E3 Report, 1995

[Author: John Emmer jjustice@cs.bsu.edu]

Here are my E3 reports. I hope you enjoy them!

[This first part was posted to r.g.v.advocacy and misc on Thursday the 11th, 1995, under the title 'An E3 Report'.]

Well, I just got back from E3, and it was a _very_ exciting show! Kalinske announced that the Saturn is now available in thousands of retail outlets in the US. No news to us here on the net, but it did seem to surprise some people at the show. I was hoping that Sony would counter by announcing an earlier release for their system, but no such luck, it was announced for Sep. 9. However, Kalinske cited $399-$449 as the street price of the Saturn, and Olafsson (actually Sony's pres.) said that the PlayStation would retail at $299. My take on this was, after looking over the show, that Sega realizes that the Saturn is underpowered compared to the PS, and wants to get a head start. There certainly were a lot more impressive PS games than Saturn games, and that lower price couldn't hurt either. Anyway, now on to the various displays.

Sega was right in front of the main door, and since I was excited about the Saturn, knowing that I could buy one now, I went there first. Here are my impressions of the games that caught my eye, in no particular order. VECTORMAN was a very slick Genesis side-scrolling action title. I think it will join the top ranks of this genre. OOZE looked like Soldier of Fortune, but with slime as a main character. Not sure if this will work or not. Well produced, however. GARFIELD - bleck. COMIX ZONE - ok. WEAPON LORD - better than I expected, but still choppy when compared to top of the line fighters (read: Neo-Geo). KOLIBRI for 32X - very nice shooter, much in the vein of Bio-Hazard Battle, even using some of the same weapons and sounds, so that I suspect it was developed by the same people. However, it's not just a side-scrolling shooter, you can fly in all directions in front of a large nicely parallaxed playing field. SHADOW SQUADRON - this is exactly what the 32X Star Wars game _should_ have been. Very nice - I liked it better than Phoenix 3, a similar game for 3DO. The 32X version of VIRTUA FIGHTER looked surprisingly good, although there was no collision detection yet. ETERNAL CHAMPIONS for Sega CD was very nice - better animation and control with many goodies added over the cartridge. Definitely one of the best 16-bit fighters. If you liked the Batman Returns CD, you'll probably also like the BATMAN AND ROBIN Sega CD game - it has a very similar driving mode, which is all I played of this one and all I ever played on the first one anyway. SONIC for PC - with Pentium _required_ - was the best looking PC scrolly game I've ever seen, (yes Jim, better than Jazz Jackrabbit). They had an interesting Doom-style X-MEN game for the 32X, which you couldn't play yet, but just showed Wolverine walking through some nicely textured rooms with, however, a fairly close horizon. ZAXXON'S MOTHERBASE 2000 was looking very nice, although the scrolling was a bit choppy - hopefully this will be fixed in the final version. LUNAR 2 WAS INCREDIBLE! You will not believe that these cinemas are on the plain old Sega CD, and the character animation and spells - what can I say, as expected, another masterpiece by Working Designs. Although this manages somehow to blow away even their own previous efforts. I expect this to become my new favorite RPG. Nothing really new to report on the Saturn games, as these have gotten fairly good attention. I must say, however, for a system you can buy today, too many of the games were still not finished. This is why I think the early release is a somewhat desperate effort to gain market share. My pick of the lot, however, would definitely be PANZER DRAGOON, which is simply beautiful.

OK, on to the Sony booth. I'm sorry to say it, but the PlayStation games on display were, on the whole, much more impressive than the Saturn games. It would really be in Sony's interest to get this system out as soon as possible. Some highlights of Sony's booth were (for some reason, I didn't take as many notes here): SYNDICATE WARS is a _greatly_ enhanced version of an already great game - think of it as a dark Relentless. Everyone already knows that TOSHINDEN is great - but nobody's ever mentioned the cute Anime girl voices before :) AIR COMBAT, which looked too good to be true in the magazines, is a very nice combat flight sim, although I didn't get to the part with the bridges and such as were shown in the mags, just a much less interesting island scenario. SHOCKWAVE looked better on PS than on 3DO - mainly due to better textures. LOADED was a very nice looking overhead game clearly inspired by Gauntlet - but _beautiful_. OVERKILL was another Gauntlet style game, also very nice. My notes say that I really liked WIPE OUT, but now I can't remember what it was... WAR HAWK was another _very_ nice combat flight game, this one leaning a little more towards action as opposed to Air Combat's simulation style. Overall, I'd say I was most impressed with the games on the PlayStation out of all the systems that I saw today - perhaps that's why I have so many fewer notes! :) I'll try to get more PS info tomorrow.

Now, while the PS had the most impressive games, I must say that the 3DO booth was the one 'Next Generation' booth that really impressed one as having the _most_ games. 3DO gamers will not be bored any time in the near future! However, there was no sign of M2! They did show the car demo in a presentation, and while impressive, it had the pre-rendered feel to it (i.e. it didn't look like a tape of someone playing a game, but like a graphics demo). Other than that, I saw no M2 mockups or any other mention of M2 at all. I will bug some people tomorrow and try to find out more about this. On to the games: BLADE FORCE looked and played something like a fully texture-mapped version of PO'd. I was frustrated, however, in that I seemed to keep running into invisible walls. I'm not sure if it was a collision detection problem, or just something about the game that I didn't understand. As one of the mags noted recently, those laser bolts you see in the screen shots are not really in the game. Just your standard firey bullets. KILLING TIME was a disappointment, being very choppy and having graphics with somewhat washed-out colors. It does not look nearly as nice as the screen shots had led me to believe. There was a Cybersled clone, BATTLE SPORT, which was nice, but not as nice as Cybersled. SPACE HULK really does look every bit as good as the screen-shots have indicated. However, you lead a team around, and without knowing how to use them, they just tended to prevent me from running away from monsters, since they were right behind me and I couldn't back up. I don't know how this will work out in the final game. This game was very reminiscent of AvP on the Jaguar, which, IMO, is a very good thing. PHOENIX 3 had some fairly lame platform levels and a space combat mode where I never got a satisfying look at the enemy ships. Maybe I didn't play it enough to tell, but it didn't make me want to play it either... CAPTAIN QUAZAR looked good, I would describe it as a Horde-shooter. Graphics very much like the Horde, only brighter and more varied, and gameplay like (again!) Gauntlet. Well, maybe not so much, since I don't recall monster-generators or armies of identical enemies, but you get the idea... STAR FIGHTER looked like a slower version of Shockwave (as a matter of fact, a _lot_ of games at the show, on many platforms, looked a lot like Shockwave) where, however, you have more freedom as to where to fly, but I never saw any enemies while the guy I watched played it. CARRIER was just a collection of fmv infobits on carriers (snore). ICE BREAKER was perhaps some kind of puzzle game, where you shoot pyramids on a grid, but it wasn't clear to me what the objective was. A game like Myst is bound to breed some clones, and ISIS fits this bill, though with an Egyptian theme (they did have a nice live Isis sitting by the demo...) BIOS FEAR looked disappointing, the engine was closer to Wolfenstein than Doom (DOOM, however, was nowhere to be seen at the show, which the author of BIOS Fear pointed out...). Hopefully, this will look better when it's released. For DEFCON 5, my notes say "nice VIDEO of Doom", which I think means it was just a demo tape, but looked good. PANZER GENERAL looked very promising, but only for the serious strategy gamer - not a game to sit down and play casually. PO'D was looking _very_nice - the authors gleefully showed me the a new weapon - the drill - which leaves the screen blood-splattered, so every time you use it, your on-screen persona wipes his hand across the screen to clear things off! Cool! DEATH KEEP, was Slayer meets Doom, with even more sophisticated dungeons than the first game, but the version I played didn't allow for combat (I did see one that was working better in another booth) - I don't think Slayer fans will be disappointed. POLICENAUTS, the Snatcher sequel, was still just a target range, though I did see some of the cinemas in the Konami booth, and they looked very good. LOST EDEN features a 7th Guest style movement interface, with what looked like a mostly talking adventure, but I didn't play it for long. DRAGON LORE played like Myst would if you multiplied the density of the locations (i.e. views per location) by a factor of 20 or 30, though I never could get it to talk to the character that I met. CASPER was a nice looking Zombies Ate My Neighbors style game, but more of an adventure - I didn't see any combat while I was watching. NHL '96 was, well, NHL '96 - what did you expect? Totally awesome! WING COMMANDER III did not appear to have any improvements over the Sampler 3 demo, though you could play other missions, etc. Still unacceptable fmv for a 3DO title. SHOCKWAVE II was pretty much just what you'd expect it to be. It did look nicer than the first one.

Atari had all the expected players on hand. Leonard Tramiel was there, the God-like Mr. Minter, and various developers showing off there works-in- progress. Unfortunately, they were mostly that - works-in-progress - they really need to get more games in the stores soon. DEFENDER 2000 llooked llovely, as did several other titles. I heard both July and August mentioned as possible dates for the release of the CD hardware, and all the developers were committed to getting their games out by Christmas. I had the pleasure of eating lunch with some of the 4-play crew, and afterward played their game BATTLE SPHERE in a networked mode. Scott killed me, of course, but the game is looking very nice, and I particularly liked the look of the ships and the way everything moves very smoothly in the game. One game that I was anxious to see was HIGHLANDER, and I was quite happy indeed when I saw it! Imagine Alone in the Dark with fully _rendered_ backgrounds (_not_ texture- mapped) and a focus on exploration and killing, not those stupid puzzles. Unfortunately, since the game is indeed based on the cartoon, there may not be any head-chopping, but I wouldn't let that stop you from checking out this _very_ promising title.

I didn't go to the Nintendo booth today, as it was in the other building, but I'll get over there tomorrow. Two things I did see for SNES in developer's booths deserve mention, however. One was DOOM, yes Doom on the SNES, and not looking to shabby either, I must say. The other was DRACULA X - which was, as the Duo version before it, absolutely beautiful. I know there are a few out there who will agree that the Duo version is one of, if not the best platformer ever, and Konami has gone all-out to take full advantage of the capabilities of the SNES to produce a scrumptious version of this classic title. Also, next to the display it was listed that this title would be available on Saturn and PlayStation as well. I don't think my heart could take a PS Dracula X...

Well, that about wraps it up for this E3 report - I still need to eat dinner! If anyone has any questions about these or other titles, please followup this post (EDIT!!!), and I will try to answer everything that I can. I know some people were wanting specific information, and I will try to get more of that tomorrow.

Let the games begin!

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Path: psuvm!jpe1
Organization: Penn State University
Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 00:28:33 EDT
From: John Emmer
Message-ID: <95135.002833JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.video.advocacy,rec.games.video.misc
Subject: E3 Report, Part 2
Lines: 157

Sorry I wasn't able to get this report out on Fri., but I went to the net.people.gathering after the show (more on that below) and so was up too late to be able to write up a good report. Then Sat. the friend I was staying with had to move out of his dorm room, so I lost contact with the net (horror!) Anyway, I'm back home in State College now, and I'll try to get the rest of my notes typed up tonight. I'll start with Nintendo, since I didn't say anything about them in the first report:

Howard Lincoln had the Keynote address on Fri., where the person who introduced him suggested that there had been some reluctance on Nintendo's part to even be at E3, but of course he didn't really say what that was all about. Lincoln's talk was not nearly as nice as Kalinske's or Olafsson's had been on Thur. He had no video of new games, and spent 90% of his time talking about the threat of software piracy. People around me said they felt the talk was 'diversionary' - i.e. intended to draw one's attention away from the fact that Nintendo really had nothing much to show for itself. Lincoln would, of course, disagree with me, for as he said, Nintendo _is_ releasing new hardware this year - the Virtual Boy. Yeah, anyway, the reason that Lincoln gave for not releasing U64 this year, and I'm not kidding, is that Donkey Kong Country is _sooo_ good that gamers will be disappointed with anything that's not mind- blowingly revolutionary. The lie was put to this claim in the next talk by the CEO of SGI, Tom Jermoluk. Jermoluk was a very arrogant man who talked a lot about himself, but managed to get around to some real-time graphics demos that looked extremely nice - running on at least a $40,000 SGI Onyx (I couldn't see what they were actually using for this presentation, but I saw some of the same demos running on an Onyx elsewhere at the show) at a resolution of 1280x1024 (which is, of course, more than your TV can handle). It was vaguely suggested that these demos were intended to show what the U64 would be like, and they were indeed impressive. They were generated real-time, not pre-rendered, as one could tell by observing the demonstrator moving things around or steering with the mouse pointer. _IF_ (and ASCII just can't convey how big an if that is) Nintendo really has a system this nice ready to go this year, gamers would not have any difficulty telling the difference between these games and DKC, which is the reason Lincoln gave for the delay - to work on U64 until the difference is unmistakable. However, Lincoln made it clear that, for this year, Nintendo is staking its reputation on Donkey Kong Country (and its sequel), Killer Instinct (available for SNES), and Virtual Boy. Make of that what you will.

Now on to the NINTENDO booth. (Actually, I stopped by the Adult software section first, but that's another story...) KILLER INSTINCT was indeed there for SNES, but I won't say much about this since I don't even like the arcade game, so I didn't bother to play it. The graphics were much in the vein of DKC. DONKEY KONG COUNTRY TWO (sorry, it might have actually had another title) looked and played just like the first one, but with two young Kongs (like two Diddy's) and new levels of course, An humorous note: while I was playing this one, some E3 staff set up a camera to tape me playing, but since I wasn't saying anything while I played, one of the crew added comments like "Cool! What a neato game!" as if I were saying them. So if you see a clip of some bearded guy playing DKC2 - I don't sound like that! They had several classics in double-game packs for the Game Boy, including ASTEROIDS/MISSILE COMMAND, GALAGA/GALAXIAN, and CENTIPEDE/ MILLIPEDE. These looked good on the _Super_ Game Boys that I saw them displayed on, but I didn't check out any of the regular Game Boy stuff. (I only even mention these because such classics are always worthy of mention.) There were a lot of SNES RPGs on display, including: EARTHBOUND, which looked only slightly better than 8-bit, but I didn't play it. CHRONO TRIGGER was gorgeous. I liked the fact that you could name the characters as they were introduced. It has FF-style combat, but it takes place on the same screen where you explore and encounter the monsters, which I thought was a nice touch. It should be out in September. SECRET OF EVERMORE, which should be out in Nov., was very much like Mana; I never saw the combat, but the part I played alternated between the main character and his dog, which I liked. SQUARE reps. at the booth said that they would be developing for the U64 only, not any of the other next gen. systems. TECMO was showing SECRET OF THE STARS, which also looked only slightly better than 8-bit. ENIX had 7TH SAGA II, which had a radar in exploration mode to show you where the combat encounters would be, even though the monsters did not appear on the map until you meet them. KING ARTHUR was another Mana-inspired game with multiple characters. I shouldn't say much about COMMANCHE, since apparently the one I saw and played was on a night mission, and I was going to report that you were lucky to even be able to distinguish the enemies from the background, but the screen shots from the June Game Fan look better than this. The big surprise of the show for me, however, was the VIRTUAL BOY. No, I'm not saying that this system is an unqualified success, but it did have one of my overall favorite titles of the show: RED ALARM. People who know me know that I'm a sucker for vector graphics, and this game is a beautiful 3D vector shooter that I went back to play again the next day. I may have to buy a VB just to play this. Otherwise, VB was just about what I had expected, which is to say, decent games, but definitely not next generation. Although I must also add that the graphics for these titles moved very smoothly, which to me is a very important criterion. If this system were truly portable, I think it might actually be viable. Anyway, I'm sorry but that's about all I have to say about Nintendo. Their presence at this show really felt half-hearted compared to Sega, Sony and 3DO. Lincoln said at his address that he was either an idiot or a visionary...

OK, I'll move on to another system that I didn't talk about in my first post, SNK's NEO-GEO. Reps. at the booth confirmed that the American release of the CD will be double-speed, but all the units on display at the show were single-speed Japanese models, and the loading times were intolerable. Some new games that I had not seen before included: ZED BLADE, a horizontal shooter which I did not think looked as nice as Last Resort, but I didn't notice any slowdown in the levels I played, and I did encounter a nice Gunstar Heroes- style segmented boss. FATAL FURY THREE was there, but has been discussed fairly extensively on r.g.v.arcade already. The new female character is bouncier than Mai in this game, but not as bouncy as Mai is in KoF '94. Mai was at the show, fighting with Terry and Joe, which was fun to see. (Actually it was quite a show for fighting game characters, with no less than _five_ former and present MK character actors present, as well as the SNK fighters and others as well!) The nice surprise for me here was GALAXY FIGHT, which I thought played very smoothly - it has more of an SF feel to it than the FF feel, which I don't care for as much (I could explain that more if I have to) - the graphics were vintage Neo-Geo, with not just shadows but full _reflections_ of the characters if they were fighting in water or in front of puddles (this was a particularly nice touch)! SAVAGE REIGN was another fighter, but its graphical style and characters didn't appeal to me as much, although it did have an interesting dual-level playfield, and all the characters had weapons that they could attack with or throw, in addition to their kicks and punches.

OK, now back to the booths I've already reported on (in my first E3 report - for my first impressions, read that post, or ask and I'll mail it to you), to add to and amend my first report. I'll try to organize my notes so I can get everything that I saw for each system together even if it's not the order in which I found things.

First, back to ATARI. I got a chance to play DEFENDER 2000 on Fri., and I really liked it. It's only up to the plus mode now, but that was already very hyper and psychedelic. Vintage Minter. (Meeting Jeff was in itself a highlight of the show, since I've long been a fan of his games. He's a great guy, and I got him to sign my Tempest 2000 manual.) FIGHT FOR LIFE was on hand, and did not look as bad as Next Generation made it sound, but it was nowhere near the quality of the polygon fighters for the Saturn or PlayStation. (It had better textures than VF, but Sega showed a t-mapped version of VF1 which looked much nicer.) POWER DRIVE was as good as an overhead driver should be, but nothing really to get excited about. Not as good as Micro Machines. PRIMAL RAGE was just a non-playable demo. BURN OUT was fast and smooth, but its OutRun-style scenery couldn't compete with Ridge Racer or Daytona. BLUE LIGHTNING for Jag CD looked similar to, but not nearly as nice as, 32X Afterburner. PINBALL FANTASIES looked every bit as good as, but more colorful than, the Amiga classic. TRF was a MK clone and accounted for two of the former MK actors present at the show, but I will reserve judgment on both this title and ULTRA VORTEX, since I don't even like Mortal Kombat to start with. ULTRA VORTEX did, however, have nice looking graphics, though the jumping reminded me of Way of the Warrior (not good). BATTLEMORPH was a nice upgrade of CyberMorph and will definitely appeal to fans of the latter, and perhaps even to a few of its detractors. WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP was slow and jerky. Another game that did impress me was HOVER HUNTER. These guys really seem to have struck the right balance between texture maps (which often look messy IMO) and gourad shading (which is clean, but can appear sparse). They also assured me that they would not fall into the uncontrollable hovercraft trap, and my go at the game bore this out. This and BATTLE SPHERE (see my first report) will both be 3D shooters to keep an eye out for. Oh yes, the explosions in Hover Hunter were particularly satisfying. RAYMAN was there, as well as being present on several other systems, and looked like a top-notch platformer. I did not wait in line for the VR demonstration, since what they had running wasn't even the Jaguar hardware that they had on display, but Virtuality sets running on hidden computers with Atari monitors. What I could see on the monitor looked very nice, much like a considerable upgrade to Iron Soldier. Jeff Minter assured me that the actual Jag VR hardware was being shown inside the closed-off portion of the booth, and he was enthusiastic about a 3D version of Missile Command which he had played on the actual unit.

I'm going to break off here and post this before it gets too long. Look for part 3 of my report if you want more information on Saturn, PlayStation, or 3DO, as I went back to all those booths. I'll also throw in a few tidbits about some computer games and about the net.people.gathering.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Organization: Penn State University
Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 10:31:43 EDT
From: John Emmer
Message-ID: <95135.103143JPE1@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.video.advocacy,rec.games.video.misc Subject:
E3 Report, Part 3

OK, I'll try to get as much of my remaining impressions in this post as possible, but now that I'm home I actually have to go back to work! And tonight I'll be playing with my new Saturn, so I may not feel inclined to spend a few hours typing up more info. Anyway, this post should consist of my notes from my return to the Sega, Sony, and 3DO booths, as well as information on games for those systems that I saw elsewhere at the show. If I have time, I'll throw in some computer stuff, but the things I looked at for computer were few and dictated by a narrow interest in PC stuff and may not have as broad an interest as the rest.

First, SEGA. In my day one report, I probably sounded a little disappointed with the Saturn. However, since I knew I'd have one soon, I went back to check it out again, play the games some more, and figure out which ones I'd want to buy. Overall, I must say that my general impression of Saturn improved on the second look. Sega really does concentrate on making quality software, and there was a fair amount of promising titles. DAYTONA looked good, although the pop-up problem was worse than I feared. However, it controlled much better with a pad than Ridge Racer, which I did not think handled well with a pad. I just can't say enough nice things about PANZER DRAGOON - if pressed, I would probably call this game of the show, but I'm a shooter fan, so sue me! The narration was in Japanese with subtitles, which is how I hope the final release is also, because that adds flavor. [Note: I was wrong about this, it's not Japanese, but some imaginary language.] BUG is a nice 3D platformer, but other than arranging the platforms in a 3D playing field, it didn't really seem to have many innovations on this tired genre. VIRTUA FIGHTER was smooth and very playable, but looks bad in comparison to the texture-mapped PlayStation fighters. Sega needs to get VF2 out soon to show what the Saturn can do. They did have a t-mapped version of VF1 there to show that they could do it, and it looked good. I was skeptical about VIRTUA COP, not being a big fan of target games, but this one is _excellent_. The articulated manner in which the enemies appear and die, as well as the way the camera pans and zooms to keep enemies in view, combined for a very satisfying shooting experience. VIRTUA RACING still needs work, or else the version I was playing was hooked up to a bad steering wheel, but this will be a good game for anyone looking for another smooth, fast driving experience. GRAN CHASER was basically Crash and Burn meets Ridge Racer, with more impressive scenery than Daytona and less pop-up. It also had a two-player, split-screen mode. SOLAR ECLIPSE is a must have for fans of Total, with a much more impressive engine and a lot more going on. BLACK FIRE is a first person helicopter sim, but I found the controls awkward - perhaps it still needs work. ASTAL, the side-scroller, didn't appeal to me, but I didn't play it much. AMOK was a very promising video of a mech game, behind the mech view of a well-articulated robot, with a split-screen, two-player mode. VERTIGO was a promising video of a Stun Runner meets Trail Blazer (you can fall through the track) meets Ridge Racer game (got that?) CYBERSLED looked like the arcade game, but was still unplayable. SIM CITY 2000's graphics didn't look impressive next to all these other flashy games. It seemed to be suffering from a loss of resolution from the PC version. All in all, I'm very much looking forward to playing with my Saturn this evening!

Back to the 3DO booth: Actually, first let's hop over to the EA booth and see what they had for 3DO. I saw a much better version of WING COMMANDER III than I had the first day. The fmv is definitely much improved over the sampler version. The rep I spoke with also said they were working to reduce the load times even further. There will be more fmv sequences in this version than there were for the PC, as some were removed to save space in that version. I suppose you could call this WCII, The Director's Cut! (I also saw an fmv- only demo of this game on PlayStation, and the PS fmv was more colorful than the 3DO's.) PROWLER is a very nice mech game, much like Amok mentioned above. The mech was very well articulated, and you appeared to have a lot of freedom in controlling it. Elsewhere I saw FIRE WOLVES which was described to me by the developers as a first-person Zelda. This version was pretty slow, but if you like the idea of a first-person adventure, as opposed to just run around a shoot everything, keep your eye out for this one - it should be out around the end of the summer. Back at the 3DO booth, reps said NHL '96 wouldn't be out until October, but SLAM & JAM 95 should be in stores in a week to ten days. FLYING NIGHTMARES still looked just like the sampler demo. I did find a side-scrolling shooter tucked away on a multi-game disk, but AQUA SHARK turned out to not be very interesting, mimicking only very early shooters, and with no bosses. SPACE ACE and BRAIN DEAD 13 should both be available end of July. D should appeal to anyone who like Mansion of the Hidden Souls, which I did. The fmv is not up to par with the best for 3DO, but it looks like there's a lot of it. The character was having numerous spooky flashbacks and visions while I played, but tended to walk past things that I wanted to examine. Promising. One game that was displayed under two titles, STAR FIGHTER/PLANET STRIKE looked like a lot of fun, even though there were no enemies yet. It is a very smooth Shockwave-style shooter with a _much_ larger playing field and a very high ceiling. Mountains and buildings that you couldn't make out from the air do tend to pop-up as you near the ground, but the craft controlled well. KINGDOM:FAR REACHES was still unplayable, but they said it would be out in June. For some reason, KILLING TIME looked much better to me on second glance - perhaps they brought in a newer version, but it was much faster and more colorful than I reported before. Again, let me note that the 3DO booth was one that impressed with the sheer number of games available (for more, see my first report, or I'll mail it to you). While other systems filled up several machines with the same game, taking up more space, 3DO had almost no duplicates, with every machine housing a new game.

OK, back to the SONY booth, since I didn't have too many notes from my first day report. RIDGE RACER is _smooth_ with much less pop-up than Daytona. However, I did not like the way it controlled with a pad. I did get a chance to try Namco's twisty-controller, which worked well, and should provide a relatively low-cost alternative for analog control. DESTRUCTION DERBY played well and will appeal to all those whose favorite part of driving games is the crashing. KILEAK is now called THE DNA IMPERATIVE instead of Blood, but was a very nice looking Doom clone. Smooth. TEKKEN had some goofy looking characters, but there are a _lot_ of them, and it plays well. TO SHIN DEN is my other pick for game of the show, as it had me standing there with my jaw hanging down. Samurai Shodown (my all-time favorite) meets VF2 (one of the most beautiful) - incredible! TWISTED METAL didn't look like much on first glance, but was really fun. It's an arena combat game, reminiscent of the good old paper & dice game Car Wars. The second level was in a nicely done city and had me racing down alleys chasing other cars and getting shot at by the police. I just spent $200 to get a used copy of VIEWPOINT for my Neo- Geo, so I was actually a little disappointed to see this one here for PS, and looking much nicer than on Neo-Geo, although this was a very early version which lacked a lot of the enemies and ended abruptly before the end of the first level. SYNDICATE WARS I mentioned in my day one report, but it's so beautiful it deserves another mention. This PS is one kick-ass piece of hardware, and these games were all so colorful and crisp! SPACE GRIFFON is another techno-Doom clone with some gorgeous cinemas and should be available at the PS's release. STEEL HARBINGER looked a lot like Syndicate Wars, an angled top-down shooter with your character center-screen. This one had a nice zoom feature and buildings that turned translucent when you walk behind them, allowing you to see you character. LONE SOLDIER was a texture-mapped polygon environment behind-your-soldier shooter, which looked promising. LOADED is again one of the Gauntlet-style games I mention in the day one report, but I got to play it this time. I was a little frustrated by the poor centering of the main character, but with a little tweaking, this could be great. The PlayStation was definitely the most powerful system on display, although M2 and U64 promise even more. Everywhere you went, though, people were developing for PS, with nary a word about M2 or U64 outside of 3DO or Nintendo's booths (and not much there either). Right now, if I had to choose one next generation system, it would probably be the PlayStation. (Of course, if you look at my sig, you could safely predict that I will buy them all...)

OK, now for some misc info that I didn't put anywhere else.

CAPCOM was at the show, with all their latest fighters on display for Saturn and PlayStation. They also had the AD&D arcade game showing for Saturn & PS, but the rep said they had no plans to port any of these titles to 3DO. All the games looked arcade perfect, but I didn't play them, so don't count on that. I got to see EARTHWORM JIM 2 demo'd by none other than Dave Perry himself, and this title was looking even better than the first. More humorous and original levels and innovative gameplay, with even better graphics and animation.

Oh, shoot, I really need to wrap this up so I can get ready for work. If you want to hear about Dungeon Master II, Stonekeep, or Star Control III for the PC, let me know. Let me also just finish by saying that I had a great time at the net.people.gathering on Fri. There were about 30 net.personalities there, we had great food, played VF2 for free, and talked about our favorite games and reactions to the show. It was a lot of fun to meet these people and put faces to all the sigs and names from here on the net. And I was happy to find that a few people remembered me, even though I don't usually post that much.

These reports are the biggest thing I've ever done on the Internet, and I hope you've enjoyed them. I'm sorry that they were kind of rushed, and didn't get out in quite as timely a fashion as I'd hoped. If you have any questions, feel free to follow-up, but please _edit_. If you want to cut out any sections to repost to appropriate groups, I don't mind as long as the text is attributed to me. Also, if you missed parts one or two, feel free to email me and I'll send them back to you. Sorry for all the typos!