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 ULTIMA WORLDS OF ADVENTURE 2: MARTIAN DREAMS

 The Grand What If is alive and well and available for play at your local
game store under the guise of MARTIAN DREAMS by Origin. Following the success
of SAVAGE EMPIRE, the Avatar has been released once again from Britannia and
is motoring around in the ULTIMA VI engine, tearing up the where and whens we
thought we knew so well. (This review is based on the IBM-PC version.)

 This game is a trip! Quite a trip. In vivid and realistic detail -- yes,
realistic -- the red sands of Mars, circa 1895, become the stomping grounds
of the Avatar and a now bookishly reformed Dr. Spector. Other characters of
the here and then are: Nikola Tesla, inventor of the AC induction motor;
Sigmund Freud, dreamy father figure; Dr. Blood, pusher of oxygenized air; and
dear little Nellie Bly, Pulitzer's prize feminist.

 After much reading and a hectic visit to Tesla's lab, you're whisked via
timegate to the site of an 1893 World's Fair disaster, and the biggest
hotshot you've ever seen, Lowell's Space Cannon. It is 1895 and you join a
rescue party setting out to follow the first batch of Spam in a canister that
boomed off to Mars in 1893. All of this action is preliminary to the game and
occurs off-system in the booklets that come in the package, or appear in the
opening (non-interactive) sequence.

 Once you've landed, you get to ransack the cargo hold and chat with your
companions. When you have stocked your inventory and obtained some
instructions, you're finally ready to step out onto the Martian surface to
rescue the 1893 party. Before you can do that, you must pass a copy-
protection exam, the only one in the game, by answering one question using
one of the booklets as a reference. Painless and effective. Nearly everything
you need during the game is found close to where it is used, but four items
are critical and must be carried at all times: the sextant, the telescope, a
tent, and a pocket watch.

 I mentioned realism. This game is realistic to the point of tedium in some
instances. Until you manage to activate the power and then to melt the ice-
cap that fills the canals, you spend much of the gametime walking...and Mars
has a lot of ground to cover! Monsters are few and far between, and like any
desert, the scenery gets monotonous.

 The object of the game is to rescue each member of the 1893 expedition, but
to do this there are five major game segments to conquer. You must find the
motherlode of oxium, get into Olympus Mons, turn on the power, melt the ice-
cap, free the expedition members from the dreamworld, and conquer Rasputin.

 Yes, that is _the_ Rasputin, mad monk extraordinaire, a swift one with the
firecracker. The group that you are about to rescue includes: Sarah
Bernhardt, actress and makeup expert; Buffalo Bill Cody and Calamity Jane,
rootin' tootin' shopkeepers; Andrew Carnegie, steel magnate and industrial
genius; George Washington Carver, plantation expert; Marie Curie, hot stuff
for a Victorian; Wyatt Earp, a rather horsey fellow, good with a gun; Thomas
Edison, tinkerer and electronics wizard; Emma Goldman, devoted leftist,
always willing to espouse revolution; William Randolph Hearst, yellow
journalism's colorist, always willing to pay for a scoop; Nikolai Lenin,
devoted distributer of the wealth of others; Percival Lowell, astronomer and
cannon father; Georges Melies, sleight-handed photographer; Admiral Peary,
explorer and iceman; Teddy Roosevelt, the man with the clues; Louis Comfort
Tiffany, handy with lenses; Mark Twain, who can fathom the skills of a river
pilot for you; and H.G. Wells, documentation specialist. There are others on
Mars, but this is the crowd you must rescue. Each is critical to the ultimate
solution, and conversations with them are frequent and informative.

 Unimpaired by the ULTIMA convention of honesty, you're free to rip off
everyone in this game. No one even notices you prying open their luggage and
taking their clothes, weapons, and supplies. This is the only unrealistic
quirk in the game. Resting is cute. You must U)se the tent. This action
results in the tent being unpacked and pitched. Then each character in your
party scurries inside, and you get to select how long you want to rest. If
any of your characters are due for a promotion, they dream it and the stats
increase.

 Although there is no magic in MARTIAN DREAMS, the dream machines are pretty
fantastic, and three of the five types of berries that grow have some wild
psychedelic properties: Brown ones allow you to see your surroundings; purple
ones allow you to control things from a distance; and green ones let you
converse with apparently inanimate things. Blue berries are not good for you,
but will help if you contract radiation sickness.

 Mapping is not required, but careful recording of coordinates is important.
I also found it helpful to sketch out the cities and mark the locations of
the characters, since each required several interactions during the game.

 The best weapons in the game are hidden in Argyre, which can not be entered
until the game is almost complete, so the great weapons are nearly useless.
Only the lead character should be allowed to have a shotgun, since all
characters fire directly at a target, right through the party if necessary.
Two pistols or a rifle seem to be the best armament for most of the game. The
Elephant guns are potent, but the ammo is heavy.

 As in most of the recent releases from Origin, there are characteristic bugs
present. Weird chunks of scenery keep popping up in the oddest places,
supposedly due to the "tiled graphics" used. Certain perfectly logical
actions can lead to needed items becoming unrecoverable. Don't lose or drop
the plate from the camera, or it is gone for good. Don't take coal from the
conveyor belt, or from the floor right next to the belt. Don't lose the
tongs. Don't use the steel cannon balls on the large barge. Don't get too
excited if your Avatar undergoes a sex-change; it's temporary.

 If you saw the movie "Robinson Crusoe on Mars," you've seen the world of
MARTIAN DREAMS, right down to the chewable oxygen supply. If you played BAD
BLOOD, you've seen the graphics of MARTIAN DREAMS. If you've seen the Voyager
photographs, you will find the geography startlingly familiar. If you ever
fell asleep in history class and conjured up an alternate reality for the
dusty people and dates being discussed, you've dreamed a Martian Dream. One
of the really neat aspects of this game is that you can go back and read the
writings of the members of the 1893 expedition -- the real writings -- and
you'll find all kinds of little things that will tickle you into thinking,
"Oh sure...he heard that on Mars!" That is the magic of the Grand What If,
and MARTIAN DREAMS captures that magic, completely.

 MARTIAN DREAMS is supplied on 5.25" disks with exchange forms for other
formats. A full 640K RAM is required for gameplay and an additional 256K
expanded memory is required for music. A hard disk is required. It supports
256-color VGA/MCGA, EGA; Roland, AdLib, and Sound Blaster soundboards.
Because of the 640K requirements, I found it necessary to use a boot-disk
floppy with just COMMAND.COM and a mouse driver. A mouse is recommended and
the game will run on IBM PCs and 100% compatibles. 10 MHz or faster is
recommended.

 ULTIMA WORLDS OF ADVENTURE 2: MARTIAN DREAMS is published and distributed
by Origin.