Cream of the Crop 22/Cream of the Crop 22.iso/games/csmag51.zip/INSTALL.DAT/23-REV.TXT

Text File | 1996-07-14 | 9KB | 268 lines

~Report from the E3 Show.

Report obtained off the internet and written by Brian.
                                            ([e-mail])

Extracted from the SEGA newsgroup so all the info concerned is
to do with the SEGA SATURN.


Well, I'm back from E3 and my head hurts.  Overall the conference
was a lot of fun.  I played literally a dozen VF rip-offs.  Lots of
derivative junk filled the place.  Sega showed a ton of things and I
played them all.  The only thing about VF3 was a video (the one the
screenshots are from and that's been shown elsewhere).  I'll go down
the list of games.



~Nights

I, like everyone else, want this game.  The controller works really
well and feels good in the hands.  The analog pad is like a ball
with a notch for your thumb. The left and right shift buttons are
underneath the controller and feel like two triggers.  Overall it
feels very comfortable.

Both the male and female character were available.  You start in the
"level of consciousness" which is the outdoorsy area you've seen in
screen shots.  You run around on the ground and the controller moves
you in the x and z directions.  When you see Nights you can jump into
him and you become him.  You can then fly around.  The controller
then handles the x and y direction, with the z direction on a track.
The movement is very smooth.

You can fly through hoops and appear to get bonuses for going through
a series of them consecutively.  There's a special type of hoop that
gives you a very long cloth-like trail that twists as you fly.  by
flying around in a circle and making a loop with the trail you get a
bonus.  If you smash into the ground while flying, you end up having
tumbling down the hill for a moment till nights recovers and jumps
back into the air.  Looks great.  There's also a train you can get
on (clockwork night style) and it travels all around.

By flying through enough consecutive hoops and collecting the gems in
the air you can enter this weird translucent diamond to move to the
next stage.  There are a bunch of stages in each level, (ala bug),
but it loads during the bonus screen so you don't notice it.  The
level of dreams which has the large dragon like creatures is really
psychedelic and pretty fun.


Overall it looks great.  The levels were sparse of enemies (my panzer
dragoon-esque healthometer never really went down) and the camera
occassionally went into the landscape, but it could easily make it
out in America soon.



~Sonic Extreme

The video looked neat.  The biggest thing was how the whole world
seemed to rotate around sonic at at least 30fps.  The only playable
"level" was a giant square with a spiral of rings in the middle.
Sonic runs around and jumps in the usual way.  The graphics looked
neat but obviously the game is just starting development.



~Virtua Cop 2

The level with the car chase was playable and very fun.   Overall it
seems like a minor upgrade from the original (though they say it's
only 40% done, so who knows).



~Three Dirty Dwarves

A side scrolling Final Fight style game with cartoon graphics.  The
controller attached to the machine was screwed up so I didn't get to
play it.



~Gun Griffon

All the text seems to have been converted.  I found the control a bit
odd, but the graphics were great.  A finished jewel case sat next to
it.



~Legend of Oasis

This game looks awesome.  It appears to run in high res mode and the
art is beautiful.  There were lots of villagers around to talk with.
One character in the game asked me "What's the name on the vase", so
it appears there are lots of puzzles to solve.  In the piece I played
all the dialog was in English, so it can't be too far from release.



~F1

Nice control, some popup, average game.



~Major Damage

Prerendered side scroller that supports two characters at a time.
Unimpressive.



~VF Kids

Great eye candy, but it's pretty dumb.  It's not much more than VF2
saturn with different character design.  They claimed new moves that
I didn't see, so who knows.  The character selection screen had tiny
cartoons of the characters and gave you an option of "Normal" or
"Kids" style play.   The only difference I noticed was that "Kids"
made it easier to execute some moves (like wolf's drop sweep).



~Dark Savior

Claims to be "the first fully polygon based RPG".  Looks as good as
the screen shots, but as to polygons, the characters seem to be
prerendered sprites that move in the eight directions.



~Destruction Derby

The graphics look a little blocky (and the exhaust is opaque), but
the game runs very smoothly and plays just like the PSX.



~Working Designs

They were the only external developer with  a booth inside the Sega
section.  Shining Wisdom and Rayearth were there and seemed solid.



~Mr. Bones (or something like this)

This game surprised me.  It was one of the best things I saw.  It
looks 3-D platformer with Resident Evil style controls.  As you get
damaged, parts of you body fall off.  At one point I was just a
skull sitting on a spine bouncing around like a pogo stick.  There
was neat lighting effects and neatest of all were these two rapidly
moving monster shadows on the wall that attacked you when you got
close.  It looked right out of a cartoon.  There was also a giant
chained t-rex that looked and moved really beautifully.



~Elsewhere were
~--------------


~Scorcher and Amok

Amok was demoing on the saturn.  You control this spider-like robot
over rocky terrain and shoot things.  The land is surrounded by
"fog" so it draws in like offworld interceptor.  The neatest part
of the game was the little people scurrying around attacking you
and fleeing.  I played Scorcher on the PC, and it was a great racer.
Tomb raider seemed further along, though the PC version looked a lot
better than the saturn (maybe because they had a 5000 dollar 3D
accelerated pentium running it on a high res monitor).  The female
character could go swimming and leap out of the pool.  It played
like 3-D Prince of Persia.

The Scavenger folks were very friendly and seemed to love their work.
Their other games like Into the Shadows and Tarantula were incredibly
cool games.  I hope they port them soon.



~Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

Played it on the PSX, though they said the Saturn was very similar.
It's an over head view on polygonal looking characters.  You can
wander out side or enter buildings to explore further.  The main
character can take five forms: wolf, vampire, bat, human and
something else.  As a vampire, you wield a huge sword.  When you
hit a monster, it gets stunned.  You can then do a move which causes
you to lean back as a stream of blood flies out of the monsters head
into your mouth.  As a human, people don't notice you so you can
wander freely.  There were a lot of cool spells as well.  One of
them causes your opponents skin to fly off in a particle spiral of
red.  The particle based stuff looked very neat.  I talked to one of
the developers for a while (great guy), and he said they are now
targeting October though they won't release it till they're
satisfied with it.



~Area 51

At the Williams booth they had a 20% "work in progress" with no real
fanfare, but there was a Stunner coming out of the wall, so I assume
it's a Saturn.  I like this game at the arcade and the play seemed
the same.  Unfortunately, the background video was blocky.



~Earthworm Jim 2 and Skeleton Warriors

Both of these were nice prerendered (or drawn) side-scrolling
platformers.  SW had a lot of explosions when you killed things(?!?).
EWJ was impressive in the number of background layers.  Both of
these showed a finished box.



~Power Slave (or something like this from Time Warner)

This is a doom clone where the player is a mage that shoots things
from his hands.  The one interesting thing was the lighting effects.
Fireballs added a colored glow to the walls as they travel along.



~Pacific Theatre of Operations 2 and Aerobiz

Koei had a nice booth but all of the games were complicated and
completely in Japanese so I have no idea how these two titles are.



~Heart of Darkness

The prerendered stuff was brilliant.  The actual play was like prince
of persia.  I saw the game on low res mode on the PC, but everything
looked good because of anti-aliasing.



~Werewolf

Not much completed on this.  The only selectable character was a
werewolf (there appears to be 7-8 characters).  You then wander
around a forest from a 3/4 perspective.  You can jump and swipe, but
nothing in the environment moved.



~Contra 96

Two players game with a 3/4 perspective.  Reminded me of Total
Carnage with a more serious theme.




~In non-saturn things

Wipeout XL (or Wipeout 2) was the best PSX game I saw.  Lots of great
additions, including exhaust from the ship, moving tracks, more
ships, etc.  Die Hard Trilogy came in a surprisingly close second.
I'm hoping for both of these asap.