EA not totally put-off by 3DO experience
It’s not often that the 3DO gets any mention in the modern gaming environment. While other older platforms like the NES, SNES, Genesis, and TurboGrafx-16 are seeing new life with services like XBLA and the Wii Virtual Console, the 3DO is pretty much dead and forgotten to modern console owners. But, it’s interesting to see that not everyone at EA was soured by their close association with the platform.
Gamasutra briefly asked Frank Gibeau, EA’s vice president and general manager of North American publishing, about EA’s experience with the 3DO and the possibility of them entering into another such hardware partnership. Surprisingly, Gibeau wasn’t totally averse to the idea:
“I worked on (the 3DO),” began Gibeau, “and I’d never say never. I was a product manager on some of the titles, like Shockwave, and Road Rash, so I was part of that team, building the games, so I’m really familiar with what happened.”
“I think the challenge that we had with 3DO was platform positioning,” he continued. “It was the Swiss Army knife of hardware, and we weren’t really sure what it was supposed to do. I think when we look at our business, what’s vitally important to us is the entertainment and customer connection.”
He’s right on the money about the 3DO’s identity crisis back in the day. But looking at Gamasutra’s original question, is it even relevant? Is there room for another platform like the 3DO? One that’s just a spec that can be manufactured by anyone with a license? Or, perhaps more relevant to EA, one where the hardware designers depend on a partnership with a separate software company to drive software development?
It worked with NEC and Hudson with the PC-Engine, but I have a feeling that today’s first-party centric market came about for good reason. After all, who better to build hardware and software than the people that designed the system?
RetroTube: Best game commercial ever?
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re Nintendo and you’ve just wrapped up development on The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the SNES. Now it’s time to sell the game to the public — a game that would go on to be considered by many as the greatest game of all time. How do you market it? Do you tout its wonderful graphics? Its deep gameplay? Its massive world to explore? Its majestic atmosphere?
Apparently not. Apparently, you use this travesty…
I think I’ll just pretend that Nintendo knew the game was good enough to sell itself and made this commercial as some sort of twisted joke. It’s better for the psyche.
Latest Haul: Midway Arcade Treasures
Alright, I have a confession to make. Maybe the “Wii Virtual Console” category gave it away already, but I do own and play systems that are more modern than the Saturn. [*gasp*] The retro gaming kick that I’ve been on is something that started several months ago — probably around when I got a Neo-Geo CDZ. Then it really kicked into high gear when I finally bought myself the Turbo Duo that I had been wanting for years. But while most of my gaming time is now devoted to older games, I do occasionally bust out the PS2, Xbox, and Wii. (Though I haven’t taken the plunge yet on Xbox 360 or PS3 due to price, reliability, and lack of interesting games.)
So while I was waiting for the tires to be changed on my car today, I decided to browse around the nearby GameStop in search of good, cheap game deals. Normally, I hate GameStop, but I am a fan of their $9.99 and under bin. Today, it had a couple of interesting finds that appealed to my retro gaming senses: Midway Arcade Treasures 1 and 2 for the Xbox.
I’m probably going to have to write a whole separate post about how it’s just not as appealing to play classic games on modern system vs. the original hardware, but for now, I decided to set aside the hate and pick these collections up. At $8 apiece, that’s 44 games for $16! That’s quite a deal. But the real kicker is that these are arcade ports. A lot of the games included in the collections may have been ported to home consoles in the past, but it was usually with some level of sacrifice. After all, when arcades were actually popular, they were usually a technological step ahead of the home systems.
So, while Marble Madness for the NES may be a fantastic game, it doesn’t live up to the original arcade version. Likewise for the NES port of Spy Hunter. And frankly, the SNES and Genesis ports of Mortal Kombat II and 3 just don’t cut it. Or Robotron 2084, Smash TV, and Total Carnage without dual joysticks? No thanks! Even though the Arcade Treasures collections aren’t perfect (there’s a slightly filtered look to most of the games), they’re as close as you can get to the original arcade versions without an expensive MAME cabinet. So, these collections get the thumbs-up from me.
Just one question… We get Mortal Kombat II and 3 in the second collection, but where’s the original Mortal Kombat? My sweat-infused SNES version needs to be replaced!
Check after the break for the complete game list in each collection.
Continue reading Latest Haul: Midway Arcade Treasures…
Streets of Rage (Sega Genesis)
What’s this? An early ’90s Genesis side-scrolling beat-em-up that doesn’t suck? I originally intended to review Golden Axe, but it was so awful that I just couldn’t bring myself to keep playing. (I’ll have to play it when I’m in a more masochistic mood, I guess.) So when I decided to play Streets of Rage instead, I had low expectations. It had been a while since I had played the game, so I couldn’t remember much and wasn’t sure what I was getting into. I had fond memories, but I had the sinking feeling that those memories were of Streets of Rage 2, not the original. Thankfully, it turned out I was right, and the game is pretty playable.
Streets of Rage is Sega’s response to Final Fight and is another entry in what used to be an extremely popular genre. Streets of Rage, Final Fight, Double Dragon, River City Ransom, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Altered Beast, Golden Axe… What the hell were we thinking back then? I guess we really liked walking to the right and repeatedly pushing the punch button. Streets of Rage is no different. Like the rest of the group, it’s pretty much a simple button-masher with very little in the way of depth. You can walk, jump, kick, punch, summon special attacks, pick up weapons, and… Well, that’s about it. Oh yeah, occasionally you’ll grapple someone.
Continue reading Streets of Rage (Sega Genesis)…
The Retro Gamer’s Lament
I wonder how many other retro gamers have the same problem that I do: I want to buy way more games than I probably should. I’ve already posted a couple of Latest Haul posts and even sent myself on a mission to get the hardware and software required to play Snatcher. On top of that, there’s a whole list of TurboGrafx games that I want to get, and to make matters worse, I’ve had seven 3DO games sitting in my shopping cart at Game Express for weeks now, just waiting for me to click “Checkout.”
For newer systems, it’s easy to not buy too many games — it’s awfully expensive to do so. But when you’re talking about retro systems, it’s not difficult to bury yourself in a pile of “new” games. When most of the games you want are less than $10 (and a good chunk are less than $5) it’s kind of hard to tell yourself “No.” But if you don’t resist, you could find yourself surrounded by unplayed games.
I know this is a lot of what I said on the About page, but since writing that, I’m starting to get the distinct feeling that The Retro Review Project might be backfiring a bit… Instead of just motivating me to play through my backlog, it’s really reinvigorating my interest in games, making me want to buy even more! Crap!
Sitegeist (7/5/07)
Let’s see, what have I changed since the last Sitegeist post… I’ve added a new link to my Recommended Links: RVGFANATIC. The owner, Steve, provides a unique look at a lot of SNES games — especially obscure Super Famicom games. If you want to explore the world of unusual Japanese SNES games, this is the place to go.
I’ve recalculated my “reviews completed” ratio off to the right. The number is now based on the number of reviews I plan to write rather than the number of physical games I own (I decided to review some collection carts as separate games). 122? Man, I have a long way to go… And I know for sure that list is going to get longer!
I decided to tag on a “Currently Playing” field to Sitegeist posts. Just for fun, really!
I’m still tweaking the structure of this site to work just the way I want. In the past, I coded all my sites by hand, so they always did exactly what I wanted at pretty much every moment. Now that I’m using a full content management system, (WordPress) I’m finding that I have to wrangle things a bit to get them working just right. Deployment of the site sure was fast, though!
Now the technicalities: I discovered that you can link thumbnail images to a “friendly” HTML page instead of just directly to the file. Since this is what I always wanted in the first place, I’ve gone back and edited all my image links to do so. So now, when you click screenshots or other images, you’ll get a nicer looking page with titles and commentary to go along with the images. From there, you can click the image to view them full size.
I’ve also made some behind-the-scenes changes to how YouTube links get embedded. You shouldn’t see any major difference, except that IE6 now scrolls much more smoothly, and I’m also less likely to break a video by editing the page.
- Currently Playing: Streets of Rage (Sega Genesis), Virtua Cop (Sega Saturn)
Recommended: Logitech 3DO Controller
Third party controllers are generally the bane of any serious gamer. Everyone knows that first party controllers are the best and anything else is merely second class. Third party controllers are the controllers you give to guests you don’t like, or to that guy that’s just too good and needs a handicap.
Well, that’s all fine, but what if there is no true first party controller? This conundrum is unique to the 3DO and its unusual hardware licensing structure. For those who are unfamiliar with the system, the 3DO was merely a specification. Hardware manufacturers could license that specification and create the hardware in any form-factor they desired — it just had to meet certain requirements. So while Panasonic’s REAL Player may be the most famous of the 3DO systems, there were additional units from Goldstar, Sanyo, and Creative. Each system was different and each one came with its own unique controller.
Without a de-facto standard, where do you turn for the best controller? Most 3DO gamers seem to prefer the standard Panasonic pad to the rest, most likely because it’s the one they’re most familiar with. But after playing through Total Eclipse, I was reminded of how there really is one 3DO controller that stands above the pack — the Logitech pad that originally came packed in with the party game Zhadnost.
While the Panasonic pad is bulky and hefty, the Logitech pad is sleek and sexy. Its shape is reminiscent of the fantastic model 2 Saturn pad and molds nicely to your hand. The shoulder buttons tilt inward (as all proper shoulder buttons should) so that you can easily press them with your fingertips, and the d-pad is circular and slightly raised. The tactile feedback on all the buttons is pretty much perfect, and the d-pad feels much less stiff than the Panasonic pad. On top of that, Logitech even put the expansion port for additional controllers at the end of the cord, rather than on the back of the controller. That way, when you play multiplayer, you don’t have to have an extra cord hanging off of your controller. The only possible downside is that this pad omits the headphone jack that the original Panasonic pad has. But really, who uses that?
Now that the 3DO is seeing a few new releases, I suspect we may see a small surge of interest in the system. Maybe a few new people will jump on board, maybe a few old fans will rediscover the system. If you’re one of those, then I suggest you try to track down one of these controllers. I found mine solo on eBay, but you may be able to find one by tracking down retailers that are selling the Zhadnost bundle.
Total Eclipse (3DO)
Like with my first Saturn review, I spent some time debating what I wanted to cover first for the 3DO. There are some great games for the system, but most of them are overshadowed by the overwhelming amount of crap that is available, too. I wanted to pick something that I felt properly represented the spirit of the 3DO, and I think Total Eclipse does that. It’s not because Total Eclipse is a particularly good game (or a particularly bad game). I think it’s just a good representation of the games that are available for the 3DO — it’s prototypical for the system.
Total Eclipse is a fantastic technical feat for its time. The terrain and enemies are all rendered in crisp, clear 3D with a slick, smooth frame-rate. It features CD audio, pre-rendered cut-scenes, and does a great job of making loading times virtually transparent. Unfortunately, it’s just not a very exciting game. The first couple of worlds drag on without much of interest to report. You’ll face straightforward terrain, easy enemies, and a soundtrack that alternates between dull, tired sounding guitar riffs and cheesy soap-opera-style saxophone.
Frankly, the whole time I was playing Total Eclipse, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was just playing a polished but generic version of Star Fox. They’re very similar games — both are futuristic rail-shooters where you take on the role of a fighter pilot heading off to save the solar system. But while Total Eclipse excels in many of the technical areas of game design, it just doesn’t match Star Fox in terms of fun.
Continue reading Total Eclipse (3DO)…
Latest Haul: Sega Saturn Stunner
This was a busy week for new retro game stuff. As I mentioned in one of my Sunday posts, I picked up a couple NES games and a Genesis game. On top of that, a recent eBay purchase arrived — a Sega Saturn Stunner ($9.99 plus shipping, brand new). That, in and of itself, does not make for a very interesting post. More importantly, it gives me a chance to tell a story and share some trivia. And that is what blog posts are all about…
What it comes down to is that I finally dropped the dough on an accessory that I should have bought about 10 years ago. I’m one of the many that adopted the Saturn when Sega was running its “Three Free Games” promotion. If you’re not familiar with it, Sega packed in three free games with each Saturn sold during the 1996 holiday season: Virtua Fighter 2, Daytona USA, and Virtua Cop. This was a fantastic deal and led to such good sales numbers that they ended up running the promotion for about six months when they originally planned six weeks!
Strangely, the box that the free games came in had a label promoting the deal which stated that the three games were a “$189″ value. $189? Where the hell did that number come from? Regardless of how it was promoted, it was very difficult to pass up a Saturn and three of its best games for $199. So that’s how they hooked me.
But like I said, one of the free games was Virtua Cop. Unfortunately, the package did not include the light gun that really makes the game what it is. For one reason or another, I never decided to get one, so the few times that I did play Virtua Cop, I played it with the controller. I actually got surprisingly good at the game like that, but really, it’s not the way it was meant to be played.
With my decision to start The Retro Review Project, I had the perfect excuse to finally break down and get the Stunner. After all, how could I possibly give Virtua Cop a proper review without it? Of course, now that I have the Stunner, that gives me the perfect excuse to get Virtua Cop 2 and House of the Dead… Collecting is a vicious cycle.
RetroMacro (6/26/07)
Alright, I think last week’s RetroMacro has been up long enough, so it’s time for the answer and a new one. For the solution to last week’s, I’ve updated the post so check it out!
As for the new one, it’s right off to your left. I tried to make this one a little easier, but again, you can click it for a bigger version and a hint. Think you figured it out? Take a guess in the comments!
Update: Check after the break for the answer!
Continue reading RetroMacro (6/26/07)…
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