The End of What Era?

Today, games that build worlds for you to explore are splitting into two camps based on two different uses of your computer's processing power. One group, led by Doom and its successors, generates blocky-looking but fast-moving 3-D worlds on the fly; the other, led by interactive movie experiments like Psychic Detective, builds labyrinths out of real-world video footage. Total Distortion, with its relatively slow-moving computer animations, falls somewhere in between these approaches. Its imagery provides far more detail and atmosphere than what you find in Doom's ilk. Yet there's very little full-motion video involved, which is one big reason Pop Rocket can deliver it on a single CD (many CD-ROM projects today demand two, three, even four discs).

So which era is it that Total Distortion consummates -- and begins to wrap up? That of the CD-ROM as a medium for static, pre-rendered computer-animation worlds (Myst remains the most popular example). More will come down the pike, to be sure, but they won't be part of any kind of vanguard. Eras move fast in techno-entertainment: the one that's fading today only began around 1991, when a CD-ROM called Spaceship Warlock debuted. One of its designers was Joe Sparks.

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