Retail Price: $69.95 (single-user); $99.95 (two-user LAN pack).
Mail Order: $40.00 (single); $52.00 (LAN pack).
Requires: Mac Plus or better, 2MB Ram under 6.0.3 or 4MB under System 7, 3MB of hard disk space. An 8-bit color card, color monitor, and 68020 or better Mac are highly recommended for getting the most enjoyment out of this game.
Protection: Valid serial number.
 
Spectre Supreme is an outstanding enhanced version of the award-winning Spectre arcade game. You control a tank-like vehicle called a spectre that drops with a loud Ugh! at the beginning of each round into an abstract arena filled with bizarre windmills, geometric obstacles, and, of course, a plethora of nogoodniks out to get you. Your goal is to blast or avoid your opponents and collect all the flags that litter the playing field. If you succeed, you move on to the next level. Those are the basics of the game.
Before we get into the specifics, a warning: Unfortunately, a serious bug slipped into the game. Spectre Supreme comes preconfigured to use a QuickTime feature that is NOT yet fully implemented in the game. The result is that if you do not have QuickTime installed, the game will bomb bigtime and become corrupted when it moves from level 1 to level 2. If you have just installed Spectre Supreme for the first time, start the game and immediately go to the Options dialog and turn Use QuickTime OFF. If you have already encountered the QuickTime crash, you MUST trash the entire game and its preferences file located in your System folder (under System 7 it will be located in your Preferences folder within the System folder). Then reinstall the game from the master disks and turn the Use QuickTime option off before playing.
CyberCool. “In cyberspace, nobody cares if you scream!” Well, at least that’s what it says, in a nod to the original Alien movie on the sleek, futuristic box Spectre Supreme arrives in. Your roommate or spouse might care, however, and you will be screaming, not out of fear, but in response to the pure, pulse-popping enjoyment and excitement this game generates.
The single-player version of the game opens with a dialog that lets you choose one of three preconfigured tanks or spectre vehicles (Balance, Speedy, Strong), or customize one of your own. If you decide to “roll your own” vehicle, you can distribute 15 points among three aspects of your custom tank: speed, shields, and ammo. Once you’re outfitted with a tank, you drop into cyberspace, with a bump and a moan, and find yourself in the Arena with enemy spectres approaching you from all across the Arena’s terrain. You can view the action from several vantage points (head on, from a slight angle overhead, map view). Digital readouts of your ammo supply, damage, level, and so on appear at the top left of the screen. There’s also an on-screen radar that tracks enemy vehicles, flags, and other elements of the Arena.
 
The Arena is a bizarre, abstract environment adorned with 3-D geometric shapes and windmills spread at random across the Arena floor. It should seem familiar to anyone who has explored the alternative worlds of cyberpunk literature, such as those found in William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer. Spectre Supreme’s cyberspace Arena is beautifully created with gradient fills and a dreamlike and slightly ominous glowing horizon. As a result, the game is far more attractive and enjoyable with a monitor set to 256 colors than in plain old black and white. The game will play on a monochrome screen such as those of some PowerBook models, but it’s just not the same experience.
In addition to the structures strewn about the Arena, you’ll encounter, of course, a variety of enemies. The enemy spectres include Rovers (the most ubiquitous and weakest meanie), Warriors, Slicers (a kind of moving can-opener with your spectre as the target can!), Auto-Turrets, Hunter-Killers (the cyberspace equivalent of a pterodactyl that can hover just out of range of your guns and swoop down in surprise attacks), superfast Orbiters that explode on contact, and some surprises at higher levels. Some enemy spectres are invisible to your radar, and some are invisible to you but can be tracked by radar.
Other obstacles also keep you from gathering the flags on each level. The Arena’s floor has hazards such as ice, cybermud, acid pools, and flow and force fields that can hinder your movement in various ways. As you progress into the game’s higher levels, the acid pools develop a hunger for human spectres and begin to hunt you down for some corrosive sliming. Some walls get smart later on in the game as well and can team up with the acid pools to entrap and destroy you. The acid pools are sluggish, but virtually indestructible.
Where there are enemies, there are always weapons you can use to defend yourself. Your spectre is equipped with a standard cannon and a set number of ammo rounds (which you can replenish by passing over ammo dumps located here and there on the floor of the Arena). Just aim and fire by hitting the space bar. As you move from level to level, the game gradually adds other, more sophisticated weapons to your arsenal. Grenades explode in midair and damage or destroy any enemy spectre unfortunate enough to be in the area of the explosion. Smart missiles and seekers lock onto enemy vehicles. Scattershots spray out fire in a shotgun-like blast. Spinners let you twirl enemies around long enough for you to escape. You can also lay mines on the Arena to destroy unwary opponents, and you can pick up invulnerability shields from the floor of the Arena that shield the front of your spectre from incoming rounds or can be used as battering rams. If all else fails, you can blast into hyperspace and be transported into another area of the Arena—where the enemy might not be so active.
Teleporters let you jump from one part of the Arena to another specific location (unlike hyperspace which sets you willy-nilly where it will). You can also enter into negative cyberspace (a sort of glass-ceiling basement of the Arena) through submergence gates where more excitement and higher scores await you.
The manual includes some confusing inaccuracies. For example, the documentation tells you to run a program called More Matrices that’s supposedly included on the distribution disks. It isn’t, but there is a folder called More Matrices and it contains an alternative cyberworld (Sam’s Crazy Worlds) you can drag into the same folder as Spectre Supreme and use instead of the default world. It’s too bad things such as this weren’t caught before the manual went to press. The errors are bound to cause frustration for some users.
Battle of the Network Stars. A slightly apocryphal story I once heard describes how a bunch of MacUser editors on the long flight from California to Boston for the MacWorld Expo decided to set up a AppleTalk network of PowerBooks, stringing the cords and connectors between seats down the aisle of the aircraft. And what was the reason for this sudden industriousness? Work? Editing a late-breaking story or review? Nope. They just wanted to play network Spectre.
Spectre Supreme exerts the same sort of seductive charm in this respect as did the original Spectre. It is made for multi-player, network play and can be a very different type of game on a network. You choose from a variety of scenarios, broken down into roughly four categories: Standard (Arena, Flag Rally, Base Raid); Enhanced (SuperArena, Flag Rally Deluxe, Maze Rally); Tag (IT!, Keep Away, Bumper Tanks, Zone Control); and Team CyberSports (BitBall, Cyber Soccer). The Standard and Enhanced scenarios are all basically variations on the basic game: the goal is to gather or capture flags. The Tag scenarios all involve bumping into your opponents or avoiding the same. The CyberSports games both involve “kicking” a cyberball into a goal somewhere in the Arena. Playing Spectre Supreme on a network, by the way, requires separate serialized copies of the program. You can’t make copies of the original program and place them on several networked Macs. And you cannot mix Spectre and Spectre Supreme for network play.
Cyberific! Despite the documentation goofs and QuickTime faux pas, Spectre Supreme lives up to expectations. Animation, graphics, sound, and gameplay are all top notch. If you enjoyed the original Spectre, Spectre Supreme is a major enhancement and a must-have. If you’re looking for that perfect Mac arcade game — addictive, playable, easy to learn — Spectre Supreme will satisfy, game after game after game. We highly recommend it.
Pros:
• High replay value
• Stunning graphics and digitized sounds
• Network play option
• Large screen support
• Inoffensive copy protection (valid serial number required when you first install)
Cons:
• Fatal bug (unless you configure the game properly)
• Eccentric manual design looks cool, but makes manual hard to handle
• Manual contains several confusing inaccuracies
Gregory Wasson is a contributing editor to MacUser and frequently writes software reviews and features for a variety of publications. His real love, however, is games. He bought a PC in 1991 as a "game machine" but continues to play on his Mac when business allows. Gregory is also a primary sysop on ZiffNet/Mac and can be reached through ZiffNet and CompuServe at 72511,36.
