorious.

The Orion Conspiracy is a futuristic adventure game set in the year 2160, when space travel is a common thing. The player controls the Irish man Devlin McCormack as he arrives at the deep space station Cerberus following the death of his son Danny. Initially he only intends to stay for a short time, but when it is discovered he was murdered, he decides to stay and investigate the circumstances of the death.

Gameplay is typical for graphical adventures of that time, with a third-person view and a point-and-click interface. When browsing an environment the cursor can be moved over objects. Objects that can be used are highlighted. After clicking them, a number of actions becomes available through icons at the bottom of the screen, such as examining them, or picking them up. There are conversation trees when talking to other characters and both subtitles and voiced speech are supported. The game contains a large amount of profanity, with words that are generally censored or avoided in other games.

This is a classic text-parser-with-moving-onscreen-actors adventure game from the early 90's. In this game you are a tech specalist for a company. (Basically Les is the poster child for nerds all over the US.) Your goal is to win the Search for Elvis contest and win the heart of the girl of your dreams. You might even wind up a superstar.

Nations is a WWII flight sim not unlike Jane's Combat Simulations: WWII Fighters.

You can fly vintage aircraft like the Focke Wulf 190, Messerschmitt bf109, Messerschmitt 163, Messerschmitt 262, Hawker Hurricane, De Havilland Mosquito, Supermarine Spitfire, Hawker Typhoon, P-38 Lightning, P-40 Kittyhawk, P-47 Thunderbolt, and finally the P-51 Mustang.

FPS Golf allows anyone to play the game in as many ways as was possible in 1997. You could play alone on your PC, with co-workers over a LAN, or over a modem with another player or over the SIGS (Sierra Gaming Network). FPS Golf was Sierra's answer to Links.

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot down by an assassin's bullet. Since that time, people have wondered how history might have been different if JFK had lived to complete his first term. Would America have gotten more deeply involved in Vietnam? Would the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have been passed? Would he have been reelected to a second term?

Reelect JFK is a first person simulation that puts you in the role of President Kennedy. You have survived the assassination attempt in Dallas, and must continue on your quest for reelection in 1964. Along the way, you will confront key political issues such as Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement. You will also face the challenge of discovering who was responsible for the attempt on your life. You will play 50 game weeks, which will take you from the assassination attempt in November of 1963 to election day 1964. Your primary objective is to get reelected to a second term.

The Operational Art of War (TOAW), Volume II is a combined simulation and scenario editor covering military campaigns over the 1956-2000 period.

Your forces are not just a collection of icons on a map, differing primarily in graphic representation or a shallow set of numerical strengths. While you can play this game at that level, your armies are actually very complex organizations made up of individual vehicles, weapons, or squads. The troops who man your weapons may range from elite vetrans to green conscript recruits who can improve their performance with experience. They need food and fuel and ammunition, and they get tired if you push them too hard. They will not usually fight to the last drop of binary blood, and they generally do not perform to their best potential if they have to coordinate with unfamiliar forces. If you ask them to do something complicated, they might not do it in a quite the way you expect. In short, they act just a little bit like real troops.

Welcome to Madden NFL 97, the game that captures the excitement of a 30 yard touchdown pass, the strategy of a well executed scoring drive, and the atmosphere of a crisp autumn afternoon in the stadium. Madden NFL 97 delivers state of the art graphics and sound -- and with modem and network support, it's ready to put your competitive skills to the test.

Ncaa 98 is College football simulation based on all Division 1A teams in existance as of 1997. You start off by choosing a game based on a exhibition, Great Game, or season game. Then you can choose from any of the Division 1A teams to start our game. NCAA 98 also includes school fight songs for 25 of the biggest teams.

Man Of War is comprised of two distinct sections, the turn based setup and plotting stage and the real-time action phase. In the setup and plotting stage, players can choose to play either a historical scenario or a customized scenario. From a map of the chosen battle, players survey the strength of their fleet, analyze the weakness of the enemy and contemplate strategy. During setup the appropriate pre-battle doctrine is set and first orders are issued through a flag system of command. When the planning is complete, Man Of War's real-time action phase puts the player on the deck of the flagship in a first-person perspective. Players can move about freely to watch the outcome of their orders from any vantage point on the ship's deck. In a phase that lasts up to four minutes, players will experience the roar of the cannons, the impact of a broadside and a changing environment of 16 different weather conditions. When the four minute turn is compete, play will return to the plotting stage where damage and fleet movement is assessed and new orders are issued. When the final orders are given and the last cannon has fired, the Victory Summary will display the results of the battle and proclaim the victor.

Carrier Strike simulates naval-air battles in the South Pacific during WWII. Carrier Strike can be used to recreate historical battles or random-historical battles (battles that could have happened at a particular time). The Campaign Game allows you to complete one battle and jump immediately into a new battle. Ships sunk or badly damaged in one battle will be unavailable for the next battle. The Campaign Game allows one battle per month from May 1942 to June 1944.

In Carrier Strike you issue movement orders to friendly task forces (TF's) and direct the Flight Operations on your carriers. Flight operations consist of selecting ordnance for bombers; moving aircraft from the hangar to the flight deck; launching aircraft on CAP, search and strike missions; and selecting or changing strike targets.