AND THE WINNER IS...IN OUR VIRTUAL REALITY,THE BEST OF NEXT YEAR MAY ALREADY BE
HERE

Prognostications and portents fly from columnists' mouths like so many bats from
limestone caves, some darting here, others winging there as they find new homes.
A few circle back and bite the lips that let them loose.

That's the risk you take when you shoot off your mouth in print. A year down
the road, your calls for the future may be only so much grist for the comedy
mill. But if you divine divinely, you can ride on the reputation forever, like
Jeane Dixon, Carnack, and Wanda the Gypsy Lady.

I'm willing to stake it all on a Top Ten list even though the year's not half
over. If Omni is the magazine of the future, then Electronic Universe better
keep up.

TOP TEN REASONS WHY 1992 WAS GOOD FOR GAMES

10. Phone cross-dressing was a big hit. Online entertainment-games fought over
the phone lines-made a few ripples when The Sierra Network brought multiplayer
games and thousands of opponents to you over telephone wire, But is that Lola
you're playing, or Larry? TSN let you create your own online persona, complete
with a computerized portrait you build from body parts. Are there that many
women playing computer games?

9. Sports commentators wouldn't shut up. John Madden babbles and Frank Gifford
bores, but you had an alternative this year when you stuck Sports Talk
cartridges into your Sega Genesis. Major league games like Joe Montana 2 Sports
Talk Football and MLBPA Sports Talk Baseball sport voice-over announcers that
interrupt play as regularly as the real thing. At least they don't draw all
over the TV.

8. George Bush's plane went down in the Pacific-again. You and George turned
back the clock 50 years with Aces of the Pacific, a WWII air-combat simulator.
In a fit of militarized Japan bashing, you dive-bombed carriers, skimmed torpedo
planes across wavetops, and sent Zeros and Bettys flaming into the sea.

7. CBS lost tons of money on the Olympics. Maybe it was because the computer
games were more fun to watch than long-distance contests in France and Spain.
One of the best was Michael Jordan Flight simulator, a fluid,
first-person-perspective game that put you on the court, trying to stick with
Air Jordan through the picks and punches of the NBA.

6. Fantasy role-playing murdered many. One of the longest-running fantasy
role-playing games issued another edition, the dark and dangerous Ultima VII:
The Black Gate. A massive world to explore, full-screen views, and murder-happy
opponents made Ultima VII an invigorating change from the too-cute fantasy games
of the past.

5. Virtual reality went mall hopping. Stratospheric price tags didn't keep the
first generation of virtual reality machines out of a few of the biggest mall
arcades. At $60,000 a pop, Virtuality's plastic shells and stand-up booths let
us don goggled helmets for an up-close-and-personal experience in a 3-D
computer-generated world.

4. UFO lands, abducts PC. Science fiction turned up the heat when such classics
as Dune, Gateway, and Star Trek (Shatner's and Stewart's) made it to game form.
Strike Commander, a near-future title in the Wing Commander vein, and Free
D.C.!, a claymation adventure set in the future Capitol, proved that originality
works, too.

3. Multimedia exposed itself. On a wing and a prayer, multimedia threw itself
into gaming with a couple dozen CD-based titles on the PC and another handful on
videogame machines. Though most were retreads of earlier, disk-based games, a
few-such as Guest, a visually stunning haunted mansion adventure-were CD from
the plastic platter up.

2. Congress gave NASA $69.95. While the real-life NASA struggles in budgetary
hell, make-believe managers and astronauts re-created history with Buzz Aldrin's
Race into Space. Fleshed out with enough technology, missions, and what-ifs to
interest even Dan Quayle, this to-the-moon simulation let players explore
opportunities missed, not made.

1. Nintendo bought the Mariners. At least it got them off our backs. With the
company concentrating on keeping Ken Griffey, Jr. happy, it sent its 8-bit
system a copy of Final Exit and made more room for the 16-bit Super NES and Sega
Genesis.