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It's been five years since the remote Californian desert town of Lizard Breath underwent the nightmare of an attack by mutant ants - it was only due to visiting scientist Greg Bradley that the town survived at all. But, with all the terror behind them, and Bradley long since moved on, the inhabitants of Lizard Breath have vowed never to talk about the dreaded ants again. They never had reason to.

Until now.

You are Brick Nash, a tough ex-fighter pilot just returned from the war in Korea and now making a quiet living as a truck driver. But things change when you receive an urgent message from your younger brother Andy (who's just joined the army) who tells of atomic testing to be carried out in the desert outside of Lizard Breath. Andy tells of a note written to him warning of thousands of deaths, and the annihilation of the town. "Warn Dr. Wells - he alone can stop the disaster!" it ends.

Acting on impulse, you attempt to avert the testing by stealing the army truck carrying the vital plutonium triggers! As you speed towards Lizard Breath, the truck is overturned by a huge unseen animal, and you are knocked unconscious. But when you awake, the nightmare is only just beginning...

The beautiful DJ Dusty over at KBUG Radio soon warms to your charms and, after a little hesitation, breaks the town pact and tells you everything about the horrible events of five years ago. Mutant ants? It sounds impossible, but then what else could have done that to your truck? Dusty kits you out with a pistol and a Geiger counter, and your investigation into the mystery begins...

You awake to find yourself in unfamiliar company, who soon introduce themselves as Dusty and Biff. According to Biff, you were carried from your mangled truck and brought here to safety to avoid the government agents who are hot on your trail. When you start babbling on about Dr. Wells, Dusty informs you that he's been dead for over five years!

Allowing you to use the vacant house as a safe hiding place from Federal Agents, Dusty advises you to get some rest. But rest is the last thing on your mind...

Keep up with the times. Don't forget that five years have passed since the first adventure, and there are a few cosmetic changes to be found. The local drive-in cinema, for example, has stopped showing Rocket Ranger in favour of Cinemaware's forthcoming World War One flight simulator Wings!

Visiting Elmer at the local service station, you realise something is amiss when he begins to talk about the giant ants being our friends - and when you offer him a piece of candy, the boy Billys talk about ants controlling the minds of humans is confirmed!

Elmer's face rips apart and is replaced by a hideous ant head! Your only chance before the ant-man's deadly sonic ray knocks you cold is to shoot off the antennae, thus returning an anthead to his former self.

As the game progresses, the hospital turns more and more people into antheads, and it's vital that you find and deal with at least three, as each one gives you a number, that comes in handy later on...

After the death of Dr. Wells, the Platt University lab was closed down, and for the last five years it's been deserted.

Billy, a young student of the local school, has been following recent events in the desert as part of his project, and has uncovered some strange notes on Dr. Wells' desk - something about harvester ants, and genetic mutation.

What could it all be about? Billy's dad, for one, seems tight-lipped about the subject: "It can't happen again," is all he has to say. What can't happen again?

To thicken the plot, Billy also tells of the late Doc's theory that the ants are brainwashing peopple in their quest for world domination. According to the boy, the local hospital holds Dr. Wells' original notes in the basement, proving his theory. If they could be brought to light, something could be done about the approaching menace. But how are you going to get to them?

It's a well-known fact that Hollywood thrives on sequels - there's no greater guarantee of drawing the punters in than releasing a popular movie with a II stuck on the end. It seems strange then, that with Cinemaware's tradition of emulating the movies, it's only now that it's decided to follow up one of its productions.

But how - and why - did Antheads come about? Cinemaware's David Riordan explains: "Every time we put out a game, we carefully evaluate the responses from reviewers, industry professionals and game-players. Desert I was no exception. When Desert I came out and got rave reviews, won awards, sold thousands of copies and so on, we knew we had to do a follow-up. The Desert gaming environment is constructed to allow for alternative scenarios, so we didn't have to start over from scratch."

As is often the case with sequels, many of the ideas seen in Antheads were actually developed for the original game, but just couldn't be included. "When the original Desert started to get too big, we split these ideas off into a separate scenario which eventually became Desert II: Antheads," David reveals. "One idea that never made it into either game, unfortunately, was the original plan to have multiple monsters - mutant bunnies, lizards and so on."

"We had originally intended to include multiple monsters, but after looking at the disk space requirements for doing one creature convincingly, we decided to do one creature well, rather than multiple creatures poorly."

While many sequels are often rather poor re-hashes of the original, Cinemaware was adamant that Antheads would have an identity of its own. "The pace of Desert II is faster than Desert I," explains David. "Desert I spends a good deal of the first act introducing the player to the inhabitants of Lizard Breath. Since this wasn't necessary in Desert II, we jumped right into the action."

"We also wanted the player to be a different character. The player as Greg Bradley in Desert I had been a town insider. Everyone knew him and, for the most part, trusted him. In Desert II the player as Brick Nash is an outsider and a fugitive from the law. This makes it more difficult for the player to get around town, and gives the story a harder edge. Ken Melville, who wrote the scripts for both Desert I and Desert II really had a great time with the Brick Nash character. He walked around for days spouting 'Brickisms' like: "Dark powers bend my will". We also wanted to transform humans into Antheads. Jeff Godfrey, one of our ace artists, did a great job creating this effect and Randy Platt, the lead programmer on Deserts I and II made it work on the code side."

And, as David explains, the level of toughness was also high up on the development menu: "When we decided to produce Desert II as a separate follow-up game to Desert I, we reasoned that it should be harder than Desert I. Although the individual arcade games are not any harder, the player has only ten days to stop the ants rather than fifteen. We knew from the avalanche of positive warranty cards on Desert I that there were loyal Desert fans out there. Since they needed to have Desert I in order to get Desert II, we wanted to make Desert II more challenging for them."

It seems to have worked. "Feedback on Desert I has been tremendous - players have liked the non-stop action and increased challenges. There's only been one slight problem: whenever we start to work on Desert's design, programming or artwork, real ants show up on our desks. No-one knows where they come from, but it's weird. This is no joke, it really happens!"

While there are no immediate plans for any more Desert add-ons, Cinemaware's interest in the latest gaming technology should see to it that we haven't seen the last of the mutant ants just yet. "We are currently developing It Came From The Desert CD for the NEC Turbo Grafix CD game system. This version will be Desert III, and will include live actors, stop-motion ants and CD quality music and sound effects - a true interactive movie."

To be honest, Antheads doesn't radically change It Came From The Desert. What you get is the next episode in the story - effectively the same game built around a new mystery, with new puzzles to solve and the odd gameplay tweak. But this is no bad thing, as it's precisely what Desert fans needed - there's no need to change the core of the gameplay drastically, as it works brilliantly already. With a new storyline, it effectively is a new game, as everything has to be solved from scratch - you can't take anything for granted, no matter how well-versed you may be with the original.

The brainwashing of the townsfolk adds an extra dimension to the proceedings, and with only ten days to destroy the second queen (as opposed to fifteen) you have to work fast. And don't forget of course that you need the original It Came From The Desert to run Antheads.

The original It Came From The Desert is due out on the Atari ST this October and, unlike the Amiga original, is expected to run on machines with half a Megabyte - although it's not certain how many disks it will occupy yet. As for Antheads, there are no immediate plans, but you could well see something next year, depending on how the first game fares.

Expect to see IBM-compatible ants crawling your way in the original It Came From The Desert in October, with EGA supported at least. As for Antheads, it's the same old story - no plans as yet, but a chance of something next year if Desert takes off.