3DO Interactive Multiplayer

"I think I'm learning Japanese, I think I'm learning Japanese, I really think so. Da-da-da-daa".

Although not terribly quickly. So far I have managed to say "This is Tanaka", in the rudest possible manner because I didn't use 'san' as in Tanaka-san and then I proudly announced that - "Tanaka is a book".

To which my tutor simply looked confused and simultaneously offended.

Another problem I have (one of many actually) is the syllable 'Tsu'. It doesn't exist in English. Every time I try to make this sound, for reasons beyond comprehension, the right-side of my brain tries to run off. It actually hurts me to try and say it. Tsu - ouch! (See?) Of cause I'm told I'm over acting. But it's true I tell you. True!

Nihon-go (Japanese language) is tough going. I picked up English when I was really young and had no problems what-so-ever. Also many of my friends are stupid and they speak English easily - So I'm assuming that Japanese is either particularly difficult or my tutor needs sacking. She won't take that news well.

On the other hand I found out my Japanese niece is being taught English - fair enough you say - however, she is being taught English by someone who doesn't actually speak English. That scares me. Although I'm reassured that her English grammar will be word perfect. She can help me then I guess.

Late night TV in Japan is also choc-a-block with English lessons too. With such classics as "I'm happy to you!" - I didn't get it either and "When in Rome - Romans do!" ...OK then?

Of cause some Japanese do practice English as frequently as they can. Which manifests itself as a really peculiar phenomena. From my experience of the Japanese they are typically fairly quiet, reserved and generally in public extremely polite at all times.

There is however a minority that behave quite differently when they spot a foreigner ...or perhaps it is just me.

This minority feel obliged to cast hundreds of years of complex Japanese tradition and etiquette to the holy wind and feel the need to shout in a foreign language - at a foreigner. Usually something like "HELLO - HOW ARE YOU?" or "GOOD AFTERNOON!". Polite? Well yes. Capable of waking the dead? Again yes. If I had a Yen for every-time this has happened to me outside of Tokyo, I might be able to afford one of those grossly over priced juicy Japanese melons - but I doubt it.

All of this perpetual English teaching doesn't stop the Japanese government continually brow beating the linguistically isolated country into learning at least a few words more of English. Jump onto the Japanese underground train system and you'll find some utter weirdo (I pray every-time I see him that he is not English - he is such a freak!) teaching the sleeping and bored looking Japanese commuters a few pointless words of English via the in-train advertising system. Last time I saw him he was teaching us 'Steering Wheel'. Which seemed an odd choice on a commuter train, yet dutifully a few of the suicidely bored looking locals were attempting to mouth the words. Oh and so was I.

Personally I'd like to see Japanese being taught on the London Underground or in fairness perhaps even English being taught there. Maybe some of the locals can re-learn the use of the letter 'H' in every day speech. Perhaps other consonants too. Before long who knows what may happen.

Getting back to the topic at hand. If I was Japanese person living in Japan I would refuse to speak a single word of English - simply in protest. Teach 'em (Foreigners) Japanese - that's what I would say.

Why am I telling you this? Because EMIT Volume 1 is actually another stab at trying to get the greater part of Japanese nation uttering a few words of English. For me they don't need to. Their country is actually cram packed with everything they are ever likely to need so why bother...? I sure as hell wouldn't.

Sadly, yet again the lesson is flawed. You see, it appears the English being taught will only be useful if you happen to meet a reverse aging alien who is looking for a clock shop in downtown Tokyo... I'm not joking.

This actually makes the French I was taught look useful. I do recall wondering at the time however - how many times am I likely to use the phrase, "Je marche mon chien sur la plage." Apparently more often than I'm likely to say "私は1 年のより若い毎日を得る。" (I get one year younger every day!)

You watch a scene - then you answer some questions on it.

The art work isn't even very good and the translation - even from my embarrassingly rudimentary understanding of Japanese language, doesn't seem to be very accurate.

Unfortunately - unfortunately for me anyway - the game doesn't work in reverse either . It's not possible to learn any Japanese from this game.

Rare? - I imagine most copies were burnt.

3DO Kid.

Ain't Barbers here buddy, we are talking Muhammad Ali. The greatest boxer of all time. Edutainment - there is that word again. It means Educational Entertainment.

This is one of those games that came from no where. I recall it being previewed in official 3DO magazine but it failed to sum up quite how amazing this game is. Don't get me wrong, this game is as boring as hell to play but the depth, the graphics and the detail, at all levels is amazing.

It charts Muhammad Ali's career from start to finish and allows you as the player to bend history - just a little by taking part.

Start with the good and go to the bad. OK then - the good.

Graphically it is amazing. Presentation wise it's Electronic Arts so no skimping on half-implemented menus. The in-game graphics are the Kingpin however. Gray Matter - Kingpin - Geddit? (I give up!) Simply put, they are drop dead gorgeous. The boxers look like their real life counter parts and take injury like their real life counter parts and sweat and bleed like their real life counter parts. Considering the platform, the excuses and general wimpishness of most 3DO games in the 3D department, Foes of Ali is nothing short of awe inspiring. It is a cathedral to what was possible when others were building mud huts.

Each fight is a brief history lesson. You are told what happened. Who hit who and how badly. How many rounds the fight went to and a brief biography on each of the historically accurate fighters you fight. All available in one of the three modes. Career, history or tournament.

So far-so good but it's time to move to the bad.

Oh man-oh-man is it dull. The history lessons are interesting, the fighting is heavy and slow and makes you wish the history lessons were longer however. I fully understand it is supposed to be a boxing simulator. No Karate chops or machine guns or for that matter E.Honda style 1000 slaps but they could have speed things up a little. Lunge, block, jab, block, and so on. All in real-time.

If Ali's greatest contribution to the English language is the phrase, "Dance like butterfly, sting like a bee" then to sum up this game he should have added, "in syrup over eternity" because that is what it feels like.

Quite rare - worth getting for the technical achievement and its cure for insomnia.

3DO Kid.

Over sold. Pretty much sums this game up. We all played Street Fighter II or if you were mentally disturbed Mortal Kombat. PF Magic - for reasons that defy mere human sanity - felt Ballz could topple Ryu and Ken and Sub-Zero and Scorpian. Of cause they were wrong. Didn't stop the marketing division at BMG interactive using wellington boots to ram it down our throats.

The title is not a comment on the game play - although it would have been a fair one - no Ballz is referring to the composition of each of the 8 playable characters and the 8 bosses.

"YOU WANT 3D!" - they the game makers cried - "YES WE DO!" the game playing public responded eager to have arcade quality gaming in the home on their 16bit consoles. Blissfully unaware that the machines under their television sets had more chance of materialising Jesus than an arcade perfect version of Virtua Fighter.

If this conversation between developers and the consumers had perhaps gone a little further we may all have saved a great deal of time and money. Hindsight is of cause 20/20 but one does wonder what might have happened if the question had been "DO YOU WANT CRAP 3D!?" to which hopefully the public would have said "No thanks, we'll stick with 2D - for just a bit longer". Perhaps however I'm bestowing too much intelligence on the public as, so it seems, they wanted 3D games crap or otherwise.

Still that never happened and the developers, eager to please, scampered off wondering how to tackle this problem. The problem was that the machine in question simply couldn't cut it. They didn't have the power. So what did we get?

Add-ons. The SNES games came with additional 3D chips and the Mega drive was treated to the 32X and a MegaCD! We also got 'almost 3D': We had pre-rendered graphics, with sprites layered on top, such as Creature Shock and Novastorm and we had painfully on rails 3D games such as Starblade and Galaxain 3.

None of which was what people wanted. As it turned out they wanted a Playstation. Good looking 3D with no ill side effects such as empty pockets or blurry vision and the same sense of freedom a goldfish in a swimming pool might get. Free but not quite.

Going back to the game. Ballz is another attempt at 3D for the masses within the confines of the machines available. Spheres are not complex polygons and can be created easily and can give the impression of 3D without all those complicated three-dimensional related algorithms. It was a fair stab.

At the end of the day, the intention by PF Magic was clearly honourable. They obviously figured that when the public said they wanted 3D games in their lounge - they wanted 3D game mechanics and all the extra depth that would add to a game. Of cause they didn't. The Public wanted whizzy graphics and detailed 3D environment and please - don't trouble us with talk of game-play. And when they finally got round to wanting depth and meaning in a game - naturally they went overboard and buried the arcade game genre.

So - Ballz is clever - reasonably well implemented but ultimately flawed.

It isn't a good fighting game and it's not helped by the 3DO D-pad either.

While the 3D element is well used the developer failed to bring across what made the 2D fighting games so good. Meaning full hit combinations. Emotionally charged character design. A feeling of contact. Drama and excitement. It's like fighting bubbles and mainly because of this it can be frustrating and a little lacklustre.

The characters aren't powerful. For example: In street Fighter II Ryus' dragons punch seems like a bomb going off - getting it right is rewarding. It feels like a deep powerful move. The graphics, sound and enemies reaction all added up tell you the 'Dragon punch is powerful'. When Zombie in Ballz removes his eyes and throws them at the enemy it's certainly cute, it's just not rewarding. And that sums the game up 'Not rewarding'.

Added to that there are some minor niggles. Things like the language used in the instructions for the special moves. These are slightly esoteric. Td, Aw, A, B. Eh? You mean fwd, bwd, A, B surely but maybe not.

All in all - Ballz is well meaning and not terribly bad just not terribly good either. It has a cult following so I'm being careful. Oh! and the sound track drives me nuts for some reason.

Quite rare too!

3DO Kid.

Novastorm also known as Scavenger 4. Released on a fairly eclectic collection of platforms. 3DO - naturally, PC, FM Towns Marty and something called a Playstation - surely that will never catch on.

Psygnosis have always run either too hot or too cold. You cannot argue however that they have certainly had their moments. Particular favourites of mine were G-Police and Colony Wars these games clicked with my psyche and were reasonably enjoyable to play. As was, lest we forget, Wipeout a game that has few hints of Novastorm in it.

Darker moments have been such style over content classics as Shadow of the beast on the Commodore Amiga and sadly... Novastorm. It's great a shame. I wanted to make you get a copy of this game.

The storyline is a whopper of a cliche - save the human race from a neural computer gone loopy, using only a experimental fighter craft - Scavenger 4.

Cough. Draxons revenge. Cough. Cough. Terminator 2. Cough. Etc. Cough.

Novastorm fails the moment you launch. Your craft, the Scavenger 4, has no inertia, no feel, no sense of flight, it behaves more like a mouse pointer - and the game is killed right there. Which is inexcusable - especially since the PC version didn't suffer from this. Because of this Novastorm is a very below mediocre shoot'em up. It is also a difficult game. You run out of screen when trying to dodge bullets and you get the feeling the game is vindictively trying to kill you. Rather than balancing the difficulty however, Psygnosis saw fit to throw lives at you, giving you the option to have up to nine.

The development team was also clearly split into two. On one side the people who crafted the astounding streamed from CD scenery and on the other the club-footed drunk ape who designed the enemy ships. Perhaps that is unfair? The end-of-level bosses are actually pretty good. OK - Very good. Some are well animated and if I'm to be fair they are varied. It is only the rank-and-file enemy ships of which there are a few, that show all the imagination of a baked bean - as do the power-ups all of which seem to have been inpsired by R-Type, 1942, 1943, etc., and everything else that went before it. Nil points for creativity there.

Content then is well below par in my opinion but what of style you cry? Novastorm actually came with a free wheel-barrow and plunger to cram in the extra style and this is partly why I have soft spot for Novastorm.

I have owned, in the past 11 years, three copies of Novastorm - all second-hand, each time I sold it, I regretted it and ended up tracking down a new copy. Don't ask me to explain - I don't think I can.

First of all - box art. A recent UK magazine covered Psygnosis box art and Novastorms is in the classic pre-Sony vein. A little bit retro - harking back to the mid to late eighties Amiga demo scene style but none the less - very good. I got a warm nostalgic glow from the box art, even in '95.

In terms of music, Novastorms is either a love it or hate it. Grunge in the 90's wasn't really my thing, other than a handful of tunes by the late Kurt Cobain, and it was good too to see that it wasn't Psygnosis thing either. Think Ridge racers techno sound track or probably more like Wipeouts sound track. Heavy beats with organic sounds. I'm no music critic - yes OK!

Graphics - I am a self confessed graphics whore - which makes you wonder why I spend all my time playing 11 old games and not bleeding edge Xbox 360 games - all the same I am. Novastorms sprawling, sweeping, beautiful, rolling landscapes, all of cause streamed from CD, are nothing short of breath taking. Firstly they are detailed and well animated, secondly they are well thought out and imaginative. The biggest shame about this is I cannot find a cheat to remove the game and just let the scenery scroll on by.

Ultimately Novastorm is a niche of history. Mostly now forgotten in all the noise and commotion but it shows Psygnosis path towards Wipeout. It also shows an attempt to embrace an underground youth culture via the music and shows a progression for the streamed from CD Goliaths that became so popular to dismiss once the Playstaion era really took effect. And for all that it's worth a look.

Quite rare.

3DO Kid.

What have golf carts, smoking pipes, tweed, cream-teas, Jaguar cars, slippers, the Daily Telegraph and the game Myst all got in common?

That's right - they all relate to something you will do once you retire at 65 years old - or if you are British, when you retire at 120 years old. When your brain is nice and slow.

There are three things said about Myst. One of which is true - because it is said by me. Another is also true - but for all the wrong reasons and a third thing, well the third thing is a blatant lie.

First, the truth they say. Good grief - this game is boring. Dull. Dull to be fair is something of understatement. Myst is equivalent to a thousand years spent watching paint fester and peel from a wall. You see, to watch paint dry, perhaps, would instill a sense of anticipation, of hope, of interest, something Myst fails to achieve on an epic scale. God spent two billion years watching the Earth cool-down before he started making worms and cardboard and stuff - which must have been two billion years well spent compared to playing Myst for 5 minutes. Boring. Boring. Boring. Bor...

On to the second thing said. "Most successful game ever" -- must be good right? Most successful and all that? The people who perpetuate this myth must think most of us were born yesterday. Or at best the day before. Its so called success is easily attributed to a number of unassailable facts. Firstly Myst was the only game in 1991 that came close to taking advantage of the 660Mb of space available on a spangly new CD media. So what happened was this. All those people who had spent £700.00 ($1,200) on a blistering 1x speed CDROM had felt somewhat cheated, way back in '91, to discover that the sticker "CD enhanced game" meant one shiny disk as opposed to 4 blue floppy disks and other than that, the games were essentially identical.

MYST never made it floppy disk. The naive masses wanted something to justify the expenditure and sadly for them, Myst was that justification. So they bought it. In their droves.

Also don't forget back in '91 3D rendered images of my back-side, assuming it was available 'only' on CD, would have sold in thousands. Pre-rendered was cool. Briefly.

Finally, and most importantly, by 1994 Myst was bundled free with every CDROM. Ever. This meant by about the mid-nineties most humans who didn't scrape their knuckles when they walked probably had more copies of Myst adorning their homes, than say the official North Korean "We love Kim Young Il" fanclub have pictures of their beloved leader hanging from the shack walls.

So to final Myst saying. Or rather the most blatant lie since Micheal Jackson gave a negative response to the question "Did you ever have plastic surgery?" It goes something like this: Myst is a cerebral game. A thinking mans game. A game for the intellectual. Who - Lord God above please tell me - are they kidding? Myst relies on slow wits and reaction times a depressed slug with an aching back and some heavy shopping would find difficult not to achieve on the way home to nagging wife. After an hours play it shows all the progress of a decrepit and arthritic minded spastic monkey still pointlessly banging away on a typewriter with an infinite number of its buddies, blindly, and rather stupidly, hoping to top Shakespeare. It is slow. Very very slow going.

You see - Just because a games introduction contains a few pretentious words, it hardly qualifies it as an intellectual Olympics. In the end all it really proves is they own a Theosaurus. (Unlike me!)

In summary - If you want to be bored, listless, aimless and wander about picking up pointless items and wishing your time away - I suggest you go to place of employment.

There is no action. No guns. No aliens. No half naked women. No C-Class actors. No monsters. No animation. No jelly fish. No nothing. And the graphics have dated badly.

Is it rare? Is it? I'm too bored to comment.

3DO Kid.

Yes. Right. OK. What can I say about this? It's a little bit sad. Actually - it's a great big bit sad. Do you remember the games from your childhood. The jigsaw, the sliding puzzle and find the pair. Yeah - you do right? This title has these but using pictures of naked women in sordid poses. No - I imagine you don't remember that version.

O.K. I'm not a big pornography fan. Yeah - I know what you are thinking but it is true. It's uncomfortable to see. I know I make light of it on here. For two debatable reasons. Partly because the 3DO played host to such a lot and that's what I am doing here and partly because most of the 3DO pornography is well natured and seemingly fun. Pretty girls showing off in skimpy sometimes topless outfits.

Maybe again, for all the wrong reasons, I don't see the harm in this. Some women, like some men, are extroverts and in the context of interactive entertainment - looking at partly naked women is no worse than constantly simulating murder and killing. Of cause in my opinion.

However - and here is the divide - you are usually excused the graphic detail of actual murder in killing games but Mind Teaser 'rewards' such as it is, with graphic sex. Somehow it's seedy and grubby and importantly for a title appearing on essentially a games console - it's not fun.

Nasty and thankfully rare.

3DO Kid.

How old do you reckon Space Ace is? Not the 3DO version but the arcade original? Go on - how old? Give up? Let me give you a clue.

E.T. had finally buggered off home - sadly not taking Drew Barrymore with him but Mr. Kesuke Miyagi hadn't told Daniel-san to wipe-on, wipe-off or indeed spawned a bazillion playground badly executed Karate copy-cats.

O.K. So you give up? Let me tell you. 23 years old. Which is incredible - June 1983 saw Dragons Lair and October 1983 gave us our game today - Space Ace.

Some more Trivia. The voices are not professional actors but the staff of the audio team. Don Bluth one of the key game designers, is also maker of Titan AE and Anastasia and voice of Borf - the bearded blue baddy in Space Ace.

The game is made up of a huge number of animated sequences - really huge. The basic flow of which has you as Ace trying to save Kimmy from the evil Borf by pressing Left, Right, Up or Down at the appropriate moment and unlike Dragons Lair also has you using diagonals.

I can sum-up this game quickly: Nice animation, fun story, great graphics and crap (can I say crap?) game-play.

1983 though! I was 10 years old. Frankie hadn't said 'Relax' or indeed gone to Hollywood. We in the UK were blissfully unaware of who Lukes father was and Tom Cruise was about to have his wicked-way with Rebecca DeMornay on the stairs of all places.

All of which means I still have designs on Porsches' 1979 super car, I still have a copy of 'Old Time Rock N' Roll' in my car - with a pair of secret-from-the-wife Ray-bans, my father-in-law is nothing like Mr Miyagi, I never saw Charlies Angels and simply seeing the word 'Relax' make me think of Frankie.

Good year 1983.

Oddly Space Ace is rare for the 3DO.

3DO Kid.

OK. Well. Right. Fine. What can I say? I do remember Volley ball! I do! I really do. I don't remember bronzed Greek-style gods in bikinis bouncing around a sun drench beach - I do remember Katie Holmes' big fat elbows cracking into my stomach and I just about remember a rather hard plastic ball smashing into my temporal lobes. And the speech impediment that it brought about. I also remember wishing I was taller. I also remember swearing a sacred vow never to play this useless game again.

So - the good news is that ESPN Volley Ball on the 3DO is not a game - it is a training video.

Some French people just look French don't they? And I'm not just talking about Pierre. The man in his black Beret and his black and white stripped jumper, resplendid with a string of onions and a poodle. No. Well yes. But no. What I'm saying is that in a room full of French people some of them will just look like people - while others will look like French people. Am I digging a hole for myself aren't I? - I don't think so. OK maybe I am. Some Japanese people look typical Japanese. While other look like generic east Asians. And so on.

The point? There was one? Oh yes. The people in ESPN Volley ball couldn't look anymore American without tattooing '#1' to their foreheads, wearing a 10 gallon hat and cowboy boots, all the while driving a Chevy with a big eagle on the bonnet (or 'hood' I guess) and perhaps waving a Magnum - the gun not the ice-cream.

If the American people who view this blog wonder what the rest of the world imagines you look like - then look no further than the images of the athletes from 3DO ESPN Volley ball below. Yep - that is what we expecting. Please do not disappoint. Especially if you are the type of moron who stands between the camera and some woman in bikini...

Get. Out. Of. The. Way. - A time machine. A time machine. My blog for a time machine!

Rare - USA only 3DO release.

3DO Kid.

Of cause you are wondering what an a-typical Brit looks like? If you guessed - Crooked teeth. Pale bluish-grey skin. Bowler hat. A picture of her Majesty the Queen in our wallet and a couple of Corgi's yapping round our feet. Preferably while sitting in a winged back chair, sipping earl grey and smoking a pipe? All the while reading the incomprehensible cricket scores from the back of the Daily Telegraph? - You would be bang on the money. "That's us. 'cor blimey gov'ner - you got mi bang ti rights". And so on - of cause.

"Hello Kitty", ハローキティ Harōkiti or, as I amusingly call it, "Hello Sh**ty".

It's a fighting game. The insurmountable cuteness of Sanrio's Hello Kitty - with its 30 years of persistent cotton candy sweetness versus me. 3DO kid. Armed with 33 years of smutty minded depravity.

To be honest - I thought it too close to call. How could I lose?

This 3DO game is based on a simple enough concept. A good job too, because it is all in Japanese. That concept is simply to create Hello Kitty scenes using one of four backgrounds.

So, armed with Hello Kitty herself, a selection of outfits, some of the Hello Kitty sidekicks and few sundry objects, such as sheep, dolphins, fish and flowers the objective is create a scene.

Naturally, I was shooting for a deprived scene. Hello Kitty making sweet love to sheep using a fish - that sort of thing.

Yet - no matter how hard I tried, how desperately I looked for the most slutty dress or how carefully I positioned the flower, each picture simply looked cute. It appears that no matter how low you are psychologically willing to sink - Hello Kitty uses a double-dragon-punch-fireball combo of lovely-cuteness and eventually you fall foul to it simply being cute - genius.

Rare? Very - Japan only game.

3DO Kid.

There are but a handful of reasons as to why a game does not leave the beautiful shores of Japan and find itself destined for this green and pleasant land. (Britain)

- It's crap. Primary reason. No point in throwing good money after bad converting a bad game to English.

- It's too Japanese. A persistent misguided myth that foreigners are just not Japanese enough to appreciate a particular game.

- Obstinacy. Gittish small mindedness. See Hideo Kojima and Policenauts for details* (*May not be because of small minded gittishness.)

So - which is Doraemons? A story of a blue robotic cat with a irrational fear of ear-eating mice. Doraemon is capable of pulling magical items out his Kangaroo style pouch and also, obviously, travelling in time.

This one might have scored a hat-trick.

Doraemons is an adventure game and looks and plays like the cartoon. Doraemon, the ear-less magical liquid drinking main protagonist, is off on a mission to find out why a small troop of international Doraemons have run amok rioting in the local town.

My natural gut reaction was because of a "World Cup" - but the lack of a British Doraemon swigging lager in a Burberry cap while hurling abuse at all the other Doraemons did not emerge - so, I'm open to suggestion.

Dorami-chan makes an appearance in the game. She is Doraemons sister from the 22nd Century. So does Nobita Nobi, Doraemons human nearly always hopeless persistent side-kick.

The entire game is in Japanese language.

It seems fairly slow going in terms of action and script. I base this on my in-house Japanese expert reciting, quite irritatingly, the entire Doraemon theme song, but only managing about 15 minutes of play once the game started. Siting 'boring' as the main reason for abandoning it.

The graphics are pretty and I'm reliably informed true to the cartoon.

Doraemon has never strayed in his 36 years far from a Japan. To be fair he has enjoyed some popularity in the USA - but is almost entirely unheard of in the UK.

In the 3DO rarity stakes - there is copy on eBay right for about now £7.00 but don't bother. It's crap, too Japanese and nobody could be bothered to translate it.

3DO Kid.

I know what you are thinking - 'Where have you been 3DO Kid?' That's technically not true is it? You have been thinking 'Look - that idiot finally gave up'. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I have been on a holy pilgrimage - seriously. The Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Wailing Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Tomb of Christ. The experience moved me. It really did. It moved me to return to England as quickly as possible so I could get to a fried bacon and egg sandwich and watch some soft porn on my 3DO.

Blond Justice.

What is it about? Who knows? In many ways the content of Blond Justice is like the sights I saw in Israel. Much of it may not be true and what you did see was actually grossly over enhanced from the original. Not to say that it didn't make it enjoyable to watch.

Secondly, the lead character in both stories was being stalked by slightly deranged maniacs.

In all fairness, the parallels are endless. However the main differences are: Pretty girls. Boobies. Dancing. More boobies. A couple of brunettes. Even more boobies. A strip dance and a bloke with a beard. That tends to be more New Testament stuff.

Rare and not really worth effort.

3DO Kid.

It's a puzzle game. The end.

...Some more? More!? O.K. A puzzle game a bit like Tetris. OK - Thanks - Bye.

... Huh? - You still here? What do you want from me? Look - pieces fall from the top screen, it is your job as the player to match the blocks - well that should be blobs - into groups of four. However, if you group the four into a square shape then the blocks mutate into another creature / blobby thing and you have to attach another four blocks to it to clear it. O.K.? Right. Bye.

...What do you mean 'Is it fun?'

It's actually O.K. It is not as good as Tetris or Puzzle Bobble but it is considerably better than Ice Breaker. And yes, you can while-away a few hours engrossed in it.

Graphics? It's a puzzle game - what are you expecting? It's as good as can be expected for game that focuses on lining up coloured blocks.

Sound - there is some - I'll be honest I can't remember it, so there you have it. Perhaps I'm sloppy - Perhaps it is unmemorable.

That's really all you can say. The name 'Trip D'? Named after Trip Hawkins - father of the 3DO? Yeah, so the rumour goes. Other than that - I don't know.

Look - it's tea-time, I'm hungry and that's really it for today.

Enjoy the pictures or grab a copy for yourself from eBay - It's not all that rare.

3DO Kid.

Glowing Iguanas. Animals – for the most part – get let off lightly in video games. This is one of the things that truly polarises real life from video game life. In video games, Zombies, mutants, mutant-zombies, aliens and other people are most likely to attack you. This is of cause a complete fallacy. I can’t remember the last-time I was attacked by a zombie in the really real world - mutated or otherwise. I’ve never seen an Alien, let alone had the opportunity to shoot at one. I don’t even own a gun. Also, despite the news, humans haven’t attacked me much either and frankly while the idea of running down hoards of Religious Nutters with a stolen car may seem appealing – the opportunity to do so rarely raises it’s head. – And it’s not for the want of hoping.

No! Our real enemies on this planet are the nasty, bitey, stingy, furry, teeth and claw riddled beasts of the land we share this world with. Sure they may look cute on the BBC documentaries, perhaps menacing in a cool way but most likely we tend to think of the animal kingdom as some subservient mass of biology that we either pet, skin or eat. Basically classified as ‘Mostly Harmless’. Nothing of cause is further from the truth. Animals – all of them – are simply waiting for the right moment to over-throw the human race. The obvious candidates are creatures like Lions and Tigers, Bears must up there too – perhaps even dogs – mans best friend? Or enemy scout? And of cause those clicky-bloody-clicky smart-arse Dolphins. Have you seen how far apart their eye’s are? How are they trusted? I’ll tell you - propaganda and lies.

Drawing from my own experiences of being traumatised by animals, I find the usual predators however feature way down the list of would be human usurpers. Sure I’ve been nipped by a dog and clawed by a cat but for true animal related horror you have to look to the ‘sleepers’ of the animal kingdom. That’s right – Cows, Sheep, Goats, Chickens and some mean looking Geese and of cause the bloody ring leaders – Hamsters.

All these creatures have attacked me with no provocation what-so-ever in past. From the ‘They are simply defending their young’ stampeding cattle to the ‘Mr fluffy likes you – that’s just his way of saying hello’ vampire hamster – taking his chance at firing the first shot across the bow of the good-ship humanity. Supported by their damnable human apologists – animal lovers.

Sewer Shark offers us the chance to prepare in many ways for a future where the human race is forced to live in sewers defending ourselves from the merciless onslaught of gods four-legged harbingers of doom, perversely referred to as the animal kingdom

Starting with ‘glowing iguanas’ - as good a place as any I suppose.

Tom Zito seems particularly proud of his efforts on this one – his name features highly during the introduction, more than in other of his outings such as Night Trap and Supreme Warrior.

Whizzing down tunnels with badly acted FMV and poorly animated ‘creatures’ for yet another ill conceived interactive movie from the Digital Pictures stable is the order of the day. And if order-of-the-day is a cliché, it’s nothing compared to this game.

Oh-yes. Why are hamsters the ring leaders? Good management is identified by the ease of communication in the upper hierarchies. So, with that in mind – what is a Hamster called in France? ‘Hamster’. In Russia? 'Hamster'. Japan? ‘Hamster’ – the naming is universal. Seems to be more than coincidence if you ask me. Watch the cages my brothers – their time is approaching.

Sewer shark – rare and over-priced.

3DO Kid.