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>> STEWART CHEIFET: OK. Kelly, let's turn to you.
Electronic Arts has a new game for the 64 called Skate or Die.
And I want you to tell me about that.
>> KELLY FLOCK: This is a multi-event game.
It's kind of like a skateboard simulation, where you get to do all
of the things you normally wouldn't do unless you....
>> STEWART CHEIFET: Didn't want to risk your knees and your elbows.
>> KELLY FLOCK: Right. All of the fun and none of the scars, as we say.
>> STEWART CHEIFET: OK. Kelly, show me how you play Skate or Die.
>> KELLY FLOCK: OK. This is a half-pipe. A regular skateboarding event.
You do it through a combination kick turns of joystick moves and button controls.
[electronic-sounding music plays] No need to look at the documentation.
>> STEWART CHEIFET: Oh, whoops, you did that on purpose.
>> KELLY FLOCK: I wish.
>> STEWART CHIEFET: [laughing]
>> KELLY FLOCK: I'm going try to get up in the air on this one.
>> STEWART CHEIFET: Alright! Beautiful! Almost!
So, it's a combination of the joystick and the buttons.
>> KELLY FLOCK: Correct.
>> STEWART CHEIFET: Oh, nice move!
[chuckles]
... however ...
>> KELLY FLOCK: So there are like 12 different moves you can do in here.
And you get points for the variety of your routine,
and you get bonus points at the end.
So, so I got 8000 points, which is a pretty good score.
You can get up to 15,000 points in here.
>> STEWART CHEIFET: Kelly, is Skate or Die available
on any machine other other than the Commodore 64?
>> KELLY FLOCK: No.
Right now it's only available on the Commodore.
It was designed on the Commodore.
And it takes advantage of some unique features such as the sprites
and the 16 colors and the three voices.
We're in the process of developing for other machines.
>> GARY KILDALL: Kelly, are there more things that you can do besides
just skating on this ramp?
>> KELLY FLOCK: There is a total of five events.
The ramp is the only event modeled on real skateboarding,
but there is a couple of downhill events.
Where you can break bottles and skate through bushes
and through a drain pipe. And there is a pool joust event
where you have three computer opponents. And you get to *** them
with a little marine bopping stick. It's a pretty fun little game.
>> GARY KILDALL: What about the price?
>> KELLY FLOCK: The suggested retail is $29.95.
>> GARY KILDALL: And is there something about the Commodore market?
You just don't get more than $30 for games?
>> KELLY FLOCK: As the Commodore market gets older,
it becomes more price sensitive.
There is a lot more product developed for it,
as opposed to say a market like the Amiga,
where there are very few games right now.
>> GARY KILDALL: So is this something that you're going
to be deemphasizing after a while?
>> KELLY FLOCK: No. We make it up in volume.... How do we do it?: Volume.
>> STEWART CHEIFET: Kelly, Malcolm, thank you very much.
>> PAUL SCHINDLER: In our available minute, we can't settle the age old question
of whether you really need an encyclopedia or not, but if you decide you do
for yourself or for your children, which would you rather have?
These 20 volumes or this compact disc?
This is the Electronic Encyclopedia.
And it contains all of the text from the Academic American Encyclopedia.
That's nine million words, 30,000 entries, 60 MB of data!
You can pay a dollar a minute to access this encyclopedia online
via Dow Jones or you pay $300 once
and have this in your home.
Now we are not going to show you any screens today.
Because screens full of text aren't very interesting to look at.
But I can tell you that when you give
the Electronic Encyclopedia search program a word, it finds every article
in the Encyclopedia that includes that word and tells you the headline of the article.
You can read it, print it, or put it in a disk file.
Now, be careful what you do with that disk file,
because you don't want to plagiarize this work.
Now I know.... In order to use this you need
an $800 CD-ROM player for your PC.
Believe me, this isn't the last CD-ROM program you'll want.
The Electronic Encyclopedia is $300 from Grolier Electronic Publishing in New
York.
For the Computer Chronicles, I'm Paul Schindler.