3Dfx native software arrives with Out of the Void • New M2 and N64 projects revealed

The most impressive 32-bit title yet?

volume three

Sony's Blasto shows off never-

before-seen PlayStation technology

c 74470 02585 6

The return of The way Games Ought to Be • Activision's Heavy Gear • EA's Nuclear Strike

The world’s #1

computer and videogame authority

What makes a

The six things every title

Blasto, a 3D action adventure featuring a bumbling superhero (with voice acting by Phil Hartman), should be an excellent game. But more importantly, it serves as an impressive demonstration of how much untapped power PlayStation has left. The story starts on page 56

opening

Does profit equal quality?

According to the IDSA, the combined installed base for next- generation game machines (PCs and consoles) will be over 50 million by 1998. The U.S. game industry is poised to sell $5.3 billion in software alone in 1997. That’s a lot of money for R&D — and a lot for companies’ bottom lines.

The slump of 1994 is finally over - good news for publishers. But what about consumers?

High sales figures don’t necessarily mean high quality games. While Sony is willing to invest millions in upping the technology and gameplay ante on PlayStation with Blasto, many publishers, in response to today’s increasingly hit-driven market, are far more likely to green light a clone of an established hit than to attempt something truly innovative. Without creativity games become stale, gamers become bored, and another slump (or crash) becomes inevitable.

It doesn’t have to be that way. One reason the “hit or abject failure” dichotomy exists today is because so many inferior products are released. When a project is commercially unsuccessful, it’s often with good reason. By simply releasing good games, whether it’s (yet another) real-time strategy game or something totally new, publishers could ensure at least solid sales figures.

So what makes a good game? We can’t provide the recipe, but the definitive ingredient list starts on page 40.

NEXT

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

Welcome to the new landscape of War.

CAVEDOG ENTERTAINMENT PRESENTS...

Giant 3D environments, including extra large maps for 32 meg users.

In a distant part of the Galaxy, the Core and the Arm continue a thousand year battle over long forgotten ideals, destroying everything in their path...

TOTAL ANNIHILATION is a real-time war game featuring true 3D terrain and run-time generated 3D units. Tanks drive up and over hills, tilting and rocking with each bump in the landscape and impact with enemy weapons. Battle on diverse landscapes, including lava worlds, ice planets, desert valleys, alien tundra, towering mountain peaks and vast island-dotted oceans. Build defenses high in the hills for a better view and a better shot. Giant Bertha cannons pound the enemy from across the world. Planes bank and dive in intense air-to-air combat. Amphibious tanks drive into and dive under water for surprise attacks. Download new reinforcements from the web and swarm the enemy with hundreds of ever evolving units.

TOTAL ANNIHILATION’S 3D landscape is a revolution that demands deeper strategy and generates more realistic game play. Mobilize your forces and experience the new landscape of war!

Extensive multi-player support including ‘Watch and Join modes’.

©1997 Humongous Entertainment. Inc. All rights reserved. Created and Published by C division of Humongous Entertainment. Inc. Distributed by GT Interactive Software Corp. C id Total Annihilation"'1 are trademarks of Humongous Entertainment. Inc. GT,M is a trade s a registered trademark of GT Interactive Software Corp Microsoft® and Windows® ar ol Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respectr

a GT Interactive compa

Take out a radar tower to cripple the enemy's intelligence. ;

Blast the opposition into smoking fragments, leaving the world scattered with burnt out wreckage.

Control the high ground.

frue 3D terrain.

Send in high altitude bombers to take out enemy encampments.

Launch an invasion from the sea.

The forest provides perfect •cover foT surprise invasions.

Bombard the enemy from the safety of the sea.

3D tanks move smoothly over the hill as they; • move into position.

#77

MeLMZIMl

July 1997

Contact

Next Generation Imagine Publishing, Inc.

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Editorial & Advertising 415. 468. 4684 (E-mail: ngonline@imagine-inc.com)

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If you have questions about a subscription, please contact us at Customer Service 415. 468. 2500 Customer Service fax 415. 656. 2486 (E-mail: subscribe@next-generation.com with"Next Generation" as the subject)

Editorial _

Chris Charla editor-in-chief

Diane Anderson managing editor

Patrick Baggatta features editor

Lucky Bagundrigan reviews editor

Tom Russo associate editor, previews

Grant Roberts assistant editor

Neil West editor-at-large

Mike Wilmoth senior art director

Christian Svensson editor, ng online

Dan Egger assistant editor, ng online

Jason Michaels disc editor

Editorial Contributors

Jason Bates, Roger Burchill, Jeff Chen, Nicolas

di Costanzo, Adam Douglas, Douglass Perry,

Mike Salmon, Marcus Webb, Mike Wolf

Photography 8> Artistic Contributors

Jude Edginton, Ken Brandow, Deirdre Griffin,

Andrew Olsen, Gerry Serrano, Debbie Wells

Advertising _

Doug Faust associate publisher Kathryn Herrick account executive Kim Hansen ad coordinator Larae Brown marketing

Production _

Richard Lesovoy production director Mark Eastwood production coordinator

imagine Publishing. Inc.

Jonathan Simpson-Bint vp/pub director Tom Hale director CD-ROM publishing Bruce Eldridge newsstand director Thea Selby newsstand manager Terry Lawson newsstand analyst Holly Kllngel vp circulation Gail Egbert circulation consultant Kate Bailey circulation manager jane Jarvis fulfillment manager Brian Hostetler hardware hero Tom Valentino vice president/CFO Chris Anderson president

Character created by Ben Harrison 3D image created by Mike Krummhoefener Next Generation (ISSN# 1078-9693) is published monthly by Imagine Publishing, Inc, 150 North Hill Drive, Brisbane, CA 94005, USA. Periodicals Class postage paid at Brisbane. CA. and additional mailing offices, postmaster send changes of address to Next Generation, PO Box 53680, Boulder, co 80328- 3680. Newsstand distribution is handled by Curtis Circulation Company. Subscriptions: one year (12 Issues) US: S34. Canada: $48. Foreign: $58. Canadian price includes postage and GST (GST# R 128 220688) CPC Int'l Pub Mail #0781126. international Licensing Representative Robert J. Abramson and Associates, Inc.

720 Post Road.Scarsdale, New York, 10583 Entire contents copyright 1997, imagine Publishing. Inc. All rights reserved. ReproducUon in wholo or in part without permission is prohibited. Imagine Publishing. Inc. also publishes ultra Game Players, Boot. PC Gamer, MacAOdict, and The Net. Products named in these pages are tradenames or trademarks of their respective companies, imagine Publishing Inc.. Is not affiliated with the companies or products covered in Next Generation. Printed in the United States of America.

Standard Mai enclosed in the Mowtig editions:

Bulk Rate U.S. Postage Paid South Florida Facility Permit No. 161

Games are going to take over the world!

Or so says Sid Meier in this month's exclusive interview. One of the top five designers in the world waxes eloquent on games that women will play, why his new company Firaxis has no marketing department, and, of course, his new games

What makes a good game?

Next Generation pinponts the six ingredients every good game must have. Plus, how do multiplayer games and single-player games differ in what makes them great? Everyone knows what games they like, but after this, everyone will know why as well

introducing

12

20

talking

Videogames vs. the world

Sid Meier is the man behind some of the best games ever ( Civilization for one). Read why his new company has no marketing or sales people

breaking

News

Gaming news from around the world, including:

29 Toolbox (developer wares)

30 Arcadia (coin-op news and updates)

32 Joyriding (online gaming news)

34 Movers 'n' shakers (business news)

n	40 1	ng special
	What makes a good game? Ever wonder why some games inspire you and others leave you flat? We may not know if it's art, but we know what we like. This month. Next Generation takes a look at what works and what doesn't. We also identify the six essential elements every good game should have
	55	ng software
	Alphas Previewed this month: Blasto (PlayStation), World Championship Racing (M2), Heavy Gear (PC), Tonic Trouble (N64), Nuclear Strike (PlayStation), Youngblood (PlayStation, PC), Sonic Jam (Saturn)
	www. next-generation . com
	Next Generation online The most respected videogame website in the world. News updated daily (and every two hours during E3, July 19 to 21)
	149	ng special

The way games ought to be

Exploring the cutting edge with Neil West

Alphas: 18 games previewed

Games for M2, PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Saturn, and PC previewed. Each month, we take a look at the best games in development around the world and report the story back to you

Finals: 33 new games reviewed

Every month, NG reviews each and every major new game release, so that you know which titles to hunt down at your local software retailer's store

Finals

We separate the stars from the starving. Reviewed this month: Dark Rift, Blast Corps, Bushido Blade, Triple Play '98, Tail of the Sun, Xevious 3D/G+, Zap, interstate 76, Air Warrior II, MDK, Moto Racer GP, Theme Hosital, Street Fighter ill, and more

176

now hiring

9am to 5pm? Tty noon to 6am. It's called crunch time. To experience it, get a job in the game biz

185

corresponding

Letters

if you've got fiber optics, you can send mail to us at the speed of light. Cool, huh?

187

ending

Next month...

Next Generation #32 arrives on newsstands on July 22. Want to know Sega's future? Get NG 32

07

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

0oW

NOW COULD WE HAVE BEEN SO WRONG FOR SO LONG? Talking about peace singing ££ peace pretesting about peace-its all been ONE BIG FARCE.! We canT tell ourselves to be peaceful any more than a computer can tell itselHo do a ptrouettel Bad brains will be bad brains' But Dr. D.G. Bartha's CyberDiversion Theory says, if we allow them to be bad in a pTace where bad ain’t so bad (i.e. on the HEAT™ internet gaming net¬ work), it's actually good! We please our bad brains and no one gets hurt! HEAT IS THE. FIRST STEP TOWARD QBAL HARMONY]

THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM- A HAD ORAIN:

THE BRAIN'S REPTILIAN COMPLEX TELLS OS TO POHIHATt AMD DESTROY! CYBERDIYERSION THEORY SATS, DON’T LET THE PEACE PROCESS STIFLE THIS NATURAL TENDENCY FOR AGGRESSION! INSTEAD, LET IT THRIVE ON HEAT.NET. WHERE EVERYONE CAN DOMINATE AND DESTROY, RUT NO ONE

CAN BE HARMED! -HOT IS THiAHMH!!

(HEAT). SO WE CAN LIVE IN A PLACE WITHOUT PAIN (EARTH)'.

WHAT’S SO CRAZY ABOUT PEACE,

LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING?

THIS: AGGRESSIOH IS HUMAN NATURE! ff L^PT inNp PUTJI RUTH THE NET WITH HQ F BEFORE MORE INNOCENT LIKS ARC

mwimarn mma

TANK. FAILED!

PFACE ISAS FASYAS 1) Logging onto HEAT.NET ( ITS FREE!), 21 Bootinq up your favorite multi-player CD-ROM game, or HEAT exclusive, 2i_Releasing your R-complex to slaughter the bad-brained vermin on the

other end of the line! You’ll feel better, they’ll feel better, we’ll all feel better- LOG ON NOW!! A LIFE SPENT ON HEAT IS A LIFE SAVED ON EARTH

THE ONLY WAY TO ACHIEVE WORLD PEACE IS TO paTJlL[. CONFLICT ONTO

THE NET AT HlAI.Nli:

To facilitate Optimum Diversion Release (ODR), or the rate at which evil R-complex urges are dispersed from the brain, we’ve developed intensive HEAT-exclusive games like Scud™ and HEAT Warz™ as well as special RIPX technology that allows the play of almost every multi-player PC game, including Blood™ and Quake™

Blood

LOG ONTO HEAT.NET NOW. GET YOUR HEAT DISC. BOOT UP YOUR FAVORITE MBIT! -PLAYER CD-ROM NOW! IT'S THAT EASY! HELP ACHIEVE WHAT MILLIONS OF OTHERS HAVE FAILED TO ACHIEfT: TOTREm™fiIUWITRDUrWAl?!

HEAT iS THE ANSWER!

Address _

il oddrsis _

_

STOP REAL-LIFE VIOLENCE!

COPY THIS FLYER AND SPREAD THE WORD!!!

I Q YES I’d like to give peace ai I taking my Reptilian Complex p!

I onto the internet with the HE#

J network! Rease send me mon j □ NOl ‘ I’m a terrorist who ptot_

| women and children, and frankly. I kind of get o( j on that sort of thing. No, thanks.

We see it on the six o’clock news every single night! HEAT is just a place where we can dominate and destroy each other with¬ out traumatizing innocent families or having to do hard time!

In fact, at HEAT.NET YOU ARE ACTUALLY REWARDED WITH PRIZES FOR YOUR EFFICIENCY IN DOMINATING AND DESTROYING!!

There are even tournaments and ladders to

increase the level of competition- the more you dominate and destroy in cyberspace, the more peaceful our reality

will be! On HEAT, you can kill your ex-husband, kill your boss, kill the leaders of pesky third-world countries- in cyberspace, nobody ever gets hurt! WE MUST KILL IN A PLACE WITHOUT PAIN

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

Next Generation editorial on an entirely new plane — the revamped Next Generation Disc expands magazine coverage with digital interviews, QuickTime movies, playable demos and a final reviews searchable database

ngdisc contents

The Next Generation Disc enhances editorial breadth with multimedia flair

finals

□ his page outlines some of the key new features found on the Next Generation Disc. Whether you enjoy testing product demos, viewing movies of gameplay, or meeting the people developing important game titles, the Next Generation Disc exists to satiate its users' gaming wants and needs.

The Next Generation Disc is in no way a static medium. Interactive at its core, the Next Generation Disc is user-friendly, requires no initial installation, and links its users straight to Next Generation Online for updates and exclusive previews of up-and-coming disc editorial.

For Next Generation Disc support go to http://support.imagine-inc.com

talking

talking is where you'll see and hear the people making news in the industry

ng special

special is dedicated to highlighting anticipated game titles

Air warrior //, Interstate 76, Theme Hospital, Pandemonium, ng Screensaver

ng previews

previews is where you can view up- and-coming game titles

ng demos

demos is where you play the latest and greatest interactive demos

ng finals

finals is a searchable database that contains every NG final review

ng internet

ng internet provides you with latest Internet connectivity software

Contest

win a copy of Interstate 76 for the PC, or 50 games in one shot by going to

http://www.next-generation.com

/contest/disccontest

incorporated, FA/18 Hornet 3.0, Pegasus Prime, NG Screensaver

America Online 3.0, The Palace Chat, Engage Games Online

A searchable databaseof Next Generation's "Finals"

See and hear Glen Schofield talk about Gex: Enter the Gecko

Armored Core,

Heavy Gear,

Nuclear strike,

Sonic world,

Timujin: The Capricorn Collection

previews

Dark Rift, Human Grand Prix, Ball Blazer Champions, Gundam Gaiden ll, Battlestations, Duke Nukem 3D, Metal Slug, Army Men, Dracula 64, Fighting Force, & more

internet

talking

10

Juiced.

Sega is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark office. Sega Saturn and Sega Sports are trademarks of SEGA. The World Series is a trademark owned by Major League Baseball and may not be reproduced without written consent. Major League Baseball trademarks and copyrights are used with permission of Major League Baseball Properties. Inc. Officially Licensed by Major League Baseball Players Association MLBPA. www.majorleaguebaseball.com ©1997 SEGA, P.0. Box 8097, Redwood City, CA 94063. Made and printed in the USA. All rights reserved, www.sega.com

NEXT GENERATION

(the fourth greatest game of all time,

according to NG's Top 100 in issue 21). Having left Microprose, he's now started his own company called Firaxis and is eager to tell NG that...

are going to

take over the _ _

focus on PC games. We're all from the entertainment business and up until now we've all worked in large companies. But the plan here is to simply concentrate on design, programming, and the creative process. And not worry about marketing and sales — these aren't our specialty, and they tend to, urn, confuse things sometimes.

id Meier is the game designer's designer.

Although his name may not crop up as often

_ J as, say, Peter Molyneux, John Romero, or

Richard Garriott, Sid is arguably the most respected PC game designer in the world (he's also famous for having founded Microprose with "Wild" Bill Stealey to settle a bet in the early '80s). A champion of gameplay over graphics, Meier titles such as Civilization, Colonization, and Railroad Tycoon created a whole new genre and paved the way for Command 8 Conquer and WarCraft.

Sid is now also leading a new trend — that of separating the process of game design from the business pressures of a bustling software house. Firaxis is his new company (with no marketing people) that has two new games scheduled for release "when they're ready." Next Generation caught up with Sid at Firaxis's headquarters just north of Baltimore to talk game design, gameplay versus graphics, and how to attract 50-year-old women.

Sid: Well, there's some good news and some bad news there. [Laughs] When you're working in a large company, a lot of times what the marketing folks will ask you to make is last year's top-seller, but just a little better. Or last year's game with 3D instead of 2D, or 4D instead of 3D.

Sometimes that input is helpful, but it often tends to make you worry right at the beginning about trying to please somebody else, whereas we're trying to find a topic that we ourselves get excited about and find a game idea that we would like to play. This way we'll make it a personal game as opposed to pleasing the

Ditching the suits

Sid Meir: Firaxis was formed about a year ago. The idea behind the company was to puli together a fairly small but experienced, and hopefully talented, design group to

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

talking

marketing people, the focus groups, or whoever else the marketing folks think the market is. We know that people who like the games we like will enjoy the game we've produced, and this has to be better than producing a game that we don't care for too much but have been told that some theoretical person might like.

Of course, there's always the chance that we're really weird and that no one else is going to like the games that we like. [Smiles] But we're willing to take that chance.

NG: How many games is Firaxis developing right now? Sid: we're working on two games that are both designer based. I'm the lead designer and programmer on one, and Brian Reynolds who was the programmer and designer for Civilization 2, Colonization , and a couple of other strong titles is leading the other project.

NG: And what kinds of games are they?

Sid: we use the phrase "innovative continuity" to describe our products, in other words, if you're familiar with the games that Brian and l have created in the past [Civilization, Colonization, Railroad Tycoon, and so on], then you won't be shocked by the games that come out of Firaxis. But having said that, we've never done the

"People don't buy games based on development budgets. They buy games based on how much fun they are"

same product twice so these games will be new and innovative, but not shockingly so.

NG: Will they be out by the end of the year?

Sid: Maybe yes, maybe no. But we're happy with how they're coming along and feel we're making progress. NG: And presumably you won't rush them out the door to make any deadlines?

Sid: [Laughs] No, that's another reason we've distanced ourselves from marketing and sales. We've found that a lot of products have really suffered from having been rushed out in time to make a deadline or in a specific quarter, we're not interested in doing that.

Graphics versus Gameplay

NG: Aside from cosmetics, how do you think games have become more sophisticated over the last five years?

Sid: There have been a couple of distractions, but gaming has mainly continued as it always has done. Every now and again a person or group comes up with a really neat idea, believes in it, and works on it out in the dark. It appears in the marketplace and then everyone says "Oh yes! That's what we wanted all along!" Doom was one example, and there are a couple of other games that have established a whole new genre.

I think Civilization was maybe that type of game Before it came along, I remember talking to someone who said that "strategy" games were a dirty word! You didn't want your game to be a strategy game because people would think it was this terrible, boring game with this crude map and some big blocky things that moved around, and that you'd need a Ph.D. to play it. That was five years ago. But then a game comes along, Civilization, that is fun to play and all of a sudden you have a whole new genre, usually, these big new genres don't require any new technology or some super high-speed processor, it's just that someone came up with an idea of a game that they wanted to play.

NG: So you're saying that the best games are the ones that designers make for themselves?

Sid: This is the way it's always been in the game industry, and it's been even more true over the last five years

Five years ago people were talking about the new Hollywood and how CD-ROMs were going to turn movies into games and games into movies, and how we were going to need massive teams of artists and cinematographers to create videogames — and none of this has actually happened. This whole notion of games being dragged around by the technology hasn't happened. Through it all, games are still being led by game ideas, designers, and players.

There's always been the tendency to think that technology drives change in the game industry, but I don't think that this has ever been true. We did fun games with EGA graphics and 640K of memory in the early PC days. Every year it's virtual reality glasses, CD-ROM, 3D accelerator cards, or some other new technology that people think is going to take us to the next level, but ultimately it's always game design that helps us evolve. NG: So do you think that the industry has finally learned that production values don't necessarily matter, and that it's gameplay that counts? Do you think that, for the time being at least, the whole "Siliwood" infatuation of Silicon Valley and Hollywood combining and the dream of the big-budget "interactive movie" is over?

Sid: People don't buy games based on development budgets. They buy games based on how much fun they are to play. So now games companies realize that they can spend either $5 million, $1 million, or even just $500,000 making a game, and looking at the sales figures over the last few years they've got to realize that there's no direct correlation between how much a game costs to make and how well it sells.

Now, of course there are some titles such as Myst and the wing Commander series that cost a lot of money and returned a lot of money, but there are many more examples of games that didn't come close to recouping their development budgets. So companies are backing off from this big-budget blockbuster idea.

NG: So did players reject the whole "Siliwood" notion? Sid: Players didn't want movies. The idea five years ago was that if your game wasn't a movie, it wouldn't compete, it was thought that people would put up with games but really wanted movies. But as it turns

14

out today, people play the games and tolerate the movie parts.

NG: Would you agree that the game industry's wooing of Hollywood over the last five years is yet more proof that too many game companies value graphics and cosmetics over actual gameplay?

Sid: I definitely think that's true. I have to say that I'm a programmer and a designer — not an artist — so l want that to be true! [Laughs] But yes, the industry definitely spends too much time trying to add video or incredible graphics to its games.

Cosmetics aren't bad. But you have to remember that each game can only have a certain amount of resources and energy put into it. If you concentrate too much on the cosmetics, then inevitably there has to be less attention given to other aspects of the game. Certainly, we need graphics, we need a good interface, we need visual clarity for our information to come across, and we need graphics to do this. But when a designer is asked how his game is really going to make a difference, l hope he has an answer that talks about gameplay, fun, and creativity — as opposed to an answer that simply focuses on how good it looks or how fast it runs.

NG: And you think innovative gameplay will always more than compensate for a lack of flashy graphics?

Sid: Good games take place in the player's mind, not on the computer screen, we can never put images on a TV or computer screen that are as realistic or a vivid as the images that we can conjure in a player's mind once they start to get drawn into a game. So even simple graphics, when combined with good gameplay, are perfectly good enough; in this way, a programmer or a designer can "create" better graphics than any artist.

NG: So, again looking at the last five years, would you say gaming's adoption of CD-ROM is a blessing or a curse?

Sid: CD-ROM has been a curse in that it's kinda led people off in strange directions. But it's been a blessing in that it's a very economical distribution medium. Right before CD-ROM, we were getting to the stage where there were 10 or even 12 diskettes in a box and production costs were really going up. CD-ROM lets us include better sounds and soundtracks in our games — an area that had always been weak — and it has even led to a few appropriate uses of video.

But it's not been revolutionary at all. The people who have tried to deal with it as a revolutionary medium and have got caught up with the whole Hollywood model of things have really gotten themselves into trouble.

Persuading Mom to play games...

NG: Right now, one of the biggest debates going on in the game industry is how to make games appeal to a

talking

wider proportion of the population. Certainly we're not appealing to too many 50-year-old women.

Obviously, it's in everyone's interest to expand computer gaming's appeal beyond that of young males, but there are opposing views as to the best way of doing this. The argument can be polarized into two opposing camps. First, there are those who believe that today's game styles and themes can resonate with broader

"Good games take place in the player's mind, not on the computer screen"

audiences, but they don't currently look good enough to be of interest to adults who are used to watching TV. second, some argue that it doesn't matter how realistic games may look, the content of today's games is intrinsically interesting to only a small portion of the population. This second group concludes that we should work towards improving gameplay and content issues instead o.f merely cosmetics.

Which camp do you belong to?

Sid: I would definitely be in the latter category. Making

15

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

talking

our games look "more like TV" isn't necessarily going to make them more attractive to a 50-year-old woman.

Most games are written by males with a certain background and an interest in gaming; the games that they produce are going to appeal to other males with similar backgrounds and an interest in gaming, if l were to try to write a game for a 50-year-old woman, I'd immediately find myself in the difficult position of having to rely on marketing research and focus groups and some vague hypothetical construct of what I think this person might want to play to help me along. It wouldn't be a game I'd play, and so I don't think it could be a tremendous success.

NG: So what's the solution?

Sid: it's important to expand the pool of designers to include a broader range of the population if we hope to reach these new groups of the population.

NG: Can the growing online, multiplayer genre spread gaming's appeal to a wider audience?

Sid: l certainly think that online, networked, multiplayer games will appeal to a wider audience than the sitting-in- your-darkened-room-staring-at-the-screen kind of games. But we still have a long way to go.

I think if we were having this interview five years

"Games are going to take over the world, oh yes"

from now, we'd look back and admit that in 1997 we didn't know what these online games were all about. The big change over the next years will be the introduction of new genres dedicated to the online environment.

NG: Whole new game genres will emerge online?

Sid: I make the analogy that 15 years ago when computer games were becoming a reality, the first thing we did was to take existing games — which were predominantly board games and card games, such as Scrabble or Monopoly — and do computer versions of them. And we called these "computer games." But since then we've discovered that there are whole new kinds of games, such as Civilization or Doom, that work better on

a computer and can't be done with any other medium.

Right now the same thing is happening with online. Right now we're taking traditional single-player computer games, adding some kind of multiplayer component, putting them up on the networks, and saying, "This is multiplayer gaming." But l think a couple of years from now, we'll find that there's a whole different kind of game — and whole different game genres — that work in the online, multiplayer environment.

NG: Why can online multiplayer games appeal to a wider audience than today's single-player games? sid: if you're looking at a game that has, say, 1,000 players, then obviously not all those players can be the omnipotent, all-conquering hero in the traditional computer game sense. New types of games that require teamwork will emerge online. And right now maybe there are a whole lot of people out there who look at computer games but aren't interested in being the all-conquering, omnipotent hero. Yet they might enjoy taking on a different role or being part of a team — with real human interaction. Maybe these people will make up a large proportion of the audience for multiplayer games.

NG: Some games have already "broken through" into the mainstream. If you argue that gameplay counts more than graphics, how do you explain the success of such cosmetically rich titles such as Myst and Seventh Guest ? Sid: I'm not much of an expert on this, but I believe certain games become popular simply by being popular. Word of mouth starts to travel, people try it and are quickly impressed by a game, it gets a reputation, and then its popularity develops a life of its own. And sure, this is one way to break out into the larger market.

But all the people who tried to follow with Myst clones found that not only is it very expensive, but that Myst was a game that typically you only want to play once — you don't want to play it through twice and you don't want to play another version of it.

NG: OK, but has Myst been useful in introducing games to people who would otherwise never think to play one? Sid: But these people aren't really gamers. A lot of people see people playing games, want to know why they're playing, want to know why they're having fun, and what's so great about it, and so they try for themselves.

And with a game like Myst they can understand it, play it, and say "OK, that was fun." But they're not really game players, and a game like Myst isn't going to convince them that playing games is something they want to be doing with their free time.

The future of gameplay

NG: Let's talk about the future of games. Most people realize the huge potential of an artistic medium in which the audience can participate. Do you agree that today's games really only scratch the surface of this potential? Sid: Games are going to take over the world, oh yes. It's going to take a while, but there's something inherently more engaging and more entertaining about computer games than there is about any other form of entertainment, it's really the only non-passive form of entertainment, except for sports and certain "indoor activities” in which people can be entertained and participate at the same time. But yes, we are still at the very earliest stages of what we can do, and we have a long way to go.

NG: How excited are you about "interactive entertainment's" future?

Sid: I'm very excited. Although in the long, long term l almost worry about it being too entertaining! We could almost get to the point where we could seriously say

16

that we have a medium that's twice as entertaining as TV. If you think about how much people watch TV...

People could spend twice as much time playing games as they do watching TV. That's a scary proposition. NG: would this make you feel guilty?

Sid: [Laughs] l don't know, I mean l wouldn't feel guilty about stopping people from watching TV, but I think that at some point we have to become responsible.

I'm actually kind of concerned about this now with some of the games that are out there. I don't believe in censorship, but l think game designers need to be responsible and think about the effect that they are having on players — especially younger kids. Now it's time for us to think about who we are, what we stand for, and what messages are we giving to our players.

Because let's not underestimate our influence — we are really engaging them with our games.

Basically, it's just a function of us having been so small for so long. Previously we haven't been called to this responsibility, we've always believed that we've been this small niche and that we're only addressing people who felt the way we do. But as we think about becoming a larger form of entertainment and grabbing larger and larger audiences, we need to think about our responsibilities some more.

NG: Has this become a concern of yours because suddenly games are reaching more people, or because you feel the content of games is actually getting worse? Sid: I think it's becoming worse. A certain segment of the industry has got itself locked into simply trying to out- gross, out-gore, and provide more shock value than the products that have gone before them. I mean, we've had spines ripped out, how can we top that? The question in a lot of designers' minds seems to be whether or not his game can be more violent, more radical, more

talking

outrageous than the games that have gone before it.

NG: isn't this giving the audience what they want?

Sid: Sure, a lot of games are marketed purely on this fact. And hopefully, this is a short-lived trend because people will realize that if the focus of the game is just on the blood and the gore then there's probably not that much to the actual game.

Anyway, l think it's a poor way for a designer to be successful, and it means that when a newcomer comes to the gaming industry and flicks through a magazine he or she is going to wonder what it is that we're saying.

NG: So given that, despite all of its successes, the game industry seems to be hung up on cosmetics instead of

"l tell designers, don't try and do better graphics than the movies because you're always going to lose"

gameplay and remains infatuated with immature subject matter, will the "interactive entertainment" industry of the 21 st century evolve from the game industry? Or will it be stolen from under our noses?

Sid: Right now, we know how to do interactivity. But we're perfectly capable of dropping the ball and letting someone else pick it up.

The game industry has to be best positioned to manage this opportunity because we know that magic ingredient is interactivity. But we have to concentrate on this. I tell designers, "Don't try and do better graphics than the movies because you're always going to lose. Don't try and do better sound than what you can get on CDs, because that's not what we're good at. What we're good at is interactivity — so make your product win, lose, stand, or fall based on its interactive content."

So l think game designers are in the best position to step in and provide the interactivity for these new forms of entertainment, but l know plenty of other people would like to get involved.

NG: What advice would you give to new game designers?

Sid: It's always fascinated me how we can do very, very difficult things on a computer that don't impress people, and then we can do things that are very easy to do on a computer and they do impress people. There's not necessarily a correlation between how much work you put into something and how much it impresses people.

I was always struck by the old Space invaders coin¬ op that had those big weird blobs moving across the top of the screen. Today, we could program that in a day, but people actually thought that they were really invaders from space and it was very exciting. Then on the other hand, you could spend six months programming a computer model of a human body to move very realistically — it's very hard to do — but then people would look at it, be interested for about three seconds and go, "Big deal. It's a guy walking across a screen."

So my rule is to think about how much work you have to put into something and how much it will impress not another programmer, but a gamer on the rrv— ,

street. They're the ones you have to impress. U=>j

17

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

"MDK promises 3-D technology so cool and action so. ..realistic that it will send everything else running for cover."

- PC GAMER

"The ability to zoom in from a mile away within the sniper mode is remarkable."

-ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY

"...WE COULD BE LOOKING AT A 1997

"One of the most innova¬ tive games ever created."

- GAMEFAN

"This is one game that no Playstation owner will want to miss."

-PSX

&

PlayStation

Created by Shiny Entertainment. Inc © 1997 Shiny Entertainment. Inc MDK is a trademark of Shiny Entertainment. Inc. All rights reserved. Artwork and design © 1997 Playmates Interactive Entertainment Inc PIE™ is a registered trademark of Playmates Interactive Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved. PlayStation and the PlayStation logos are trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

Your planet is being bulldozed by the ton. Alien controlled mobile mining cities are strip-mining the earth's surface overrunning and crushing anything in their path... Unless you can stop them.

PLAYSTATION GAME OF THE YEAR..."

-GAMEFAN

• Fully 3-D rendered graphics unlike any¬ thing you have ever before seen.

• Over 60 arenas spread out over 6 cities.

• Never before seen "sniper mode" that allows you to zoom in on the enemy and pick it off with astounding accuracy. ^

• The most sophisticated enemy artificial intelligence ever created. Fully reactive "smart enemies" think, listen, and communicate in a calculated assault on your life.

• An arsenal of totally innovative weapons

W I IBS II

and equipment including:

- A helmet-mounted sniper rifle that tar¬ gets enemies from over two miles away.

- A living polymer suit that protects from piercing projectiles.O -A high-tech reusable parachute.

- Bombs... decoys... homing sniper grenades... and many more.

Two styles of adrenaline¬ pumping game dynamics featuring first and third person point of view.

\

IT THINKS. THEREFORE IT KILLS.

http://www.playmatestoys.com

www.shiny.com

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

CGDC: The low-down on the Computer Game Developers' Conference • corporate Restructuring: Interactive spring-cleaning for the industry • Game.com: Tiger's new handheld — a Game Boy for the '90s? • Toolbox: A new column — this month, we look at Lightwave 5.5 • Plus, Joyriding, Arcadia, and Movers and Shakers

News from all over — Disneyland, Silicon Valley, the land of fiber optics

CGDC in Santa Clara:

eeks get down

Tipsy attendees went from the floor to Intel's spotlight awards

show's focus expanded to include seminars on topics (like marketing) well beyond the conference's original focus.

The CGDC hosted an all-day class on Friday April 25 on managing game development. The classic conference classes (April 25 to 29) covered everything from programming and production to business concerns and legal issues pertinent to the industry. Also, several roundtables focused on issues of game design and the future direction of gaming. Keynote speakers at the show included John Romero, Chris Roberts, and Nolan Bushnell. intensive two-day tutorials focused on object-oriented game design, creating online games with Java, Softimage development tools and techniques, and 3D Studio Max. One- day tutorials covered OpenGL, Windows programming, Debabelizer, and modeling.

Several related events enriched this year's CGDC. 3Dfx hosted

More attendees, and less goatees, than ever were at the nth annual cgdc. Estimates put the total attendance at around 6,300 people

immersion '97 to help developers "master the magic" of its Voodoo chipset; TEN hosted a developer day with sessions zeroing in on server architecture, its SDK, and other enabling technologies; and Microsoft got in on the action and capitalized on the presence of so many developers convened at one place with a DirectX 5 seminar held the day after the show (April 30) at the Santa Clara convention center. To get a beta version of DirectX 5, visit www.directx.com.

The show wasn't an

serious developer talk, however. On Sunday night, various companies' hospitality suites provided booze and an ideal opportunity to schmooze.

The gossip, networking, and "casual" business talk that happens in the suites (and at the hotel bar afterward) is well worth the price of admission.

On Monday night, the exhibition floor was similarly flooded with cocktails. Tipsy attendees went from the floor and onto the Multimedia Theatre where Intel sponsored the Spotlight awards (see sidebar).

Quake picked up two awards (for sound effects and best online/Internet game), and Super Mario won in three areas (best use of innovative technology, best console game, and best game of 1996). Sony's carnival followed the awards ceremony which found many developers working on the logistics

Developers gather at the Santa Clara Convention Center

While late-night parties

kept conference-goers up all night, the show's celebratory spirit didn't prevent this year's computer Game Developer's Conference (CGDC) from being a true meeting of the minds for game developers — and "suits," as the

CGDC crowd (top). San Francisco Rush kept gamers going (bottom)

20

breaking

Microsoft's construction site promoted Sidewinder (top). One gamer played Mace all day (bottom)

of gorging on cotton candy and talking about z-buffering.

The CGDC show has been criticized since changing hands a year ago. Formerly put on by Computer Game Developers' Association (CGDA), the CGDC was known as a small homegrown operation nurtured by the tight-knit game developer community. The first annual CGDC was a group of 20 people (basically the CGDA) gathered in a living room. Although CGDA has always held and continues to hold a stake in the proceedings, in 1996 Miller Freeman Inc. took over the show. Many bemoaned the inevitable "growth" that MFl meant for the CGDC, arguing that heavy traffic would ruin the independent feel that was once so integral to attendees' enjoyment of the show. The 1995 show (pre- MFI) saw 2,200 people, and MFl grew the 1996 show to 4,000.

The nth annual CGDC this year featured expo-only attendees for the first time— 4,000 conference goers and an additional 2,300 expo-only visitors attended — bringing the total numbers to 6,300. The CGDC was definitely more crowded this year and had a more corporate feel. While there were still a good amount of tie- dyed tee shirts and goatees, the attendees this year were more tame and less colorful than those in attendance in previous years. Still, more people isn't always a bad thing, and most attendees Next

TEN sponsored a Quake tournament. Here, id founder John Romero tries to impress a TEN employee and onlookers with his Quake skills

Generation spoke to were enthusiastic about the benefits of the conference.

As was expected, Ernest Adams donned his top hat and suspenders

This year's CGDC was more crowded than in previous years

and announced that he is resigning from his volunteer post at the CGDA in order to devote his full energies to Electronic Arts.

The show floor was twice as crowded with the number of exhibitors doubled since last year, while conferences and hospitality suites often find developers for competing companies comparing notes, swapping gossip, and (sometimes) exchanging resumes, the mood on the floor is less friendly. Still, it was nearly impossible for competitors to avoid each other on the exhibition floor. Matrox, S3, 3Dfx, ATI, and Nvidea were all crowded into one area, while the two force feedback companies (Immersion showed a promising force-feedback future with its l-Force 2.0, and Microsoft) were likewise tightly grouped. TWo multiplayer players — TEN and Rtime — were also cozy neighbors. Of course, 3Dfx, MMX, and DVD seemed to be everywhere. PowerVR demoed a high-resolution version of Wipeout XL which ran at l024-by-768 using Direct 3D. And San Francisco Rush was all the buzz as attendees competed at arcades near the entrance to the show floor.

Southern California will be the site of next year's conference and show, which will be held in Long Beach. The Long Beach dates are set for May 4 to 8, 1998. Part of the reason for the move is that show is committed to building stronger ties with the entertainment industry; expect more suits and style next year. To counteract the glitz of Hollywood, the show will return to Northern California the year after.

The 1999 show will take place at the San Jose Convention Center on March 15 to 19 (tentative dates), so hopefully the dawn of the millennium will bring the spirit of the r'-^—y CGDC back where it belongs. ul>°<

Spotlight Award Winners

Best Games, Technologies and Craft Implementation of 1997 Best Prerendered Art:

Zork Nemesis

Best Animation: Tomb Raider Best Adaptation of Linear Media: / Have No Mouth and I Must Scream Best Script, Story or Interactive Writing: You Don’t Know Jack XL Best Use of Video: Wing Commander IV Sound Effects: Quake Best Use of Innovative Technology: Super Mario 64, for the N 64 Best Console Game:

Super Mario 64 Best Simulation Game: Mechwarrior II: Mercenaries Best Music or Soundtrack: Quake

Best Strategy /War Game:

C&C Red Alert Best PC/Mac Game: Civilization II Best Arcade Game: Virtua Fighter III

Best Educational Game: Freddi Fish II Best Action Game: Duke Nukem 3D

Best Sports Game: NHL Hockey ’97

Best Adventure Game/RPG: Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall Best New Technology: N64 from Nintendo Best Trivia or Puzzle Game: You Don’ t Know Jack XL On-Line/Internet Game: Quake

Best Game of 1996: Super Mario 64

21

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

| breaking

Cleaning time:

Corporations slim down

With numerous companies spring-cleaning for the long haul, many are asking: is the interactive gold rush over?

Huring the months of April and May, a number of publishers and developers underwent a form of spring-cleaning. While there may have been numerous cutbacks, canceled projects, job losses, and shut-downs, the game industry seems to be settling into better defined business models On May 3, in response to '96 fiscal losses of $221 million. Acclaim initiated a pre-E3 housecleaning. The company laid off over 115 employees, amounting to 15% of its work force. According to Acclaim, some early, unannounced works in development

The industry is settling into better defined business models

have been discontinued during this restructuring. The stock market responded positively with shares moving up sharply at the news.

Westwood president Brett W. Sperry (center) is now also Virgin's president of publishing, with Sperry, Westwood vps Steve wetherill and Louis castle

22

BMG titles Specops (top) and Major League Soccer are possibly up for sale

Several weeks before, Disney interactive laid off 100 temporary and permanent staff members over the course of three days in mid-April. Disney itself claims that only 20% of its nearly 435 permanent staff have been laid off. A Disney spokesperson offered, "After having an incredibly successful business with rapid growth, we have re-examined our business strategy against the current marketplace, given all of the industry consolidation and competition for shelf space at retail."

As Disney rethinks its strategy, the company will be scaling back production from 15 to 20 titles per year to 10 to 12 titles per year. The major difference is that Disney will be "partnering" with developers rather than doing the development in¬

house. "For our games business we will still be actively involved in story creation, creative oversight, and things of such nature," offered a spokesperson. "The actual programming and development of the physical game will be handled by one of our partners."

Disney and Acclaim may

have downsized, but BMG Interactive has all but shut down its U.S. operations. Unfortunately, this comes at a time when the company was poised to debut some strong products. Early statements from BMG speculated that the company may become some kind of affiliate label, but with only a handful of staffers left after the layoffs of April 22, this is doubtful. It appears that most the U.S.

rights to upcoming titles will be sold off to other publishers.

Unable to find more financial backing, or a publisher to ally with, Rocket Science shut its doors in April as well.

While some publishers look to leaner business models, others such as Capcom are retooling their internal development. After canceling the two internal projects, Major Damage and Werewolf, Capcom has brought in David Siller to head its U.S. research and development department. Siller, a former producer at Universal interactive, was one of the members of the Crash Bandicoot design team as well as the man behind such SunSoft mascots as Aero the Acrobat and Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel. While Siller is head of Capcom's R&D

breaking

Capcom's Major Damage didn't make the cut. The U.S. internal studio is restructuring

department, some restructuring of the department is slated but exact details are currently unavailable.

in a similar fashion, in May Virgin announced a new President of Worldwide Publishing, Brett w. Sperry.

Sperry, who has the unenviable task of stopping Virgin's red ink hemorrhage, will now pull double duty, as he's also the President and CEO of Westwood Studios, which he helped found in 1985. "The trick is to empower the right people," Sperry says of his new role, "and give them the resources and flexibility to get the job done. You also try as quickly as possible to identify those people who are not right."

The man who commands at Westwood has conquered all of Virgin, as Sperry is now responsible for all the projects coming out of Virgin's five development studios, including the problematic Burst, which is the company's U.S. internal studio. "The way the Burst studio was structured made a lot of sense on paper," Sperry concedes. "But for a variety of reasons, it wasn't delivering product at the end of the day." And while there were some layoffs centered around the cancellation of Propaganda (a mission-based driving game), Sperry is confident in the studio's upcoming product line and seemed amused at the recent speculation that the company was running out of capital. While he noted the company will look more strategically at the market, Virgin has announced that it will be shipping more than 25 new games in 1997 and 1998.

On April 4, Crystal Dynamics also announced a new president, promoting Rob Dyer from his senior vice president position. During a major down-sizing last year, Crystal Dynamics abandoned their publishing efforts and has since concentrated strictly on development. The company had been functioning without a president, as CEO Ted Ardel managed day-to-day operations as well as the company's relations with venture- capitalists. While many naysayers believed the end was near for Crystal last year, it appears they are the first to reemerge as a smaller but more streamlined operation.

April capped off with several reports of significant growth in the game marketplace for 1996, with one report predicting a 20% gain for 1997. While the game industry has bloomed again with the next- generation systems, the competition is tougher than ever, and some growing pangs are inevitable. With no room on the shelves for pork products, leaner and more defined business models for publishers and developers can only add longevity and stability to an industry, which, to date, can't boast rrv^

much of either. W)

UQ&Stl

A Next Generation look behind the scenes...

Earthworm Jim 64 developed in Europe? At press time, creators of the 16-bit Jim, Doug TenNapel of the Neverhood and Dave Perry of Shiny individually confirmed that they were meeting with a European development house to discuss the deal. The meeting puts TenNapel and Perry back on the same side of the fence for the first time since TenNapel left Shiny to launch the Neverhood.

Sony’s Rally Cross team is back on the track. According to a source inside Sony’s San Diego studio, it’s not a sequel, but a “licensed racing game.”

The classic collections keep on coming, as Midway plans both another Williams and Atari collection. A company insider notes that the next Williams compilation tentatively includes Moon Patrol, Joust II, Spy Hunter, Burger Time, Tapper, and two never released titles by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMarr entitled Splat and Blast. As for the next Atari compilation, the disc looks to feature Road Blasters, Gauntlet, Crystal Castles, Paper Boy, and possibly 720°.

More Turok is on the way, as Sculptured Software is currently conducting tests to see whether Turok can faithfully be translated to PlayStation. According to Acclaim, PC owners should be receiving at least one version of Turok. One is expected to be a strict conversion of the Nintendo 64 game, while another may include new levels, network modes and more. It is extremely likely that 3Dfx- enhanced versions of the game will be featured prominently. Also, Turok 2 for Nintendo 64 is in design stages at Iguana. No expected release dates have been made available for any of the titles.

GT Interactive took advantage of the Computer Game Developers’ Conference to announce the sequel to Duke Nukem 3 D, entitled Du Ice Nukem Forever. This sequel will feature a true 3D environment built with Id Software’s Quake II engine. Duke Nukem Forever will continue to have the same realistic, interactive environment as its predecessor, while adding the advantages of true 3D levels. Many features of the Quake II engine are not fully ready at this time, so the Duke team will be developing for the existing Quake engine, and adding the updates as they are finished. While enhanced, the new engine should not require steeper system requirements than the existing engine demands. Much of the story has already been written, and work is being done to have the title ready for summer ’98, so it will not conflict with Prey, 3D Realms’s other big title.

23

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

Activision is a ascrermsD trademark and Apocaudse is a iitADEMABK or Acriwsios. „ Ivc. S' i-m? Activision- fsc. Licensed by Sonic Computer ENTRkrA jMiKNf Am erica sot : ft»» rnirrat 1‘iaySxation came coneoi.e. ITaySeaTIon a ni>;tAe PiayStati on ilocos An?. TRADEMARK? OK SoN'Y GoMtWTER ENTERTAINMENT, 1^0. Ai.I.WCHTS RESERVED. All OTHER TRADE AtAllXS AND TRADE NAMES AKE THE PKOI’r.KllJis OR TfiKIR KKSi’KlIFiyii OWNERS.

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

Game.com:

Will it beat Game Boy?

Next Generation gets the first hands-on test drive of the new Tiger Electronics handheld

26

Titles

available at launch:

Lights Out (pack-in)

Batman & Robin The Lost World Williams Arcade Classics Wheel of Fortune Indy 500

Available by the Holidays:

internet Cartridge Sonic Jam Duke Nukem 3D Jeopardy!

Name that Tune Wheel of Fortune 2 Mortal Kombat Trilogy NBA Hang Time Madden Football 98 Fighters Megamix Tiger Casino

Henry: The Match the Sounds Memory Game Quizwhiz Cyber Trivia

Tiger Electronics's Game.com Is roughly the same size as Sega's Game Gear. The default opening screen shows the built-in features, which can be accessed either by using the Joypad and buttons, or the touch screen and stylus

game.com

iger Electronics is mostly known for its line of hand¬ held, dedicated LCD games, mostly based on licenses like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. However, by the time you read this Tiger will have released Game.com, a new cartridge-based handheld meant to compete directly with Nintendo's Game Boy.

In the interest of trying to put a dent in that segment of the market, the overall design philosophy is one of low cost: the LCD screen is black and white and unlit (out of consideration for battery life as much as cost). However, the screen is larger than the Game Boy's, and is exceptionally clear with a nice resolution. The unit is roughly the same size as a Sega Game Gear, although thinner, and fits comfortably

enough between the hands. It features the usual joypad and four buttons, but the LCD also functions as a touch screen interface, and the unit comes equipped with a stylus for precise pointing.

Built-in software includes a calculator, solitaire, a phone number and address database, and a calendar (which is just that: a calendar, not a day planner or anything fancy). It features the usual jacks for headphones and AC adapter, as well as a comm port for connecting the unit to a phone plug (more on this later). Game.com also comes with the puzzle game Lights Out as the pack-in, and the whole thing retails for $69.95.

One of the most noticeable features of Game.com is that it can

use two carts at once. The unit showed to Next Generation came with playable beta versions of Indy 500, a racing game, and Wheel of Fortune. Also shown were non- playable demos of Batman & Robin and Duke Nukem. Indy 500 was less than exciting, although Wheel of Fortune, with an interface designed around the stylus and touch screen, was much easier to play than any version previously available for consoles and handhelds. The demoed Batman & Robin was a typical side scrolling action tie-in, but Duke Nukem looked quite promising.

According to Allen Richardson, a producer at Tiger, Game.com is based around a CPU, "in the Z80 family." Although unable to specify the unit's specs, Richardson did admit, "It's not really a 3D machine

Stop Press

SCEAto pick up Porsche Challenge

The highly rated European game developed by Sony U.K. had oddly languished in limbo for months until SCEA decided to pick it up for release in the U.S. Ship date is tentatively scheduled for August.

Nintendo disappoints everyone with annual results

Nintendo Corporation saw profits fall to $848 million dollars (¥101 billion), that’s down 13.7% from the previous years. Nintendo claims the shortfall is due to costs incurred launching the system, although the drop is more than analysts had expected.

Pentium 2 flaw

Errors in the floating-point sections of the chip put egg on Intel’s face. Certain operations produce incorrect error flags, and others fail to produce error flags when they should.

E3 Coverage on NG Online

Bi-hourly updates July 19 to 21 at www.next-generation.com.

breaking

— the 3D in Duke is simulated.” Nevertheless, the demo was impressive. Duke also highlighted one other Game.com feature: a liberal use of voice samples, unusual for a hand-held, cart-based system.

Perhaps the most interesting cart that will be available, however,

Overall, Game.com gives the impression of value for money. Carts are in the $19.95 to $29.95 range, with five titles available at launch and another thirteen by the end of the year, including Madden Football '98 and Fighters Megamix. Richardson says, "Since our carts are in the 16 Megabit range, Madden will probably

Perhaps the most interesting cart available is the Internet Cartridge

is Game.com's internet cartridge.

For $19.95 (modem and Internet account are extra), the cart enables the user to send and receive e-mail, and perform some other limited, text-based internet functions. Unavailable for testing at press time, Internet cartridge should be on the shelves by the holiday season (see sidebar). Most other Game.com titles are various ports of titles from other consoles, and while some third parties have expressed interest in developing for it, so far Tiger has no plans to sign any on.

be the toughest title to do. we're also trying to do something more with Megamix than turn it into a 2D fighter." However, with no Tetris or other clear killer app (with the possible exception of internet Cartridge ), it remains to be seen whether the aging Game Boy is under any immediate threat. On the other hand, Tiger plans on staging the largest marketing blitz in its history this fall, and Game.com will be available in most retail electronics, toy, and hobby stores, we wish them the best. Hf!°7

Intel and Microsoft Enter the arcade fray

□ ntel has announced its plans for a new arcade architecture that it hopes will allow far more players to participate in the arcade market. Previously, proprietary hardware from the likes of Namco, Capcom, Midway, and Sega has allowed few developers entrance. But through the use of a PC-based architecture and taking advantage of the advent of cheap but powerful 3D accelerators, Intel and Microsoft envision a new paradigm in arcade development.

The initial design specs for Intel's arcade unit call for a Pentium ll at 266MHz minimum. A 400MHz variant is also planned, as are dual or quad

processor configurations as required. The 3D graphics subsystem currently in use is based on the 3Dfx Obsidian class boards, previously used only in high-end workstations.

Developers accustomed to designing for the PC and working with Microsoft's DirectX APIs should now be able to get their games easily and cheaply into the arcade. Microsoft and Intel claim this is something of a "movie-industry" model. Just as feature films are shown on the big screen with a videotape release some nine months later, developers are expected to debut their games in the arcade with

home conversion for PC expected some time later.

This would give arcade operators cheaper systems to buy, which can then easily have hardware upgraded or new games added any time. This is an attractive solution to arcade operators at a time when Model 3 hardware generally costs upwards of $14,000 per unit.

With the advent of Intel and Microsoft's vision, the arcade industry is at a crossroads. It must decide whether to pursue the older, expensive, proprietary hardware or some new, cheaper, open standard that may not necessarily provide the horsepower to UL° ■

27

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

Alias I Wavefront's PowerAnimator™

is the tool for creating the industry’s fastest, perfectly textured, real time, so-good-you- can’t-tell-they’re-polygonal video games.

$16,995

02™ is the only workstation that's built on an innovative Unified Memory Architecture, delivering lead¬ ing CPU and graphics performance as well as breakthrough video and imaging capabilities. Check the specs - O2 gives you the most raw horsepower of any workstation in its class.

“ All prices are in US dollars and available in North America only. Offer available for a limited time.

Don't settle for a system that slows you down. Or won't grow with your needs. Or can't deliver the realism that audiences expect.

Get PowerAnimator O2

for a total system price of just $16,995* and blow their minds, not your budget.

i a s

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For more information call 1 .800.447.2542 or visit our web site at www.aw.sgi.com

breaking

The latest upgrade from Newtek, Lightwave 5.5

Lightwave has always given a lot of bang for the buck

Ilias wavefront and 3D Studio max may take the technological high ground in the ever-growing field of CG graphics, but for sheer ubiquity, no package beats Newtek's Lightwave, its wide range of features, relative ease of use, and low cost (right around half that of 3DS Max) have made it the favorite of workaday Hollywood effects companies and game developers. TV shows like "Babylon 5," "xena," and even

"Baywatch," have sported Lightwave CG

images, and it continues to be the workhorse modeling and animation program for numerous developers like Westwood and Sony.

Lightwave has always given a lot of bang for the buck. It may not do everything well, but it does seem to do practically everything, from a full set of the expected modeling tools (extrude, lathe, bevel, Boolean operations, and so on), to a MetaNURBS modeler (which makes modeling organic shapes easy but is not true NURBS), bones and inverse kinematics, lens flare, particle systems, some built-in image processing, and support for most of the more popular image and 3D object formats. Newtek's latest rev, Lightwave 5.5, boasts a number of improvements and added features. With any package of this complexity, it can take months or even years of use to figure out what works, what doesn't, and how best to use every feature, but our initial impressions are

very positive.

Lightwave splits modeling and animation into two separate programs, Modeler and Layout respectively. This is somewhat old school and mildly counterintuitive — textures are added in Layout, for example, not Modeler. Another minor annoyance is the menu system which, although easy to understand and streamlined a great deal so that no function is more than a button or two away, still means that just about every function is a

^ button or two

away. Get used to those keyboard shortcuts.

However, 5.5 has appreciably sped up nearly everything, reducing rendering times and IK computations, and now supports Direct3D in addition to OpenGL. It also sports a number of new "gee whiz" features like a Morph Gizmo that makes facial animations a whole lot easier, by allowing artists to model several extreme expressions for a given face, then just use a series of morph control sliders to govern how fast the expressions change and how far along the extreme they go, or even blend two or three. An enhanced version of 5.0's image processor, Cel Shader, called Super Cel Shader, allows rendered images to be output so they look like cel animation and even, if desired, anime-style cels.

Overall, Lightwave 5.5 is not without its quirks, but it's nearly impossible to find a more comprehensive package, especially at r^—, the price.

The Layout interface for 5.5 has been significantly streamlined from 5.0. A row of buttons along the top brings up sub menus, while buttons along the side control more general functions

This new column in Next Generation is

dedicated to covering the products that build your favorite games

This image. Office stress, was produced in a few hours by a Next Generation staffer using Newtek's Lightwave 5.5

Over $50,000 in cash and prizes for your best game

Fuseworks, an Ottawa-based online technology company, is offering $25,000 for first prize in its game development contest. The contest will run through September 30th. Second prize is $10,000; third is $5,000; and ten fourth prizes are worth $1,000 each.

To enter the contest, you must use Fuseworks’s new Software Development Kit, which is available for download free from their web site (www.fuseworks.com). The SDK is designed for ease of use in creating unlimited- player online games, run in a frame through a web browser.

Both Corel (sponsoring the contest) and the Canadian government (funding Fuseworks’s R&D) have a stake in the free SDK and its free server, so expect Fuseworks to stay on theicutting edge of web technology.

29

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

The latest arcade and coin-op news

Arcades are Bustin'

Out All Over

Steven Spielberg's first "location-based entertainment" (LBE) site is up and running in Seattle...and it's got all the hype and excitement of Jaws, Indiana Jones, and E.T. rolled into one. Called Sega GameWorks, this 30,000-square-foot dreamland could be described as a $10 million mega-arcade for the 21st century.

Speilberg's studio, DreamWorks, is a founding partner with Sega and MCA in the GameWorks joint venture. The Oscar-winning movie director recently explained his videogame background to USA Today, "in the 1970s while we

The loading dock (right) and video cluster (above) show the technology at GameWorks

were filming Jaws, Richard Dreyfuss and l would sneak off the set and spend hours at the local arcade playing Pong. As the technology and games became more advanced, so did my interest."

But Speilberg & Co. felt arcades didn't keep up with the evolution of video technology and excitement. The guiding vision at GameWorks is to close the gap and create the ultimate gamer's environment. "Playing," said Spielberg, "is about fun, excitement, competition, and bringing people together. It's also about escape, adventure, and connecting. It gives each person the chance to prove that he or she is a star."

Outside, GameWorks/Seattle looks like a funky old industrial factory, inside, space is divided into three "zones" — each with different theming, lighting, music, architecture, and decor to support a variety of moods and experiences.

The "Loading Dock" looks like an underground nightclub; the latest games are unloaded right off the truck and "audience tested" by the club's hard-core gamers.

In the "Arena," visitors will experience a hi-

tech 3-ring circus atmosphere, complete with enormous video screens on all the walls. Top players will see their own live images televised on these screens as they play current games and unique signature attractions like "Vertical Reality," a sort of zippy elevator-chair/multi-level game/ride/experience. A mezzanine bar provides an overview of the whole Arena.

Upstairs, visitors can chill out in "The Loft," a quieter area with fun food and adult beverages (Starbucks, a microbrewery, gourmet pizza, and Cheesecake Factory desserts). The Loft features a jukebox, classic arcade games from the early '80s in oak cabinets, sports table games like air hockey, pool, and foosball, board games like chess, and internet terminals — all presented amidst wooden floors, comfortable chairs, and a controlled noise level to allow ease of conversation.

GameWorks is aimed at the 18-and-up crowd looking for a quality entertainment environment. Gameplay is $1.25 per shot, paid via smartcards. Special attractions like Vertical Reality may cost $3 or $4 per play. The company plans to open two more this year (a 40,000-square-foot site on the Vegas Strip and a 30,000-square-foot place in Ontario, CA), with a goal of 100 GameWorks worldwide by 2002. That will require opening a new GameWorks every six weeks from Jan. 1, 1998 to Dec. 31, 2002 — at a total cost of over half a billion dollars, even if they only cost half the price of the Seattle unit

D&B: Go west

Young Gamer

Dave & Buster's is the adult playground that every arcade wants to "grow up and be like." This popular chain of location-based entertainment centers started in Dallas; now it has 10 stores nationwide. They are usually about 60,000 square feet and feature a deluxe arcade, upscale billiards, "just for fun" gambling, a fine restaurant, casual diner, a handsome bar, and myriad other entertainment choices under a single roof.

Its latest unit opened in Ontario Mills, CA; two more D&Bs are planned for this the U.S. year and one will open overseas. The Ontario and Dallas sites, by the way, feature a new d&b attraction: cyberPak, a new virtual reality technology which D8iB co-founder Dave Corriveau calls "a new look and a high level of performance in VR gaming." The first CyberPak game is called Alpha 1 Rescue.

by Marcus Webb

Marcus Webb is the editor of RePlay magazine

"Everbody wants

inta Da Act"

Jimmy Durante's line applies to LBEs. Besides D8iB and GameWorks, several other leading corporations have lbe plans on the drawing board. Such as? Disney, Sony, Brunswick, and — believe it or not — Wal-Mart.

• Disney won't comment for the record, but industry buzz says it's planning a chain of family entertainment centers to be called "Disney Quest." A lavish video arcade is expected to be a major component. (By the way, the 24,000-square-foot Club Disney site which recently opened in Thousand Oaks,

CA, is a "mommy 8i me"-type children's entertainment center with not a single arcade videogame to be found, though it does have some internet computers to keep daddies entertained. Disney reportedly plans to build 100 of the Club Disney stores, too.)

• Sony Retail Corp. (based in Burbank, Calif.) will soon open a four-story flagship LBE in San Francisco, with a chain of others to follow, reliable sources report. Sony's been working with Namco (America's biggest arcade operator) on its PlayStation technology, but we haven't heard any hints that Namco might be involved with Sony's LBE plans.

• Brunswick, famed for recreational goods for pool and bowling, has opened a huge site in Alberta, Canada called Red's, we're told it is themed like the "ultimate 1950's rec room" with plenty of videogames and sports games on hand; adult beverages and food are served. If it's a hit, more will follow.

• Wal-Mart is teaming up with a national cinema chain, carmike Cinemas, to open family entertainment centers called "The Hollywood Connection." They're starting this summer with a 69,000-square-foot site in a former Wal-Mart store in Goshen, Indiana. Two more should follow in the Midwest by next year, says Carmike. If the partners like the results, they'll roll out Hollywood Connections nationwide. Our guess is many of these super¬ arcades could go into former Wal-Marts, since the company is reportedly

consolidating its retail chain a bit.

NEXT GENERATION Ju ly 1997

Gaming on the internet

When talking about online gaming, most people focus upon individual services, what games they have, and their revenue model. These are clearly important, but it pays to look deeper and check out the technical hurdles a service must overcome. There seems to be a level playing field for these companies because they are trying to deal with the same problems but are often approaching it in completely different ways.

provide a decent level of performance for more ISPs. Naturally, this action is more expensive, but Heat is betting that the increase in cost will pay off in terms of quality of play. Time will tell.

The major obstacle arising from disparate latencies is client synchronization. Many LAN games require all clients to sync with each other for every frame, but this is impossible when faced with the latencies associated with the Internet. The solution to this is decoupling

Many LAN games require all clients to sync for every frame, but this is impossible online

by Christian Svensson

Christian Svensson is the editor of Next Generation Online

Higher bandwidth modems (28.8K and above) can add additional latency through the compression and decompression of data. Each pass through a modem can be as high as 40ms — giving a total of more than 1 60ms just for the data to pass from client to isp and back on a round trip. To make matters worse, congestion points at MAE East and MAE West (major hubs on the Internet where major providers' backbones interface with one another) can add even more latency. Currently both MAE outlets are estimated to drop more than 20% of packets sent through them, requiring a resend, thereby doubling the latency of those packets, imagine telling your friend that you never received the letter that was sent to you a week ago and asking for another to be sent. This is exactly what happens when packets are dropped.

the network update from the frame update, but this requires the use of a global timebase to determine which network packets arrived on time. The client must "smooth" animation to cover up the true position of an object and the perceived position, one example is in TCP/IP Quake where the aiming of discrete weaponry (shotguns) is difficult because the perceived location of your enemy is not accurate. Thus non-exact weapons (rocket launchers and grenades) are often the weapons of choice because players only have to aim in a general area.

Adding further to the confusion for developers is the fixed frame rate issue. For

Rtime's background is in large-scale military simulations that generally can accommodate upwards of 600 players. It seeks to take its experience in this arena and put it into better Internet gaming while turning a tidy profit. Rtime has come to the same conclusion as many other companies, but its solution is somewhat different. Other services seek to take a sector of the Internet and run a service, but Rtime contends this method is inconvenient for the customer (either having to switch ISPs or suffer poor performance), limits sales potential, and costs service providers too much.

So Rtime has introduced a four-pronged solution consisting of a client/server architecture, a new "affinity-based" data distribution method, dynamic motion updating in conjunction with a global timebase, and low-bandwidth requirements. The client/server architecture is not unlike other solutions on the market. Each client in an Rtime game opens and closes a single connection to the server. The server acts as an intelligent network switch that coordinates the clients' communications.

The benefit is gained by adding servers in other geographic areas.

example, if someone on a Pentium 200 is playing

Over 800 developers and 500 organizations have signed on to Rtime's developer program

Current online gaming services (such as Mplayer and TEN) house their servers on a single backbone. Clients using the same provider as these services will get better performance because they don't have to pass through the MAE connections (and other congested intersections) to pass from their ISP's backbone to that of the service. Essentially, a somewhat proprietary network is required for the best performance. While this isn't a major problem if your provider is connected to the same backbone as your service, it can considerably restrict the true potential market of customers for these services. Heat is taking an interesting position of setting servers on a variety of provider backbones, in this way, it hopes to

another client on a Pentium 100, there are three possible solutions. Either the high-end machine has to be crippled to match the low-end machine, or the low-end machine must have a substantial drop in detail or resolution to match the frame rate of the high-end machine. The final solution is abstinence — not allowing the two platforms to interact — which is not a solution at all. Clearly, developers have many obstacles to overcome when designing for Internet gaming.

At the CGDC, Rtime proposed a somewhat different approach to each of these problems and a revolutionary revenue model — developers and publishers starting their own online gaming mini-services similar to Battle.net or Westwood Chat.

As an extension to the architecture, Rtime's affinity data distribution method uses "filtering templates." Rather than a static, centralized approach to affinity definition, Rtime lets the client set its own affinities. Multiple templates can specify multiple affinities based on geographic location, priority data-type, and user-defined subtypes.

The Rtime server analyzes all incoming data for affinity-based distribution and has been designed to be quite efficient at deciding which data to send and when to send it.

The dynamic motion modeling is nothing more than estimating where an object will O

32

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If you know Tomb Raider, you know why Lara Croft is the #1 cover girl in gaming. No other game has won more awards, sold more copies, or kicked more ass. Hardcore gamers have made Tomb Raider the undisputed megabit of the year. Have your got yours yet?

Game of the Year

'PS Extreme

Game of the Year

-Game Fan

Game of the Year

'Computer Player

Action Game of the Year

'PC Gamer

Adventure Game of the Year

'Ultra Game Players

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NEXT GENERATION July 1997

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O be at the time of the next network update using velocity-based "dead reckoning" or path- based motion updates. Either way, the client uses a global timebase to let clients run asynchonrously (without handicapping). As an update is sent, the Rtime engine auto¬ matically timestamps the update with the current global time. That timestamp is carried to the other clients and used to properly model an object's trajectory.

According to marketing data compiled by Rtime, online gaming service providers need to generate approximately $2 an hour revenue from customers. Exactly how that revenue is generated is irrelevant. Of that $2, the average developer or publisher receives between $0.20 to $0.50 an hour. Another $0.15 an hour is dedicated toward distribution (marketing, promotion, infrastructure, and so on). The remaining $1.35 an hour goes back to the gaming service.

Rtime's proposed model for

publishers to set up their own service is considerably different. Rtime uses the same base of $0.15 an hour for distribution costs and factors in another $0.15 an hour for billing costs, where Rtime gets its money is at a $0.10 an hour licensing charge per user from the company using its technology. This leaves an additional $1.60 an hour to the publisher.

Currently over 800 developers and 500 organizations have signed on to Rtime's developer program. These companies that may not necessarily ever use the Rtime technology, but they are interested in the directions it is going and the future developments of the technology.

Right now, only three of Rtime's customers are expected to deliver commercial products during 1997, but many more are expected for 1998. Revenant will be releasing a multiplayer RPG entitled Ascension: Myths and Legends. JAGware will be releasing a multiplayer space combat sim using Direct 3D. VR Tech is the final company to have a product on the market using Rtime in 1997 that will be some variety of helicopter sim, but most details surrounding the game are still unknown.

Rtime's technology has yet to really be proven in a large-scale test on a blockbuster game, but its technology and business models seem sound. This technology (or something very similar to it) could factor largely into the future of the online gaming community. Next Generation online will be watching closely to monitor its progress, and of course will keep you up to date. uL§J

The business news that

DOOM! ALL DOOM

Newsline: it was carnage as usual in the industry this month with big names dropping out of key markets. BMG closed down its U.S. office and slunk back to Europe; 3DO sold off Its hardware interests to Samsung; and Rocket Science simply ceased to be.

BOTTOMLINE: All this bad news usually heralds the appearance of ashen-faced "crash-mongers" forecasting more 1983-style holes in the desert and the end of videogaming. Fact is, like specks of iron to a magnet, gamers are Increasingly sliding over to hot products and leaving the unattractive sadly alone. The difference between a hit and a miss is so wide now that one disappointing game with high expectations (e.g. Rocket Jockey) is enough to flounder great ambitions. Meanwhile, videogaming is due to grow by another 20% this year. See story on page 22 for more detail.

HELLO SEGA

Newsline: some people are wondering if Sega is awake anymore. No amount of flapping hands frantically over its motionless eyes will raise the once vibrant giant from its slumber, in a month when information on its new hardware platform leapt into the public domain and Saturn sat precariously under the $199 guillotine, the company managed to only stare silently into space.

bottomline: Sega: It's time to go to work. The long-rumored price drop to $129 needs to happen sooner rather than later. And pretending to ignore that we all know all about Black Belt will not make us forget Its existence.

affects the games you play

equivalent of $400, only to drop the price after one month to $300.

bottomline: So, either the plan all along was to take U.K.'s Nintendo-crazed early adopters for a pretty pound while the machine was super-hot, before dropping to a reasonable level, or Nintendo heard the cries of the faithful and dropped the price quickly.

Either way, British gamers are not happy at the high premium they had to pay (against the U.S. price of $150).

MPLAYER'S FUTURE SEARCH

Newsline: internet Partnership Of The Month? MPath and Intel teamed up to offer support to any game developers hoping to create true Internet games.

bottomline: MPlayer Is already deeply involved with developers in an attempt to make sure all relevant commercial games have multiplayer capabilities. While the future of that market still may be the domain of the publishers themselves, it's up to MPath and other online game providers to keep looking for more options.

BIG DEAL THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN

NEWSLINE: T*HQ has decided against publishing Psygnosis games for Saturn.

BOTTOMLINE: Remember all the fuss in 1995 when Sony subsidiary Psygnosis warned it would be releasing its PlayStation games to Saturn? Psygnosis Saturn games to date: Only three in the U.S.

ORIGINAL SINS

NEWSLINE: Believe it or not, 80% of PlayStation games sold belong to only three genres.

BOTTOMLINE: That's right. A full quarter of all PlayStation titles are racing games. Sports make up 35%, and fighting 19%. And you wonder why there's no originality?

NINTENDO'S BRITISH INVASION

NEWSLINE: Britain is one of those little countries that can't get enough Nintendo. So there was some bitterness there when the beloved Big N introduced Nintendo 64 at the

Visit Next Generation Online, the number one website for computer and videogames at http://www.next- generation.com/ It's updated every p-v_

single day.,. Ul>°

34

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The Carmageddoim XV5

Car & Pedestrian Magazine

“Best road-kill compacter in its class. ”

J.D. Cower & Associates

“It slices, it dices, it wipes clean in

aim ”

Consumer Contorts

True 3D, 360- graphics ENGINE FEATURES USER- DEFINABLE CAMERA ANGLES, INSTANT REPLAY AND SVGA OPTIONS

25 DIFFERENT VEHICLES, EACH FEATURING ACCURATE DRIVING PHYSICS AND

Shown with optional hood ornament.

REALISTIC COLLISION DAMAGE

AND 5 DIFFERENT RACE ENVIRONMENTS FEATURE COMPLETE FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT

Metwork PLAY INCLUDES 7 MODES AND 3 UNIQUE TRACKS

Pedestrians ^points!

Some race for glory. Some for money. Then there are those who drive for the sheer ecstasy of crunching bones against their bumper.

Introducing Carmageddon.

The racing game that separates the men from the grease spots on the road.

Drive whatever you want, wherever you want, over whoever you want. You make the rules.

ARRIVING JULY 1997!

Available on PC CD-ROM Test drive the demo at www.interplay.com

Stomach-churning reausm . . .

CRASH, CRUMPLE, BURN, SKID, AND JUMP IN GLORIOUS 3D!

520 HORSES UNDER THE HOOD. EVEN MORE PEDESTRIANS ON TOP.

Power-assisted 4-wheel disc brakes,

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f~llGH-TENSILE-STRENGTH STEEL BODY PANELS PROVIDE THE DURABILITY YOU NEED, IMPACT AFTER IMPACT.

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NEVER MISS THE BIG BEACH PARTY AGAIN.

The racing game for the chemically imbalanced.

©1997 and trademark SCi. All rights reserved. Interplay is the trademark of Interplay Productions. All rights reserved. Exclusively published and distributed by Interplay Productions. All other copyrights and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

h y p e r - a m p 1 i f i e d sound

available at these fine national retailers

open

FuncoLand

What

makes a

Videogames, like music videos and digital movie effects, are a modern-day art. Anyone who doesn't believe that should stop reading right here. As with any art, good and bad examples abound This month. Next Generation explains what it takes to be good.

What makes a good game? Next Generation has isolated six elements found in every successful game throughout history. When considering games, or anything else, as an art form, it’s important to recognize that these elements are more easily spotted than executed, and we aren’t suggesting that simply knowing what it takes to make a great game guarantees good game design. Of the millions of people who have picked up a paintbrush or a guitar or sat at a typewriter, only a few have succeeded in creating great art. Knowing and doing are two separate, equally vital skills. Inspiration is obviously another matter to consider.

Good game design is about achieving a certain harmony through the use of all available elements, and it takes an artist to create this kind of harmony. The following

special feature only aims to list and describe the elements of a good game — it’s up to the talent and skill of a great designer (and programming and art team) to put them together in a successful mix.

An important distinction to be made at this point is the one between single-player and multiplayer competitive games. The following text deals only with single-player games unless otherwise noted, because the source of competition means that very different dynamics exist in these two kinds of games. In a multiplayer game, the balance is found somewhere between the various players’ skill levels; in a single-player game, this responsibility rests squarely on the computer Al. For a brief description of what makes a good multiplayer game see “What Makes a Good Multiplayer Game?” on page 44.

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

ng special

Good game design is

balanced

Poorly balanced gameplay and pacing are the most common mistakes in game design.

— Richard Garriott, President. Origin (The ultima Series)

□ alance is at the heart of prominent eastern religions, a blessing to athletes, and absolutely essential to good game design. Balance hangs in the shadows of all great games and proves itself the backbone of any successful project.

Balance makes a game feel right and can rescue a mediocre concept, while a lack of balance can dash against the rocks a brilliantly conceived notion. It’s the unseen force that raises you up, beats you down, sends you away in anger, and brings you back for more. More than any other element, it’s the quality that makes you feel good about playing a game.

Looking at how balance applies directly to videogames is not easy because it often represents the sum total of many elements we will explore, and it’s sometimes not until the end that a well-balanced game reveals itself

Balance is found most specifically in the Al. In a multiplayer game, the balance is struck by the opponents’ skill levels and thus can be perfect or totally out of whack, but in a one- player game it has to come from the computer Al. In Tomb Raider, if the challenge of the first few levels had been much more than just figuring out how to navigate the terrain, then

Nearly every game starts off with at least some part of it not being possible, the clever part is how the design changes in the finished game.

— Adrian smith. Operations Director. Core Design (Tomb Raider, Thunderstrike )

exploration and balanced that against a more challenging puzzle aspect at the end of the game.

Conversely, in Mario Kart 64, no matter how well you race in one-player mode, no matter how far ahead you get, if you slip up at at all you get passed. The game cheats. There is simply no worse way to “balance” a game (and no better way to ensure that gamers tire of it quickly).

A game with balance never leaves players sputtering, “That wasn’t fair!” as they throw the controller to the floor. Instead, good balance carefully, and according to plan, doles out appropriate challenges and rewards on the way to its conclusion. This does not mean that the rewards should be million-dollar FMV sequences. In fact, a carefully balanced game is satisfying without any fancy extras. Balance is probably the one game design element that cannot be faked and comes only through careful planning, mathematical reasoning, and most of all play-testing until the game testers cry uncle. It’s a part of game design that can never be solved by throwing money at the

Pre-design your game before you start development on it. This will allow you and your team to have a strong set of goals.

— John Romero. President ion Storm (Doom. Wallenstein 3D)

as such. Super Mario Bros, was challenging, but with each level it became evident that the game was not unfair but rather prepared players for the next level. In doing so, the game never forced players into situations they weren’t ready for. This is only one specific kind of balance, however. Whereas Mario maintained a consistent challenge throughout a very long and involved game, balance is just as effective in a racing game such as Manx TT which offers a host of motorcycles with different strengths and weaknesses so that each player can find a comfortable fit.

players would probably never have enjoyed the later levels as much as they did.

Tomb Raider represents a fairly unusual use of balance. Whereas most games spend their time trying to teach players one basic skill and to control the challenge level of that skill throughout the game, Tomb Raider lets the first part of the game be devoted to light

project or tossing in unnecessary features; in fact, it’s exactly this kind of frivolous approach that often delivers an unbalanced game. In the end, making a balanced game is less art than hard work and simply represents the answer to some of the most basic questions in game design: Is this necessary? Is this fair? Does this feel right?

As Doom taught people how to play a first-person shooter, it kept its lessons easily digestible and encouraging

A big part of the success of Tetris stems from the game's ability to control the pace and balance of its challenge

Tomb Raider uses a sophisticated sense of balance that successfully shifts from action to puzzle-solving as the game progresses

42

ns special

Good game design is

creative

Hne might think creativity would be integral to all serious game design, but sadly, the lion’s share of titles today are seriously lacking in it. Game design, like much popular entertainment, has fallen into a serious rut of formulaic despair, with any innovation (like Command & Conquer) followed by endless repetition. Only real creativity, not "it’s like ‘game x’, but...” derivatives can overcome this industry shortcoming. Creativity should also be a part of the game’s challenges — expect more of players and they will, in turn, appreciate the game as something special. Finally, creativity is only properly received if it’s delivered in a game that makes sense and is more fun because of it. Certainly, some games with the

designers want to keep players’ attention (and business), they will have to think of new and exciting ways to challenge them. There is nothing worse than picking up a game that promises a new gameplay experience only to find out it’s the same old game with fancy new

What is the reason to design games if you can’t do something new?

— John Romero. President. Ion Storm

fell in love with the game because of it.

Another element necessary to creative design is the ability to bring the original features to the forefront in an almost casual manner. It’s one thing for a “smart” team to dream up a list of clever game ideas, but without the ability to integrate them into a game that makes sense and feels natural, they are of little use. If these ideas end up buried deep in the game or tacked on at the end, then the effort was pretty much in vain. Ultimately, taking the risk is worth it, even if it means several failed attempts.

While it can be argued that early game designers were more creative because standards had not yet been established and there was good territory to mine, creative thinkers in today’s industry have an amazing opportunity. With an entire generation of players familiar with what it means to play a videogame, designers no longer have to worry about “babying” them and thus are free to raise the bar on what can happen in a

Stay away from the marketing department. Stay away from the marketing department. Stay away from the marketing department.

- Travis L williams. Executive Producer, ASC Games {Street Fighter II Turbo. X-Men: Children of the Atom)

The bulk of poor titles last year are a result of the new demands catching even proven teams off guard.

— James Goddard, Chief Planner, Dead On Design WesponLord. Street Fighter It: Championship edition)

right stuff at their core lack the confidence and the means to deliver their message, and so never make themselves known as great.

Historically, intelligence and creativity have walked hand in hand — great thinkers such as Thomas Edison certainly proved this. A handful of designers have been willing to take similar chances. But when 99% of all games delivered to market today are fitting neatly into one of about eight well-defined genres, it’s tempting to believe that most designers and publishers are taking the easy way out — waiting for a visionary to establish a new set of rules for each generation and then copying them until the concept runs dry. We’ve seen it a million times — id creates Wolfenstein 3D and suddenly we’re faced with countless clones.

The world needs followers as much as leaders, but in an art form limited only by the designer’s imagination, the game industry has an inordinate number of followers. A creative surprise is almost never a bad thing and should be a priority for every game designer.

A creative touch is most recognizable in the specific challenge of the game. In the early days, it was enough to simply make the player jump across a tar pit onto the heads of crocodiles or navigate a forward-scrolling landscape, but players are growing up. If game

graphics. On the other hand, there’s nothing better than expecting the same old thing and getting surprised by something totally unexpected and clever. A game such as Jumping Flash!, for example, took what was already a tired format (the first- person shooter) and made something completely new and innovative — and people

The Jumping Flash! series took a familiar genre and changed the dynamic with one simple innovation — the jump

videogame. This could easily provide the setting for the most exciting advancements in gameplay yet. In the end, producing a creative game is a matter of wanting to do something new and challenging and then making it work.

Nights successfully offered a whole new gameplay challenge within the comfortable confines of the platform genre

With so many titles being forced on the shelves, you need to be innovative to be noticed, you need to be revolutionary to sell.

— Howard Schwartz, Executive Producer. ASC Games Wien Trilogy, NBA Jam extreme)

43

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

ng special

Good game design is

focused

ome of the best games were made great by maintaining a very rigid focus on what made the experience enjoyable. Tetris is the obvious example of a game with focus. It contains no frills, no FMV intro sequence, no real change in gameplay from beginning to end, and yet it is still one of the most fun and successful games ever. But this is the literal approach of focus, and there are as many interpretations as there are success stories in the videogame industry. When used properly, in fact, focus has very little to do with repetition (as in the case of Tetris) and much more to do with keeping a tight reign on the game’s purpose.

The idea is simple: decide what’s fun about the game and make sure the player is

exposed to it at all times. Is it fun to break away from a heart-pounding action game to watch a long and meaningless FMV sequence? Absolutely not. An excellent example is in Wipeout XL where the enjoyment is in the racing, and so everything else in the game,

Good game design is eternal; new hardware is temporary.

— Howard Schwartz, rxecutive Producer, ASC Games

unique control of the game and offers a long list of incredible, futuristic weapons. Where a game such as Wipeout XL succeeds is in its ability to bring to the forefront all of these elements and not get hung up on unnecessary extras. Could the designers at Psygnosis have taken a month of precious development time dreaming up ridiculous features that allowed players to customize the finish on their vehicles or draw funny pictures on the billboards? Of course they could have, but that would have been one less month concentrating on the things that really matter in the game.

With the arrival of 3D gaming and specifically 3D environments, game designers are faced with several new challenges in keeping their games focused. The main problem is one of freedom and how to offer it — or at least the illusion of freedom — without

To avoid the loss of focus in the age of 3D, some game designers have resorted to putting their games on invisible tracks

It’s very simple to copy others’ ideas — that’s development. Coming up with new ideas is research and can’t be scheduled.

— Kerry J. Ganofsky, CKWoonder, High Voltage Software. Inc (NBA Hangtimc, Tempest X3)

such as the vehicle and track select screens, has been streamlined so that the player can spend as much time actually racing as possible. But it goes beyond that. What’s specifically fun about Wipeout XL is more than just the racing — if that were the only thing then it wouldn’t stand out above any other racing game. What’s fun about Wipeout XL is the future/fantasy aspect that creates the

What Makes A Good Multiplayer Game?

The online gaming revolution is upon us and games may never be the same. After years of creating games primarily for one player, designers are now struggling with the brave new world of multiplayer games. But while everyone is jumping on the multiplayer bandwagon, only a handful of designers have really

caught on, and for every success story there are several failed attempts. So, what keeps the great games out of the bargain bin and on your hard drive?

Speed

Probably more than anything, multiplayer games have to be fast. Speed does not necessarily mean that the action itself has to be fast, but rather that the game should be efficient in the way it deals with a multiplayer scenario. While this is not typically a problem for console players crowded around a single

television, it is a serious issue for computer games played over a modem or the Internet.

For games to stay in synch, every computer (client) must be able to send its game state information to a host machine, which then sends out the relevant information to everyone else. This means if the red player in Doom shoots a rocket at the green player, the host machine must get the information and send it out in a timely manner: before the blue player escapes through the door.

This is accomplished by

ensuring that every time the player’s machine sends updates to the server, it only sends relevant information such as location, direction, and momentum — not things like what team the player is on or the player’s nickname.

Advanced Interaction

You can get some satisfaction by shooting opponents and scoring points. But you can get much more enjoyment if you can also completely humiliate opponents in the process. For example in Doom, when you shoot

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creating a sloppy game. When designers first realized that they could create a world in which a character could be led around anywhere, many of them thought that was enough to make a fun game. But the truth of the matter is, it’s not fun just walking around a 3D environment; if it were, people would walk around their office buildings or schools all day long having fun. What is fun is having the

is about and never lets them down. This does not mean that a game has to be about the exact same thing from start to finish, but that it should establish a goal or a set of goals and set off on a clear path toward achieving them. Focus is what keeps a player from ever having to say: “I hate this part! Why on earth would they put this lousy shooter in the middle of my adventure game?”

One of the most common mistakes in game design is trying to incorporate game elements that are not true to the main focus of the title.

freedom to move anywhere in a 3D environment and finding yourself enticed down a particular path that is specifically designed for enjoyment. A focused 3D game will always make it clear where the fun is and will never mistakenly value wandering around for 15 minutes, just for the sake of freedom, for fun.

Focus, in the end, is the quality that keeps a player interested in the game throughout. It’s the quality that lets players know what a game

While some games have successfully employed elements such as FMV, extras often distract from the focus of the game

3D is a neat feature, but things are getting ugly as the player’s eyes clear from the initial 32-bit glitz and are screaming, "Where is the gameplay?"

— James Goddard, Chief Planner, Dead On Design

Wipeout XL is an example of a game that knows what it's about and stays focused throughout

opponents, they pretty much die and that’s it. But in Duke Nukem 3D, you can freeze them solid, then walk up and kick them into tiny ice shards or shrink them into a tiny six-inch figure and watch them scurry around before you stomp them. In Rocket Jockey, you never actually kill opponents, but you can yank them off their rocket cycles, drag them across the arena, and tether them between two poles. To be truly successful in a game centered around the interaction between players, that interaction needs to be both advanced and

inventive. Simply shooting opponents is fine for single¬ player games when you’re dealing with hordes of Al drones, but when players are willing to work hard to best a clever human opponent, a good game will give them the tools to do it with.

Focused Gameplay Some older network games require everyone to gather in a chat room, decide who’s going to play, and then simultaneously launch their game. If one player drops out, the whole tedious

process has to begin again. A much better example for good multiplayer game design is Quake or the more recent Interstate ’76. People can jump into a running game at any time, or quit whenever they want, without crashing the game server. The result: any time, day or night, hundreds, if not thousands, of people are playing Quake on the Internet. The easier you make it to get into a game, the more people will play it.

Another way to keep things easy for people is by

keeping the design uncluttered. Most people play multiplayer games as a quick way to blow off steam — they don’t want to invest a weekend just trying to figure out the basic rules. Throwing a bunch of extraneous power-ups, play options, and extra units into a game isn’t going to make a weak design any stronger — no more than it would in a single-player game. The classic example is Bomberman; it has an extremely simple multiplayer formula that’s also one of the best.

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Good game design has

character

t’s important to distinguish the difference between overall character in a game’s design and a character in the game. In an ideal situation, the two support each other, but one can exist without the other (both successfully and otherwise). A game like Soviet Strike has a cold and impersonal helicopter as its lead character, but the game itself is drenched in a distinct style that makes it nothing short of captivating. And in Quake, the character is nothing more than a forearm.

On the other end of the scale, countless movie license titles begin with extremely strong lead characters but go on to deliver the ultimate in bland, boring, character-free games.

Of course, one of the big components of a game’s character are the actual characters in the game. What die-hard Nintendo fan, after all, can’t recite by name every incidental enemy in Bowser’s army? And how many Virtua Fighter fans aren’t perfectly willing to believe that their favorite characters really exist in some alternate universe? The point is, games with fully developed character (including,

Mario 64, even though the jump from 2D to 3D graphics changed the look of the game quite dramatically. It worked, in the end, because the game’s creator and audience understood what the character of a Mario game was all about. Part of that was the character of Mario, but just as important was the overall feel of the game.

Of course, if you can create a memorable character along the way — that’s a bonus!

— Adrian Smith, operations Director, Core Design

drastically watered down because of technological limits. The danger of today’s technology is that it often makes it too easy for designers to be lazy and it’s often the depth of character that suffers. Those making great games use technology as a means to go beyond what’s expected, while the rest use it as a shortcut to get at the standards faster. In the end, the best designers know that technology is only a tool; how it is used is what counts. In the early days, after all, rudimentary graphics made it difficult to create a convincing jungle scene but how many gamers let themselves be fully convinced by the jungle settings and wild creatures in the original Pitfall ? Pretty much all of them and it was because of the game’s well- developed character — not its graphics.

Character (like God) is in the details. While no bad games have ever been saved by details alone, many good games have felt great

If designers would concentrate on making a complete world, they would be amazed at how these (gameplay) solutions just appear.

— Travis L williams, fxecutive Producer, ASC Games (Street Fighter II Turbo. XMcn: CtMen of the Atom)

I would like my games to be remembered for the quality and richness of their stories.

— Richard Garrlott President. Origin (The Ultima Series)

when appropriate, fully developed characters) are the ones we remember and revere. They are the games that smack of care, planning, and vision. Character is also the quality that enables a series such as Mario to be upgraded from system to system without ever losing its original charm. Think about how natural it all seemed to see the lush environments in Super

As gaming hardware becomes ever more capable of hosting amazing graphic environments and sound libraries, limitless new opportunities exist to fully develop a game’s character. This is not to suggest that a game has to include remarkable graphics to have character — just look at Tail of the Sun. But today’s technology enables designers to create games that are truly representative of the details in their heads. And so an idea, be it visual or otherwise, no longer has to be

because of them. When Sonic first faced the screen and tapped his foot in displeasure at having been left unplayed for too long, gamers instantly understood what the character of a Sonic game was all about. With that one little detail, the entire series was enhanced (and a new generation of imitative “idle animations” was launched). The personality of a game is similar to the personality of a human being — a “good” one can inspire instant affection, while a “poor” one can kill a relationship before it’s even started. This is why developing thorough and likable character in games is key.

A game like Super Mario 64 is instantly recognizable and enjoyable because of the deep and consistent character of the series

Technological advances let today's designers give their games exactly the kind of character they pictured in their heads

sometimes it's something as simple as Sonic impatiently tapping his foot that gives a game its distinct personality

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Good game design has

tension

he important difference between an action movie and an action game is that movie viewers know the protagonist will come out on top in the end, and thus any amount of tension caused by a belief that he or she may not ultimately succeed is simply part of the process. In a game, however, the hero only wins if the player is skilled enough to make it happen, and this creates an amazing opportunity for game designers to develop real tension.

The first time players encounter a zombie in Resident Evil, inevitably their blood starts pumping, a few stray shotgun blasts fly off in nervous haste, and finally the fatal shot is delivered to the head. With that simple encounter, most players are hooked. Tension

action games such as Tomb Raider or puzzle games such as Tetris, some genres require a little more sophistication in their delivery — but it’s still every bit as important to find a place for it. In a driving game, for example, tension comes from good competitor Al as

blown to bits. Even the turn based games (the good ones) provide the tension inherent in the thought, “what do I do now?” In the end, tension in videogames gives the player the chance to act out the final scene in every great action/adventure movie — the scene in which the hero’s back is against the wall and everything seems to be working against him or her, but suddenly, to the disbelief of all watching, he or she manages just one last trick and wins one for the good side. A great

The first time I played D, it was a stormy night and I had the light out. I opened a door in the game and actually screamed.

— Howard Schwartz, Executive Producer. ASC Carnes

doesn’t require an action game, of course Oust as other genres of movie can provide far more tension than an action movie). Remember waiting for a long thin piece in Tetris, as your pieces stack closer and closer to the top? Or waiting for the right animal in Baku Baku to implement a devastating combo?

Tension has been found in great games throughout history and has been missing from the worst. It makes you pause the game every few minutes to take a deep breath instead of turning the game off after the first few minutes because you just don’t care to play any longer. The idea is simple — make the player care about the goal of the game and then threaten to take it away. This can be done countless ways, but the best games manage to do it better than others. Take for example one of the many generic side-scrollers of the 16-bit days. The formula approach was to throw tons of mindless enemies at players until they finally got worn down enough to loose a life, then have the process start all over again. But it would take a screenful of these enemies to equal the intense pressure created by just one of the hideous flying demons in Tomb Raider which taunt and lure the player into a lengthy battle of give and take.

While it’s easy to see how tension works in

We now have the tools to create complex games that have amazing graphics, speed, and audio. It’s all up to game designers to use these assets efficiently.

— John Romero, Chief Planner. Dead On Design

players are heading down the final stretch, neck and neck with a car that is actually trying to run them off the road or force them into the high side of the final curve. In a story-reliant game, diminishing time is always a good source of tension; if players don’t crack the puzzle to open the locked door in time, they will be

designer knows how to place the player in this situation and how to provide that last trick for players to discover at the right moment while making them feel they did it all on their own.

I have high hopes for breakthroughs in Al and voice recognition and think these technologies can lead to smarter games.

— Helmut Kobler. President Cyclone Design

One of the most dramatic examples of tension in a videogame is found in the slow and determined pace of Resident Evil

Simply by limiting the number of enemies in the game, each battle in Tomb Raider becomes a tense and meaningful situation

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Good game design has

energy

Hone right, a videogame can bring to life an entire world. These games have a real sense of energy — the kind of games that make you forget to check the clock until the wee hours of the morning or rejuvenate you after a hard day at work or school. But this quality doesn’t have to come from the obvious kind of explosive force found in a fast-action shooter such as Quake or a high-speed racing game such as Rage Racer.

In fact, energy can just as easily be expressed in a complex adventure game that carefully

I think, for a while, publishers cared more about good-looking than good-playing.

— Travis L williams. Executive Producer. ASC Games

played a game when everything was new and exciting.

Several things translate into energy on a TV or computer screen. Movement is a key element to creating a lively atmosphere. The simple choice to include waving flags in the background of Vectorman gave the very first level of the game a heightened sense of excitement. A game that uses this technique is more likely to get the player charged up and excited about what’s to come.

Making games is a creative endeavor. If you’re doing anything at all original, it’s an organic, figure-it-out-as-you-go process.

— Helmut Kobler, president. Cyclone Design {Battle Sport captain Quant)

marching into battle or getting ready to dive out of an airplane.

Probably the most exciting and challenging method of introducing energy into a game, however, is from fine-tuning the Al to the point that players begin to feel that the game is truly reacting to what they are doing. When the Al is convincing enough to give a game a feeling of reality, the player feeds off this energy. Only living things react in this kind of intelligent manner, and there is no greater thrill than when a game seems to have actually developed its own sense of power. Beating the game suddenly becomes much more than an intellectual challenge — it becomes an emotional necessity.

I think one of the most important things that could happen to game design is a crossover of underground design into the mainstream.

— Kerry J. Ganofsky, CEO/Pounder, High Voltage Software. Inc. (NBA Hangtime. Tempest X3)

leads players from one clue to the next until suddenly they are just one step away from cracking the code on the flying machine that will take them to the next level. Energy in videogames is all about movement, momentum, and pace; the best game designers know exactly how to exploit it and infect players with the game’s spirit.

We’ve all experienced the unpleasant

I just want people to think my games are fun. Isn't being damn fun perfection enough?

— Helmut Kobler. President, Cyclone Design

phenomenon of popping a new game into the player and anxiously awaiting the big thrill ride promised on the box only to be greeted by a flat and lifeless experience tempting us to turn off the machine and go to bed. Fortunately, sometimes we’ve sat down to play a game without expecting much — it’s shareware or a rental — and suddenly found ourselves caught up in a whirlwind of excitement in which every turn leads to some new sign of life. These games manage to give even the most seasoned players a thrill comparable to that felt the first time they

Music can also be used to raise the energy level in a game and is probably one of the most under-utilized methods. While a lifeless soundtrack can get by as nothing more than background atmosphere, used correctly, music can inject a whole new sense of energy into a project. Even in the most tedious of set-up screens, a motivating soundtrack can make players feel like they are

The dramatic music in the Panzer Dragoon series sets the tone for a very exciting battle in the sky before the battle starts

As with most elements of good design, a game with these qualities is useless if the designers can’t find a way to let players tap into it. A well-designed game will invite players to celebrate the game’s energy — and even give them the opportunity to increase it as their skill levels increase. In doing so, the game enables

players to become part of a more organic _

and thoroughly satisfying experience. <

Energy need not come from an explosive action scene, it can just as easily come from a well-designed puzzle-solving episode

48

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Why It All Matters

We certainly hope that this article provides some food for thought for developers. But how does all this help the gamer? After all, liking or disliking a videogame often comes down to a matter of personal taste (the l-don’t-know- anything-about-art-but-l-know-what-l-like school of thought). In the end, understanding the finer points of what makes a good game invites a deeper appreciation for games in general. Michelangelo’s sculptures can be appreciated without knowing anything about the complex muscle structure of the human body, but the appreciation is much deeper when the viewer understands exactly what kind of effort went into delivering such a deep and careful expression of the human form.

The elements highlighted in this feature are not new. In fact, each one is just a part of why we all love videogames so much in the first place, but by identifying them in this way, it makes it

easier to demand them in games — both on the consumer side (“this game has no energy, I won’t be buying the sequel”) and on the developer side (“OK, Suit. I can ship this game now, but without the additional playtesting to balance it, expect horrendous reviews and sales”).

And so, as we look to the future and ask ourselves what videogames will deliver next, we can examine what we already know and demand that future games go beyond by introducing new and exciting elements into the mix. What if, for example, tomorrow’s games not only gave us balance, creativity, focus, character, tension and energy but also went on to explore emotion, intellectual fulfillment, and artistic inspiration. The point is, we know what it takes to make a good game and if we can count on all these elements in every game, then we can get back to what’s most exciting about videogames — dreaming up what’s next.

Publishers and Developers

CONQUER EUROPE!

It's easy when you know how.

.J _

(Codemasters ^

The Codemasters Organization, with headquarters in the UK, is a leading European publisher of computer and video games. In our 11 year history we have built an extensive European-wide distribution network via established trading relationships with major distributors and retailers in each country. Our high profile youth marketing activities have given us many Number One Hits over the years.

it

it

A

Visit

Codemasters at

Stand # 8010 Georgia Dome

Europes spsh hit!

If you would like to fully exploit the European market for your games we would be happy to talk to you.

Please contact Justin Gaffney to arrange submission of AAA games for licensing of European distribution rights.

Codemasters, E3 booth 8010, Georgia Dome. Email justing@codemasters.com to arrange a confidential meeting.

Tel: +44 1926 814132 Fax: +44 1926 817595 http://www.codemasters.com

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

OBSERVATION

GEX is juiced with over 1 25 unique ’^■iV moves, 3,400 frames of fluid v-'-* character animation and seamless lizard skin texturing. HBQ® comedian Dana Gould returns as the voice of GEX, lampooning Hollywood's finest With oven 500 lip-synched celebrity impressions and smart ass one-liners.

CD-ROM

PlayStation

For more GEX product and contest info, visit our website at www.crystald.com

the GEX character are trademarks of

Dynamics logo, GEX,

/stah Dynamics, the

iami<

1 997 Crystal Dynamics. All rights reserved.

31n tlje lanb of fDarliamainc, a corpse s nostrils anil moutb arc scion sljut, its knees anil ^ big; foes tieii, anil a lullaby is lobispereb into tlje

body’s ear.

* •

sometimes iieatlj is£)ust tlje beginning

It’s a grim world where voodoo tainted civilizations tap the spiritual energy of the freshly killed. Welcome to Akuji the Heartless - an epic tale from the demented publishers of Blood Omen: Legacy of KainT Enter the world of Stratos and experience the power of casting voodoo spells as you wander through a vast 3D action adventure laced with sacrifice, warring cultures and the living dead.

_ _ _

Akuji the Heartless" possesses the PlayStation" Game Console, March 1998

m

CRYSTAL

fzazEszznsj

w

Crystal Dynamics, the Crystal Dynamics logo; the GEX character. Hood Omen: Legacy »f Kan, and Akop the Heartless are trademarks of Crystal Djnamkx. © 1997 M rights resened. PlajiStation and the PlayStation toga <

The best just got better. Introducing Flight Unlimited n from Looking Glass. The most realistic flight experience ever in a PC simulation.

Fly through a sky filled with commercial, civilian and MILITARY AIRCRAFT. REAL-TIME COMMUNICATION BETWEEN

you and Air Traffic Control gets you through the jam.

Experience 25 heart-pounding adventures, including DODGING TWO F-16S WITH THE LICENSE TO KILL WHEN YOU VIOLATE RESTRICTED AIRSPACE.

At THE CONTROLS OF THIS DeHAVILLAND BEAVER SEAPLANE, YOU CAN TRY SOMETHING TOTALLY NEW IN A FLIGHT SIM — LAND ON WATER.

"The Real Deal’

C/Net’s GameCenter

Throw everything you know about flight sims right out the window. Because Flight Unlimited II takes the realism and thrill of simulated flying to a higher plane. Over 11,000 square miles of incredible Bay Area terrain accurately modeled for the most precise detail ever in a flight sim. The most advanced weather effects — rain, lightning, cross wind and more. Visual and instrument navigation. Six of the coolest civilian aircraft, including the legendary P-51D Mustang. Whether you're a high-flyin' veteran or just getting off the ground, check out the sim that sets the standard once again. Flight Unlimited II from Looking Glass...coming this summer.

"The richest, most detailed environment yet seen in a PC flight sim.”

Computer Gaming World

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Take the "Unlimited Challenge" and win really cool prizes, www.lglass.com

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E S. ©1997 Looking Glass Technologies, Inc., Cambridge. MA. Flight Unlimited II and Looking Glass are trademarks of Looking Glass Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Blasto PlayStation World Championship Racing M2 Out of the Void PC CD-ROM Nuclear Strike PlayStation Bomberman 64 Nintendo 64 Sonic Jam Saturn Populous 3 PC CD-ROM Gex: Enter the Gecko PlayStation

All the previews, half the fat

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110

124

□ t's worth asking whether the

PlayStation, after two years on the shelf, has any new tricks left. Sony's answer Blasto. Our exclusive first look begins on page 56, but that's just the first of the info-packed exclusives we've crammed in this month.

Bon appetit.

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NEXT GENERATION July 1997

Format	PlayStation
Publisher	SCEA
Developer	Sony Interactive erica 1
Release Date	Fall 1997
1 Origin	U.S. _

Ttie initial effort from SISA's Foster City studios, Sony hopes Blasto will be both a good game and an impressive demonstration of what PlayStation can do

" be impressive alone, but in .combi natiorf®

^ they provide for a game that is clearly well ** beyond anything currently available for the. ^ system. m t p

The game is full 3D, over-the-should&r*' : similar to Mand^lom^Wder. "we knew - ; we had the engine/' says Beard, "but we ' " thought/are we gonna do what everyone m else does? 'OK, it's a dark future, go blow everything up!' Or do we do.spmething ^ .-that has more personality and depth?" The" ■ : ’team decided to go with a game based on'

. a parody superhero character. Captain 1 ^'blasto. "He's a combination of James Bond, inspector Clouseau, and.Flash Gordon/'says Beard. In the game, Blasto /• must save his planet, Zantax, 5 by finally J vanquishing his arch-nemesis, Bose.

Ene of the biggest criticisms 1 :V leveled at PlayStation before and after its launch was that it^hefty - graphics libraries and OS meant that there was little room for developers to explore, the system, it was said . that PlayStation,. . V despite the good looks of Ridge Racer and ‘.To SHih'Den, just wasn't as powerful as'it seemed. "There's been a lot of unfair. . g| criticism of PlayStation, and we wanted to prc$£:that all wrong," says producer John BeSid; discussing the genesis of the fife v'fhe game the team has produced will meft .only dramatically up the ante for yf^ ■^jiyStatiori technology, but should also , . firmly establish SISA's reputation beyond the realm of sports titles Any one of Blasto' s technological achievements would

■

NEXT GENERATION, 1997

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

113 alphas

Though the character certainly has precedent in the videogame world (i Captain Quazar, for one), the setting of the game, which draws heavily on the Chuck Jones Warner Brothers style, is fairly unique in a 3D videogame (although it was used to some extent in Bubsy3D). As the look of the character and landscape lead you to expect, the game has a humorous tone to it. "We didn't want to bat the player over the head with it," says Beard, "but it is there — for instance one of the idle animations is Blasto pulling his spandex superhero pants out of his butt." Blasto also makes heroic comments throughout the game, of the "Take that, Evildoer!" variety, although (thankfully) they can be toned down or turned off. Still, considering the voice¬ overs will be done by Phil ("Saturday Night Live") Hartman (who is also the voice for Troy McClure of "The Simpsons"), you may not want to.

The game itself is massive — roughly four square miles of explorable area with eight distinct environments. This is quite a lot when you're on foot, with people — or pear-shaped alien soldiers — constantly

The blue chicken (below, left) gives players a higher jump. Keeping with the humor theme, it's named Kay F. See (get It?)

shooting at you. Unlike Tomb Raider, the game streams constantly off CD. "we wanted to prove it could be done — a huge 3D game with no loading time," says Beard. Although there are some non¬ interactive sequences of in-game animation, there are no FMV cut scenes. The distinctions between environments flow gradually — as you leave the desert, you may start to see vegetation that gets thicker and thicker until you realize you're in the jungle environment.

Blasto has huge environments (an average of 70 to 80,000 polygons per environment, with the largest having over 150,000) and tons of animation — three full-time traditional animators worked on the project. Most of the 30+ characters in the game have around 500 frames of animation, and Captain Blasto himself has more than 2,000, with specialized animations (like swimming or flying) loaded and purged in the background, as needed. Because the environment streams off disc, using Redbook audio was impossible. The midi music system, though, is fully interactive and changes tone and pace as Blasto gets in more or less precarious situations.

The gameplay itself should be familiar to most players — this is a platform-shooter — but as long as it's done well, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Blasto has the expected moves: jump, a Tomb Raider- style "walk", a flip, side-steps, and so on. There's even a Yoshi- style blue chicken to ride on.

There will be at least 10 weapons, a jet- pack, and more. Enemy Al is fairly advanced. The standard enemy, the "peartroop," will not notice you until it sees you — unless it hears you kill another peartroop. Enemies also signal to each other, and have variable degrees of courage. Shoot at one and it may stay to fight while another may run away.

we are also assured that "tons" of

These original design sketches are by lead artist Ben Harrison

58

ng alphas

Although there's plenty of shooting (above), there is also exploration (top)

hidden stuff is in the game, from secret areas, to Easter-egg animations. "Say you randomly don't kill someone," says Beard. "He may walk around a corner; and if you follow him, he may go into a secret door or possibility get in a ship and fly away in an animation you haven't seen before."

One of the dangers in creating a game with a massive 3D world is that players will become lost, stuck, or bored (this was a downfall of Bubsy 3D, and even happened occasionally in Tomb Raider ). Although the proof is in the playing, the designers have taken steps to ensure this won't happen, "we've set up the hierarchy of gameplay so there's primary, secondary, and tertiary goals," says Beard, "in the first five minutes we want someone to be able to pick it up and get instant gratification running around and taking stuff out, so you've got the quick initial fun right at the start. Second, you've got environmental hazards and small puzzles — how to get somewhere, and so on. As your tertiary task, you've got larger goals. But we've been very careful how we've designed the maps, so there's not really a situation where your walking around bored — there's always something to do."

says Cuthbert. "But no one's done it on PlayStation yet. it was pretty difficult to implement initially, because we were batting against a wall of people saying, 'It can't be done,' but we thought about it a bit and did it." ( Crash 2 is also rumored to use software z-buffering.)

The use of environment mapping is another PlayStation first. "The reason we did this," says Beard, "is because people said you could never do environment mapping on PlayStation. We got talking to the programmers and that said, 'That's bullshit! — we can do that,' so we did." in the game, Blasto's pants and cowl are both environment mapped, and at one point in the game, there will be a fully reflective "chrome Blasto."

Thanks to low-level programming (the game uses none of PlayStation's graphics libraries), the game also achieves a high polygon per second count at 5l2-by-240 resolution. The game uses PlayStation's ability to do semi-transparent polygons to increase the apparent polygon count — like stained glass windows with lead between the panes, done with a single polygon. "No one's used this yet, because there isn't a tool for it," says Cuthbert. "Photoshop doesn't let you draw like that,

The Marvin the Martian influence is especially evident on the space port above the planet of zantax 5

More than just a game, though, Blasto should stand as an impressive PlayStation technology demonstration. "Everyone says PlayStation can't do certain things," says Dillon Cuthbert, lead programmer. "And we're basically saying; Yes, it can." Most groundbreaking may be the software z-buffering, which enables smooth transitions as Captain Blasto moves in and out of water or mud. "Z- buffering is fairly standard technology,"

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NEXT GENERATION Juiy 1997

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but we developed a way of doing it."

The number of custom tools developed for the project is impressive. The team brings level models and characters in directly from Alias running on an SGI. "It allows us to take everything the artists have and put it onscreen, displayed as the artists originally intended, without any programming limitations," says Cuthbert. "It gives us enormous flexibility in creating just a huge, seamless 3D world. There's nothing rigid or hardwired in there at all." The engine was designed to be extremely flexible and modifiable —testers and designers can alter things such as the view cone very easily. "The flexibility frees us up to what we do best, not just constantly implementing changes for the designers."

One tool lets the designers see exactly which parts of the world are most heavily trafficked by testers— then they can either tweak the design to direct players to important parts of the map, or, if

The lighting effects from Blasto's blaster are nothing short of amazing — and come in handy on a later level that is almost totally dark

an area is simply not visited enough, they can move important elements from that area to a more heavily trafficked spot.

The team denies that their status as a first-party developer gave them any special access to the latest from the labs in Japan, but Cuthbert acknowledges a personal relationship he formed with someone at SCEl helped. "I went to Japan and showed someone some of our technology, and he was impressed enough to keep the contact open. It was just lucky, really, l don't think anyone else here has the same kind of link. It helped that I speak Japanese," he adds. "And we gave him ideas as well."

Case in point: the skinned joint system. All the characters in the game

have skinned joints, so there are no seams in any of the characters. "After seeing that, the library people in Japan developed their own skinned joint system, and it's actually in the current revision of the libraries," says Cuthbert. "But it's only just come out, so we'll be the first to market with it."

The game boasts a complete particle system, and shows off a number of custom routines, like rippling lava. "We discovered a lot of interesting secrets. There's just so much you can do with the PlayStation graphics chip. It's extremely powerful and no one's really utilized it yet."

Also exciting is the use of vertex lighting to prelight the environments "we really didn't want to over-texture map the floors, because games look crappy when you put textures on the floors," says Beard. "They bit out." instead, using vertex lighting (lighting each vertex of a polygon individually, instead of merely lighting the entire polygon at once), a one-color floor, like sand in the desert environment, develops a number of hues and colors, while still looking sharp.

Vertex lighting is an extremely time- consuming process for the artists, and it's a telling sign of the importance of this project to Sony that the Blasto team has been given carte blanche to take artists from other teams to complete the project on time. "We've got priority right now," says Beard. "I've never seen a situation where they said, 'Pull whatever kind of talent you need.' It's really great."

Sony has a lot to prove with Blasto. First, it wants to finally dispel the notion that it lacks a strong first-party development presence. But perhaps more importantly, as PlayStation enters mid-life, Sony is eager to change the reputation of the system. When the system first launched, Sony built developer support by promoting the notion that it was easy to develop for, that nearly anyone who knew how to write "Hello, world" in C could produce a game. Now Sony seems equally eager to make sure people understand that the system that promises any programmer good results, can deliver, to great programmers, fantastic results. r'-v— ,

Blasto should be proof of that. Ul>° j

Most areas have vista points from which the lay of the environment can be seen (top)

&

More design sketches by Harrison show off the flora of Zantax 5

60

are against jou.

He’s skinny. He wears a loincloth. He has no weapons. (He’s the guy that you play.)

Walk. Talk. Feel. Hide.Think. And take on the ugliest bunch of carnivorous crustaceans this side of a baboon’s butt in a new kind of game and a brave new world of interaction.

From slave-laborer at Rupture Farms to Liberator of

the Mudokon, it can all be yours. That is, if you can make it through the most inexplicably challenging gameplay in the known universe.

Communicate with real characters. But, not in some cardboard RP6. Blow away your enemies. But, not in some

don’t get mad: get elum between a paramite and a hard place possession is 9/1 Oths of the law

one-dimensional shooter. Solve wicked situations and you’ve ever seen and blends them into one seamless,

wicked enemies. But, not in some wallpaper puzzle game. surreal, sensory overload of pure gaminij So take your

ODDWORLD: ABE’S ODDYSEE takes every game genre loinclothed butt and claim your destiny. Savior. Or salami.

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SEPTEMBER 1997

ODDWORLD

INHABITANTS

Oddworid Inhabitants Abe’s Odd/see TM & 0 1997 Oddwortd Inhafiitants, Inc. AH Rlshts Resemed- Putdsded and dKritxded Oy GT fcteractwe Software Corp. PlayStatton and the PlayStation Logo are trademarirs Sony Computer Eotertainmant, Inc. Mfcrosoft® and Windows® are registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All ether trademarks are property of their respective companies.

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

ng alphas

world

Championship Racing

world Championship Racing is intended to be as much a demo of M2 features as it is a game. Note the specular highlights and alpha channel smoke

□ s Next Generation goes to press on the brink of E3, Matsushita's plans for the M2 console are still the game industry's biggest mystery. However, while details of the system (and final tech specs) may still be a closely guarded secret, news on

Format	M2
Publisher	Studio 3DO
Developer	Studio 3DO
Release Date	Fall 1997
Origin	U.S.

"in this game there is no pop-in — none at all"

and make the tools more robust for other M2 projects.''

Ed Rotberg, l ead Designer

individual titles is leaking like water through a sieve.

World Championship Racing began development almost three years ago, before the designers even had hardware to work with. "The first six months on a new format are always interesting," says Greg Richardson, producer, "because you're giving as much feedback to the guys who are building the hardware as you are actually developing the game. We knew that going in, and so this has really been a guinea pig project to help define

Lead designer Ed Rotberg, industry veteran of Battlezone fame, puts it this way: "We've been down a few false paths, but because of that we've been on the leading edge as far as development. Maybe that's braggadocio, but l believe we are. Obviously there's never enough time or resources to do things exactly the way you want to, but I'm very pleased with this game. I don't think there's ever been anything out there, ever, that looks anything like this."

And he's right. WCR runs at 30fps at a full 640-by-480, twice the resolution of standard console games — PlayStation

Players can assemble custom cars from specialized parts

ng alphas |

The game's physical model seems to be the most accurate ever available on a console

titles like Tobal No. 1 run that sharp, but Tobal uses no textures. WCR is fully texture-mapped and is based on the Professional Sportscar Racing circuit (formerly the IMSA); it's set on courses all over the world. "One of the reasons we chose that license is they're a fast growing circuit," Richardson explains.

"But, more importantly, we think their cars are far and away the most beautiful, and the tracks they use, like Laguna and New Orleans, are just world class venues. It really gave us a lot of creativity."

The tracks were each modeled down to every last curve and tree on the sidelines. The landscape model for each is constant, but the designers have used no replacement geometry for the tracks (as can be seen in Pilotwings 64, for example), "in this game there's no pop-in — none at all," Rotberg boasts with obvious pride. "One of the things you'll notice is that our tires are round. I mean they are round ! We don't screw around with any of this other stuff. They are round'."

Players will be able to choose from "standard" cars but can also assemble custom cars from a selection of body styles, engines, tires, and so on. The game can be played with a more or less demanding physical model, in either arcade or sim mode. The sim model is highly accurate, reflecting not only speed and momentum, but even a separate variable for each tire's suspension. "You won't have to worry about things like tire temperature and wear in arcade mode," Rotberg explains. "But in sim mode when you start out on the track, your tires are cold and you won't have the same traction you will have as you race. So we

When cars swerve, they leave tire marks, and the marks remain on the track for the entire duration of the race

put some gauges on the dashboard showing tire temperature and tire wear."

The game's bells and whistles include real-time specular highlights, alpha channel smoke, and variable fog.

The latter was a near accident, initially added to the New Orleans stage to hide pop-in. once the engine had been tweaked and the software libraries were optimized, the fog was no longer needed,

"The tracks are world class, it allowed us a lot of creativity"

Greg Richardson. Producer

but it looked so good the designers left it in as an optional weather condition.

Every new system seems to need at least one racing game to show off the hardware. World Championship Racing fills that niche, but could also offer a few surprises. "Let's put it this way," Rotberg concludes. "There's tracks other than those listed, and there are also some other interesting, urn, Easter Eggs, that don't have much to do with racing. But because we were doing a lot of work with this hardware, there were some other things we could do, so we found ways to fit them in." Let's hope Matsushita does the same with the system as a whole. ul>£ <

65

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

Copyright © 1996 3Dfx Interactive, Inc. the 3Dfx Interactive logo and Voodoo Graphics are trademarks of 3Dfx Interactive, Inc.

Images courtesy of Eidos, Ubi Soft, Criterion Studios, Activision, and Shiny Entertainment. Deathtrap Dungeon, Flying Nightmares 2, Tomb Raider, Lara Croft and her likeness are trademarks of EIDOS, PLC. Entertainment © 1997 Shiny Entertainment. Activision is a registered trademark of Activision, Inc. 1996 Activision, Inc. MechWarrior, BattleMech and ‘Mech are registered trademarks and

Get Voodoo.

© 1997 Eidos. Subculture images are trademark of Criterion Studios. © 1997 Criterion Studios. Pod images are trademark of Ubi Soft. MDK images are trademark of Shiny

MechWarrior 2, MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries and MercNet are trademarks of FASA Corporation. All rights reserved. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners.

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ng alphas |

Out of the void

The staff at GameFX are big fans of sci-fi films, out of the void reflects their enthusiasm with brilliantly illuminated spacescape environments

Hike cellular fission, many game companies are been born out of a split. Such was the birth of GameFX (now nine months old) when Noah Davis led a group of fellow Looking Glass employees down the road to a new Arlington, Massachusetts office. Davis, president and CEO of GameFX and LG's former director of technology, describes the move as a forward-thinking one.

"GameFX is dedicated to putting high technology back into gaming," an even-

"GameFX is dedicated to putting high technology back into gaming"

Noah Davis, President

toned Davis says. "We aggressively go after cutting-edge technologies, not necessarily reinventing but adapting them, and put them inside of gaming components as quickly as possible."

Given the look of its first title. Out of the void , GameFX is managing to do just that. This 3D space shooter's gameplay is still early, and Davis insists the design will be kept arcade-simple. But what a beautiful shooter — unlike any game before it, Out of the void looks like CG animation, but it's the real deal. The fully 3D environment features polygon-

Harnessing the power of 3Dfx, GameFX rides home the chip's first native game

Format	PC CD-ROM
Publisher	TBA
Developer	GameFX
Release Date	TBA
Origin	U.S.

modeled spacecrafts with notably smooth edges and complex textures featuring more- detail than anything in the current market. Also immediately evident are the extraordinary lighting effects, comparable to special effects found in movies.

Breakthrough graphics, however, don't usually come on mass-market machines. This is why, currently, Out of the Void only runs on a P200 and requires 3Dfx acceleration. "If a common machine is a P60, P90 or P120," Davis languidly says, "that's too low for us right now." While readily accepting that the mass audience isn't there for him yet, Davis believes that if GameFX builds it, they will come.

To do this, Davis has established strong ties with 3Dfx and Intel. Both companies need developers like GameFX, who can create showpieces for their hardware, as 3Dfx president Greg Ballard concedes. "3Dfx really thinks of itself as a platform, not as a chip company." Ballard says. "They hired me away from Capcom as a way of making a connection to the

The ootv engine pushes around tens of thousands of polygons

69

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

ng alphas

game business. The theory being that we need to have a direct link to game content as a way of really exploiting the power of this technology."

And the competition in the accelerator race is already heating up.

"This title has been developed on a board released last November," says 3Dfx V.R of marketing Andy Keane. "You're not on a six-month treadmill with our chip. Out of the void is evidence. This chip will still have distinct value into the following year."

Fortunately for the suits, Davis is also very much behind the development philosophy at 3Dfx technology. "We're of like minds," he says. 'They want to do stuff that no one understands how to deal with quite yet, and that's exactly what our goal is."

Interestingly enough, Davis sees Out of the Void as an episodic game,

with new gaming updates available every couple of months, which may be why they haven't pinned down the number of levels yet.

"Basically, GameFX is a big

experiment," Davis says. "We have different methodologies for games and their storylines." Davis explains that a comic book will ship with the game, providing players with a backstory for the action. At press time, GameFX was negotiating who would actually publish this and future titles. "With this type of space action game there are a number of licenses begging to be done like that,"

Davis says. But due to the limited

"GameFX is a big experiment, we have different methodologies"

Noah Davis. President

number of gamers who will be able to run Out of the Void, he's not positively sure it will be available through the retail channel.

Davis mentions how particularly proud he is of his team and what they've accomplished in the face of companies who have been slow to accept new technology. "The thing is," Davis says, "there's such a gap between what current games give people and what's available given the current processors and 3D accelerators. It's gonna take a r~v~7 year for people to catch up." ul>§j

With true space physics, OOTV doesn't permit traditional tricks, like fogging distant objects. GameFX had to create a realistic spatial partitioning system, in a field of 1,000 polygonal asteroids (above) the game still runs at 30+ fps

70

THE NEH BREED OF COHBAT UNIVERSE

What started as a paper-based, role-playing

GAME IS ABOUT TO REACH EPIC PROPORTIONS.

The Heavy Gear™ universe. Perpetuated by a

WAR BETWEEN NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN LEAGUES.

Defined by a superior war machine, the Heavy Gear. Brought to life by the producers of the ^/l- selling, 3-D combat simulator of all time. Heavy Gear. The new combat universe.

ii

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Pilot one of 16 Heavy Gear

WAR MACHINES, AS WELL AS

Striders and other armored VEHICLES.

The stunning graphics are ELEVATED TO THE NEXT LEVEL

with Direct 3D support.

(screen shots feature D3D)

Engage in a brutal war PITTING THE NORTHERN AND Southern Leagues against EACH OTHER.

C1997 DREAMT# 9. INC. NO TARGET GAMES. AN. BASES ON THE t

C. ACTIVISION IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK Of ACTIVISION. INC. *1997 ACTIVISION.

; RESERVED. ACL OTHER TRADEMARKS AND 1

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NEXT GENERATION July 1997

ng alphas

Nuclear Strike

Hame companies have always adhered to the if-it-ain't-broke- don't-fix-it approach. Successful formulas are safe. Successful formulas sell games (just ask Capcom). Occasionally, though, a developer follows an established formula and creates a product that is new in all the right places.

Nuclear Strike picks up where the top ten-selling Soviet Strike (NG 20) left off, with the team's next mission. Michael Kosaka, Nuclear's enthusiastic producer, explains, "The general storyline has a madman with a nuke running loose, and the Strike's got to track him down."

"we've got a harrier, an A-10, tanks — a little bit of everything"

Electronic Arts is recycling the Soviet engine, with a few improvements. "As far as gameplay goes," says Kosaka, "we're coming back with a bunch of new features, and this time the engine's going to be faster and smoother. We've got a better frame rate going on." The Heads- Up Display now provides more information, and the compass now

Call it a top-down twitch game. Call it the thinking man's shooter. But, please, just don't call it Soviet Strike II

Format	PlayStation, PC CD-ROM
Publisher	Electronic Arts
Developer	Electronic Arts
Release Date	September (PS-X), October (PC)
Origin	U.S.

points the player toward his or her next mission. Also, the loading time of the photo-realistic terrain has been optimized. Terrain streams off the disc, so there is no perceptible loading time.

The ability to pilot additional vehicles is the most interesting new feature. "We're going to have a lot more vehicles," Kosaka explains. "So it's not just the Apache. It'll be a whole variety of choppers, actually. We're probably going to have on the order of five different helicopters to fly, plus we've got a harrier, an A-10, tanks — a little bit of everything." in addition, EA will expand on a feature found in Soviet Strike. In Soviet's level three, players control a group of troops Command & Conquer style; this will happen in at least one of Nuclear's levels.

Nuclear also features a persistent environment. When a player shoots a spread of missiles into the ground, the resulting crater remains for the duration of the level. Weapons include the

74

ng |

Destroy the mountains and hills (left, right) and they'll stay destroyed

standard guns and missiles, along with new additions such as infrared tracking weapons and flame-throwers. The vehicles and weapons look very realistic; early polygonal models show an attention to detail worthy of the company that produces the Jane's series.

The music in Nuclear will be context- sensitive. Kosaka describes it as "a proprietary system we call IMS (interactive Music System) that's based on what's happening in the game. So if you're getting shot, if you're dying, then the music will be very pulse-pounding. If you're off in the boonies, it will be softer."

The Strike series has

historically been difficult, almost to a fault. To this end, EA tells us that Nuclear will be a bit easier than Soviet. "But we're not going to rely on just giving you more bullets," Kosaka says, "because that's sort of a cheap way to do it. We're instead going to concentrate on what information

we're giving the players, how we are getting it to them, and so on."

The designers hope that giving more direction and assistance to the player will attract new fans, while hard-core Strike devotees will still find the game challenging. No one does top-down helicopter shooters like Electronic Arts

"if you're getting shot, if you're dying, then the music will be very pulse-pounding."

(although, admittedly, no one else does top-down helicopter shooters at all), and Nuclear may set a new high —

watermark in the Strike series. Ul>§ j

Note: Look on the Next Generation Disc for exclusive monthly updates on Nuclear Strike's development.

75

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

wttfN YOU

DRlVf a TRUClR THIS

pricin’ ei Cr,

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result is high-octane excitement. Pound asphalt, dirt and the competition into submission in several monster vehicles. And with life-like 4WD suspension, 360° range of motion and killer 3D landscapes, kicking-ass will look kick-ass. Ravage roads. Trample trouble. Send family wagons to meet their maker. Get Thunder Truck Rally, and get ready to shred.

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

ng alphas

Armored Core

From Soft, with a little help from Sony in s set to deliver one of the most mech games ever built

ln-mission cut scenes are handled with non¬ interactive sequences (above). The environmental lighting effects are stunning (left)

□ latform manufacturers giving financial help to smaller developers to encourage development for a system is nothing new (Hasbro distributed scores of free SGI workstations to spark development for its ill-fated VR project), but it's rare to find that level of commitment in a company once it has the dominant platform, as Sony does in Japan.

Still, that's exactly what SCEl's third- party division has been doing in Japan —

Well over 200,000 different core combinations are possible

enabling smaller developers to stop worrying about market pressures and concentrate on developing great games. Armored Core will be one of the first titles to ship under the program.

It's another entry in the giant fighting mechs genre, and the game's attention to detail, both in design and execution, marks it as one of the most impressive titles to come for PlayStation so far this year.

in the game, you play a mercenary

Format	PlayStation
Publisher	SCEA
Developer	From Soft
Release Date	August 1 997
Origin	Japan

with access to a top-rate mech garage. (To avoid the lawsuit by FASA, the game calls mechs "armored cores," the core being the chest section that one commands the mechs from.) in the garage, one's core is constructed. (The robot designer is Shoji Kawamori, of Robotech fame.) Every aspect of the core is customizable — from arms to legs to chest, right-hand weapon, left- hand weapon, secondary weapons, and so on. Well over 200,000 different core combinations are possible.

Once you've created your core, you can completely customize the color (using RGB sliders) and pattern down to the individual component. You can even create your own logo. Then, you name your core and select your mission.

Each of the 30 levels in the game

The satisfaction of launching a missile or six is hard to beat

78

ng alphas |

has between one and six possible missions. Depending on which mission you choose, the missions available to you on the next level may change.

Failing in a mission will bring up a different selection of missions for the next level than if you succeeded, for instance, so it's possible to play the game multiple times without accepting the same mission twice.

The interface for core selection and customization and mission selection is one of the most intuitive and eloquent Next Generation has seen and is typical of the attention to detail that characterizes the project.

Once you select a mission (after seeing a mission briefing, you can reconfigure your core, if you choose), a drop ship brings your core into the action in a non-interactive sequence — just one of several similar touches that add to the immersion level of the game.

Gameplay is fast and high-res. The control is fairly complex — every button of the controller is utilized — but the learning curve is easy. The in-mission graphics are amazing, making full effect of the latest PlayStation graphics libraries — lightsourcing is evident in explosions, animation speed is a consistent 30 fps, and the game's graphics have a solid feel that was simply not present in first- and second- generation PlayStation software.

Missions have an overall goal (protect a train, maybe) and boss, but also feature plenty of fast core-to-core arcade combat

and take between three and 30 minutes to complete, depending on the level. The missions Next Generation played at From Soft's offices in Tokyo had excellent design — always tension-filled, but rarely out-of-control. The feeling we got when playing is best described as a cross between Robotron, warHav/k, and Mech warrior ll.

Completing a mission successfully earns money for core upgrades and reveals the good or evil intentions of the person who put out the contract.

From spent over a year developing the engine alone — it shows

Eventually, players can determine whether a mission is for good or evil and make moral choices for themselves.

The two-player mode (either split¬ screen or via link cable) is well balanced and fun, and souped up cores that one earns in campaign mode can be used in versus mode as well.

From Soft, with Sony's support, spent well over a year in development of the engine alone — it shows. Quality is high, even at alpha. SCEl's practice of supporting promising, but small, third parties is a win-win situation for everyone. Gamers get an excellent game, From soft stands to make plenty of money, and Sony gets another quality addition to its library, it would be a good thing if SCEA considers importing the strategy, as well as the game it helped to create. LfC°7

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

ns alphas

Bomberman 64

The famous Japanese icon forges ahead into

the 64-bit future — hopefully carrying all of its 16-bit magic along with it

Bomberman' s bombs appear as if they might grow or shrink, and with the addition of Mario- like puzzles, the one-player mode seems to have improved ten-fold

Large-scale textures and grandiose environments create new atmosphere for an old series. Our hero appears even smaller than ever

Bhortly after the Bomberman franchise reached the peak of cultural status in Japan, Hudson Japan neatly retooled its entire software development team toward making 3D games. The company, now in preparation with about five Nintendo 64 titles and a

Format	Nintendo 64
Publisher	Hudson
Developer	Hudson
Release Date	Q4 1997
Origin	Japan

Hudson's initial designs for Bomberman 64 were scrapped after about six months of work

few PlayStation games, is entering the next generation head first, with Bomberman carrying (glove in hand) the Hudson banner.

But it hasn't been easy for Hudson, initial designs for Bomberman 64 were scrapped after about six months of work, and the team, seeing even newer 3D games arrive (not to mention Interplay's PC version), started up again with renewed verve and determination. Bomberman 64 is aiming to keep the multiplayer tension of its 16-bit days on Super NES and to boost the first-person play. (After all, it was the multiplayer mode that made the game a classic.)

Early shots of the game display Hudson's smooth transition to 3D with cartoonish but impressive 3D backgrounds and a hint of action-based exploration, similar to that of Super Mario

64. In single-player mode, the Bomberman character must be far more adventurous and seek out secret tunnels and passageways in the 3D arenas to get through to the next level. More belligerent enemies confront players here than in previous incarnations. Gamers will play this mode via an isometric perspective.

Little word is out on the

multiplayer mode, although it's a sure bet to be included. But what really could make it any better? Speedier characters, N64's graphic enhancements (like gorgeous transparency capabilities and anti-aliasing), and new weapons are in the wings. Hudson has hinted at the creation of an N64 multitap (for as many as eight people) as well, so it's highly likely that the Bomberman tests of old are soon to be back in vogue.

After Super Bomberman for the Super NES, Hudson had really reached its zenith in the 16-bit arena; all later versions pale in comparison. Let's hope the 64-bit version brings the magic back, proving Super Bomberman 2 r-v—.

wasn't just a stroke of luck.

Entertainment Inc. "RAYSTORM" is a trademark of Taito Corp., licensed by Working Designs. Original Game © Taito Corp. 1996. tered trademark of Working Designs, Inc. All rights reserved. "SPAZ" is a trademark of Working Designs, Inc. All rights reserved, all 1-800-771 -3772 for Game Rating Information.

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

ng alphas

Sonic Jam

Is this a sign of exciting new things for Sonic or just a fancy new package for some great old games?

True to the style of the sonic series, the 3D level in sonic Jam delivers all the attitude and speed of the original

fter the cancellation of last year's Sonic X-Treme and the subsequent release of the disappointing Sonic 3D Blast, Sega fans have had good reason to be concerned over where the Sonic series is heading.

The recently revealed Sonic Jam, however, could be enough of a reason to get excited about Sega's once-proud mascot all over again. Back in the hands of the Japanese-based Sonic Team (including Sonic and Nights creator YUji

if the 3D level is any indication, a new triple-A game could be heading to Saturn

Naka and Naoto Ohshima), Sonic Jam is a collection of 16-bit Sonic games tied together by an impressive, real-time 3D level designed in the vein of Mario 64.

Sega admits that it is

working on a full game based on the same engine, which makes this new level particularly exciting. The new game is scheduled to be out by the end of the year, and if the 3D level in Sonic Jam is any indication of the ambition level going into the title, a new triple-A (non-arcade) game could be heading to Saturn.

Beyond the 16-bit titles included

Format	Saturn
Publisher	Sega
Developer	Sega
Release Date	August
Origin	Japan

in Sonic Jam (Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, and Sonic & Knuckles), the game offers a gallery of rendered art as well as information about the Sonic "goods" strewn about the 3D landscape. The original Sonic games also benefit from a retrofitted analog control option. Although the digital direction pad still works fine, there is a decided advantage in accuracy using the analog pad.

Other bonus items include a few minor upgrades made to the 16-bit games, such as the ability to save at any point and Spin Dash in the original Sonic The Hedgehog. Sonic Jam will likely be a pleasant walk down memory lane for die-hard fans of the series, but still doesn't quite qualify as a new game. The 3D level is an exciting indicator of what's to come, but on its own does not justify the purchase.

Described as step one in Sega's "Project Sonic," Sonic Jam is at the very least a clear indicator that Sega is not

willing to let the once-revolutionary _ _

series fade away through neglect. l_fL>° \

From the original 16-bit adventures to real-time 3D playgrounds, sonic Jam gives fans a little bit of everything

82

assurance that this product] meets the highest qualityV | standards of SEGA.™ Buy (games and accessories with this seal to be sure that they are compatible with the SEGA Saturn™ System.

mi'S&'i'J 0

legend OF eldean

fun Corporation, Inc., licensed by Woi Call 1r906-2?1*3772 for Information «

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ASG Games™, One™, TNN Motor Sports HardCore 2™, Colliderz™ and 3rd Annuai'TNN Outdoors Bass Tournament™ are trademarks of American Softworks Corporation. TNN® and the TNN® logos are registered service marks and TNN Motor Sports™ and TNN Outdoors™ are trademarks of Hospitality. & Leisure. Management Co., Inc. ©1997 ^American Softworks Corporation. All rights reserved.

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

ng alphas

G-Police

Format
Publisher	Psygnosis
Developer	Psygnosis
Release Date	December 1 99
Origin	U.K.

The flight-based shoot 'em up should blast other end-of-year releases off the planet

Each craft leaves its own thruster trail, and every weapon is accompanied by a different blast effect

When the game begins, it's easy to see its inspiration. G-Police producer, Ross Thody, admits: "We've gone for the Blade Runner look, simply because it was the vision of the future city, dark, moody, and lots of neon."

"we've gone for the Blade Runner look, simply because it was the vision of the future city"

Isygnosis president Ian Heatherington has predicted G- Police will top the charts for Christmas 1997. instead of being horrified at the pressure placed on them, the team responsible for the game has similar sentiments: "The game is excellent," says head producer Graham Davis. "Ian knows this, otherwise he wouldn't have said it."

From the recent evidence Next Generation procured, this confidence

Ross Thody. Producer

isn't misplaced. The game is set in 2097, in domed cities located on one of Jupiter's moons. As part of the local G-Police, players pilot high-tech, heavily armed helicopters. Throughout 35 missions, they must protect innocent civilians from two warring corporations.

According to the team, the missions will be more complex than the cliche "destroy the enemy vehicles then return to base." For example, it's possible to call in ground teams to assist the player and scan vehicles to locate enemy weapons.

Huge skyscrapers with

hundreds of flickering lights loom out of the darkness in front of the cockpit display, various futuristic motor vehicles zoom by on the streets below, and flight craft cruise by. Many of the 50 domes do stray from this future city recipe, industrial, mining, skyscraper, solar panel, and agricultural domes are all included to add diversity to the game's scenery.

With a powerful 3D engine, G-Police places the action among the buildings and structures, rather than above them. Davis notes it hasn't been easy. 'To create a 3D city," he says, "in which the

Sketches show how the futuristic look of 2097 was built

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The lighting effects in G-Police are a particular strong point. Skyscrapers loom in the darkness and thruster craft infest the polluted skies

With a powerful 3D engine, G- Police places the action among the buildings and structures, rather than above them

player has a full 3D ability to fly around, is an epic task. If you can go anywhere, you need tons of 3D art for buildings, cars, planes — especially if you want to give the player lots of environments."

Piloting the Havoc craft (a kind of sci-fi helicopter/thrust vehicle) is an impressively realistic experience and the view rarely shudders as the many tower blocks are cruised by. The handling is tricky at first, as most of the PlayStation pad's buttons are used and there are two control modes to learn — normal and hover.

Once this has been mastered, players can conduct intricate dogfights with several other craft, swoop between buildings, and zoom

precariously beneath pedestrian walkways — with a truly convincing feeling of flight. All the while the engine maintains a steady 30fps update, so the fluidity of the flight experience is never lost.

Some missions involve taking out huge Gunc/am-style robots and various

other terrain crawlers. For this, the player is equipped with a fantastically effective 1,000-pound bomb. When detonated, it sends out a huge shockwave, blowing other vehicles into the air, a la independence Day.

G-Police is in place to be yet another huge Psygnosis release, unique both in its use of detailed, totally explorable landscapes and its combination of flight sim handling with shoot-'em-up gameplay. Number one at Christmas? It certainly r-v— , a chance.

Available weapons include hyper-velocity missiles, starburst dispersion missiles, and plasma launchers. Here, a Henschel AAG-53E 25mm cannon

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

ns alphas

Youngblood

Comic books turned into videogames usually don't work, but GT Interactive and developer Realtime may have made one that does

For those unfamiliar with the comic, Team Youngblood is a group of futuristic heroes battling (in this case) genetic freaks

"The is as

Format	PlayStation, PC CD-ROM
Publisher	Realtime Associates
Developer	GT Interactive
Release Date	September 1 997
Origin	U.S.

While the comic

industry in general seems to be taking a hit of late (with Marvel Comics filing for bankruptcy, among other things), there are a few bright spots, and one of them is Extreme Studios. Headed by Rob Liefeld and creators of such titles as "X-Force" and "Avengelyne,"

best way I can describe this a PlayStation Diablo"

Kurt Busch, Producer, GT Interactive

Extreme Studios had "Youngblood," one of its more popular series, recently licensed by GT interactive.

The history of videogame adaptations of comic characters has been spotty at best and a total disaster at worst, but Kurt Busch, Youngblood's producer at GT, is a rabid comic fan. "The main thing is that we didn't want to make a fighting game," he insists. "Youngblood deserved better than that. And we didn't want another platform game, we really wanted to remain true to the characters and highlight what's unique about the comic."

For those unfamiliar with the source material, Youngblood is not a single character, but a team of heroes fighting evil in a future world gone politically and genetically awry. The multi-character nature of the series has dictated an

The game combines elements of RPGs with real-time strategy, as players pit their team against evil forces with really, really big guns

approach that's remarkably different from comic-book adaptations of the past, "initially," Busch explains, "l felt very strongly we should do this as a first- person RPG, take these characters and put them in your party, and if they die, they'd be dead and you'd feel terrible because you'd lost a friend and hang your head in shame. But the more we thought about it the more we realized it would be really difficult to do it as a first-person RPG because you want to show off the characters, and in first- person we couldn't work out the right set of views so players could see who was beside them, in the end, it just wasn't very satisfying."

Other approaches had their

pitfalls as well. "The problem with doing a Tomb Ra/cfer-style, third-person game," Busch continues, "was that the main attraction of the license was not in any single character, but in the interaction of the team, and at the time trying to do it Tomb Raider- style with six people on a screen all running around just wasn't appetizing — the interface was just very, very difficult to design."

The sprite-based approach allows a high level of detail

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in the end, Busch and the designers at Realtime decided on a sprite-based, isometric view, which enabled the characters to be rendered in great detail and gave the player a wide view of the action. And, in the final design, the action element is every bit as important as the RPG side. "I think the best way I can describe this is as a PlayStation version of Diablo, except you control more than one character. You have a team, and you build your team up," Busch says.

"This is a very weapon-intensive kind of combat," says producer Kurt Busch — as if you couldn't tell that from the pictures

The final game wm include 11 missions, and players choose teams of two to four heroes in the PlayStation version, and as many as six on the PC, although only the lead character can be controlled directly, "in that sense, the game also has some real-time strategy elements," Busch explains, "in that you can give orders to the guys on your team, tell them, 'OK, attack this target and this target,' send them off, and they'll keep doing that while you control the lead character and go off to accomplish the mission objectives — this is a very

weapon-intensive kind of combat."

The interface for both versions will be different; the PlayStation version uses the D-pad to scroll through options, while the PC version uses a Diablo- style series of point-and- click menus. A

multiplayer deathmatch will also be featured in the PC version, although otherwise the missions and design for both versions are the same.

GT Interactive, developer Realtime Associates, and comic creator Extreme Studios are all working together to make sure Youngblood doesn't fall into the same qualitative abyss that seems to

"The main attraction of the license was the interaction of the team"

befall most comic-book games, "in fact," Busch concludes, with some pride, "the story for the game was created by the developers, and Rob Liefeld at Extreme Studios liked it so much, they're incorporating it into the "Youngblood"

series." That, we p-v-j believe, is a first. UU^j

89

NEXT GENERATION July 1997

IF BATTLING THE CYCLOPS AND THE FOUR-HEADED HYDRA ISN'T FUN ENOUGH, YOU CAN ALWAYS GO TO HADES

Z In addition to all the other freaky creatures, you’ll have to battle a boar. Which is anything but a bore.

Zeus not only has to conquer Hades, ' but also conquer the heart of Atlanta. (A Herculean task, indeed.)

In Here’s Adventures, unlike life, to have a happy ending, you’ll have to wind up in hell. After all, that’s where you must duel with Hades, god of the underworld, to save civilization.

STRENGTH OF CHARACTER. You’ll go into battle as one of three heroic, mythological characters, each one with unique powers:

Hercules possesses super strength.

Atlanta has lightning speed. And,

Jason - savvy street smarts.

WEIRD WEAPONS. Sure, you get the usual arrows, slingshots and swords. But,

. Sega

. . SATURN “

you can also arm yourself with ray guns, houses, sheep and inflatable cows.

EVEN WEIRDER BAD GUYS.

Freaky weapons are perfect for fighting even freakier enemies: The four-headed Hydra, snake¬ haired Medusa, sword-swinging skeletons, crazy clowns, nasty Martians and more. GamePro says “Challe7iging bosses , humorous anecdotes , and gigantic landscapes - Here’s has it all.” In the end, it’s up to you to save the world in this crazy twist on Greek mythology. And, if you fail? Well, at least you’ll die laughing.

Z So many Martians, so litde time! And, to make matters worse, they’ve got Jason surrounded with ray guns.

Unfortunately for Adanta, the Cyclops J has a huge appetite