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Now Playing at Escapade (www.escapade.com)

November 22, 1996

Russ Ceccola

Expanding Our Scope

Turkey Day is close at hand, but we're still trying to digest all
of the new games flying in the door here at Escapade
(www.escapade.com). New titles on all platforms and in all themes have
really started to pour into our mailbox. We'll make sure we hit some
of the most important of these games over the next few weeks in the
holiday season, but there's just no way to cover them all.

Look to this week's Editorial Escapades from Editor Arnie Katz for a
more complete exploration of this phenomenon and a no-nonsense
description of our review policy. It's something like "we'll sell no
wine before its time," but I'll let Arnie get into the details.

The headline this week refers to our commitment to cover all areas
of the gaming industry. In particular, Joyce Worley interviews two
members of the design team for Midway's new racing game, "Cruis'n
World." We're not limited in our coverage to just the home market, but
we'll visit the arcades every now and then as well. Joyce has written
about coin-op games in NewsWatch news items, so it's only appropriate
that we do more in-depth stories when appropriate. I really liked
"Cruis'n USA," so you can be sure I'll be in line at the arcade for
this design team's sequel. Read our interview of the week for the full
details.

Continuing with her fine news investigations, Joyce used News
Spotlight this week to look at CompuServe, the online service's
history and its current position in the market. New things are
definitely on the way for the veteran online service to keep it
competitive. You may just be surprised.

Heading to our Departments section, you can find an expanded NewsWatch
element, the <B>In Brief</B> news tidbits. In some cases, the news
Joyce comes across may only require a single statement rather than an
in-depth news item or interview, so we altered NewsWatch to
accommodate this aspect of news coverage. Once again, we've further
established NewsWatch as the most popular and complete news source for
electronic entertainment. In this week's Fanzine Scope, Arnie Katz
reviews the latest issues of "Overkill" and "Shining Forth." Joyce has
put together another interesting set of Web sites for Crawl Space,
some of which offer winter fun. Whether you're ready or not, winter's
on the way, so at least make the season entertaining.

You can find a new edition of CyberDad in our Columns section this
week. CyberDad now appears biweekly in the virtual pages of Escapade.
Eventually, we'd like to increase the frequency of all our columns.
I'll alert you as our columns appear more often, but this fact will be
evident in the "freshness date" for the particular column. Charles
Taft gets a bit impulsive with his discussion of shopping for the
upcoming holidays, but after all, there were Christmas trees up in
stores at Halloween, and I saw Santa in a mall last night. Let the
madness begin! Jingle all the way indeed...

Our Reviews selection this week really covers the gamut of genres.
Marcy Waldie takes a look at a children's holiday activities title
called "Blizzard's Holiday Jamboree." Parents will want to check out
this review. Ross Chamberlain may not have suited up for a chemistry
course for a while, but he can certainly explore the value of a
product that does take you to the lab. "Corel ChemLab" might be the
safest way for your children to mix chemicals and blow things up. Ross
gets into the details. I always loved my chemistry kit because you
could burn stuff that presumably wouldn't explode in your face. Did
you ever hook up the bunsen burners to a water faucet? They shoot much
farther than any Super Soaker. Ross continues his Book Link reviews
this week with his comments on "Origin's Official Guide to Crusader:
No Remorse" from Prima. We're not limited to strategy guides at
Escapade. Ross has a few different kinds of books on tap. Make sure
you check out the Book Link reviews next week for some more diverse
titles.

I can't picture Arnie in Bigfoot or one of the other popular monster
trucks, but he takes the safer route by hopping into the vehicles in
Microsoft's "Monster Truck Madness." Let the race begin! Bill Weney
strapped on a guitar for his latest review. Sega's "mr. Bones"
features a talented skeleton in a "me against the world" scenario,
except that his world is full of nasty enemy skeletons and other
undead creatures. Music figures heavily into the game. It sure beats
the blips and beeps of past gaming systems. Finally, Rich Heimlich
writes about "Tomb Raider" from Eidos. It's a third-person perspective
3-D game with photorealistic environments. Read Rich's review to find
out why "Tomb Raider" made him rush to his PC to comment about his
experiences.

We won't really be taking off for Thanksgiving. I'm sure that we'll
be right back at our computers and gaming systems after the pumpkin
pie gets decimated and the football games start. When you've had
enough of the TV and you've taken a tiny nap after all that eating,
check out the magazine for the latest in entertainment news and
reviews. Happy Thanksgiving!