Ces
Eric Glover
N.U.
CES and remembrance the last of 3.
It was time for the big guns Nintendo Vs Sega.
The Nintendo booth was a monster. It was a huge black video stone hinge
with a giant nintendo banner. It was both impressive and almost downright
frighting. It was style straight from the 6th lord's school of thought.
Inside the @50 foot circle was a raised video floor that gave an eerie and
cool SUPER hightech feel to the space. In various states around the circle
were the defacto standard 25" televisions pumping out 16bit graphics and
stereo sound.
Mini Review of the Super Famicon
The control is sleek, stylish and functional. The feel is easily
comparable to if not superior to the Genesis. Four clustered action buttons
and a D button are framed by a rounded creme shell. In a word. Awesome.
The Console is very sleek and warm. It is very compact, again the creme
motif with Famicon logo resides in an understated corner of the machine.
Things that caught my eye
Nested in several Super Famicon station where SimCity [Not bad, but not
quite as crisp as the Mac II or IBM versions.], F-Zero [A dizzying,
blinding monolith to the power of the hardware but please turn that music
off.] Pilot Wings [Rather bogus in my opinion] and of course the ever
popular
super mario world.
Quick Supermario World Review
On my initial run thru the opening screen of super mario world I thought,
hey this is darn cool. The game has a nice mellow flow to it coupled with
good animation and a hefty dose of humor. [When the ostrich looking thing
mario gets to ride eats an apple thats a riot!]. I was quite happy with
the video "pixellation" effect that begins play [Pixellation; you know when
the viewed screen breaks down into bigger and bigger pixels. Watch Parker
Lewis Next week to see what I mean.]
Didnt get to see Zelda III but I was told it was their somewhere. :(.
Also rans in the nintendo area, gameboy stuff like Lunar Chase, Metroid an
Kid Icarus.
I was overall a happy camper. Quite impressed with the SNES until I saw
what some poor shlep had done to the American version. [But that was
another post, and I wont repeat myself here]
The Power of Nintendo is not to be under estimated. I was 2/3 sold on
maybe acquiring an SNES [except for the utter ugliness of the American
Unit, that missing 1/3]
After tooling thru the nintendo display I went over to the almost ho-hum
Sega display. yawn.
The Sega booth was a rather understated grey with the Sega Does it All
Logo. On one end a group of Game Gears stood in wait for me to play.
Game Gear Quick Review
While the screen output makes the GG a strong rival to the Lynx, Im sorry
but the feel of the machine just sucks. Softs that I played on the GG,
Shinobi, G-Loc and Dragon Crystal. Both rather eat it. Dragon Crystal
reminded me of miniature Fatal Labyrinth [Or is that futile labyrinth :)].
G-loc just didnt have it, it had tomy lcd pocket games written all over it.
Shinobi wasnt too bad. But I was almost ashamed to own a master system.
[Which btw was no where to be found]
As I walked about I noticed that there were several screens that said,
Mario vs Sonic. So I stood infront of one and waited as the demo rewound.
On the screen before me Super Famicon's Super Mario World came on the
screen a bright and vibrant as I remembered it. The nifty jingling music
and the ostrich thing eating apples. Cute. Then in a small window at the
top of the screen someone turned on a Genesis with Sonic the Hedgehog.
Sonic scrambled across the screen a breakneck speed with nothing short of
*Eyepoping* graphics and special effects. A cool, not not musical score
accompanied Sonic on his voyage. As I stood with my mouth open. I noticed
other people laughing at this obvious slam.
Sonic ***NUKED*** anything I saw, heard, wished was on the Super Famicon
that day. Im sorry Sega just blew nintendo away. I ran for the nearest
open sonic to check this game out. It was awesome. Sorry nintendo, Im
buying a Genesis.
Pumping out more 16bit power than one could fully absorb Sega showed of
Donald Duck Quack Shot [Awesome the graphics blow mickey mouse away],
Spiderman [I died, I had no clue what I was doing but the graphics and
gameplay were quite cool.], Fantasia was there along with Shining in the
darkness [Shining in the darkness from what I played of it was kind of
lame] Other promoted titles, Joe Montana II, 688, Alien Storm, Decapattack,
Phantasy Star III, Twin Cobra [looked good], Toe Jam and Earl [Bizarre] and
Streets of Rage.
Along with this dazzling in house power display where Tengen with Pac-Land
[Looked lame], RoadBlaster [Awesome looking], Pit Fighter [Looked very
close to the arcade I was impressed] and a Rampart Banner.
Also Rans, Swampthing and Bean Ball Benny [Or something like that] Both
sucked.
Other hot picks, Qix [Nice tweeking of the game] and Batman, [cool but I
could get passed this stack of boxes]
Well that was about it, I have a list of everything that was supposed to be
there[Snk/TG16/Sega/Big N/MsDos etal]. IF I get time Ill try to post it but
this is a 14 page two column document. :#.
Glover
A man thinking CDTV is the next DeLorian :).
Now is that good, or is that bad?
How bout that Twin Peaks Ending :).