Two old Cold War enemies, former CIA Director William Colby and ex-KGB Gen. Oleg Kalugin, are going Hollywood in a high-tech computer game that features their real-life espionage experiences.
The veteran spies, once deadly antagonists in the East-West showdown, now shake hands, smile for the cameras and play themselves in the interactive CD-ROM game thriller, "Spycraft: The Great Game.""Hollywood is great fun. This is the most exciting time in my life," said Kalugin, who previously got his thrills by stealing U.S. rocket fuel formulas and supervising the spying activities of American traitors such as Navy spy John Walker.
Colby and Kalugin met for the first time in 1991 in Potsdam, Germany, at a conference on East-West cooperation. While acknowledging that Kalugin's spying skills were devastating to U.S. interests, Colby holds no grudges.
"We've got lots of former enemies," Colby said from Washington. "We fought a lot of them, and now we are allies."
The multimillion-dollar game fuses Clancy-style gadgetry, LeCarre-like tension and Hollywood production techniques.
Many scenes in the game were shot on 35mm film. The producers used special-effects teams that worked on movies such as "Jurassic Park" and "JFK."
Crowds of extras gather in a digital copy of Red Square, and more than two dozen actors flesh out the cast, including a blustering politician who bears a passing resemblance to nationalist presidential candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
The politician gets shot by an assassin, and players have to figure out whodunit with help from Colby and Kalugin, who join forces to save civilization from a Russian Mafia cabal.
To solve the case, players are shown a dazzling array of gizmos, including satellite imagery, sound detection devices and weaponry that would make James Bond's armorer envious.
"We have many kinds of games used in the government for training and to stretch the minds a bit," said Colby, who began his secret career parachuting into France to fight Nazis. "Those games are normally strategic. This one is at the case officer level."
In an advance from previous CD-ROM entertainments, the Spycraft player can vault onto the Internet and access the graphic Web pages for the real CIA, FBI and other federal agencies, using Intelink, a fictional intelligence communications network that really goes online.
"What's going on is a new and very powerful form of entertainment," said Alan Gershenfeld, vice president for production at Los Angeles-based Activision, which made the game. "I don't think it will replace movies, but it's going to be as big as movies."
Through the online feature, the game blends real world news reports with fictional scenarios in playing time that can last up to 40 hours. The game, hitting stores this month, will sell for about $50.