PC Gamer Issue 57

Features:

• Cover Story - The Ultimate 1999 Strategy Guide: A solid 46 pages of hints, tips, tactics, and cheats to give readers a leg up on all the best 1998 had to offer, such as:
  • Blood II: The Chosen
  • Caesar III
  • Delta Force
  • Grim Fandango
  • Half-Life
  • Railroad Tycoon II
  • Shogo: Mobile Armor Division
  • SiN
  • Tomb Raider III
• The PC Gamer Readers' Top 50: The fifty best PC games of all-time, as voted by the readers of PC Gamer. Certainly the last word in gaming for everyone, everywhere, right? In case you're curious, here's the top 10:
  1. StarCraft
  2. WarCraft II
  3. Quake II
  4. Jedi Knight
  5. Diablo
  6. Civilization II
  7. Duke Nukem 3D
  8. Command & Conquer: Red Alert
  9. Doom
  10. Heroes of Might & Magic 2

Departments:

• The CD - Includes a DirectX 6.0 installation, MindSpring and EarthLink software, a selection of add-ons and patches, and playable demos for:
  • The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard
  • Resident Evil 2
  • Wargasm
  • Heavy Gear 2
  • Settlers III
  • Tomb Raider III
  • Pro Pinball: Big Race USA
  • Future Cop: L.A.P.D.
  • Test Drive Off-Road 2
  • Star Trek: Klingon Honor Guard
  • Chron X
  • Pretzel Pete
• Eyewitness (News, Previews, Behind-the-Scenes Reports): Digital Anvil has three new titles in the works, a massive staff defection from Ion Storm, and Sierra gets bought up by the French are just three of the juicy tidbits brought to readers this month.
• The Hard Stuff (Hardware news, reviews, and some tech Q&A): Voodoo 3 is coming, USB mice are all the rage, and how about some hardware reviews for:
  • Diamond Multimedia Monster Sound MX300
  • Gravis Stinger Gamepad
  • Proton MM-750i 17" monitor
  • Logitech WingMan Formula Force racing wheel
  • Metabyte Wicked3D Vengeance
• Extended Play: Editor T. Liam McDonald looks at the glut of patches, add-ons, upgrades, and bug-fixes unelashed on PC owners over the holiday season.
• Multi-Play: Jason Bates gets down and dirty with Gravy Trader, 'the game of the decade'.
• The Point After: Rob Smolka sets the newest Jack Nicklaus golf game against Links LS to see if it can dethrone the reigning champion.
• The Killing Box: Michael Luton laments the lack of time and hard drive space necessary to play all those nifty new FPS games released this past holiday season.
• Alternate Lives: Michael Wolf, likewise, hasn't enough time in his day to get through all those RPGs.
• The Desktop General: William R. Trotter plugs a bunch of historical, military-themed magazines.
• Sim Column: Dan Bennett is fairly certain he's not the only sane fan of simulation games out there.
• Letters: Readers write in, editors respond, often with snark.
• Next Time...: PC Gamer's March issue serves up new reviews, previews, and their 1999 PC Gamer awards for the best in entertainment, along with a knock-down, drag-out brawl over which 3D accelerator card is the best of the bunch. Don't miss it!

Scoops (aka Previews):

• Driver
• Rayman 2
• Braveheart

Reviews:

• Railroad Tycoon II (92%)
• Barrage (34%)
• Fallout 2 (89%)
• European Air War (89%)
• Vigilance (45%)
• Heretic II (89%)
• Future Cop: L.A.P.D. (76%)
• Space Bunnies Must Die (23%)
• Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator (85%)
• KKND2: Krossfire (80%)
• Cydonia - Mars: The First Manned Mission (38%)
• John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles (79%)
• eXtreme Paintbrawl (6%)
• Blood II: The Chosen (80%)
• Fighter Pilot (31%)
• Chaos Gate (85%)
• NBA Live 99 (92%)
• Deer Hunter II: The Hunt Continues (66%)

Cheaters' Corner:

• Age of Empires: The Rise of Rome
• Blood 2: The Chosen
• Carmageddon
• Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
• Deathtrap Dungeon
• Delta Force
• Die By the Sword
• Forsaken
• Grand Theft Auto
• Half-Life
• Jazz Jackrabbit 2
• Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith
• Lords of Magic
• NCAA Football '99
• Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit
• NFL Blitz
• NHL 99
• Rainbow Six
• Railroad Tycoon II
• Seven Kingdoms
• Shogo: Mobile Armor Division
• SiN
• StarCraft
• TOCA Touring Car Championship
• Test Drive 4
• Trespasser
• Tomb Raider III
• Unreal
• Uprising
• Worms 2

Ads (in order of appearance):

• Civilization: Call to Power
• Beavis and Butt-Head: Do U. - Morons Cum Laude
• Half-Life
• Enemy Engaged: Apache V Havoc
• Kingpin: Life of Crime
• Chron X
• John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles
• Links LS 1999
• Dark Vengeance
• Monsoon computer audio hardware
• The Settlers III
• Warzone 2100
• Fly!
• Heat.net online gaming service
• StarCraft: Brood War expansion
• Interstate '82
• Populous: The Beginning
• Close Combat III: The Russian Front
• Fallout 2
• Creative Labs Live! computer hardware
• Union Reality computer hardware
• European Air War
• Braveheart
• Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty mission pack
• Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
• YOOT Tower
• Darkstone
• Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia
• Blizzard action figures
• STB Velocity 4400 3D card
• Baldur's Gate
• Army Men II
• Caesar III
• Lands of Lore III
• Revenant
• Thief: The Dark Project
• Clans
• Myth II: Soulblighter
• Jeff Gordon's XS Racing
• YOOT Tower (again)
• FireTeam
• Jane's Fleet Command
• Gangsters: Organized Crime
• Diamond Monster Fusion 3D card
• Planescape: Torment
• Sim City 3000
• Amen: The Awakening (cancelled)
• Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned
• Recoil
• MindSpring internet services
• Electronics Boutique six-page catalog
• Wargasm
• The 4th Coming
• Carnivores
• Falcon 4.0
• ATi Rage Fury 3D card
• Resident Evil 2
• Uprising: Lead and Destroy
• South Park
• Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now
• Tomb Raider III
• Alienware gaming PCs
• Homeworld
• Return to Krondor
• YOOT Tower (for a third time)
• Drakan: Order of the Flame
• Total Annihilation Kingdoms
• Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3D
• King's Quest: Mask of Eternity
• Andretti Racing Wheel controller
• Columbia House CD club
• GameShark for PC
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
• Aureal A3D sound card
• PC Gamer subscription cards
• Optical brand gaming PCs
• You Don't Know Jack, Volume 4: The Ride
• High Heat Baseball 2000
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
• GameDealer.com website
• Playback.com website
• JediSource.com website
• Mech Commander
• Yamaha PC speakers
• Creative Labs Environmental Audio sound cards
• Requiem: Avenging Angel
• Dethkarz
• QuickShot GenX 700 joystick
• Links Extreme
• WCW Nitro
• Logitech WingMan Formula Force racing wheel
• Falcon gaming PCs
• GameStorm.com
• EarthLink internet
• Fly Hunter (unreleased?)
• Hypersonic gaming PCs
• PC Accelerator subscription card
• Pinky and the Brain: World Conquest
• Pretzel Pete
• CeBit gaming controllers
• Star Trek - The Next Generation: Klingon Honor Guard
• Redline
• Creative Labs computer hardware

Interesting Stuff: 

• Final issue worked on by Deputy Editor Todd Vaughn, who left the magazine to work for Bethesda Softworks as an in-house writer.
• The Creative Labs Live! ad is an 8-page perforated tear-out mini-catalog. Eight pages of magazine real-estate couldn't have been cheap, even in 1999.
• Ion Storm, the studio headed by John Romero and responsible for Daikatana, had ten senior staff jump ship, with eight of them going on to form their own start-up, Bloodshot Entertainment, which worked on KISS: Psycho Circus. Most everybody landed on their feet, but I have to feel sorry for Corinne Yu, who moved over to 3D Realms to work on a new engine for the next Duke Nukem game. No, not Duke Nukem Forever; the Duke Nukem game 3D Realms was going to publish after that. Yeah...
• Micro Star Software, a company notorious in the 90's for producing unauthorized expansion packs for other studios' games, got sued by Blizzard over the release of their unofficial Stellar Forces add-on for StarCraft. This, combined with GT Interactive's successful lawsuit against them over the unauthorized Nuke It! level pack for Duke Nukem 3D, must have finally gotten the message across, as Stellar Forces was the company's final product release intended to capitalize on properties they didn't own.
• Gamers upset over the infamous "John Romero's About to Make You His Bitch!" ad campaign for Daikatana got an opportunity for payback thanks to a deathmatch contest coordinated by Ion Storm, MPlayer, and Eidos Interactive. The tournament, which took place exclusively on the MPlayer multi-player gaming service, winnowed the competition down to four competitors who were then flown to Romero's Ion Storm headquarters in Dallas, TX to face off with Romero and lay down some serious smack.
• The cheat code to instantly beat Trespasser is (wait for it...) 'WIN'.
• The Top 50 list actually contains 59 games, due to some multi-way ties at several spots. The oldest game to make the list is 1990's Red Baron, limping in at #49 just ahead of MotoRacer GP. Some other surprises: the original X-Wing from 1993 came in at #35, while TIE Fighter hit #12, but the newest title in the franchise, 1997's X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, only ranked #40. Duke Nukem 3D came in at #7, beating out the original Quake at #11 and Doom II at #19. Finally, while Tomb Raider earned the #16 spot, its sequel which is generally regarded as the best of the original series got caught in a three-way tie with Daggerfall and Panzer General II at #45.
• No, your eyes don't deceive you. HeadGames' eXtreme Paintbrawl managed to earn a meager 6%, with most of that coming from the fact reviewer Colin Williamson managed to get it installed and the game's quirky and unique soundtrack. Was this the worst-reviewed game the magazine ever looked at?
• Why is Jason Bates' Gravy Trader write-up in the February issue, when it should be relegated to an April column? It's about a game which doesn't freaking exist.