One week after 3D Realms’ George Broussard posted “I smell gold” on the company’s forum, it’s official: Prey discs are being gold mastered. In the official press release, 3D Realms confirms the game will be in North American stores on July 11 and in Europe three days later. The buzz is good, the demo is a hoot, and Prey should, in the words of 3D Realms CEO Scott Miller, “be a major hit for gamers worldwide.”

On a tangential note, I had to smile when I read Human Head developer talk about Prey as the “cumulation of nearly five years work.” To clarify, Human Head may have been working on the game for half-a-decade, but Prey was first announced back in 1995, and I remember reading a preview in a 1996 PC Gamer. Just for giggles, I dug up an online copy of that article here, which highlights such features as “very smooth animation without the need for a 3D accelerator card,” “3D, polygon-based enemies,” and most exciting of all, an “early 1997” release date.