Two years ago, fewer than six feature films utilized computer graphics; this year perhaps six will not use any type of computerized enhancement. The embrace of cutting-edge technology by Hollywood is most ambitiously exemplified by Disney's Toy Story. Unlike movies with fantastic digital imagery like Apollo 13 and Casper, in which such graphics make up a mere fraction of the running time, every single frame of Toy Story was created on Silicon Graphics workstations and rendered on Pixar-made RenderMan software. Pixar's founder, Steve Jobs, is so confident in this project that he predicts the animated feature will jump-start a new epoch in movie-making, potentially replacing 2-D animation altogether.

Over one hundred studio employees worked to bring the tale of Toy Story to life, painstakingly preparing digital sets, characters, and props. Animators and VFX artists stylized the film from the storyboarding sketch phase to the last-minute shading. In the director's words, "In computer animation, it's so easy to make things move, but it's the minute detail work at the end that makes it look so real." Audiences appear enraptured by the feature, propelling it to the top of the Box Office ahead of the new James Bond picture, GoldenEye. There is certainly no shortage of home adaptations, either. Our team reviewed the superb Genesis cart released last month. Disney Interactive will also publish an Animated Storybook for PC this spring.

Mortal Mania is hot as ever two years after the release of the amusingly controversial Mortal Kombat arcade cabinet. We've seen MK1, MK2, and now MK3 is imminent! Just a quick glance at the sales figures of this franchise, the varied merchandising and millions of game copies sold, will tell you MK may well be the most popular fighter of all time. MK3, with its 14-character roster and new leaps in visual design, is just the beginning. The highly anticipated Mortal Kombat feature film will take martial arts to new heights when it is released in theaters everywhere this summer. Director Paul Anderson will seek to bring the brawl to life with the help of Christopher Lambert (Tarzan!) as Lord Ryden and Robin Shou and Liu Kang.

But wait, there's more! A $2.5 million Mortal Kombat arena show is gearing up for a major launch. Named the Live Tour, the theatrical event will showcase state-of-the-art special effects, magical illusions, lasers, gymnastics, and real-life martial arts straight from the film! Audience participation will play a key part in the show as well, with one show producer explaining that the crowd will directly determine the ultimate outcome of each event. The Live Tour is scheduled to begin this September at Radio City Music Hall, NY, but will crisscross throughout the country at 150 cities until sometime next year. Oh, and attendants will have a shot of playing MK3 on an enormous screen before the performance, and learn some secret codes, too!

Fighters have taken over the video game scene. Next stop: The Movies! Capcom's world-famous one-on-one fighting game, Street Fighter II, is about to be unearthed in cinemas everywhere. The film adaptation is coming courtesy of Universal Studios with an assumed blessing from Capcom. Steven E. de Souza, blockbuster action director best known for Commando and Die Hard is confident that this picture will be one for the history books. De Souza started filming this project over in Bangkok, Thailand, kicking off the story in the midst of the Shadowloo Civil War. Evil General M. Bison, played on-screen by Raul Julia, kidnapped dozens of relief workers and has demanded $20 billion. Col. William Guile is out to stop him!

The complete cast list for Street Fighter goes down nearly the entire fighting roster, from Ryu and Ken to Dhalsim and Zangief. Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile is a sight to behold. Preview images sent over for marketing purposes showcase just how true-to-life this casting has turned out. It's almost as if the folks behind this movie played the game, unlike those maroons in charge of last year's Super Mario oddity. With a giant helping of explosive action and its fair share of game-like brawling, we have no doubt players all over will have a roaring time upon Street Fighter's December release. It will be rated PG-13 for excessive violence, so you just know it will be a goodie. Get ready for a match you won't soon forget!

Walt Disney Pictures is sailing atop the world following successive theatrical hits. The latest film in this lineage which brought you Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast, is, of course, The Lion King: The tale of a young lion prince destined to be King of the Pride Lands. The star of the show is the titular king to-be, Simba, played by both Jonathan Taylor Thomas of Home Improvement fame and Matthew Broderick AKA Ferris Bueller. Boasting an all-star cast and a musical score directed by the masterful Hans Zimmer, it's no wonder this picture was hyped to the moon and back. Simba and Co. were marketed so well in advance of the premier, in fact, that merchandise began flying off store shelves as early as April.

Riding high on its third consecutive month in theaters with an estimated $215 million under its belt, The Lion King can now safely be deemed an entertainment juggernaut. So much so that it launched Elton John to the top of the charts with his (extensively overplayed) "Can You Feel the Love Tonight". Disney animators were reportedly astounded by the popularity of the feature. In the eyes of the execs, movies about anthropomorphic animals underperformed next to people-driven pictures. Yeesh. Consider that theory debunked. Simba, Nala, and the rest are set to appear in the newest project from Virgin Interactive. The game will utilize the work of professional Disney animators and adapt Zimmer's orchestrations as well. Due out this fall.

What happens when you combine five rowdy teens with legendary powers? Evidently, you have a media juggernaut. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers leapt forth from nowhere to claim the top toy spot among younger lads in 1993. The concept, for those wrinkly dudes too old to be persuaded by the bright marketing, is rather ingenious. Using footage from a Japanese fantasy series called "Super Sentai," stateside producers adapted and converted the show. The famed Power Rangers unleash their evil-thwarting assault whilst clad in face-covered helmets and costumes, so us Americans are none the wiser! Storylines have been altered to bring in English-speaking actors within a California-based setting, but the fights are oh-so Sentai.

Then there's the all-powerful moneymaker known as merchandise. Kids eat that stuff up! Action figures, PJs, home decor - you name it, Toys R' Us and other major retails carry it. The TV show itself is about to cross a milestone and reach its one-year anniversary. Fad though it may seem, Bandai America exhibits not one doubt that the flame will burn on, promising more adventures on the horizon for Zordon's young rangers and the Empress of Evil, Rita Repulsa. This begs the question, where are all the video games? Games, of course, take some time to develop, but rest assured the carts are on the way. Coming later this year for SNES and Game Boy is a somewhat secretive Bandai action-brawler. No doubt it will be accompanied by a fellow traveler on the Genesis and Game Gear as well. There's no escape from the craze, so you might as well enjoy the ride.

Luke, Han, Yoda, and the rest of this legendary cast of characters seem to be popping up all over the place lately. It's undeniable we've faced a barrage of Star Wars related merchandizing in the past couple of years. This, of course, includes video games, but it stretches beyond that to apparel, toys, and comic books too! Fans of all ages are going nuts over those glowing laser swords and space-faring dogfights a whole ten years after the release of the series' final film, Return of the Jedi. Super Star Wars kicked off the mania, but with its roaring success came the realization that this property is as exploitable as ever (I'm not complaining! -Jet). See the new publication Star Wars Generation for example, a magazine based solely on that one specific niche!

George Lucas is himself aware of heightened interest in his brainchild, and just recently revealed plans to produce an all-new trilogy of Star Wars films. As the reports indicate, this trio will be a group of prequels set before the events of the known films. Some sources say these movies will star a young Obi-Wan Kenobi - the sage-like mentor to Luke Skywalker - and follow his very own adventures. Lucas is on record claiming no script is yet written for these features, and that he instead is focusing primarily on wow-ing the audience with special effects courtesy of his award-winning Industrial Light and Magic team. Preferring razzle-dazzle to smart screenwriting sounds somewhat troubling to our ears, but if Lucas can manage to hire a directorial wizard like John Woo to tie up the loose ends, audiences will flood the seats at lightspeed.

THE ANNUAL HALLOWEEN SPOOKTACULAR

Us dudes over at the PPM Headquarters are all about games. We play 'em all the time and, let's face it, we're as hooked as you are! But if anything comes close to video games in our hearts, it's getting a good scare from a horror movie! Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger have haunted our nightmares for a long, long while - so we figured we oughta share some of our favorite spooky flicks of the past few years to liven up even the stalest Halloween get-together. 1992 was a goldmine for chilling thrillers. Just look at Bernard Rose's Candyman, a supernatural story set at the basin of urban legend, or Bram Stoker's Dracula, where just the sight of Gary Oldman's face is enough to scare you. Just the thought sends shivers down our spines.

1990 back at the start of this decade had some goodies to offer too, like the sequel to every mother's worst nightmare, Child's Play 2, the frighteningly realistic tale of a possessed doll come to life. John, PPM's Publisher, is a giant fan of Stephen King, so naturally we're forced - uh, I mean treated - to a viewing of Tales from the Darkside each year: An eerie anthology film starring Debbie Harry and Christian Slater. What are we checking out this year, you may ask? Well, the scariest movie of the year will undoubtedly be the truly grotesque remake of Beverly Hillbillies, featuring the most dreaded villain of all: A soulless, corporate cash-grab! We jest (Sorta -Jet), but the reviews are in and it ain't pretty, folks!

A JURASSIC PHENOMENON

1993 is shaping up to be the year of the dino. The best-selling novel Jurassic Park has officially been converted to the silver screen courtesy of Universal Pictures and Steven Spielberg, and chances are you've seen the glorious reptiles in all their glory. The $65 million movie is not all - in fact we're also knee-deep in a host of other dino merch ranging from video games and electronic handheld devices to t-shirts and comic books. Though Topps' comic cards and Universal's fun tie-ins are plenty of fun, it wouldn't exist without the spectacular studio film and the ingenious dinosaur recreations.

Spielberg's direction and Michael Crichton's authorship of the source material were instrumental in bringing the story to life, but the film would not have achieved its box-office breakthrough without the special effects team. Jurassic Park's animators, led by stop-motion specialist Phil Tippett, and the small crew over at George Lucas' VFX computer lab (known for E.T.: Extra Terrestrial and Terminator 2), used their knowledge of the field to create eye-popping, photorealistic dinosaurs the likes of which we've never seen. Computer graphics are astonishing. We're super jazzed to see what's next in store from these wizards.