3DO Interactive Multiplayer

You can tell I'm excited - I've decided to simply ramble on for a bit. I have also decided to use under-pants at least three times today, and you know what? I'm going to tie underpants into this thing that I laughingly refer too as a review.

Skidding is always cool, unless, and I have to be careful on this particular point, it’s the smudgy type that occasionally appear in the very young or the very old, or indeed everyones, from time-to-time, under-pants . You know the ones.  In Britian, when I was 12 years old, they were called 'skids'. And also there was a game called 'Skid Marks' which was considered very funny indeed at the time.

The final reference to under-pants is, under-pants and, I'll get to the point in a minute, cars. Particularly the skidding, drifting and power sliding of cars. It’s a fact! It really is. All men love watching cars drifting and power sliding. And if you don’t? Then check the contents of your under-pants (You see? We got there.) – as you may well be a woman. This isn’t some sexist slur of course. Oh no. The boffins at MIT and Harvard have scientifically proven beyond all reasonable doubt, that if you do not enjoy seeing or participating in power slides, you are in fact a woman – and you must immediately return your extra chromosome. You are not even a good woman, because all the best women love power slides in cars too. Stamped addressed envelopes can be provided upon request. So there we have it. Under-pants, skidding and cars. We got there in the end. Ramble over. Phew!

So, you’re thinking to yourself, where are you going with this 3DO Kid? Well... Just Powerslide for the 3DO by Elite that is all!

You read that right! Powerslide for the 3DO. OH-MY-GOD. YES. IT’S INCREDIBLE ISN’T? YES? -- and no, that’s not blasphemy by the way – but a prayer. I wondered if the Lord fancied a go – because I doubt even he believed we would ever see this blessed day. The blessed day when 3DO Kid gets to play Powerslide on the 3DO. It’s only been 13 years waiting. I may have skidded my pants in excitement! Perhaps not then. 

Well sort of played Powerslide to be fair. Don’t get me wrong, we can all play it and you don’t need a 3DO Dev kit to play this game, just a regular common garden variety 3DO, and it’s not a gold disc secret squirrel release that you have to sell a kidney to get hold of, you can buy it now from Oldergames, but sadly, there is a caveat: it’s not a finished version of Powerslide. It’s a beta. Still, I’ll say it again, Powerslide has been released! Personally? I don’t think I’ve been this happy since I got a pristine copy of 3DO Creature Shock for a few dollars.

That was yesterday by the way. 

So – what do we have? I guess in a word: potential. Powerslide appears to be a good 3D rally racing game for the 3DO. You race a car from a heli-cam view, which is just above the rear of the car, and steer it around a randomly selected track.

After the Need for Speed, car games that are half-way decent on the 3DO are none existent. The Japanese, and I hesitate before using the word ‘enjoyed’, but they had Autobahn Tokio and F1GP, neither of which set the gaming world on fire. Then there is of cause Megarace and Quarantine – which probably belong on fire. After that there were some others, I won’t bore you with the details. So - amongst these does Powerslide fit?  

It’s difficult to say in honesty.  We will start with the choice of cars. Powerslide is possibly the anti-NFS in many respects. While NFS offered Ferraris and Porsches, Powerslide tries to tempt us with cars like a Ford Escort and a Rover Metro!
 
While you can only play 1 car in this demo release, I believe it is the Lancia, an examination of the other drivers that would have been available in the finished game, suggests, putting it mildly, an intriguing collection of cars. Firstly, a Metro. Yep, the new Mini before the BMW new Mini and made after the old Mini – if you follow. The Peugeot 205 GTi, a Lancer, a Escort Cosworth and a Toyota Celica.  And as I have said, there was also a driver to go with each car. There is no suggestion of how this would impact the game play, and these characters are all 1994 clichés that I’m not going to dwell on. Besides, the x-man from the Need for speed was no shining beacon for the future of interactive entertainment by any means. 

So choice of cars and drivers aside. How about graphically? Graphically this is definately a beta release. The frame rate is there, it hits between 20FPS and 30FPS which isn’t bad but the draw distance is. Bad that is. Oh – and there are no wheels on the car. Giving Elite the benefit of the doubt? I imagine the graphics would have been greatly improved, one would hope the draw distance inched out and the car models finished off.

Motion? I don’t  of cause know what Elite would have done with the sense-of-speed the game has once it had progressed from a beta release to a proper release, but slow feels pretty slow and quick feels pretty quick, again it’s not to bad and shows promise. It’s very NFS in that department too. 

Tracks? From what I can see, there was a desert section, a road section, a snow section. …and that’s about it. Which means it is about the same as every 3D racer since 1993.

On to more important things: The physics model. This was always one of the Need for Speeds strong points, and of cause it’s the physics model that counts when drifting a computer car. Well – Powerslide’s physics engine looks and feels very nice. The car rolls around on what appears to be independent suspension for each wheel, but it doesn’t appear that the cars can be completely flipped over or damaged. This is different to NFS, as you could flip a car and smoke would pour from the engine block. Although of cause no physical damage is possible in either game. Having said that, you get the impression that Powerslide had an accomplished physics engine, that given the time it needed, could have only gotten better. 

So, that leads us on to the big question – what of actually power sliding? What can I say? There is certainly a possibility that you perhaps can power slide the car in Powerslide. I say that because it’s hard to tell. Occasionally, i.e., once your car is in 5^th gear at full speed, you will turn the car and it will veer off to the left or right, and you certainly get the impression you are sliding, but there is no visual clue, other than the car is now bouncing off-of the side of the road, and there is no audio clue, as this beta game is entirely silent anyway.  Also. whether being able to adjust the direction of the wheels, to alter the entry angle into a power slide was possible or not remains to be seen, and Powerslide, in this beta state, doesn’t appear to have the granularity of control in a slide as you might find in Ridge Racer. To be fair, the controls are not broken, they just aren’t fixed. I guess we will never really know. Handling is tricky to begin with, but ultimately it offers a hint of satisfying and it's by no means bad.

I should also mention there maybe jumps. The un-numbered rev counter goes past where i assumed the red-line should have been and that usually indicates no traction. As in the wheels have left the ground. There are no other clues. No sound like I said, and no shadow. So - maybe jumps.

Oddly the gear shift is on the up and down of the dpad, and the turning of the steering wheel is the left and right shift buttons of the pad. This is an unusual way of doing things in a 3DO game but it works well interestingly.  

…and that’s about it.  There is a two player version but the unoptomised code slows to a grind halt, there is no control of the second car and it caused my 3DO to crash - so the less said about it the better.

I don’t want to over sell Powerslide. It is a beta. The potential is there in heaps, but ultimately there isn’t much too it, but, and again I don’t want to overstate this, in this unfinished state one thing is clear, the Need for Speed’s crown as the greatest racer on the 3DO would have been, in my expert opinion,  threatened by Powerslide – should it have ever gotten that far. What Oldergames has provided us with is a glimpse of a solid foundation that perhaps would have been one of the best 3DO games ever released. 

A final note. I want to thank Elite for allowing this game to be released - but more importantly I also want to offer a heart felt jesture of gratitude to Oldergames. This release, for me at least, was more anticpiated, more welcome, and more exciting than anything being released on the 360, the Wii or indeed the PS3 this year- and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. The work you have put into this is greatly appreciated, and wish you all the best in the future.

A new type of Spam. "Ironic Spam".

סוככי כניסה כשמם כן הם – סוככים המיועדים להתקנה בכניסת מבנים ומספקים הגנה מפני השמש ומפגעי מזג האויר השונים. סוככים אלו מגוונים מאוד בצורתם חלקם מזכירים סוככים מסוגים שונים. כחלק מהמגוון הגדול של קבוצה זו ישנם סוככים הניתנים לפתיחה וישנם סוככים הקבועים לאורך כל השנה. החומרים מהם עשויים סוככי כניסה מגוונים אך כמעט לכולם משותפת מסגרת המתכת עליה מתוח בד או מותקן חומר פלסטי לסיכוך מירבי.

First of all a note to spammers. This spam, I believe, is selling Caravan awnings. You know, the bit of tent stuck to the side of caravans? This blog however is about video games. Can you see the school boy error that has been made by this spammer?

Spam, hate it or hate it, is a form of marketing. Now - advertising caravan awnings on a video game blog? I don't know, the page 1 in my 'How to be the greatest marketing guru ever guide' does state clearly in bold font "Know your audience", I can't imagine many people on here looking for 3DO games are also looking for Caravan awnings - I could be wrong but I have a feeling I'm not.

To me, this means that this spammer, bless his little cotton socks, is doubly stupid. Stupid because the blog is set to 'moderate' which means with a single click all his efforts are gone - and secondly awnings? On a 3DO blog?

...But the big thing, for me anyway, is that this is Hebrew Spam. Think about it. Only on the Internet right?

Here is the link: http://www.awnings.co.il/ go on, buy Israeli awnings now! Avoid the rush!

3DO Kid.

Bob Monkhouse. I know to a lot of people on here that name means absolutely nothing, but I’m going to say it again, Bob Monkhouse. Family Fortunes? Come on now? This is now one of my all time favourite 3DO games. Ever. You know what? This is the only T.V. game show I ever watched as a kid and actually enjoyed. In America it was originally called Family Feud – and your version of Bob Monkhouse was Richard Dawson.

For years, back in the 80s, I sat on the floor in front of the T.V. on a weekend evening, racking my brain to questions like: “We asked a survey of 100 people, what would you expect to find on the breakfast table” and yelling as loud as I could ‘TOAST! YOU MORONS! IT’S TOAST!” of cause it wasn’t – but that in many ways has been the story of my life.

There’s not a lot to the game. There are two families, one of which can be computer controlled, and they are asked a series of questions. The questions are survey questions of 100 people. So, for example, the researchers for the show asked a 100 people “Name a type of whale?”. They then gather the results. So, 23 of the surveyed people said “Blue”, which would be the top answer, then 16 say “Humped Back”, etc., etc. It’s the job of the contestants during the game to guess the most right answer. Simple eh?

There are three rounds, the first round is a head-to-head between an individual from both families. The first person to hit the buzzer and say the most correct answer takes control of the game for their family and they move on to the second round. It’s the job of each member of the successful family to then find the remaining correct answers given by the respondents to the survey. Get three wrong answers and it is UUUUNNNNEEEER! And over to the other family to possibly get the cash!

The final round is two members of the same family trying to get all the highest answers to the survey questions in an attempt to score higher than 201 points.

It’s actually a lot harder than it looks but really and genuinely, and from the bottom of my heart, I swear, “fun”.

I was concerned of a couple of things. Firstly, I thought that the answers would need to be word perfect. They in fact don’t, which is good. Even better, sometimes an answer can be said in a number of ways and still be correct. The game even takes this into account. I also feared that the questions would be repeated. Fortunately, while it does happen, it is pretty infrequent with 4,000 questions in the database.

The presentation isn’t bad, the input mechanism is as good as might be expected, and it’s just brilliant. This is really, really good fun. What put me off, and why it has taken me this long to get round to it is, I didn’t know what Family Feud was! I thought, or rather feared, it was going to be another Station Invasion or Twisted or something!

We asked a survey of 1 person, 3DO Kid: "Should we get Family Feud for the 3DO?" and the top answer was? "YES! GET IT YOU MORON! THE ANSWERS' YES! WHERE DO THEY GET THESE PEOPLE?! YES!" -- ah happy memories.

Quite rare and under valued!

3DO Kid.

It's me! 3DO Kid. Giving you a lovely update, to what is coming soon on my lovely blog.

So -- what is coming to my blog? Ask yourself this: What haven't we had recently? Japanese games? We've had those actually. Movie tie-in games? Again yes. Also, we've had good games and bad games and rare game... What about smut? That's right. Coming soon: Paper, Scissors, Stone. 3DO style! (i.e. With Naked Japanese girls!) Of cause I'll see the nudity and you will read about me seeing the nudity but hey...!

What else?

- Family Feud.
- Perfect General.
- I feeling the need to go back to Casper.
- plus - just a thought - my FMW module? You're asking yourself is it any good? I'll be answering!

...suggestions are also welcome. Do you want me to put something on my blog for you? Just ask and I'll look into it.

The other thing of cause, before I forget, is the four totally new games, no - wait! Is it five? I thin kit is! 5 new games coming to the 3DO this Summer! They will be on here first!

So -- stick with the Kid. The 3DO Kid. Master of his own PC, 3DO and beer bottle.

Bye for now!

3DO Kid.

“Jurassic Park Interactive”, can you believe it? Yet another 3DO game movie tie-in? Is it a pattern forming I hear you cry. No. No it isn’t. Just a happy coincidence

I also have another confession. Another confession from 3DO Kid? Madness you're thinking to yourself. Again -- no. The last review of Jurassic Park Interactive I did, way back on Christmas Day 2005, was feebly attempting humour. You know what? It wasn’t funny. My coverage doesn’t tell you anything about the game, what’s in it, what it is about, whether you should buy it or not, or whether it’s rare or collectible. Plus I’m a hypocrite too! Because? Well, because it’s a collection of small games and puzzles, in a similar vein to that of Warps Short Warp that I raved on about, yet I felt in some way compelled to belittle this particular game. I let you, my loyal readers down. I let myself down. And more importantly, I let Trip Hawkins down. So now, I’m going to set the record straight.

… NOooooooooooooooooooooooo! NO! NO! NO! …

O.K. I’m kidding, I’m kidding.

The Jurassic Park Interactive concept is a simple one You have two main objectives. Get all the characters to the Heliport and get the cargo ship to turn around and go home.

This is done via a series of mini-games, loosely, based on scenes in the movie. E.g. Escape the perusing Tyrannosaurus Rex by driving as quickly as possible through the forest, or by fending off those, if you remember them, spitting little dinosaur things or by sneaking about in 3D maze bit, trying to fit a fuse.

So good. It has some structure and as game concepts and movie tie-ins go, on the surface it’s not all that bad. You know, I know you think I’m being facetious at this point. I’m not. After all, that is the plot to the movie isn't it? A bunch of people wander about in the woods, having little adventures, avoiding killer dinosaurs, until they can escape. Movie and game in perfect harmony so far then.

Yet all is not well. The first swift kick to your dino-regions is when you discover that while the game features the characters from the film, it doesn’t feature the actors. The FMV is filled with uglier versions of Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern and Sam Neill. I don’t claim to be an oil painting myself – but then I’m not an actor. Why the hell Universal Interactive Studios couldn’t convince the, and lets be honest, quite clearly b-list cast of Jurassic Park to take part in the making of the game is beyond me. Think about it. 1993 plus CD plus 32Bit plus blockbuster movie plus the word Interactive, you would have thought the game makers would have been fighting Richard Attenborough off with an amber encrusted Brontosaurus bone or something. …but no - we got Sam Neil’s uniquely less talented double. The role requires chinos, a neckerchief, and slightly educated look. Amazingly they failed.

But if you are going to whip a dinosaur game, you better tie it down with something strong – so let’s use game-play to tie-down JPI. It’s bad, there is no hiding from it. There is not one of the mini-games that is actually any good.

One of the ‘system’ games is a shoot’em up. O.K. You’ve got the Jurassic Park visuals, a 32bit CD system and the world watching – but they still managed to cock it up. The driving sequence is by far the best bit – and that’s a sorry look out for the other parts of the game. The controls are minced and the frame-rate? The images below are representative of the expected frame rate. I’d like to thank Eurogamer for that gag by the way.

The spitting dinosaurs sub-game would have been better placed on an 8bit system and given away free. The Asteroids clone is in-fact an insult to the memory of Asteriods, and the Galaga rip-off? It reduced me to tears. It’s all pretty rubbish. It’s not pretty actually – it’s just rubbish. If I was to be cynical, then I would say that the real actors were not invited to be in the game. Why? To keep costs, read ‘royalties’, down, Jurassic Park Interactive is cheap. It’s nasty. It’s rushed.

Which is all a bit of a shame – because like I said, the foundation, I mean the concept, wasn’t all that bad.

But wait, what’s that I hear? “it's-a-meee”, you know, the world is a different place. Small, easy to grasp games are all the rage – perhaps I’m a trifle too hard on Jurassic Park Interactive? Sadly -- no. The combination of frame rate, controls, difficulty and, in the case of the shoot ‘em bit, where you could be killed off screen three times and not realise it. Trifle hard? The trifle, sponge cake, and a handful of boiled sweets aren’t hard enough. It’s all bad.

Any redeeming points? Some of the music from Jurassic Park is included in the disc in CD quality and well digitized sequences from the movie are also included. However these titbits are not enough to rescue a below average game. SO if you like the movie – don’t soil it’s good memory by putting this into your 3DO machine. By the way – this game doesn’t run well under Freedo.

It’s also pretty rare. Especially in the U.K.

3DO Kid.

Edit: Defunct games said that this game is immersive. I have one question: Do those guys bury themselves in shhhh....I better stop there!

We can all be wrong. "What's that 3DO Kid?" I guess you're saying to yourself already, "3DO Kid? Wrong about a 3DO game?". Satan ice-skate to work this morning did he? Before you all jump on the 3DO Kid is a git anyway bandwagon and start professing that Egg a-la Face actually suits me, let me explain, no it's not a u-turn on Wolfenstein. Wolfenstien is still utterly boring.

You see, it's like this: Wrong is a constant habit of mine. In fact I'm so practiced at being wrong, I'm an expert in u-turns. So, as you can probably guess I suspect, today I'm officially announcing I was wrong about Rebel Assault. Well - sort of wrong. Now - let us not all be wrong, so don't get me wrong, as I still firmly believe that George Lucas was wrong.  He, I firmly believe, actually does enjoy defecating on our dreams, and to some degree Rebel Assault was a County prizing winning deification. It just wasn't as bad as I originally made out.
 
So, I've been playing Rebel Assault properly again today and, yep, you've guessed it - I actually quite enjoyed myself.

So, what is Rebel Assault?

Rebel Assault is a sort of sister game. Sister to the original Star Wars movie. With a bit of Empire Strikes Back welded intio it for good measure. You play the role of a character called "Rookie One", which has a striking similarity to Luke Skywalker, except of cause when you choose to give Rookie One a female voice. It's not Luke, you don't play as Luke, but it could be sort of thing.

There are 15 missions in total. The first three of which are training missions. They are in-line with what you would expect. So, the first is flying a Y-Wing down a trench, there is some variety during this mission where you get the choice to go left or right, once done, the second part of the mission is a top down view and shoot at the targets affair.

Later missions include dodging asteroids, O.K. you're thinking, and yes, Wing Commander may have done it better, but Empire Strikes Back invented it if you follow my drift. So it's a game immitating movies, inmmitating games. I think. Maybe.

The final training mission is a game of follow my leader on planet Kolaador.

Training missions though?  Rebel Assault is very unforgiving, even in 'Normal' mode. Short of Obi Wan actually taking some force and shoving it down your throat, the game is patience shredding to a very spectacular level.

During training, the asteroid section is by far the most difficult. Trying to avoid rock asteroids and shoot ice asteroids is very difficult. Someone, anyone, should have pointed out at the time, you can not shoot right and steer left on one 3DO joy-pad. Not, as is required, at the same time.

Once done with the training, you enter into a some pretty predictable Star Wars style missions. Shoot the Probots, shoot the Tie fighters, blow up the Super Star Destroyer, fly the trench, blow up death star, etc. You are on rails for most of these, which was lamented a great deal about at the time, but in retrospect it isn't the problem.

No, the problem is that Rebel Assault is not very rewarding, in fact the game is positively merciless.

For example; during the shoot the Super Star Destroyer level, you circle round and around and around, until you have destroyed all the gun turrets. Firstly, there are a lot of gun turrets, what makes it worse is that your laser sights snap to a sort of grid. This grid isn't tuned to the targets. Because of this, often what you will find is that your cursors moves left, then snaps right of a target and you never hit it. If you miss the target, so that it passes behind your craft, it will immediately shoot you in the back, depleting your all ready weak shields.

It's an award winning recipe for joypad slamming anger. A dish best served on less rare controllers. Many, many of the levels are very similar. For example, the Shoot the Walker level is just as bad, but includes a need to dodge the Walker, even though you are on rails. More-of:  you cannot steer left and shoot right syndrome.

It's fair to say the graphics are very 1993 PC, and not terribly 1995 3DO. The bulk of the game is sprites overlaid on either pre-rendered Star Wars scenes or over actual Star Wars footage. It's grainy. There are fields of grain, less grainy than the footage in Rebel Assault.

During the cut scenes we encounter another weird decision. The decision to include actual footage from Star Wars, but using a compression technique that meant only moving parts of the scene actually move. It means that when Darth Vader is talking to his, although he didn't know it at the time, soon to be dead Generals, only Darths head moves and everything else is perfectly and absolutely still. It's pretty funny. Weird though? Yes, insomuch that you could rip Star Wars from DVD to MPEG and fit the whole thing into 700Mb very easily and get better quality. Not just 15 or so scenes.

So, at the end of the day, I'm still not saying it's a good game but it is, the above caveates aside, considerably better than I professed in my original covering of it. What I'm saying is, it's not the worst game, in fact it's probably better than Cobra and Pyramid Intruder, which are both games in a similar vein, but Rebel Assault is a mediocre game. The nostalgia, the Star Wars, the tunes? In fairness, it has it in spades.

Do you like the new design? No? Fine - I don't care. The fact of the matter is that I do like it. I like it a lot.

We now have links. Look, over there on the left. Mobius is doing a nice slick looking Retroreview site, obviously and quite predictably it isn't as a good as mine, but it's brilliant none-the-less.

Michael Buffa? Where are you? You have been linked. We miss you.

3DO Today. Despite the fact they ignored my mail asking to join my outstanding, innovative and to be perfectly honest, near-on perfect 3DO forum, I've linked him. It;s a good resource.

The old 3DO website. Take a look. The web in 1996 was not pretty.

Mail Order Japan. The easiest way to get 3DO games out of the Land of the Rising sun without having to re-mortgage the house.

Older Games? Bless them. 4 new games for the 3DO. 4 I TELL YOU. BUY THEM. BUY THEM AND BE DAMNED!

As you can see, I haven't linked the 3DO collective. WHHHHAATAT!!!!!???!!? Crazy. Just madness. Gir Draxa, the CEO of the 3DO collective, has assured me personally that the Collective will return soon. And then? I'll think about it.

You want me to link you? Just ask and I will consider.

I'm not sure you are going to like this. It's another Japanese import. It's not a game and it's not in English. It's a CD based manga story. So, instead of turning pages, you press the 'A' button on your 3DO controller to turn the virtual pages. The future of none-interactive entertainment?

The story follows the adventures I believe,  of a man called Takeru. And it's OK. I suppose I better answer the big question first; does not being able to read Japanese hinder this? I'd say 50% of what is going-on is lost, but this is what I figured out:

Takeru is a wandering chap, perhaps a Ronin. He looks like he escaped from Fist of North Star if you have seen that. And no, not the dreadful live action movie, the anime cartoon. He's a big chap, with big blond hair and a half disco, half Samurai bright red outfit. Takeru also has a pet fox thing, that seems to be inside a rice cooker. And together they are looking for someone. Someone clearly evil.

So far, I'm up to chapter 4, and Takeru has been in a fight in a bar. He has tortured some guy in the bar to tell him where the old evil guy he was looking for was. He then chased after this old guy, who was being protected by this robotic woman in a red bikini. You following me? OK. Good.

At this point, I should point that the artist, a man who seems to draw all his art from start to finish on computer rather than on paper first then transfering them to computer, is quite keen on drawing the female form. And occasionally, in the name of equality, the male form.

Anyway, on with the story: A long chase ensues. Takeru on the floating Rice Cooker with a fox inside it and the old-man on a giant robotic Sea-horse. And it's all very exciting. There are explosions, a half naked women's butts and hand-grenades, but eventually the old guy escapes. He escapes by means of taking a hostage. The hostage is freed, but the old guy scurries off leaving Takeru to do what he does second best after fighting. Yes, that's right, licking faces.

Takeru's chat up line is unique and transcends language. He licks the faces of the women he fancies. Women, in so far as I can make out, he has just met. I'm only on chapter 4, but Takeru the Licker has used the same trick twice. The first time it worked, and before you could say "What's Japanese for lick?" he was taking a bath with the lady in question. The second time he tried to lick his way into a women affections, he was arrested, but call it the 3DO Kid Anime intuition, but I reckon it worked the second time too.

The story is based in a world that shares parallels with the PS2 game series Onimusha. Old world feudal Japan, modern technology and a 1970s dress code.

The art is very good. It's nostalgic, especially if you like early 1990s anime like The Fist of the North Star, or Ninja Scroll, and the story? Well I'm just about keeping up.

Rare-ish outside of Japan.

3DO Kid.

Enjoy the pictures.

L3 Interactive and now 3DO Kid, would like to spend several minutes explaining that strapping a piece of wood, coated in slippy wax, to your feet, then climbing up the nearest snow covered mountain, and then jumping off is in fact dangerous. Duuuude!

Oh really?

One of the great things about being the last of the great 3DO fan-boys, that's me, 3DO kid by-the-way, is that I am immortal. Why? Firstly, I challenge you to prove to me that I'm wrong. And secondly, I don't, under any circumstances, jump off of snowy cliffs. 'cos that is dangerous, in a life threatening kind of way.

Still some people do.

I guess it will always be one of life's unanswered questions. Did anyone who owned this disc actually go Snow Boarding? I guess some did, one would imagine they already snow boarded.

Or did sad kids, you know, ones like me, 3DO Kid, last of the great 3DO fan-boys, buy this Snow Boarding Tutorial disc and then pretend to know about Snow Boarding to look cool? Perhaps even buy a snow board and mount it on the wall in their room. Until it started ripping plaster off the walls, because it was a cheap Snow Board, that weighed many, many, many, kilograms and then their dad came into that room and shouted at them and they ended up having to repair the damage and re-decorate the whole room?

We will never know. Never. Never I tell you.

Yeah - yeah. Learn to snowboard very dull and very rare.

3DO Kid.

A guy from New York asked me, jokingly one would hope, to ask my new Texan bosses which is more important? i) A gun rack. ii) A bottle blond shopping mall hairdo. He reckoned it would be 50/50 but sorry John, I don't get it - after-all, I'm English. However, if American Laser games, who were based in Texas are anything to go by, I'd say gun rack.

And who can blame them?

Guns - you have to love 'em. Now before you all start wittering on about statistics and crime and facts and stuff, be aware it's falling on 3DO Kids deaf ears. I like guns. Never owned one. Never shot one. Still - I like 'em. Why do I like them? Erm, actually I'm not sure. Let's chalk it up to that extra chromosome again.

What I do know is Solid Snake had one and I liked him. The A Team had loads, and I liked them. Rambo too. In fact lots of people, imaginary or otherwise have had guns, and I liked them all. Except of cause the bad guys. No - I didn't like them. Fortunately they often get shot. Just like the ones in Crime Patrol.

One of the great things about video games is that you can enjoy all the boyish thrills of pretending to shoot bad guys, without all the blood and without all those tricky questions.

Crime Patrol offers the ability to join the American Police force and shoot criminals. Good. In addition you get the opportunity to be promoted, of cause only if you shoot enough bad people. It's like America's Wildest Police chases meets Mad Dog Mcree, without that over entusiastic ex-Police Sergeant, no cars, and women that quite frankly were hired neither for their sex appeal or indeed their acting skills. Another friends and family casting agent for a 3DO game? I'll let you decide.

If you have played Mad Dog Mcree, Space Pirates or any of the American Laser game games, then when all said and done you've played Crime Patrol.

Sadly, as usual, it's no fun at all without a light gun. Which I did bid on from Germany but got out bid by a few poxy few Euros. (Silly currency anyway)

Quite rare too!

3DO Kid.

Who would have thought? Eh? You? I don't think so. Me? The last of the great 3DO fan-boys? Would I have thought? Probably not. What am I thinking? I dunno, I forgot. No! Hold-on! I remember! Who would have thought that after nearly two years of dragging my sorry gamer backside through the scorched desert of 3DO releases, that I would stumble across another unknown gem at this late stage!

Well guess what, I have!

The Tower. Oh-yes. So, err, anyway, let's walk through this particular door backwards - yep, the 'but' first.

It's all in Japanese. So there you go - I've said it.

Now, before you roll your eyes and think to yourself, oh good-grief 3DO Kid, it's another game I'm going to be searching eBay for, or at great expense having to ship it from Japan, only to be disappointed again - like I was with Dr Hauzer. Wait.

Now stop right there. Hold your horses. You won't regret this. Well - not entirely. Perhaps.

I'm not saying it's going to be any easier than Dr Hauzer, but it can be played with a fair amount of fun even if you don't speak Japanese.

You have to build a Tower. The game is like Sim City but set in a tower, hence the name right? So, and at this point you can qualify in or out if you want to play it to some degree, this game reminds me of Japan. And I like Japan. It's a great country and somehow, The Tower has integrated what makes Japan different, in a game. The essence of, what is to me recognisable modern Japan, in a game.

So why does it remind me of Japan? Lots of reasons actually.

The music right at the start is quintessentially Japanese. And no, it's not some heavy drum with some priest warbling in the background, it's, I don't know, it's... it's very Japanese. Trust me. It's cute and happy and the kind of music you hear in the Taxi or in the department store. It's very upbeat, and sounds I guess you'd call it 'hopeful'.

The other sounds are very Japanese too. The sounds that are played while the inhabitants of The Tower make their way to work or bed or get into the lift, they all chatter away in Japanese. As a none Japanese speaker a few sounds stick in your head when you visit Japan. When you walk into a shop and the shop-keeper says something, or the lift, should it come fitted with voice says something similar, it sounds something like chikikikiik-maaaaas, and that 'maaaaas' sound sticks in your head, it's said a lot, like "Sumimasen" (Sort of means excuse me, but not exactly) - I recounted this to some Japanese people and they all laughed, but it's true and that very sound is included in the game.

It also looks Japanese. The graphics straddle crude and sophisticated in an interesting way. The people are merely stick people walking about, but then when you have built a restaurant or bar on the 10th floor you can peep (it's easy, click on the binoculars icon) and you can see the little peoples home or noodle bars, and that looks Japanese too. Look at the pictures below - it explains it better than I can.

So - you build your Tower, you put in Lobby, a lift, some apartments and offices and you grow a Tower, it's in so far as I have gotten, as simple as that. It's very good, and if you enjoyed Sim City or any other Sim games, this is worth taking a look at!

This game isn't rare in Japan, but it is quite rare outside. Go - on, ask Azuma! You know where to find him! Mail Order Japan! (use google!)

3DO Kid.

If you are like me, and let's face it, that is unlikely, but if you are, then you must be thinking that learning to drive in Japan must be the best ever. Surely?

Drifting round bends, down hill racing, all the cars have names like AE86 and RX8. Then there is the hot chicks, the drama, the small cans of warm coffee from seemingly unpowered and randomly placed vending machines that litter Japan, and of cause, the complete absence of Police. The complete absence of traffic police anyway... I have a re-occurring dream about that. [sigh] Anyway...

The inhabitants of Ridge City don't have police. Tak Fujiwara of Initial D fame has never been pulled over by the fuzz. Not once have you seen the little chap sweating profusely in his Dads Toyota, as some sarcastic traffic cop asks him questions like: "How fast do you think you were going?" or "Is this your car?", "Where is the fire?" or my personal favourite "Sorry Mr 3DO Kid, emergency Cocaine deliveries to hookers does not justify speeding" that sort of thing. You know how police are.

Fast and the Furious Tokyo drift taught us the Japanese cops can't even be bothered to chase Toyota Supras with body-kits. It's like the law over there.

So is it racer Heaven? Apparently, and predictably, not. Firstly getting a license is expensive. Really expensive. So I'm told.

Secondly, they have all manner of stupid questions to answer before they get given the chance to even prove to the driving license test guy they can drift. And then, once all the stupid questions have been answered, drifting and power-slides during the exam is frowned upon. It's just crazy. The movies, games and anime have lied to us. Thanks a lot Battlegear!

Learning to drive in Japan is just as dull, and quite possibly, the biggest anticlimax in the Westernized world, including Japan. Yes you're free! Free to pay car tax, petrol, repairs, servicing, the list is endless. For what? A lump of metal that simply sits there and when you do drive it the only thing that really accelerates is the depreciation.

...and this game for the 3DO, a Japanese only game that allows you to practice for the written part of the Japanese driving license test, proves this emphatically. Bah.

Rare, for obvious reasons, outside of Japan.

3DO Kid.