The hottest personal computer games expected to ship this year are . . . the same ones that were supposed to ship last year.
Virgin Interactive Entertainment Inc.'s 11th Hour, Sierra On-Line Inc.'s Phantasmagoria and Spectrum HoloByte Inc.'s Star Trek: The Next Generation "A Final Unity" - to name a few - are all more than half a year late.What's more, many of the CD-ROM games that are on the shelves are sequels and knockoffs of last year's hits. Interplay Productions' Descent, for instance, adds three-dimensional graphics, but it is otherwise a takeoff of GT Interactive's shoot'em-up alien game Doom. Synergy Interactive Corp.'s Gadget is widely seen as an effort to recreate last year's hit Myst, created by Broderbund Software Inc.
That's partly because sequels increase the odds of a hit in an industry that has so few. Game-development costs are going up as game makers seek more high-tech effects, while prices are falling in the glutted market. Dan Lavin, an industry analyst at Dataquest Inc., estimates that wholesale revenue in 1995 will be $19 each for unbundled disks, down from $20 last year and $24 in 1993. Only a handful of titles sell more than 100,000 copies - that means roughly $1.9 million in revenue, with development costs of $500,000 or more a title.
The slim profits and long development process are forcing game makers to resell their game engines, the software they use to make their games. This cuts down on production costs for the game engines' buyers, but the drawback is that "the games end up looking the same," says Gwyneth Hamel, marketing director of San Francisco game developer MechaDeus.
Here's a look at some of the titles software makers are betting on this year.
LATE
11th Hour. (Virgin Interactive Entertainment Inc., Irvine, Calif.)
Original shipping date: October 1994.
New date: third quarter 1995.
This long-awaited title is expected to be a huge hit, because it's a sequel to last year's 7th Guest, a haunted-house mystery game that sold 1.5 million copies worldwide. The story, about a reporter who's looking through a haunted house for his missing girlfriend, isn't particularly different. But the technology is new. The game includes 65 minutes of fluid-looking video and a technology that allows the game to read your CD-ROM player to see what kinds of sound and video cards it needs to work with, instead of asking you to key in that information.
Star Trek: The Next Generation "A Final Unity" (Spectrum HoloByte Inc., Alameda, Calif.)
Original shipping date: summer 1994
New date: before June 30
Spectrum says it ran into several glitches, including a decision late in development to get eight hours of the Star Trek actors' voices in the game, instead of using text. The company ended up having to incorporate 15,000 sound files containing individual lines of dialogue. It could be another big hit - during the delays, it drummed up 280,000 pre-orders from distributors, Spectrum says. In the game, you play a Star Trek character out to save the universe. The twist: You can be one of seven characters, and the game plays differently depending on whom you choose.
The Dig (Lucas Arts Entertainment Co., San Rafael, Calif.)
Original shipping date: none promised, but has been in development for more than four years, under three different production teams.
New date: September or October 1995
Delays and the involvement of Steven Spielberg have elevated expectations for this game into the stratosphere. At first glance, it doesn't deliver. The graphics, though good, aren't on the cutting edge. LucasArts hopes to make up for that with the game's story, which draws on the movie "Treasure of the Sierra Madre." Three people are kidnapped to an alien world, where they dig through ruins to find technology to take them home; along the way, they stumble across the prospect of unlimited wealth. What's different: The characters have complex personalities that unfold during tense situations and change the way the game is played. As their leader, you must discover and work with the personalities to get everyone home safely.
Phantasmagoria (Sierra On-Line Inc., Bellevue, Wash.)
Original shipping date: Christmas 1994.
New shipping date: end of June
In this racy horror thriller featuring partial nudity and much gore, you play Adrian, a writer who has moved into an old house in the Northeast with her photographer husband. As you move through the house, horrifying things happen, and you must solve puzzles to escape. The twist: As in The Dig, part of the battle is against the good guys, who have a dark side. In this case, your husband mutates into a mean person, and you must find a way to fix him.
NEW AND DIFFERENT
The Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong Nou (Sony Corp.'s Sony Imagesoft unit, Santa Monica, Calif.)
Shipping date: early August
This game is billing itself as "Mystlike," but it's completely different. It may be the first CD-ROM game where it's good to die. You play a man who has lost his soul, and you must die and be reincarnated nine times to get it back. The game is more of a journey than a story or moral tale, and Osamu Sato, the Tokyo multimedia artist who developed the game, has incorporated Asian philosophies, images and music in it.
The Beast Within (Sierra On-Line Inc., Bellevue, Wash.)
Shipping date: by Christmas
In this second title in the Gabriel Knight series, you play Gabriel, a fighter of evil spirits who goes to Germany to investigate the death of King Ludwig of Bavaria, who in real life was found drowned more than a century ago. The game developer, Jane Jensen, takes the opportunity to speculate that the king may have been associated with werewolves. What's different: As you learn about the king, you also uncover some unseemly aspects of Gabriel's character, which you must overcome in order to win.
The Daedalus Encounter (Viacom Inc.'s Virgin Interactive Entertainment Inc.)
Shipped: April
This game looks like a violent alien game, but it's not. You help movie stars Tia Carrere ("True Lies," "Wayne's World") and Christian Bocher (bit parts in television shows "Melrose Place" and "Murder, She Wrote") explore an alien spaceship that's about to burn up in the sun. In the game, you encounter an intriguing ethical dilemma, and your choice determines what ending you get.
Johnny Mnemonic (Sony Imagesoft)
Shipped: May 26
This is said to be the medium's first interactive movie, with a script based on the big-screen movie of the same name. You play Johnny, a futuristic courier who uses a chip in his brain to carry a massive amount of data that could save the world; he must either unload the data or die. What's different: If you don't want to play the game, you can sit back and let the video play like a movie. Or, during certain scenes, you can use your keyboard to control Johnny's actions.