Dear IE,

A couple of beefs, kudos and suggestions:

I just receive Episode 8 and was excited at the prospect of trying out "Cyberia" as it is on my possible "BUY ME" list. I was disappointed to get a "Fail, Abort, Retry . . . " message of two seconds of running it. Oh yeah, I tried deleting and re-installing and all that rigmarole, but nada. I had purchased several European mags with CD-ROMs glued to them earlier last year, and had problems of some kind with a few of the demos, so I wasn't too surprised (some demos even had disclaimers warning of bugs). I almost subscribed to one of those mags, (pricing would be the same as you) but I reviewed your product and chose it over them, even though they had playable demos and you didn't (at that time), now I see you have playable stuff, plus the regular gritty, funny, cut to the chase, honest (I hope) reviews. I think I made the right choice.

Although you offer a good $1.00 per hour entertainment value, I am disappointed that us Canadians get ripped off with the subscription cost. Hey, we still get the same lousy cardboard envelope with a 60 cent stamp on it, but shell out 20 extra big ones. What gives? It's not like you have extra administrative charges for things like extortionate mailing costs or CUSTOMS LABELS! (Tisk tisk, you've been forgetting it, haven't your?) By the way, Canadians represent 10 percent of the North American market, plus most of us think we're smarter than the rest of the world, or maybe its because its too damn cold most of the time for kids to skip school, so they get educated, I dunno.

Some suggestions: Please don't lean too heavily on one genre of game style. One magazine I have read has three reviewers who I swear are one and the same. Even their profiles state that they all prefer strategy-type games. I think the mag should fire two of them and get two writers with different likes.

I really like the idea of the free game (who wouldn't), but is there a chance that you could distribute an older game as well, or instead of, such as Kings Quest III or Ultima IV or Red Baron, etc.? Or how about the odd shareware game like DOOM just to save us the downloading hassles of big games?

What would be really nice is to see game play instead of screen shots of reviews, too. Yeah, you probably get asked this a lot, any comments?

So can I get a replacement disc with a working Cyberia on it?

Thanks in anticipation of your support, keep up the improvements.

P.J.
Coquitlam, B.C.