textfiles/games/REVIEWS/neuro.rev

 NEUROMANCER

 NEUROMANCER is a skill-based role-playing game from Interplay Productions
(WASTELAND, THE BARD'Ss TALE). Based on the hip, futuristic, and highly
 intricate
storyline of William Gibson's novel of the same name, NEUROMANCER features
excellent graphics, a soundtrack by Devo, icon and menu-driven gameplay,
joystick or keyboard control, a save-game option, plenty of hi-tech sleaze, lots
of self-referential humor, and no on-disk copy protection. The Commodore 64/128
version is the basis of this review; Apple II and IBM-PC version notes follow.

 For well over a year, NEUROMANCER ranked Numero Uno on my list of vaporware
favorites. Now that it has finally arrived, it's safe to say that the wait
wasn't all that bad. This Interplay/Brian Fargo/Troy Miles version, as opposed
to the Activision/Timothy Leary/Peter Max version I read about so long ago,
remains mostly true to William Gibson's nasty, wonderful novel.

 The ultimate goal of NEUROMANCER is to penetrate cyberspace, the limitless
database grid of private, corporate, government, and military information into
which several hackers (known as "cowboys") have disappeared. To reach this goal,
you must wander the streets, back alleys, and space colonies of Chiba City,
gather clues, interact with the citizens of the City's technical and criminal
subcultures, learn skills, and amass enough money to buy a cyberspace-capable
deck.

 Information can be obtained from citizens, through many lower-level databases
and bulletin boards, and from PAX, the Public Access network whose terminals are
scattered throughout Chiba City. PAX is the gateway to your bank account, and
you'll have to log on at least once a day to read messages and the Night City
News.

 Skills (for example, Cryptology, Evasion, Ice Breaking, Bargaining, and
Coptalk) come in the form of chips implanted in a jack on the side of your
skull. Each costs, and each can be upgraded.

 Once you've amassed enough money (you might have to sell a few body parts), and
bought or downloaded the right software (called "softwarez"), you'll be able to
afford and use an Ono-Sendai Cyberspace Seven deck. In cyberspace, databases are
protected by ICE (Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics) and AIs. ICE are
semi-intelligent programs designed to prevent unauthorized entry; AI are
artificially-intelligent programs designed to do the same, with this difference:
An AI doesn't mind frying your brain, a possibility that prompted NEUROMANCER's
tag line: "Hacking can get you killed."

 The C64 screen display consists of static scenes of Chiba City, streets along
which you guide a character who bears a slight resemblance to Elvis (when he was
among the living). Doorways lead to the interiors of buildings and shops, such
as a hotel, a pawn shop, a restaurant, a massage parlor, and various computer
and softwarez stores. You can speak with and interrogate the citizens by way of
dialogue balloons.

 Below the main screen are eight icons that control play: Mode, Inventory, PAX,
Talk, Skills, Walk, ROM Construct, and Disk. Mode cycles through money, date,
time, and constitution; Inventory displays current items, and lets you operate,
take, discard, or give an item, and use or erase softwarez; PAX connects you to
the network (logon must be verified by entering a number from the PAX code
wheel).

 Talk lets you converse with or question citizens; Skills lets you use any skill
currently installed in your head; Walk aborts the current action and lets you
bop around the City; and from Disk, you can save game positions, reload them,
pause, and restart.

 A ROM Construct is a personality cartridge that fits into a cyberdeck. It is
capable of debugging and analyzing softwarez, as well monitoring your activities
in cyberspace. It will warn you of important events, such as "flatlining" --
tech talk for a brain fry.

 NEUROMANCER can be controlled from the keyboard or with a joystick; both
methods are always active. Selecting a number or a letter invokes a function;
moving the onscreen arrow with the joystick highlights choices the button may
select.

 The NEUROMANCER package comes with a good instruction manual, a reference card,
the PAX Verification Code Wheel, and two double-sided disks. The boot disk
contains a program to copy the four disk sides. Up to four game positions can be
saved.

 NEUROMANCER's role-playing concepts are hardly new, as players of THE BARD'S
TALE series and WASTELAND will attest. Interplay's layered interface is simple
to understand and use, and it doesn't get in the way of what lies behind: a
great story.

 Enhanced by stylish and gritty text descriptions, the visual display (graphics
by Charles Weidman III) is a computerized version of the Los Angeles of "Blade
Runner." The pictures are colorful and visually interesting. The scenes
themselves are static; your character moves through one scene into the next by
way of a quick disk access.

 There are other non-street scenes: Getting nabbed in the massage parlor by a
lawbot takes you to an electronic judge whose frightening visage is straight
from Orwell's 1984. Freeside is Chiba City's orbital banking colony, where, at
the Villa Straylight, you'll meet an incredibly morbid talking head. Zion
Cluster is Chiba City's orbital poverty colony, in which a Rastafarian will help
you if you have the right skills. Hitachi Biotech will pay you $3000 if you let
them remove your lungs.

 Collecting enough money to afford a cyberspace deck and Comlink 6.0 (the only
operating system capable of connecting to cyberspace) takes some time.
NEUROMANCER has many levels; each inexorably sucks you deeper into a complex and
mysterious story. You must find out who your friends are, weasel information out
of the databases, bulletin boards, and the citizens, and use your skills wisely.

 The Devo soundtrack plays for a while, stops for a while, then starts up again.
I find myself humming it at odd moments, which in itself is odd because Devo's
music isn't tops on my list. Cabana Boy Productions has a NEUROMANCER film in
the works.

 With its familiar interface created by developers who know what they're doing,
a great plot from an excellent novel, and a sustained sense of humor,
NEUROMANCER is one of the best games of the year.

 APPLE II VERSION NOTES

 The Apple II version of NEUROMANCER is as excellent and as playable as the
Commodore 64 version; the only discernible differences involve disk access and
overall speed.

 As difficult to believe as this may be, disk access on the C64 is faster -- not
by much, but enough to be noticeable. Although the Laser 128 on which I tested
the game has two speedup options, neither seemed to matter. Disk accesses and
the general speed of NEUROMANCER remained the same in all modes.

 Either the keyboard or a joystick can be used to control the game, and both are
always active. The keystrokes are the same in both versions.

 Graphically, the Apple version looks good, although switching the monitor into
composite mode smeared and flattened the colors. The Devo soundtrack, suitably
intermittent and tolerable on the C64, is so disastrous on the Apple that it
doesn't even sound like the same song.

 NEUROMANCER's excellent and intricate story and Interplay's easy-to-use
interface more than make up for any speed loss which, in any case, is not that
bad. If you own an Apple or Apple-compatible, you have to get NEUROMANCER.

 IBM-PC VERSION NOTES

 NEUROMANCER has been ported to MS-DOS machines with great success. The game's
Apple origins are apparent in the cartoonish graphics, but the quality of the
game more than makes up for this minor shortcoming. The program supports both
CGA and 16-color EGA mode, and accepts keyboard as well as mouse input (although
the mouse works best in combat). Despite the fact that the game does not support
any music cards, the Devo soundtrack actually sounds pretty good through the
tiny IBM speaker.

 As in other versions, there is no on-disk copy protection; instead, you must
enter numbers from a code wheel. The game requires 512K of RAM and a version of
DOS greater than 2.1. It should run on IBMs, Tandys, or 100% IBM-compatibles.
NEUROMANCER is distributed on two 5-1/4" diskettes; 3-1/2" diskettes are
available separately. The only problem I noticed when playing on my PS/2 is that
"real time" seemed to pass too quickly, but this was no doubt due to my slow
reflexes.

 This version of NEUROMANCER was well worth the long wait. Let's hope other
Interplay games make it to the IBM faster.

 NEUROMANCER is published by Interplay Productions and distributed by
Mediagenic.

 This review is copyright (c) 1988 by The Doctor's Office. All rights reserved.

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