Ultim@te Race Pro Released

Microprose today announced the release of Kalisto’s Ultim@te Race Pro. Check out the press release below.

Press release:

DRIVERS! DRIVE LIKE HELL THROUGH THE INTERNET WITH ULTIM@TE RACE PRO™ FROM MICROPROSE®

ALAMEDA, CA, March 17, 1998 — MicroProse, Inc. (NASDAQ-NMS: MPRS) announced today the shipment of Ultim@te Race Pro, the ultimate arcade-style multiplayer racing game for the PC. Created by European developer Kalisto Entertainment™, Ultim@te Race Pro features a high frame rate with superior quality imagery, multiple tracks and cars, and 3-D graphic acceleration support for the 3Dfx™, PowerVR™ chip sets and Direct3D™ cards. The game is now available internationally at major distributors, retailers and mass merchants.

“Kalisto has created a true-to-life arcade racing experience for the PC,” said Tom Nichols, Senior Director of Product Marketing at MicroProse. Nichols adds, “Ultim@te Race Pro is one of the first racing games to offer Internet play in a destruction arena, giving the player the opportunity to smash and crash into drivers playing next door or around the world.”

“We wanted to make an arcade-style driving game that the player could just jump right in, grab a hold of the steering wheel and race,” said Dan Kaufman, Head of Development at Kalisto Entertainment. “The fast action, especially in the Ultim@te Arena, is pure accelerated arcade excitement.”

GAMEPLAY
Featuring high quality 3-D graphics that plunge the player into the heat of the action, Ultim@te Race Pro offers a selection of 16 tricked-out mega-horsepower street cars, each with customizable driving style options. The player can bounce from speed, acceleration, grip and armor. This is realistic racing, as the player slides around the bends on 18 possible tracks that take them from lush valleys, towns and cities to vast open spaces and deep canyons. Players will drive on tracks that differ dramatically in length and difficulty and that can be raced under many different, challenging conditions: day races, night races, wet races and stormy races. The Internet game gives the player all these tracks plus a new multiplayer track, the Ultim@te Arena, where the player can combat other players in “rabbit” or “team play” modes. This is smash-and-crash heaven.

GAME MODES
Single Player – Race against the clock or the computer. This is the player’s chance to practice on various customized cars. There are seven other computer-driven cars racing against you. Your goal is to finish first, but you’ll be starting last on the grid.

Multiplayer – Jump into heart-pounding action and race on the Internet. The player can race against anyone anywhere in the world. Players can race via LAN (local area network), modem or Internet. Free Internet gameplay is available on Mplayer at www.mplayer.com.

Ultim@te Arena – The Ultim@te Arena puts the player in a race where anything goes: destroy your opponent’s car, leap over gaps in the track, change direction, hide behind structures, chase opponents across dirt tracks, pick up bonuses — it’s all here — the final multiplayer showdown. The player can use the radar display to find the participating vehicles. The player can also send messages via a chat capability to taunt opponents or rally teammates.

Category: Action Racing
Format: Windows® 95 CD-ROM
Minimum Requirements: Minimum system of 133MHz Pentium compatible or faster, Windows 95, DirectX 5.0, 16MB RAM, double-speed CD-ROM drive, SVGA graphics, DirectX-compatible sound card

MicroProse, Inc. is a leading developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software for use on CD-ROM-based personal computers. The company is also developing software for the use on next generation 32/64-bit console machines, the Internet and online gaming services. The company has five development studios located in Alameda, California; Hunt Valley, Maryland; Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Austin, Texas and Chipping Sodbury, England. Products are available nationally and internationally and are sold through major distributors, retailers and mass merchants. Products and company information are available for download from the MicroProse Web site at www.microprose.com.

Kalisto is an independent game developer with a development studio based in Bordeaux, France. Kalisto also has international marketing and business development offices in the USA, France, Japan, UK and Germany. Originally founded in 1990 by Nicolas Gaume under the name of Atreid Concept, the company joined the Pearson Group at the end of 1994 working as a games development studio. After two successful years of collaboration, a desire by each partner to follow different strategies led Nicolas Gaume to buy back the company in November 1996. Recent successful products include Dark Earth, a real-time adventure game, and Nightmare Creatures, a 3-D action game.

Ultim@te Race Pro, Dark Earth, Nightmare Creatures and KALISTO ENTERTAINMENT are trademarks of Kalisto Technologies. MICROPROSE is a registered trademark of MicroProse, Inc. or its affiliates. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.