Any company who is anybody has to be on the CES floor, right?  Well, it ain't necessarily so.  The cost of even the smallest booth can be prohibitive to a struggling young developer, and if you do pay the umpteen dollars for a half-card table, how can you compete with giants like Nintendo, who can afford almost a fourth of the floor space?

	For many companies the answer to this problem was simple: get off that noisy floor!  Send out invitations to the people that matter (like IE, for example) and get a hotel suite somewhere else in Chicago.

	This is all leading to the fact that DoMark took this option, and held their presentation at the Drake Hotel.  In my opinion, the money that didn't go to outrageous booth fees will probably be well spent on game development.  These guys have some very interesting projects on the fire.

	Obviously, there are a lot of flight simulators on the market.  DoMark has distinguished itself in this highly competitive field with the Flight Sim Toolkit, which allows the player the latitude to create his own game.  Two of the products announced at the Drake are add-ons to FST, but they can also be played as stand alone games.

	FST:World War II boasts improved AI over the original kit; the addition of bombers, tailguns and torpedoes; as well as the option of assigning planes to whatever side you like.  Fly a Zero for the Allies?  Hey,why not?  This should be available in the Fall.

	FST: Dogfight is really quite ambitious.  The emphasis is on plane-to-plane combat. The player will have more control than ever before over the flight capabilities of his own aircraft.  On top of this, the AI is modular, so the player has individual control over elements such as aggressiveness, G-tolerance and physical strength of the enemy.

	In addition to the components for FST, DoMark will also be releasing stand-alone flight sims, all supporting the Power Mac.  The sequel to Flying Nightmares, Out of the Sun, features simulations of four important aerial battles from World War II.  The player can take either the Axis or Allied side and participate in fast-paced dogfights.  The missions also include bombing and torpedo runs.  Out of the Sun should be in the stores as you read this.

	DoMark was also rightfully proud of their new production head, Bryan Walker.  Bryan flew the AH-64 Apache helicopter during the Gulf War, and is putting that knowledge to good use in the design of Apache, a 32-bit helicopter sim with Super VGA graphics and digitized stereo sound recorded in flight.  Apache promises an accurate flight experience in one of America's most modern machines of war.  The game is planned to be released in October 1995 on 32X, Saturn, 3DO, Power Mac and PC CD-ROM platforms.

	DoMark is also planning to stretch into the worlds of science fiction with their upcoming release, Absolute Zero.  The storyline involves mankind's encounter with a hostile mineral-based lifeform while mining on Jupiter in the 23rd century.  This seems to mainly be a shooter with great graphics, a cool storyline, and a minor strategy element.  The game will be available for PC, Power Mac, and 32 bit platforms including 3DO, Saturn and Playstation.

	Even though the bulk of DoMark's releases are flight sims, most of their presentation was taken up with a demonstration of their new fantasy adventure, Lords of Midnight: The Citadel.  While we previewed the game last episode, there are now a few more developments to mention.  The player can choose between as many as 24 different characters as the game progresses.  The player can set the action to continue in real time even after logging off, so that, if you don't play for a day, that day also passes in the game world.  The landscape is fractally generated so that a LOT more ground can be covered.  In short, this is just a huge game, and will hopefully be available for PC CD-ROM in late 1994.