3DO Interactive Multiplayer

The worst game ever? Or in the words of some of the less eloquent posters on this blog: 'TEH WORZ GAMEZ EVAR!!111!!'

They maybe on to something.

I'd happily nominate BC Racer, Primal Rage, Cyberdillo, even Rise of the robots - all of which failed to, even in the vaguest sense of the word, be a game. There was no fun therein. Truly pointless. Pitiful and embarrassing. Which puts Plumbers in the same league for sure.

For the developers I can only assume the following: I think we have all had the dream where we turn up for the exam, school, business meeting and have forgotten our trousers. Stood there in our under-pants as the world gawps out our spindley hairy legs and our funny in the shop but not clinging to our butts Marge Simpson under-garments. Plumbers don't wear ties is like this - but for Kirin, the developers, it is not a dream. It's real - having your name associated with Plumbers must be a re-occuring nightmare - a living one.

...but the worst game?

Plumbers is different. Yes it is bad. Dreadful. So woefully shameful that things that are 'woe' fully appreciate how full of shame this is. Words fail me. Bad. Very very bad.

...but is it the worst?

If I thought it would help, I would take the developers, rub their noses in this game, slap their behinds and then throw them out on the lawn whether it was raining or not, with a stern warning never to do it again.

...but worse than BC Racer?

Is a collection of still images, strung together with an appalling story line, an incomprehensible scoring system and with more retries than Jeffery Archer a game? Does it make it the worst game ever?

Worse then Primal Rage...? Worse than Rise of the Robots? Worse than Cyberdillo?

No. No it isn't - The saviour of this game. The Messiah, is a pretty blond woman who scampers about in lingerie. You see, no matter how bad the game maybe, the compulsion to see more of that sort-of-thing raises Plumbers fractionally about its competitors for the title of: Worst game ever.

So... Plumbers don't wear ties is NOT the worst game ever. Not quite. Worse than the Japanese Virtual Cameraman Part 1, better than Jurassic Park Interactive.

Fairly rare too.

3DO Kid.

There have been 18 (at least) Electronic Arts made games brandishing the word Fifa since 1993. That's 13 years. This earliest was converted to Amiga, DOS, Game Gear, Mega Drive, Sega CD, Sega Master System, SNES and of cause and why we are here the 3DO Multiplayer.

The 3DO got the best version.

There are two elements to any game: Game-play and graphics - and this first iteration of the Fifa brand, certainly on the 3DO, pulled off both with a certain elegance.

The game is well balanced, the difficulty is fair and there is no need to have the hand-to-eye coordination of a profession sniper to score some goals. This game is genuinely fun to play and engrossing.

However I find Football games in themselves are odd. For the most part Soccer is a viewers sport. For most soccer fans they prefer to watch the 90 minutes of game, rather than actually run around a field themselves for 90 minutes.

So - you would have thought the option to participate in a none-physically challenging alternative to real soccer for 90 minutes would be popular. Which it is. But no one plays a single match of simulated soccer for 90 minutes. It doesn't usually stretch beyond 5 to 10 minutes for each half.

For some reason, probably to keep the game interesting in a virtualised environment, the game is reduced in time by almost a factor of 10. But the score isn't. In the real world a game of only 10 minutes would produce most commonly a score of nil-nil. Or at best one-nil. Yet soccer video games manage to keep the scores realistic - while abandoning realistic time and abandoning for the most part realistic player vitality - and then they promote 'realism' as a selling point. In fairness - it is not real at all.

Not that vitality is a variable in Fifa on the 3DO.

The Teams, Countries, Players, are all represented. The option to play Friendlies, Tournaments, Championships and Leagues is available, which is presumably to virtualise the other half of the soccer world - the drama of the league positions.

Graphically for 1993 Fifa is amazing. Animated players running about and waving with joy or staring in disbelief. The pitch rotates, scales, zooms in and out impressively and even the crowd is animated - a selling feature in 1993.

Fifa International Soccer is a top draw game for the 3DO. Whatever happened to the Fifa brand during the subsequent 13 years is not relevant here - suffice to say the foundations were solid.

Not rare at all!

3DO Kid.

It's not a light gun game - but it was made by American Laser Games. The lion and lamb didn't lay down together when this game was released - neither was there peace on Earth during 1994. (I checked on Wikipedia) So maybe American Laser games could write games other than Light Gun shooting games.

Amazing.

My lasting memory of the boot sequence is the phrase "Designed and built in New Mexico USA" - 'So what' you say - well they didn't put this phrase on the light gun games. It must have some kind of deeper meaning.

To descibe it. Do you remember Robotron on the Spectrum? No? OK. Where do I start? Hmmm?

The game is isometric. The goal of the game is to clear each level, of which there are round 12 - 15. Your character is a little digitized man. Or woman. The jury is still undecided about Freon. The character does seem to be wearing a sports bra but I can't be sure.

Confused gender aside, there are in total four characters:

Hawk - the cliched American one.
Asashi - the cliched Japanese one.
Freon - the female one.
Azotar - the one that escaped from the Village People.

During play you'll notice around the edge of the play area captive humans. These you must free by shooting at them - an odd concept I agree. In the center of the play area is a generator thing that must be destroyed - again by shooting at it. Meanwhile attempting to thwart your destructive / liberation plans are motorised 'things' such as balls with guns, robot-walking things with guns, lizards with guns and so on.

As Calarence said in Robocop 'Guns, guns, guns!' Old habits died hard for American Laser games.

It's not hard to imagine a bunch of Americans from the deep south of America talking about developing Mazer.

- It's a maze like game.
- With guns right?
- And there will humans to free.
- With guns right?
- And there will balls and killer robots.
- With guns right?
- And lizards...
- With big guns right?

So - everything has guns.

Once you have destroyed the generator thing an end of level boss materialises and you must dispense with it - using guns.

Between levels there is an opportunity to upgrade your health, learn a new trick - even enhance your guns.

Still it is fun. I quite enjoyed it. Hard as nails mind but fun none the less. There is even a two player mode which might be quite frantic.

The graphics aren't bad. They are fluid and the camera zooms in and out at a healthy pace. The CGI rendered introduction is predictable but not bad and all-in-all Mazer is extremely mediocre. On 3DO this was a good thing.

Pretty rare - I've never seen a UK release but I stand to be corrected!

3DO Kid.

'Peace reigns throughout the galaxy.'

Maybe so, but it doesn't make for a fun video game. These are the first words you see as the pre-rendered introduction to Defcon 5 starts.

So - what the hell is going on here then? Because I have no idea. I played this game for over an hour today. I played for an hour because I kept waiting for something to happen - sadly nothing did.

The monotone womans voice told me to go to the Command Center to be briefed on my mission. However I could not find the Command Center. I wandered around - lost - looking for something to shoot and nothing came.

Eventually the monotone voice piped up with "We are under attack". 'We'? I was always lead to believe 'we' inferred more than one person, however, I couldn't find anyone else. I wandered around the labyrinth of first person shooter mazes some more, looking for something to shoot. Eventually the woman piped up again and said, although I cannot quite recall clearly, that something had entered the compound. This final message got me excited - finally I thought, something to shoot.

Nothing came.

I went to all the places on the map. All the levels, went up and down in all the lifts and opened all the doors - Nada, nothing, nowt, not one thing presented itself to be shot at.

Peace reigns throughout the game.

At this point I thought that the game had loaded wrong - so I rebooted.

This time, when the single octave woman spoke, I was ready. I headed straight to the turrets and sure enough there were things to kill. After a short while I ran out of bullets and missiles so I headed for the next turret. Eventually all six turrets had depleted weapons.

So I headed back inside and waited for voice to speak to me once again. It did eventually - it told me that once again something had entered the compound.

Nothing materialised - maybe they were scared.

In summary Defcon 5 is the dullest first person shooter I have every played - and it is rare.

3DO Kid.

From the inventor of the Metal Gear Solid series - Policenauts.

In most cases a game being totally in japanese language is a hinderence - in the case of Policenauts it is unplayable.

Which is a great shame as the Saturn version and PS1 version were epics apparently.

The art seems amazing and there was deluxe version released that came bundled with a 3DO mouse.

Rare as chicken fur.

Enjoy the screen shots.

Edutainment. It's Educational Entertainment - Edutainment. Yes. OK. Fine. I get it. Today we would call it a DVD. It's a digital library that covers the various Space Shuttle missions. To be honest it's like GCSE space shuttles. (Beginners Space shuttle) I don't claim to know diddly-squat about Space Shuttle but there is plenty of information here and absolutely no depth.

The disk takes you through some 53 Space Shuttle missions, including the Challenger Disaster but with just a few facts and some very small video footage. The same for all the other missions. Each mission you get about one-line of information on the crew members, then some take-off footage and data on time and date and any delays, then some key mission involved in that flight and then more tiny, grainy, footage of the landing. It does smack of cash-in. It could have been interesting but instead it's a little bit fustrating.

Plus there is a game that has you shooting space rubbish - best to just avoid this.

I've never seen the jewel box version or for that matter any PAL version so I am guessing that it was only released in the USA. Although it seems to run fine on my PAL FZ-1.

Rare - for good reason. [Yawn]

3DO Kid.

Football - Soccer - A game of two halves.

Here is a secret: I don't really know much about footy. Shockingly little. My earliest recollection at five years old of soccer was forgetting my P.E. (Physical Education) kit and being made to stay in the class with the girls. This 'forgetting' turned into something of a habit - so much so - that while the offside rule was and is still something of a mystery, I became a world ambassador for the sport of kiss-chase. In addition I'm gold medalist six years running on the much maligned but highly coveted knicker-chase olympics.

In fact bonding with women on the grounds that I don't really know that much about Soccer has served me well. So-well, I have no intention of learning.

Kind of puts Striker World Cup Special on a bit of back footing. (That is a football reference isn't it?) If I play a Football game and then like it, I might loose some of my oh-so-cute naivety that always surrounds me when I'm talking to the women in a group, while all the other men whitter on about Liverpool United, Greaves or Stanley Matthews or someone.

I do know my father supports Derby County. I also know that they have a white T-Shirt with a sheep on it and I'm also aware it costs £50. About the same price as a video game.

In the name of fairness I risked all and gave Striker a quick play. Oh! - it looked fun. There was all the foreign teams! Like Scotland and Wales and Argentina and loads of others. I chose, predictably, England and I played against Argentina.

I could choose the formation! Which I tried to think about logically. Argentina are as I recall pretty good. Especially so I have heard at World Cup and Olympic Cup games, so I thought I'd better play defensive.

It was two minutes each way (I believe). The game started by singing the national anthem. Once under way we had some "Throw-ins", some "Goal Kicks" - it was all very exciting.

Sadly at some point of the game one of the Argentinians grew a hand the size of a tennis racket, stuck something up his nose and whacked the ball using his hand straight into my English goal. He then muttered something about a boat and some islands and scampered off with a giant Cuban cigar - or did I dream that?

Either way - this looks good. I'd rather have a knicker-chase simulator (Virtual Camera man?) but hey, you can't have everything.

Pretty rare - seemed pretty good and probably worth having if virtual footy is your retro game playing thing.

3DO Kid.

More Bullfrog goodness. If they could prove it was chemically addictive, Theme Park would be the video game equivalent of class A drugs. With less side effects - but be prepared for your family life to nose-dive in much the same way.

It's a Theme park simulator. You open a park, place some rides and hire a few cleaners. Then the little punters, I mean valued customers start complaining; "I'm thirsty". So you build a coffee shop. "I'm hungry". So you build a burger stand. "I'm bored!" so you hire a guy in Shark suit and so on. The more you build rides, the more ticket sales you get, the more the complaints roll in. So the more you need to build infrastructure but the more infrastructure you have, the more people and 'stuff' you need to support it.

Everything costs: It costs to get in, it costs to buy a burger but then the guy in the Shark Suit doesn't come cheap, neither do the rides and the APR on the loan you have, can end the game. If you raise ticket prices - fewer people come to the park - so you lower ticket prices or should I have built more rides?

The whole game is finely balanced. It is in retrospect the balance that makes the game. Theme Park is neither a chore nor impossible - it is a fair challenge - a challenge that spurs you on. You are always just winning but suddenly you'll find there is too much litter and you are just about losing, so you hire a cleaner and start to win again - but the increased salary bill means you have to raise ticket prices and then the little gits start to complain again.

Each game goes the same way - You start to feel the whole Park is ultimately doomed but something pushes you to try and beat it. But in the back of your mind the doubt sets in - Should I have set the ticket price lower to start with...? Or higher? Should I have focused on planting trees and shrubs from the start? Is there too much pathway? But you keep going and the park either fails or succeeds and your bid for world theme park domination is one step closer or further. Yet every park you start you get all the same nagging doubts.

The only thing that shows its age is the advert for Midland Bank during the obligatory 3d rendered introduction.

A fine, fine, fine game.

Rare enough to keep the prices high!

3DO Kid.

I hate death and violence, I hate it - it scares me. I fear my own mortality. The first time I saw a dead person, a real dead person, I nearly vomited. Something about how our species is dehumanized in death - just a body laying there unmoving. You would have thought it would be like staring at someone asleep - but it is not. The longer you stare, the more you realise - there is something odd about a dead human. Some arcane observation. Some archaic sense. Perception. Instinct. Something tells you to run. Turn your head. Close your eyes. But you cannot. A taste of your own mortality is too delicious to ignore, to disgusting to watch - real violence - real death - is not amusing.

But video-game death and violence? Well that's bloody hilarious!

The conversations went something like this:

- "So, how did you waste him and take India?"
- "I waited until he left the house, I then ploughed through the crowd in a car and mowed him down. And you?"
- "I sent in a sniper - but the crowd went nuts and I had to use one guy to cut them down with a mini-gun, while the sniper struggled to get into position."
- "Just like Western Europe eh?"
- "Yeah!"

That would be a fairly typical conversation in 1995. Why this brand was never exploited further is beyond me. 50 levels that never once became boring, stale or none-challenging. It is truly a classic. With an easy enough concept, straight forward interface - even on the 3DO D-Pad and missions that are simply cool. Well 'Cool' that is if you believe that cyborgs wading into a busy street and using flame-throwers to explode an enemies car and all the while innocent civilians are running about screaming on fire because your other three cyborgs are trying to fight off an enraged police force is 'cool'. In a game environment - naturally. If you don't then ...erm ...well "Tough". Don't play it. Find a 'knitting simulator' or something.

Syndicate is a isometric cyborg hit-man simulator. You have a team of four cyborgs that you must utilise to fulfill a series of missions. The missions are achieved in which ever way you see fit, in your bid as Syndicate leader to take over the world. You might have to kill a politician who has decided to become uncooperative or to take over mind control of enemy faction leader or simply to shoot lots of civilians. As time and levels progresses more weapons and cyborg upgrades are made available to you.

Each level is represented by country or a region. As you enter a region what you'll find that stands between you and success is usually the city itself and its construct.

Additionally, the local Police are not on your side, well not until you have brain washed them and neither are the enemy Syndicate that may already be in the city. Of cause how you commandeer the whole world is up to you. You see, each region is a mini-sandbox. How you achieve the goal is largely up to you. One player may use his cyborgs superior speed to basically run-up and kill the enemy. Another my attempt to kill the guy by hijacking a car and running the target down. While another may use the sniper.

Sometimes you'll find your cyborgs are under-powered for the job or you need another weapon to actually achieve the objectives. You have to go back, beat some simpler regions, then use the cash from those to buy the upgrades you need and then try again to beat the region you were after in the first place.

The graphics are stylish - very Blade Runner esque and very fluid. Best described if you remember the developer is Bullfrog of Populace and Theme Park fame. In effect instead of little people being bullied by god and building towns or building fun parks, it is little people running around killing other little people with Uzis.

The sound track is somewhat repetitive but fits the game well.

It's a damned good game.

Not to rare - which is good news. Scamper over to eBay and buy a copy and then download the Freedo http://www.freedo.org

You will not regret it.

3DO Kid.

Ah Flashback. Every time I fire up my 3DO I have a flashback. Back to the halcyon days when CD was an exciting new media. Where the difference between the floppy-disk based version of a game and the CD based version was a CD icon on the loading screen and six months of pre-rendered, pretty but ultimately pointless, 3D graphics.

Flashback is not the sequel to Another World (U.S. Out of this World). It maybe by the same genius developers - Delphine. It may have a red headed lead character. It may well involve a left-to-right platform game - but - and repeat after me: "This is not the sequel to Another World". That was called Another World 2. Shocking - yes - I know.

The graphics have dated badly, unlike its sister game and the story is slightly more blase. Other than that Flashback supercedes its counterpart in most technical ways. There are more levels, based around more varied locations. Pixel perfect jumping is not so relevant as in Another World and there is a greater variety of items to collect and use. The emphasis on object based puzzle solving is used more than in Another World. Which for the most part was obstacle based puzzle solving.

Overall Flashback is more rounded than its predecessor - however it has lost a lot of the charm and chic that Another World had - even though it's not a sequel.

Rare? Not really. A very good game, certainly one worth playing today but not a scratch on its shorter, graphic deficient, pixel perfect, none-sequel sister game. It is simply not as good.

3DO Kid.

O.K. Anyone familiar with the title of this game will be thinking to themselves - this 3DO Kid, he's a grubby little pervert. Well - possibly. But no thanks to virtual Cameraman part 1.

This is a Japanese language game - yes another. You take on the role of a cameraman intent, so it seems, on filming half naked Japanese women. Fair enough you say - who ever grows tired of seeing half naked women?

Well, to be honest Virtual Cameraman part 1 works hard at making you bored. Not that that you as a none Nihon-go (Japanese language) understander are going to ever see any half naked Japanese women in this game. What you will see is a selection of two girls. A slutty one in a pink dress and a archetypal Japanese school girl. Although I'm guessing she's only wearing the uniform for nostalgic reasons, since it is fairly apparent she left school a while back.

What the game amounts to is two parts. The first part is a conversation. You as the Cameraman must convince the chosen girl (slutty girl or school girl) to remove their clothes by choosing the correct words or phrases to woo the little strumpets into nudity.

The second part seems to based around convincing the strumpets that you can handle a camera. To - in traditional British manner - further assist them in getting their kit off.

All I can say is that the school girl was easier to convince and was starkers before you could say - "Anyone for ramen?". The slutty one in the bright pink dress was much harder to convince - but we got there in the end.

Good luck.

Rare enough. There is also a Part 2,3,4 and 5. So it was popular in Japan at least.

3DO Kid.

This is rarer than hens teeth. Orbatak. An unreleased prototype of a game designed and built by American Laser games. The people responsible for Mad McCree, Crime Patrol, etc.

It was supposed to be a dedicated 3DO console based acrade machine but it never came to fruition.

All you can do when you insert the disk into a standard 3DO Multiplayer is watch the attract mode - since it is not possible to 'insert coin' on a standard 3DO player.

Enjoy the pictures!

3DO Kid!

This is a Japanese game - I'm sure the title gave that fact away. I believe the title of the game is "Hanako comes back." Or there abouts - Japanese language is not a strong point of mine.

What I figured by common sense and common sense alone is the following.

I think Hanako - the little dark haired Japanese girl in the pictures below - is dead. And what we see in the game is her ghost.

The same as Sadako or Dark Water ghost right? Little girl. Check. Asian origin. Check. Long dark creepy hair and pale face. Check and check. The Ring, Dark Water, etc., all have the same ghost. Apparently it is traditional Japanese ghost. OK then. Hanako is dead. Not a big surprise this didn't get translated - it is very Japanese.

However, the morose lead character doesn't stop the games overtly cheerful disposition. There is a cute tune, a happy little pointer and the characters are always smiling. Even the other ghosts that seem to play some part in the game. Eveything looks cheeky and fun.

The game is a little like Myst. A point and click adventure. Based around a haunted school - again I'm guessing. The imagery isn't as glitzy or prerended as Myst but they work. The transition between scenes deserves special mention. It is very effective and without seeing it, trust me when I say it is 'spooky' to watch. The character animation is a traditional Japanese style, just not the highly stylised anime we are familiar with. If anyone has seen the 1970's original Japanese Devilman the art is sort of similar. (As are the voices!)

The art work is very basic, almost flat but it works in an engaging way. The simplicity of the characters somehow force the viewer to sympathise with them. And once in motion they become much more real. This is genuine talent. Especially since I didn't understand more than four or five of the words they said. Yeah - weird.

This game will not turn up too frequently - which is a great shame - I'm sure if it was translated it would have been at the very least a cult classic.

3DO Kid.

More Gherkin the Elf. Sigh. I don't know the best way to convey my disappointment. You see, secretly I wanted Slayer, the original AD and D game, to be good on the 3DO. And it was. In a way. It just lacked structure - a point. Some kind of focus. You just ran around a maze killing things as far as I could tell. Which is fine - but if your psychological make-up stretches to killing for a reason - Slayer didn't really have one - and was ultimately a bit of let down.

Death Keep has a point. Capture the bad guy. It's a bit like a Lord of the Rings meets the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Inspired. Well maybe not but certainly better than roaming around killing for no point.

So what is this games particular failing. Surely by now we have all come to expect some sort of failing in a 3DO game. Well don't dispare, Deathkeep Advanced Dungeons and Dragons doesn't disappoint.

Deathkeep has less options than the original. It is not possible to handcraft your own character quite as much as you could in the original. But that's not enough to be considered a failure - short sighted? Lazy? But a failure? - not on its own. Assuming that you are an average person in the street, there are plenty of characters to choose from and the lack of character customisation, isn't that heart breaking.

Difficulty then? Hmmm. That old chestnut. You can have within the world of Deathkeep any difficulty setting you want. Easy, Average, Hard. As long as it's hard. Oh man is it hard?

I have started this game ten times with the same result but with different characters.

To start: You must jump off the little rocky blue shaded cliff. There are some items to pick up. A Sword, health, cloak and some other bits and bobs. Equip them - quickly. You then head off down the slope.

You are now faced with a choice.

If you turn right and up the slope you die - there are some trolls that wipe you pretty much instantly. Alternatively you follow the path round and then die the same way. It's not much of choice. Regardless of what you do - the third thing you meet will invariably kill you. Simple as that. It really does take the fun out of it.

The graphic engine is top notch - extremely good and fluid. A lot of blue - but very good. The character animations are equally pretty. It's just you never get see much of it before you are slaughtered by angry looking albeit well animated, Goblins or Trolls or whatever the hell that thing was.

Rarer than its predecessor but one for hardcore fans only.

3DOkid.