Well, I didn’t intend to cover an issue with a Prince of Persia game on the cover to coincide with a new Prince of Persia game coming out, but it worked out that way.

Cover: The cover for this issue is Prince of Persia 3D – with upcoming anti-game legislation in Florida being teased on the cover as well.

Industry Interview: Our industry interview is with two of the principals of Gathering of Developers (G.O.D.) – Mike Wilson (the CEO), and co-founder Harry Miller (of Ritual Entertainment) – who talk about the company. Well, company isn’t quite the right term, it’s meant to to be more of a developer collective, meant to get better conditions for game developers after years of them getting jerked around by publishers. Now, the historical record shows that things didn’t work out as planned, but considering the current state of the game industry, I might say that it was an idea that was before its time. With how things currently are, I wonder if we’re due for another go at the concept – another group of independent game developers reviving the experiment to advocate for developers in an era where developers are being gutted by layoffs paired with record profits – along with acquisition binges by entities like the Embracer Group.

News: As mentioned on the cover, Florida is working on a sweeping game censorship law. NG interviews one of the sponsors, Rep. Barry Silva, and he’s clearly not prepared to get a serious, hard-hitting interview from a video game magazine, for example getting hit with questions asking about legal precedent that would make this law unconstitutional.

On a lighter side of things, we get some rumblings about the impending launch of the Game Boy Color – which we haven’t gotten much on in Nintendo Power yet.

In Colin Campbell’s Movers & Shaker’s column, there’s a profile of EA’s new COO, fresh from Sara Lee – John Riccitello (yes, the one that was just at Unity and utterly cratered that company’s market share).

Retroview: We have a discussion of Ralph Baer developing the tech behind “Journey: Escape” (both the tape deck music accompaniment and the digitized sprites of the various band members).

The Rise & Fall of BMG Interactive: We have a profile of BMG Interactive – the music label’s attempt to get into video games, and what happened to it during and after its collapse – a story that includes names that you might recognize, like Strauss Zelnick (currently at Take Two), and the Hauser Brothers, along with franchises like Spec Ops. As the crater is rather fresh, we don’t yet have any reveal of what will emerge from this crater – Rockstar Games.

Tales of the Hardcore: A follow-up to their hardcore gamer survey article, with people sharing their most “hardcore” gamer moments. I believe kids these days would call this “Cringe”. Also, they give people’s actual E-mail addresses, which I don’t think anyone would do now.

Alphas (Previews): We have our coverage of Prince of Persia 3D here, getting into how they want more flowing movement in the game, compared to the more rigid movement you get from using the grid-style navigation from the Tomb Raider series. We also have an interview with Jordan Mechner on the development process for the original game.

There are also some previews of sequels – like Abe’s Exodus, Fighting Vipers II, and Descent II. We also get a preview of Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64, from DMA Design (the other upcoming part of Rockstar).

The Way Games Ought To Be: Neil West traces the criticism of video games causing violence to the fact that the predominant verb in gaming is killing stuff.

Finals (Reviews): Not a lot of great titles for the N64 this month. The main titles that get decent scores are the N64 version of Quake and Fighters Destiny.

The PlayStation has considerably stronger titles and more of them. We have Bloody Roar, Breath of Fire III, Hot Shots Golf, and Bust-a-Move (the dancing rhythm game, not the matching bubbles game).

Only one title for the Saturn, but it’s a doozy – like Panzer Dragoon Saga.

The PC has Mysteries of the Sith (an expansion for Jedi Knights, along with Journeyman Project 3.

Letters: One of the things I miss from working off of scans, is handling the physical magazine, and we have a discussion here on their experimentation with different cover treatments & variants.