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Expectations have been running high at the prospect of Cinemaware’s third release of the year. The quality of their sports simulations and interactive movies has largely been responsible for taking gaming forward into a new era, and establishing a benchmark by which other software houses and the public test their releases. At the heart of Cinemaware’s success is their belief that gaming should encourage players to plunge themselves into complete roles with the mood augmented by impressive sound and graphics. It Came From The Desert continues this approach by taking 50’s B movie science fiction and creating a complete melodrama in which the player is the main protagonist. It works instantly.

The plot of It Came From The Desert is a hybrid of ‘It Came From Outer Space’ and the bug movie ‘Them’. After a meteorite crashes in nearby mountains, the small town of Lizard Breath, California, is disturbed by bizarre events, disappearances and the appearance of huge killer ants - pugonomyrex rugosus to you. You play Doctor Greg Bradley, a geologist who rapidly becomes involved in a battle, first to persuade the authorities that the creatures exist, and then top stop them before they overrun the town.

The game begins at your ranch house in the centre of town, with the visit of an old prospector, Geez, who drops some rock samples from the area where the meteorite fell. From this point on you are on your own, and you will have to collect evidence of the insects, and formulate a plan of action by moving around the area, talking to the townspeople, looking for clues and most importantly staying out of trouble. Confrontations with ants or the wrong kind of people can result in injury and lost time. Since you only have fifteen days before the ants strike, you need all the time you can get. Like any human though, you will have to spend some of that time asleep.

You interact with the other characters and operate by selecting from a series of options which appear in boxes throughout the game. It is efficiently done, making the role playing/adventure side of the game painless and enjoyable. As usual Cinemaware have crammed every form of gaming in there. Strategy is ever present as you work your way through the game and battle the ants. Problem solving intermingles with elements from wargaming to adventuring.

Most importantly the arcade sections are there in force. They occur frequently and variously enough in the game to maintain their freshness. Confrontations with an ant usually result in mini shoot ‘em ups in which you have a frighteningly short time to blow off both antennae to stop it from getting you, but a bizarre and often tongue in cheek array of activities await you from firefighting to a knife fight with the local rednecks. You will have to navigate the plane for aerial reconnaissance and bombing runs, and even try and save time by escaping from hospital in a wheelchair in a hilarious Gauntlet pastiche.

It goes without saying that It Came From The Desert is extraordinarily polished. The sections all interlock fluently, whilst the graphics, as ever, are excellent. All the townsfolk you come into contact with appear as large animated stills, whilst the locations are authentically put together. The sound adds to this, with a suitably eerie tune for much of the time which changes as you visit other locations, for example to country rock at the bar and the radio station (KBUG), and hoe down violins at the various farmsteads dotted around the map.

I could tell you about there being over twenty locations, and how large amounts of the game play randomly, but you have probably got the picture by now - It Came From The Desert is Cinemaware’s most complete game yet. All this and you get to see decent Americans terrorised too! Mike Pattenden

GRAPHICS 94%
SOUND 92%
PLAYABILITY 97%
LASTABILITY 95%
OVERALL 96%

Cinemaware/Mirrorsoft, Amiga £29.99 - 1 Megabyte only!!
Lizard Breath, California; a small town in the backwater of cultural development - and the current base of geologist, Dr Greg Bradly. He's cut short his vacation to study the remains of a large meteorite which crashed in the nearby mountains a week ago. Nothing much ever happens in this one-lizard town so the townfolk here are thrilled by it. But their excitement is soon to turn to horror… (cue dramatic music)
You see, the meteorite was extremely radioactive and affected the local wildlife in a literally massive way - the sleepy town of Lizard Breath is about to be attacked by giant ants!
In this tribute to 1950s B-movies you play the part of Greg, attempting to destroy the ants before they reach the town. Your first problem is that unsurprisingly no-one believes you - four pieces of solid evidence must be collected (a plastercast of a creature's tracks, a recording of creature sounds, creature fluids, and a creature part) to convince the mayor into calling out the national guard.

But to know where to look for evidence you'll first have to talk to people about some recent strange occurrences. You can phone people from your home and most other buildings, or alternatively, visit them at their place of work (although the may be out, usually at the pub!). Travelling is generally done by car. A scrolling map shows all the locations, and the estimated time of arrival for each - you can't afford to waste time as you have only 15 days to save the town.

Once a location is selected you are automatically transported there. That is, unless you run into the local gang - The Hellcats - who'll challenge you to an extremely dangerous game of 'chicken'. In an arcade sequence, your car speeds towards the Hellraisers', the loser being the car which chickens out and swerves off the road.

On arrival at the chosen location, you are greeted with a static picture and a text window showing your current thoughts. If anyone's there they'll usually talk to you, sometimes giving you useful information, but beware of hoaxes! One very helpful character is Professor Wells, a scientist at the local university who can analyse any evidence given to him. Other important characters include a female radio DJ, a newspaper reporter, and the police sergeant. However, some of these people are not so friendly and may even challenge you to a knife fight!

A visit to the airfield allows you to survey the town from overhead. The plane is equipped with a limited amount of chemical spray to use on any ants seen. Fuel is also limited and must be carefully watched so that you have enough to get back to the airfield - if not, you can try crash-landing in the desert or on a road. Flying is also necessary to get the recording of creature sounds.

For some of the required evidence you'll need first-hand contact with the ants - they usually hang out around the mineshafts or volcano craters. A massive ant crawls across the screen - you must aim your gun at it and hopefully destroy it before it attacks. However, if you kill it the view switches to an overhead one as you are chased by more angry ants! This time you can use grenades against them - kill enough ants and the rest will run away.

If at any time you get injured (by an ants, knife fight, plane crash etc) you'll be sent to the hospital. Any treatment here wastes valuable time, so the usual course of action is to try and escape! In an overhead-view sequence you must try to get to the ground floor and out of the front door. If they spot you the doctors and nurses will chase you and, if they catch you, stick a large hypodermic needle you know where. Luckily, you can hide under desks and in spare beds, and you can even find a wheelchair for extra speed!

Ultimately, to save the town you must find the opening to the nest and destroy the queen. If you haven't achieved this by Day 15, you will have to defend the town from an all-out attack. The mayor will call a general alert - he is finally convinced when one of the ants eats his car! - and will allow you to organise the defences: you can allocate townfolk, construction workers, soldiers, and police to any location under siege. You can then leave them to it, or go to help in another overhead arcade sequence - here you can enter and control any of the army tanks. Jet strikes can also be ordered from the general alert map.
If you successfully defend the town, you can have another crack at the ants' nest; otherwise it's 'THE END' of Lizard's Breath!

The game comes on three disks so an extra drive is recommended to cut down on the inevitable disk swapping. You also need 1Mb of memory to run the game: unfortunately Cinemaware are not planning a version for the unexpanded A500.

Zzap! Issue 58, February 1990, p.p.78-79

This is the best combination of adventure, strategy and arcade genres since the classic Rocket Ranger, also from Cinemaware. Some of the arcade sequences are great games in themselves - I particularly like the hospital scene where your run and hide from the chasing nurses and doctors: zipping around in the wheelchair is hilarious fun! The adventure itself is superb with a classic B-Movie storyline and typically slick Cinemaware presentation to heighten the atmosphere - the giant ants are so well animated, they're scary! With each new game the course of events is slightly different and therefore never predictable. Of course there's the inevitable disk access and shuffling, but it's not too intrusive and all pretty rapid.

I enjoyed Rocket Ranger a lot: there was lots to do with some excellent sub-games to liven things up. This has been repeated in It, but while it is certainly an even more impressive game to look at, I feel it's lost some of the ease of play and fun that made Rocket Ranger such an enjoyable game to play. The 'whatdunnit' aspect of It makes it a lot more thought provoking but it lacks instant accessibility as a result. Well, that's my personal moan about it anyway.
This aside, It is a lavishly put-together package with quality throughout - the incredible start up sequence is a testament to that. Sonic effects and tunes are of the usual excellent Cinemaware standard; the samples are top quality and even the sub-games are great games in their own right. A lot of thought has obviously gone into the game structure and as such no two games follow the same path with random events cropping up frequently. You really do have to work to find the evidence, fight off the ants, AND convince the Lizard Breath citizens that the damn things exist! Great stuff although it's not quite in the Rocket Ranger league.

It has been hyped for so long now that first impressions are disappointing - there's quite a bit of moving about and the concept lacks the immediate drama of Rocket Ranger. But the more you play, the more interesting the game becomes. The small 'one-lizard' town becomes increasingly familiar, creating a good atmosphere and a real B-movie feel. The sound effects are probably best at this - the radio music sounds exactly like it's been filtered through a cheap radio and the spooky FX when ants are near is excellent, as well as being vitally important.
The structure of the game is adventure/strategy biased, with the finding of clues presenting a formidable task. On the other hand though, Cinemaware have cleverly put in plenty of exciting arcade sequences. The Hospital one in particular is technically unexciting, but great fun to play and hard enough to beat even an arcade wiz like Robin. All in all a great game, although not quite good enough to justify a RAM upgrade unless you also plan to get Dungeon Master.


PRESENTATION 90%
Easy-to-read manual, superb intro sequence, adequate save facility, disk access and shuffling not too bad.
GRAPHICS 88%
Detailed static screens, good arcade sequences with nice animation - especially of the large ants.
SOUND 94%
Excellent sampled intro, very atmospheric orchestral music, plus a number of other good tunes in various locations.
HOOKABILITY 90%
Very user-friendly selection system makes it easy to get into the game. Arcade sequences provide light relief from the main adventure.
LASTABILITY 91%
Stopping the ants is a fascinating challenge, and the course of events change every game.
OVERALL
90%
Yet another slick Cinemaware release - a pity it's only for 1Mb machines, though.

Following the launch of the Commodore Amiga in 1985, nobody could have foreseen the kind of impact that this revolutionary machine would have upon the computing industry. Equipped with a custom chipset that granted the machine advanced graphical and sound capabilities way beyond the capabilities of the competition (at least at the given price point), the Amiga was seen as an untapped wealth of potential, simply waiting for developers and artists to create content that would demonstrate the capabilities of the machine.

In the year following the Amiga’s release, Defender of the Crown is often cited as one of the first, true showcases of what the Amiga and it’s custom chips could achieve.

Developed by Cinemaware, and featuring some truly phenomenal artwork by Jim Sachs, the game became something of an early poster-child for the machine, and would be a title that crystalised the studio’s reputation for creating engaging video experiences, drawing inspiration from Hollywood cinema and the many genres of movie when developing future titles.

Having covered swashbuckling adventure and science fiction genres in earlier titles, Cinemaware would turn it’s attention to the plethora of B-movie horror flicks from the 1950s for the creation of it’s 1989 release, It Came From the Desert.

Featuring casts of Z-list actors in equally forgettable roles, and with effects budgets that would make an Ed Wood film seem positively space-age by comparison, these movies would often see humankind battling against hostile alien races and other-worldly monsters.

Of all the films in this particular genre, it would be the 1954 movie Them! that would serve as chief inspiration for the game, a movie involving the discovery and subsequent attempts to destroy a nest of mutant, irradiated ants that threaten human existence.

Set during the summer of 1951 in the state of California, the player assumes the role of Dr. Greg Bradley, a geologist who has come to visit the remote town of Lizard Breath in order to study the impact site of a large meteor that has crash-landed somewhere to the south of the town.

The crash itself is depicted in the game’s short but memorable introductory sequence, falling from the sky in suitably spectacular fashion, before smashing into the southern volcano with impressively dramatic consequences.

Unbeknown to the town’s inhabitants, the radiation caused from the fallout of the crash has resulted in the rapid mutation of the local ant population, causing the insects to grow to a truly colossal size. This colony of super-sized insects starts to expand at an alarming rate, roaming the desert and harvesting anything they come into contact with, including the inhabitants of Lizard Breath themselves!

At first, scant heed is paid to the rumours surrounding the existence of these creatures, and potential sightings of the beasts dismissed as little more than the deranged ramblings of yet another poor soul who’s spent too long in the scorching heat of the desert sun.

Less dismissive, however, is Dr. Bradley. As a man of science, the strange tales and string of unexplained events that have occurred in the wake of the meteor strike leave his curiosity well and truly piqued. Having heard wild stories involving the discovery of a headless cow at a neighbouring farm, and with unexplained lights being seen in the night sky around one of the local pumping stations, the good doctor heads out into the desert to discover the truth.

The game’s primary objective is to help Dr. Bradley discover the precise location of the ant colony and to destroy it. You have approximately 10 days in which to do this, else the ant’s mating flight will begin, producing hundreds of new queens that will spread death and destruction across America and beyond.

Designed as a mixture of narrative-driven adventure game, and interspersed with that can be described as a variety of mini-games, much of the game will involve travelling between the various locations within the confines of Lizard Breath, visiting local farms, as well as the volcanic cones situated to the north and south of the town itself.

One of the game’s central features is the map screen, an overhead plan of Lizard Breath and the surrounding area. From here, it’s possible to select a destination where you wish to travel next, which includes an assessment of how long it will take for you to arrive.

Time proves to be most precious of resources in this game, certainly something that neither you, nor the town of Lizard Breath has much of. Many of the encounters with characters and opportunities to advance the plot are scripted to occur on specific days at specific times; with a limited window of opportunity to reach a location, and the fact that you cannot be in two places at once, time management becomes one of the most important facets of the game.

These restrictions, coupled with the game’s non-linearity, result in a title with above-average longevity. The fact that it’s impossible to visit every location and participate in every encounter in a single play session means that players can enjoy a new and fresh experience each time they play, choosing to pursue different lines of questioning, or visiting different locations with each successive attempt.

Of all Lizard Breath’s residents, it is the local mayor who proves to be the most resistant to the notion that his town is about to be overrun by a swarming colony of mutant ants. Understandably, the threat of being harvested and carried away to feed the queen’s burgeoning brood is unlikely to do much for the town’s popularity or economy, so it comes as no surprise that he’s more than a little reticent to recognise the encroaching threat.

Unfortunately, the mayor is the only person with the authority to declare a state of emergency and call on armed forces stationed at the local army barracks for support. The sooner you can convince the mayor of the threat facing the town, the quicker that troops and patrols can be dispatched to keep the marauding insects in check.

The only way to convince the mayor is to present him with sufficient evidence that the ants exist. Whether it is scenting fluid deposited by the creatures whilst foraging, or a chunk of chitinous remains left in the wake of one your inevitable entanglements with the creatures, all of these things contribute towards creating a body of evidence that can be used to persuade the mayor to sound the alarm.

Any evidence gathered should be taken to the Platt University Laboratory, where respected academic, Dr H.G. Wells, will examine the items you have collected. The good doctor will need to run tests on the samples that you bring him, with the results usually becoming available in 1 to 2 days of game time.

Unless you do nothing but sleep all day, your investigations will inevitably lead to an all-too-personal encounter with the ants themselves. Whenever you enter a location, there’s a chance that you’ll encounter one of the monstrosities first hand, with the ant entering from the right of the screen and attempting to leave by the left.

During these encounters, the only weapon you have available to defend yourself with is your trusty revolver. Unfortunately, this sidearm lacks the penetration to punch through the creature’s armoured exoskeleton, so bringing the beast down will prove far more difficult than you might think. The only place where the ant is vulnerable in these encounters is at the base of the antenna, which you must blow clean off with two well-placed shots.

This proves to be exceptionally tricky for several reasons, the first being that there’s no reticule to help you aim. Instead, your only option is to fire the gun and to look for the hit marker that indicates where the shot landed, then to adjust your aim accordingly.

Secondly, the ant isn’t merely going to stand there and let you take pot-shots at it, instead turning this way and that, constantly throwing off your aim as it wanders backwards and forwards, meaning that you’re likely to miss quite a few shots before you get your eye in.

Should you fail to kill the ant at this stage, it may come back to exact it’s revenge, getting right up close and personal in a scene that remains one of the most terrifying gaming moments from my childhood! With mandibles snapping but a few inches from your face, you have only a handful of seconds to shoot off the remaining antenna before you’re overcome by sheer terror, blacking out in the process.

The second mini-game in which you combat the ants on a personal level is somewhat simpler, although no less intense. Moving to an overhead perspective, you must move Dr. Bradley across the desert, blowing up ants with limited supply of dynamite. Timing is crucial to success here, as you must gauge the correct distance between yourself and the ant to ensure that the resulting explosion kills the beast. Kill enough ants and the rest of the colony will retreat; run out of dynamite, however, and the only option remaining is to flee.

Having been blessed by the virtue of “plot armour”, it’s impossible for the player to actually die, at least not in the conventional sense. Whether by losing in battle to the ants, bleeding out in a knife fight with Ice and his Hell Cats, or collapsing through dehydration in the baking sun, Bradley’s unconscious body will be recovered and transported to the town’s hospital to recuperate.

As attractive a prospect of receiving a sponge bath at the hands of the ravishing nurse Judy might be, taking time out to convalesce is something you can ill afford. The penalty for accepting treatment is going to cost you several days of game time, bringing the town’s demise ever closer. You’ll also miss the opportunity to talk to key people, which can even result in their deaths if you’re not careful.

You can attempt to escape the confines of the hospital if you so wish, which initiates a game of cat-and-mouse as you attempt to reach the hospital exit without being accosted by hospital staff. It’s possible to hide under the covers of beds to avoid detection, as well as hitching a ride in a handy wheelchair to give you a speed boost. Get caught, however, and you’ll have no choice but to accept treatment.

With a decent sense of narrative and accomplished script writing, perhaps the game’s greatest feature is the cast of supporting characters you’ll encounter on your adventure. Inhabitants such as Elmer the gas station attendant and Dr Wells, provide you with vital resources and information in your battles with the ants, proving themselves to be key allies.

However, not all of Lizard Breath’s residents prove to be quite so friendly. You’ll cross paths on more than one occasion with the Hell Cats, a local street gang, and there’s something more than a little fishy going on Neptune Hall and it’s band of Mafioso-aligned cultists.

Although perhaps not as ground-breaking as Defender of the Crown, there’s no denying that the artwork and visuals on the display here are anything less than excellent. It goes goes without saying that the ants look suitably terrifying, but all of the location backgrounds look amazing as well. There are plenty of subtle nuances in the animation system too, such as the way that all of the characters that you encounter will display various incidental animations to convey that these are living people you are interacting with and not just a collection of lifeless mannequins.

The game’s music and audio is also exceptionally good. More than just a collection of in-game tunes, the musical score that Cinemaware created for the game really helps in creating an atmosphere of brooding uncertainty and foreboding, and will certainly leave the player apprehensive as to what might happen each and every time they enter a new location.

It’s also worth noting that this particular game really hits home just how advanced the Amiga’s video and sound capabilities really were. You only have to take one look at the garish visuals, or listen to the inferior music of the PC DOS version to know that the Amiga and it’s chipset was still in another league, at least as far as gaming was concerned.

There are, however, a couple of problems with what is an otherwise excellent game.

As good as the game’s script might be, it’s not perfect. Managing such a broad number of story arcs and plot developments must surely have proven to be quite the challenge during the development, and there are times when the various narrative passages fail to gel quite so seamlessly with earlier events.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that all of the game’s scenes and events are pre-scripted, and it’s perfectly possible to run across later encounters that make direct reference to earlier events that the player may never have actually witnessed. Although a rarity, this can result in character dialogue that doesn’t always make much sense, and you might be left wondering exactly what it was you missed earlier in the game.

On a similar note, the game doesn’t appear to place any restriction on when you can enter the ant’s nest, other than the weather needs to be hot and you know where to go. If you’re already familiar with the game, this can invalidate the need to conduct any form of investigation in the first place since there’s really nothing to stop you chartering a plane and then heading out to correct spot when the time is right.

In reality, none of these issues prove to be in any way detrimental to one’s enjoyment of what is an otherwise superb game.

With a sense of style quite unlike anything else available at the time of release, the game remains an experience, that, if anything, might just prove to be even more enjoyable than you remembered. This is partly due to the fact that the presentation has stood the test of time, but also the fact that, as more mature gamers, we’re more likely to appreciate the nuances in the game’s dialogue and finer plot details.

If you’ve never had the opportunity to experience It Came From the Desert, or if you never managed to complete it and wish to make a fresh attempt at saving Lizard Breath, then Cinemaware’s sci-fi horror remains one of the best examples in the genre: highly recommended!

It Came From the Desert

Review
Title It Came From the Desert
Game Type Adventure
Company Cinemaware
Players 1
HD Installable Yes
Compatibility All
Submission Stacia Kissick

Review
It's June 1, 1951, and you're a geologist investigating a meteor strike in
a small desert town. You've lived in the town -- a quaint dot on the map
called Lizard Breath -- for a month, and now you're being told that some
very odd things are happening, not least of which is the headless cow over
at J.D.'s farm.

Based loosely on dozens of 1950s American sci fi thrillers, especially the
1954 mutant-ant classic "Them!", ICFtD challenges both your mind and your
might. When you boot up the game, a gorgeous red-orange desert panorama
scrolls by as a narrator warns that, because man has meddled where he
should not have, this desert will become living proof that the Biblical
prophesy "the meek shall inherit the earth" is about to come true.

Your goal once the game starts is to discover the source of all the
strange occurances happening in Lizard Breath. Starting out in your small
home, you are given text that describes the scene. Geez, an old geezer who
collects rock samples for you, stops by with some new material from the
meteor impact site. Soon after, your occasional sidekick Biff drops by as
well. You get to choose what you want to do by selecting an option on the
multiple choice screens that pop up.

There are several buildings in town, as well as farms, mines, an airport,
and even a drive-in theatre. To get to the map, select "go to map" at one
of the pop-up screens. A solid knowledge of the map will help you
greatly, as time ticks away quickly at one minute per second of real time.
The time and date appear in the upper corner of the town map. As you use
the joystick to move around, each building you point to will be labelled,
and the ETA to get there shown.

Once you investigate, you soon realize there are large, mutant ants
roaming around the outskirts of town. These ants are dangerous, and you
must fight them to survive. Sure, you're just a geologist, but you're a
well-armed geologist, equipped with a handgun and an apparently infinite
amount of grenades. Not only do you fight the terrifying ants on the
ground, but in the air as well; the airplane at the airport contains
several canisters of some serious bug spray. Knowledge of the movie
"Them!" will help you kill the ants, but if you haven't seen the movie,
don't despair -- you get hints when talking to the townsfolk.

While play might seem limited at first, there are dozens (possibly
hundreds) of variations in the game, depending on the choices you make.
Not only that, but there are many opportunities to find yourself in a
fight, either with the ants, or with some of the not-so-friendly folk of
Lizard Breath. You can wind up in a knife fight, or being chased across
the desert by several hundred giant ants, or even playing chicken on the
highway with the local greaser punks.

If you get injured, you'll wake up in the hospital with a gorgeous, buxom
blonde nurse standing at the foot of your bed. Time is important in
ICFtD, so you have the option to try and escape from the hospital instead
of wasting two days in bed. If you choose to try and escape, play
switches to an overhead view of the hospital floor you are on. But be
careful -- the moment a nurse or doctor (even if they're off-screen) sees
you out of bed, they'll shout, "There he is!" and begin chasing you.
Once caught, you have no choice but to stay in hospital for two days.

Ultimately, you'll need to present several items of evidence to the mayor
of Lizard Breath to convince him of the seriousness of the ant situation.
Visit everyone in town to get hints about where to go and what to do. It
might not hurt to sketch a map of the town so you can select your
destination more quickly, saving time.

ICFtD has some beautiful graphics, and although they are sometimes rather
limited, the characters and color scheme quickly transport you back to
1950s America. The music is well-done, especially the spooky 1950s sci fi
mood music that accompanies your adventure through town. The plot is
elaborate and allows for many pleasant distractions, which won't help you
win the game, but will still make playing worthwhile. And for those who
like to fight rather than think, there's plenty of things to kill.

This is not to say that there are not some problems with ICFtD. When
travelling from one place to another, the ETA is often more than 30
minutes, even if the building is quite close to the one you are currently
in. You travel by car, and should be able to get to most destinations
quickly; the town is simply not spread out that much. Another problem is
disk swapping. For anyone with only one floppy drive, the amount of disk
changing is excessive. (I can only assume that two drives would decrease
the need for switching disks.) The game can however be installed to the
hard drive, which increases playability dramatically.

Despite the floppy drawback, It Came From the Desert is easily one of
Cinemaware's finest games, lovely to look at and a lot of fun to play.

"Nice giant ant, who's a good giant ant? OHMIGOD!!!"

I love monster movies, so it caught my eye some years back when I was reading this issue of Gameplayer's magazine that did an article about a game called It Came From the Desert about giant ants attacking a desert town. It looked pretty cool, but it wasn't until just recently that I managed to lay my hands on it.

You're geologist Greg Bradley, investigating a fallen meteor outside the nowhere town of Lizard Breath. Strange things have been going on since the meteor landed, like the people have been hearing funny noises at night, and farmers been finding livestock with their head bitten off...Obviously, danger is afoot, and you've got about two weeks game time to find out exactly what (although the manual makes it pretty clear) and doing something about it.

This being a take-off of 50's monster movies, Greg is an all-around he-man type, meaning that he's as good at leading military operations and having knife and gun fights as he is at geology. This is kind of cool, but it can also be a little disconcerting at times as I'll get to in a bit.

The long and short of the game is that you need to follow up on clues of strange activity, collect evidence that mutations resulting from the meteor are on the loose, and convince the authorities of what's going on in time to save the town. Of course, easier said than done, but the great thing about It Came from the Desert is that the game is completely non-linear, allowing you to have a different experience every time you play, depending on where you are at any given time of the day. The game feels like an interactive version of a big bug movie, as well, with everything you'd expect from one, like the finnicky mayor who doesn't want to scare the town what with their one holiday coming up.

My one complaint about the game is that there's numerous different kinds of action sequences in it, since there's also a gang of knife-toting hot rod punks to contend with as well as the mutants running around the desert. When you suddenly find yourself commanding a tank battalion or having a knife fight with a greaser, it all happens very suddenly and you're required to adapt very quickly. I would've appreciated a mode that let you practice in the various modes of combat before plunging into the game proper. Also, there's just one save game slot, keeping you from doing much experimenting as you play. And really, cool as it is, It Came From the Desert isn't really a game I want to be starting from the beginning a hundred times.

This is one for all the b-movie fans out there, as long as they're willing to take action, strategy and adventure-type gameplay in equal doses. I would've liked more time to practice with the different action modes, but overall this is an excellent game that's worth any PC gamer's time to track down.


Reviewer's Score: 9/10 | Originally Posted: 06/07/04, Updated 07/15/04

"Cinemaware's masterpiece; Everyone should play this"

[NOTE: From what I've read of the Turbo CD version, it's a completely different game which has nothing to do with this]

Ahh, Cinemaware... The main reason why anyone would want an Amiga (or an emulator) even today; no acceptable versions of any of their games exist for any other system. Because of this they have been criminall ignored in some places (= America).

Cinemaware, as the name suggests, is probably one of the few game companies that had a concept behind it. Nearly all of their games resemble some classic movie genre. 'King of Chicago' = gangster drama; 'Defender of the Crown' = Robin Hood or Ivanhoe; 'Rocket Ranger' = Rocketeer etc. pulp heroes; & so on...

The gameplay naturally was quite different between the different releases, but one of Cinemaware games' strongest points was that they were NON-LINEAR, but made sense. -> There are a lot of different ways to complete all of them, and you REALLY can choose what you want to do, and not just have an illusion of that you do... Unlike say, in Hideo Kojima's 'Snatcher'; otherwise a brilliant game, but it always goes the same way. Cinemaware's games do not.

And Cinemaware games are some of the best ever; 'It Came from the Desert' is based on '50s monster movies, mostly on 'Them'.

Mystery is abound in the little town of Lizard Breath and you, as a scientist examining a recently fallen comet, are the one who's to solve it...

GRAPHICS - For the time, the graphics were amazing, and I wouldn't say anything bad about them even today. Everything is hand-drawn in a nice style.

GAMEPLAY - GREAT. It's nearly impossible to place ICftD into any category; mainly it's a kind of a non-linear multiple-choice adventure, but the minigames you'll get into include shooting, throwing grenades, planning strategy, flying, knife fighting, etc... A big minus, if you're playing on a real Amiga, is having to swap the disks to load everything... So that's where the consoles win ;)..

SOUND - The game's intro was unreal back then... It's a completely digitized speech that pretty much takes the whole first disk. Today this is nothing exciting, though, and most other sounds are pretty basic. The moody background music is nice, but it doesn't really vary much / at all.

OVERALL - I 100% recommend everyone to try this game; in fact EVEN MORE so if you never owned an Amiga and haven't played it before. You will be surprised... Then find the rest of Cinemaware's back catalogue...


Reviewer's Score: 10/10 | Originally Posted: 03/18/04