As 1994 draws near to a close, it is an exciting time to take a look back at not only the current year of gaming, but actually, take a long look back over the past 3-5 years. We've come SO far in the quality (and quantity) of the games we're playing now. It wasn't that long ago that we were heralding King's Quest IV as a turning-point product in the industry as it was the first major title that had support for a multiple of sound devices. 256 color games enchanted us (remarkably, it was King's Quest V that really ushered that era in too) and the tidal wave of development began. Today, we have stunning creations like Doom, X-COM, Tie Fighter, Flight Simulator 5.0, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mortal Kombat 2 and more. These titles have caused each of our jaws to drop as we've become immersed in new virtual worlds and virtual experiences.
So, where are we now?
And where are we going?
If there's one thing that's constant in the interactive entertainment industry, it is change (for us too... keep reading!). Change and the constant upward spiral in computing power and it's megabytes and gigabytes, and the infinite imaginations of those who create these replayable experiences. On many fronts, we can expect massive change over the course of the next 12-24 months. As a long-time gamer like many of you, I've been afflicted by the omnipresent limitations of DOS for many years. We've patched it, upgraded it, extended it, expanded it, cursed it and otherwise just plain broke it for the purposes of a good game for several years now. There have been (and continue to be) several attempts by huge corporations to replace it, but DOS still just chugs along. Being a Microsoft product, the one company that can kill it apparently will do so in the 1st half of '95. Not to debate the relative merits of its replacement, Windows '95, aka 'Chicago', I for one, am hysterically glad that over the longterm, something will FINALLY be here to takes its place and we can, forever rid ourselves of the infamous 640K limit. Certainly there will be a transition period to whatever ultimately succeeds DOS, be it Chicago, Warp, MacOS, or something entirely new, where we have our unique difficulties getting something old to run on something new. This should be expected. It is the long-term vision I'm hopeful of that a game developer can write a cutting edge game on the EXACT boot configuration of my machine that I also run Excel, Word Perfect, Charisma, and the hundreds of other business and utility programs. Enough with the boot disk, the alternate config.sys / autoexec.bat files, and the CTRL-ALT-DEL to play a game.
Of course, the console gamers are just plain laughing at this, but they (we) too can look for major change on the T.V. top over the course of the next 24 months. The sales of 16-bit machines are already way off this fall/winter season, and despite new, quality 16-bit titles, the consumer public knows that something newer, better, faster, more colorful and more powerful (yield: more fun,...hopefully) is around the corner. Sega will be introducing a 32-bit bridge product (32X) for the Genesis shortly; Nintendo is preparing their Ultra 64 system for a late '95 introduction, Sega has their own 32-bit Saturn system announced in Japan now and preparing for a North American launch next year; Atari is here now with the 64-bit Jaguary; Sony is throwing itself into the ring with the Playstation system; and we have 3DO here now with a (now) impressive showing of next generation titles. Change. It is constant.
It is this same level of change that is causing us to refocus Game Bytes. The very size of this issue should demonstrate that we've outlived the capabilities of the current format. With so many SVGA games coming out (screenshots thus become 4X in size) and the release of SO MANY more new games, we simply need a new delivery vehicle. We believe the Internet, and specifically the World-Wide Web (WWW) is the vehicle. I've received numerous criticisms of Game Bytes that people have stopped reading it because it's just too much all at once and "I just wanted to read a piece of it. I'm not interested in all the other stuff that's there." The currency and timliness of Game Bytes has suffered in recent months too. It's just SO hard to put this much content together and doing more frequent and smaller issues doesn't fix the problem on our development side either. The WWW will provide us a tailor-made environment to produce flexible, cutting-edge content, with an extreme focus on timliness. The very nature of the Web is such that those browsing can now read and view only those items that interest them. It will no longer be an 'all or nothing' proposition with Game Bytes.
I'm sure this will disappoint those who do not currently have access to the WWW, but I'm being assured by all fronts that these capabilities are being added across the board. The WWW, and the Mosaic-like browsers are being hailed as the 'killer app' for the Internet. Compuserve and America-On- Line users are even getting into the act with WWW access announced for early next year. We do plan to make this transition successful for those who don't have WWW access yet. We'll try to make as much of the content download'able via FTP and the other ususal sites, but we won't be packaging entire issues together anymore. We'll be making the Web site just hum with tremendous content and package the reviews, previews, etc. into smaller nuggets that can be downloaded for local viewing and reading.
To do this, however, we'll need your help. Game Bytes will always survive only because the reading public as a whole wants it to. We still need your critical and honest reviews, your screen captures, your thoughts, essays, strategy guides and everything else to succeed. I can promise you, however, that your well-written content will have a MUCH wider audience and be seen by that audience MUCH faster. When you make your submission, we intend to have it on the Web site within 24 hours of your submission. Obviously, further details will be made known to everyone when we're ready to go live. We have our design done and all that remains is to put the HTML code in place (I'm welcoming any volunteers who would like to participate in this process!). We think we can have a major portion of the site in place and live between Thanksgiving (US) and Christmas. We hope you'll frequent it often.
I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for making Game Bytes what it is today and hope that you'll stay with me as we transition in this period of change to something even more exciting, useful and fun.
Thanks for reading Game Bytes.
Ross Erickson, Editor/Publisher
Game Bytes Magazine