Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!scea!peter_alau@playstation.sony.com From: "Manifered H. Wolfe, II" Newsgroups: scea.yaroze.freetalk Subject: Re: E3 Questions for all who attended, esp. Mario Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 16:54:02 -0400 Organization: Lobo Electronics Lines: 115 Message-ID: <3586DB6A.6D9E@vicon.net> References: <35718657.3581814@news.scea.sony.com> Reply-To: lobo@vicon.net NNTP-Posting-Host: sc12.vicon.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.04 (Win95; I) Sorry, this may run a little long... > 1) In your opinion, which company made the biggest impression at the > show? Who were people talking about? Close ties are allowed... I think overall people were talking most about Sony, followed by PC games. Most people I talked to were disappointed by what Nintendo was showing, although they did have a nice booth. Sega's was utterly boring. > > 2) What games were you most impressed with? What games were people > talking about? THE most impressive game I saw at the show was a title I never heard of before, no one else seems to have seen, and have yet to see mentioned anywhere. It's a PC game called "Mars Maniacs". Basically a futuristic racing game set on Mars with graphics that defy belief. I saw a lot of stuff before this (didn't see this game until the second day), and my jaw just dropped as I begged to let me attach my retinas to the monitor. I talked to one of the programmers (being developed by a foriegn outfit called "Church of the Enlightened") and he said they had been developing it on a P166 with a Voodoo 1 card and it was running at 30fps. When they got to E3, 3dfx (they were showing it in their booth) made them run it on an AMD-K6 machine (don't know the speed) with a Voodoo 2 card and they had to write a chunk of code to slow it down to 60fps! Needless to say, the Church of the Enlightened were quite pleased. =) The other really impressive thing I saw was the AMD-K6-2 w/ 3D...truly amzing, especially for the price...$150 for the 300MHz version! They had it running side by side with a P2 at the same speed and it was kicking the pants off it. Another game that was very, very impressive is the sequel to Colony Wars. At first I thought it was the PC version, till I saw the PSX controller and I nearly died, it's just beautiful. Generally people were talking about the usual, though, Metal Gear Solid (pretty cool, but I was very distracted by the chick walking around in fatigues), Zelda (also pretty cool), and of course Dreamcast, the gayest name for a console since the Pippen. > > 3) Where were Dreamcast/Katana and Project X? What was your > impression of their debut? If they were there, where were they shown > and who got to see them? What was the 'buzz'? > I was standing in Sega's booth when my friend motioned to an older guy being filmed showing a controller and said, "Hey, look at that controller!" I looked and gasped, "It's the Katana controller!"..."Hey, that's Bernie Stolar!" I was standing about 3 feet from him as he demonstrated the tamagotchi-looking thingie that plugs into the controller, then a lady brought the Dreamcast machine itself over and he pointed out all the stuff on it and so forth. So I guess I was in the right place at the right time. =) The machine is cool looking, but the name is not. It's bad enough that Microsoft has their claws in it, now it has a stupid name to boot. I will get one 2 days after it's available in Japan (shipping takes time, you know) because I'm insane. =) I was highly disappointed, though, at not being able to "get an appointment" to see VM Labs' Project X, but even more dispointed at not getting in to meet my greatest programming hero, Jeff Minter. On the last day of the show, I tried again to meet him and the guy actually went back to see if he'd come out to meet me. He did!! I nearly peed my pants when he came walking around that black wall and said, "Hey, mate." I must have had the biggest, dumbest grin on my face. I shook his hand and we talked about games and music and stuff for about 20 minutes or so and then I got his autograph. I was totally babbling, I don't even know what I said. I walked out of their place and collapsed to my knees, they would support me no longer. =) I also got a cool psychedlic Project X slinky! Getting Gillian Anderson's autograph was cool, too, I had the pleasure of standing in line for 2 hours for that one. Not nearly as cool as meeting Yak, though. Meeting Mario and Don was also cool, as well as the WWF's Headbangers. Oh, yeah, for you wrestling fans, WWF Warzone is by far the best wrestling game I've played on a console. I also saw a good number of blue PSX's running the games, too, about 75% of them running upside down. (chuckle) You know it's bad when sony won't replace those ones, either. =) "We know nothing about that problem, it's your own stupidity that it skips." Well, that's it, I guess. I saw a lot of other stuff, but I won't bore you with it...well, ok, here's a list of other games that'll buy as soon as their available: Centipede (PC or PSX) NFL Blitz (N64...unless a sequel is released in the arcade, then I'll get the pcb really cheap) Parasite Eve (PSX) Metal Gear Solid (PSX) Castelvania 64 (N64) Zelda 64 (N64) Abe's Exodus (PSX...very tasty Soulstorm Brew they were serving there) Madden '99 (N64...PSX version looked ill next to it) And probably some more, too. =) See 'ya! -- ------------------------------- Manifered H. Wolfe, II lobo@vicon.net Lobo Electronics http://www.vicon.net/~lobo 28 Game Systems, 1000+ cartridges/CD's, 36 Coin-Op's, 1 Pinball Amiga 3000, 24MB, 2GB, 25MHz, Video Toaster 2.0 Atari TT030, 18MB, 200MB, 33MHz, Magic 4/Linux AMD K6 P233, 32MB, 6.4GB, Voodoo Rush, Win95/Linux