GAMES WITHOUT FRONTIERS

VIDEO GAMES

“Man is only completely human when he plays”. Konrad Lorenz, The Waning Of Humanness

Game playing is one of the oldest human traits. It helps us learn about our environment and about how to interact socially and solve problems and think like soldiers. Children just love to play, and when adults are playing skilfully we call them artists.

The primary tool of game playing is the imagination. In a bygone era the imagination was used to transform simple objects into fantastic machines. You took up a piece of wood and you imagined it to be a machine gun. You sat on a trunk of a tree and you imagined it to be a ship. You got on your bicycle and you were in a racing car. You threw a stone and you imagined it to be a bomb.

Today, you sit before a screen and, with the right hardware and software, you see a machine gun on screen and when you press the button on your joystick, it fires. You see a ship and sail in it, a racing car and race in it. You hear the bomb explode when it hits the target you’ve thrown it at.

It all seems too real. And next year – or perhaps next month – it will become even more real, because all the major companies are in a frantic technological race to see who can get the best graphics, the best processing power, the best multimedia link-up, the best characters, so that the seers and enthusiasts can feel that they are really, really there.

What happens in America and Japan today will be happening in Ireland very soon. At present, half of American households have video game players, with that figure rising to 80% for those with 8 to 14-year-old boys. In Japan – the home of Nintendo – the figure is even higher. In fact, Japan is so in love with the animated world that professors have taken to writing books of philosophy dealing with the role and importance of the animated character. Back in America, Wire, a magazine for the technologically hip, voted Sega’s Sonic The Hedgehog its “Man of the Year” for 1993.

LOWER PRICE

The video game market is broken into two distinct sectors: games for consoles and games for computers. The console is a computer in its own right but it does not come with the a screen or keyboard. The games on it are controlled by use of a joypad and to get the visuals you link it up to your television. Computer games are just that: games to be played on your busines or home computer.

At present, the dominant companies manufacturing consoles are Nintendo and Sega, with a wide variety of specialist software companies creating games for either or both systems. This is also true for the computer sector. Because of the fact that separate companies write the game software, you will often find games – like say Mortal Kombat – are available for both Nintendo and Sega consoles. This seems to be the trend: that popular games will be available for a variety of machines.

At the end of 1993, Nintendo has sold approximately 26 million consoles in America in comparison to Sega’s 13 million. However, in actual game cartridges sold, Sega slightly outsold Nintendo. In the European market Sega claims 66% of the market. Nintendo very much dominates in the Japanese market. From ringing around a number of Dublin shops, it was hard to tell which company has the bigger market share here. Some shops, such as Peats, swear by Sega, stating that over the Christmas period Sega outsold Nintendo by a factor of two to one. However, Tower Records swear by Nintendo, claiming the reverse figures for the Christmas period.

Brian Edwards from Game, a new video game shop in Grafton Street, believes that Nintendo has better graphics and Sega has a better procesor. “Sega have a better range of games,” he adds, “so you’re more likely to find some games to suit the lower price bracket, if you’re looking for them. But on new releases, they’re more or less neck and neck really.”

Patricia Finn from Peats (as seen on The Den) pointed out that one definite advantage of Sega was the fact tht it had two joy-pads. With Nintendo, if you want to play a game for two, she explained, you have to keep swapping the joypad.

Price wise, top-of-the-range Super Nintendo and Sega Megadrive consoles can be purchased for between £100 and £130. However, Sega game cartridges tend to be on average £10 cheaper than Nintendo’s. Philip Smyth, from Tower Records, a dedicated Nintendo enthusiast, believes that Nintendo games are dearer because they are better designed.

From the five shops that I spoke to the only consensus as to which is the better console to buy was that there was no consensus. It would seem that shopping around is in order.

ANT COLONIES

In relation to Nintendo and Sega, the types of games available fall into the following basic categories: adventure/role playing/puzzle; sports (motor racing, soccer) type; simulation (flying an aeroplane) and what you might call the kick ‘em an’ shoot ‘em type. Patricia Finn from Peats says that about 60% of all console games sold are of the kick ‘em an’ shoot ‘em variety. And it would seem that there are endless variations on this time-honoured theme. She mentioned a Turtles game, which she described as, “just like Street Fighter II but you have a shell on your back.”

Certainly, if the American experience is anything to go by, the more gore, the better it sells. The Sega version of Mortal Kombat, which was released in the States in September 1993, had the by now infamous celebration of victory: tearing your opponent’s head off and watching his blood splurting and brains popping out. Nintendo were more modest, only allowing you to stomp on your opponent and do a bit of a victory jig. Not surprisingly, Sega sold about twice as many Mortal Kombat's as Nintendo. (To get into gore mode, the Sega version requires a special code, which is seemingly not so readily available these days).

However, none of the shops I spoke to have had the experience of angry parents coming back with games to them. The probable reason for this lack of reaction was outlined by Alan Wilson from the Virgin Game Shop. “We won’t basically sell them to young children unless they’ve got their parents with them. And if the parent asks for advice on the game, we’ll say, this game does have a violent factor, and it’s up to you to decide whether it’s suitable for your child or not.”

It may not be left entirely up to the parent’s judgement for much longer. As a result of the furore caused by Mortal Kombat, there is presently a bill before the U.S. Congress which, if passed, will require warning labels to be put on the more violent games. In Britain and Ireland, Sega and Nintendo have started voluntarily submitting their games to the British Film Censor, which as Alan Wilson pointed out, has given all the games submitted so far PG ratings.

There is little or no educational software available for consoles, the main reason being that most educational-type games tend to be more complex, requiring a keyboard rather than joypad for their successful operation. Even so, Elaine Downey from Tower believes that there is a trend towards introducing more educational games, despite such limitations.

It’s not all gore for console games. The most popular game by far – so popular all the shops ran out of stock – over the last couple of months has been the FIFA Soccer game. Why, I can’t quite figure out, but as Brian Edwards from Game put it, “the demand has been absolutely astronomical.”

He explained its attractions: “Graphically it’s a very good game. There are a lot of options in it. You can pick your team formations. The range of teams is very good. The way the game is presented, it’s like camera angles from Match Of The Day nearly. A lot of people have actually seen it on our monitors and asked is it a TV.”

He went on to explain how you play it. “One man of yours is the guy you’re controlling at any given time. But you can switch men as the ball moves up and down the pitch. You can play it with up to four players; two players against each other. (FIFA Soccer retails – when you can get it – at £47.99 and is available only on the Sega Megadrive).

Other popular console games over the last couple of months have included: Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Allstars, Sonic Spinball and Frontier League II.

Because of its obvious advantages, the computer game sector is the area where you will find a large variety of educational game software. Such games tend to be of the role-playing variety, where your character is put into a certain environment and has to use skill and judgement to solve some sort of puzzle. For younger children there is, for example, an adaptation of Nintendo’s Mario, called Mario Teaches, whereby the unemployed plumbers teach sums, counting alphabet and suchlike. Another example of such educational software is the Sierra range of environmental, ecological and geographical-based games.

In Japan, there is a craze in the computer games sector at the moment for what have been termed “raising games”. This allows you to raise a boy, girl, animal, fish or whatever on computer. They will have their own unique life history and you will have to choose the right food, clothes, education, etc. for them. In America, a company called Maxis Inc. allows players to create and manipulate imaginary cities, ant colonies, farms, eco systems and so on.

DUD TECHNOLOGY

What are all these seductive video games doing to our youth? Are they turning them away from the one true youth religion; rock’n’roll? Not at all, as far as Elaine Downey from Tower Records is concerned. She believes that there has been a general slow-down in video game sales, and that, “There’s no way that music is ever going to die. So, I don’t think that video games will ever take over the sales of records, ever. But it could be that like, for example, all the ambient CDs that are coming out, all the dance stuff, that games will actually be developed to go onto the CD, if CDI (CD Interactive) takes off, and they’ll merge the two. So that for every CD that comes out, there’ll be a CDI that goes with it.”

CDI allows you to plug in your CD album and then listen to it in beautiful hi-fi, while watching it on sharp video. It also allows you to interact with the music, to choose your mix or focus in on individual instruments at the push of a button. As Elaine pointed out, Polygram are already preparing for the introduction of such technology. It looks like CD Interactive is going to be just one more exciting element in the ever-expanding multi-media, global-highway, global-sittingroom world.

The future is fascinating in its boundless possibilities. Atari, an original mover in the games market, is back with a 64-bit processing console called Jaguar, which promises to operate 100 times faster than the 16-bit Sega and Nintendo machines. It will offer near life-like graphics, smooth and precise movements and realistic sounds. However, hot on its bits looks likely to be Project Reality, a collaboration between Nintendo and Silicon Graphics (Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park graphic designs). It’s also a 64-bit baby and if its press blurb is anything to go by, it promises to make heaven hot and hell a paradise.

Sega are not slouching about either. They plan to launch Multi-Megadrive in April, which will combine a Megadrive, a Mega-CD and a Discman all in one. So, you can play your CD as if it was a portable CD player. And then you can hook it up to a TV and it will be a Megadrive.

A word of warning before you rush out and buy all these amazing new gadgets, however. What often seems to be wonderfully new and innovative has a time-honoured habit of exploding in the face of all its technological wizardry. As Philip Smyth from Tower Records wisely pointed out, “It’s always dodgy with new hardware because unless there’s loads of software there, the hardware can’t take off. And the software is not going to take off unless loads of people own the hardware.”

Alan Wilson from the Virgin Game Shop reinforced this point, with particular reference to the impending launch of Atari’s Jaguar system. “The only thing really that we bear in mind,” he stated, “is the fact that Atari have a track record of releasing amazingly brilliant machines with little or no support.”

As the multimedia world arrives in our sittingrooms, there will certainly be the odd example of dud technology. However, the horizon is ablaze with the fantastic. Not far ahead of us lies the endless dream-promise of virtual reality, of computers that can carry out conversations with us, and of all sorts of other tools for the imagination.

Virtual reality, once it gets its technology right – which it inevitably will – promises to immerse us totally in the games we’re playing. With the help of your headset and data-glove we’ll be right in the middle of the frenzy. And just imagine, FIFA-heads, what it’ll be like when they introduce the data-boots.

“What a pass! And he swerves past another defender to get the return. Such control! Such grace! The ball is stuck to his boot. He beats one man, beats another. He’s thirty yards out. The goalie’s off his line. He shoots . . . Jaysus! Wide again!” •

IT'S ALL IN THE WRIST ACTION

Duan Shaman goes joystick crazy as he reviews the current crop of computer games.

Street Fighter 2; Turbo Edition (Capcom) £57.99 S.Nes

Street Fighter has come a long way. Back in the late eighties, the original coin-op version featured pressure sensitive pads which were a total disaster because people literally beat the shit out of the machine. The game returned minus pads and was a minor hit. None of this prepared Capcom for the success of Street Fighter 2. The sequel merely refines the previous mould-breaking mix, but the result is devastating. Smooth animation and clearly defined graphics mixed with fast action ensure that playability is at an optimum level.

Turbo Edition is the sequel to Street Fighter 2. Unfortunately there are no devastating new features. Players can now choose any character and each has a new special move. The real change is the speed: in Turbo mode the action is frighteningly fast. This leads to a chaotic fusion of button pressing and as one player struggles with the intricate combinations for his super fire punch his one-time friend invariably rushes in and whacks him. This is a great game and is well worth purchasing if Street Fighter is not part of your collection. If you’ve got Street Fighter 2 it offers little more to justify the price.

Cool Spot (Virgin) £44.99 S.Nes

A painfully familiar plot – evil man captures all your friends and you must go to the rescue – but thankfully this platformer is of the highest quality. Cool Spot actually manages to breathe fresh air into the ancient genre and does so with panache.

Our intrepid hero is in reality a small red disc, who manages to wear shades while searching for his buddies. A stylish geezer I hear you cry. He saves his friends by getting cool points that enable him to free them. There’s nothing more to it, but the smoothness of the gameplay is second to none, as are the backdrops and sound. A first-rate game worthy of any accolade heaped upon it.

Ranma 1/2 (Ocean) £49.99 S.Nes

A game whose sole selling-point is that it is based on Manga Videos, Ranma 1/2 is passable at best.

It unashamedly mimics Street Fighter 2 in its game play yet is nowhere near as good. The graphics are slow and the action repetitive. The only redeeming feature is the inclusion of a giant panda among the characters. The laugh generated by this lumbering beast is the best part of the game.

Nigel Mansell’s Racing (Nintendo) £39.99 S.Nes

Nigel Mansell so intolerably boring that I really don’t want to compliment anything he has endorsed.

It’s unfortunate then that this is a highly enjoyable driving simulation combining a level of difficulty suitable for experts with more lenient levels for the less skilled driver.

Players can opt for “arcade” or “simulation” mode. “Arcade” gives an easy ride with straightforward steering, the main action being in the braking and passing. In the more realistic “simulation” mode, the car becomes uncontrollable.

The World Championship is then held with the player taking on a remarkable likeness to Nigel. The only complaint is the lack of a two player mode but this is forgivable in an otherwise excellent product.

Teenage Mutant Turtles Tournament Fighters (Konami) £49.99 Megadrive

Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Donatello and Raphael are back. This one-on-one combat game takes them through a variety of scenes where players can choose their favourite renaissance artist and attempt to conquer all opponents.

While the game is remarkably similar to the aforementioned Street Fighter it does have some original features. The characters all have contrasting styles and the ability to customise characters within the game has obvious attractions. The action is quick, the humour that pervades the cartoon well harnessed to spice up the entertainment and the end result is admirable.

Sonic Spinball (Sega) £52.99 Megadrive

The latest instalment in the “Sonic” series Spinball is, as its name suggests, a pinball simulation. The concept may seem slightly outlandish, but as Sonic actually becomes the ball, the game is more than simple simulation, and the player can to an extent control the hedgehog as he spins.

The pinball tables change at frequent intervals and each level contains its own set, all internally linked. The action is very different from the game’s predecessors but this is a tie-in with Sega’s most popular hero rather than being Sonic 3.

Best played as a group game (up to four players can compete at a time) Sonic Spinball is not truly great but definitely a game with a difference.

Sensible Soccer (Sony) £39.99 Megadrive

As World Cup ‘94 draws ever closer the number of soccer releases grows. Sensible Soccer is a conversion of an immensely popular Amiga, PC and Atari ST football simulation. The graphics are small and clear allowing accurate representation of the action without cluttering up the screen.

The gameplay, while very quick, can be slightly frustrating, if only because your opponent constantly seems to nick the ball off the star striker’s toes just as he was about to score. The enjoyment of the game is further enhanced by the almost-real team and player names. (I personally made sure that “E. Kirnaghun” was dropped by Ireland yet I still got whacked by Spain in the World Cup Qualifiers).

Flashback (US. Gold) £44.99 Megadrive

Flashback has smooth platform action combined with close-up animated sequences. It looks marvellous. However, it doesn’t play as well as it could.

The problem lies in the complicated control system. To perform a relatively basic action such as a running jump requires a specific combination of button presses and joystick movements. This is fine at the start but does become irritating when you die for the twelfth time due to your inability to complete the combinations.

Still, an interesting variation on an old theme and often very enjoyable.

Hired Guns (Psycnosis) £25.99 Amiga

Four mercenaries controlled by separate players team up to complete a wide variety of missions, kick the shit out of a lot of bad guys, annoy each other and kick the shit out of more bad guys.

The game is designed so each player can be located anywhere. The action is viewed through the eyes of all four characters and this can be frenetic when each player is separately pursuing his own aims. As a game for a group it allows scope for internal bickering and treachery. There are also scenarios which involve two teams competing against each other. The possibilities are virtually endless and although the icon-driven control system can be confusing at first, Hired Guns is straight forward enough.

Frontier; Elite 2 (Konami) £23.99 Amiga

The long awaited sequel to one of the most popular games of all time has arrived. Frontier has all the features of its predecessor and much more besides.

The process of inter-galactic trading has been refined with an increase in the number of goods, and the chance to play space pirate is likewise retained.

So much has been added; passengers, crew, espionage and about 99 billion planets. The game is so vast that what little can be said here could never do justice to it. Suffice to say that it’s a giant challenge and if you didn’t have a whole lot of better things to do you could probably spent the rest of your life playing it and still not manage everything.

Games supplied courtesy of Tower Records.

Fast Forward

To The

21st

Century

Hot Press’ resident cyber-punk STUART CLARK delves into the futuristic world of Manga Videos

DID YOU find yourself nodding off during The Terminator? Is Sly Stallone just a little too conservative for your tastes? If you’re an action junkie and not getting your fix, the only solution is to fast forward to the 21st Century and enter the thrill-a-minute animated world of Manga Videos.

Launched in October 1991 with Katsuhiro Otomo’s cyber-punk classic Akira, Manga has developed beyond its initial cult status to become a huge worldwide success story to rival the likes of Sega and Nintendo.

Indeed, titles like Vampire Hunter D, Project A-Ko, 3 x 3 Eyes and Ultimate Teacher go a long way to bridging the gap between computer games and film. Comic, graphic novel, role-playing, sci-fi and rock music fans will also find plenty to stimulate the senses among the current catalogue of over 30 Manga titles which are exclusively distributed in Ireland by Dun Laoghaire-based multi-media company Cabcon.

In addition to its impeccable cult credentials, Manga has also managed to crossover to the mainstream.

“Manga reckons its core market to be between 16 and 25-years-of-age,” explains Cabcon’s Scott McAlister, “but talking to retailers, it’s obvious that the upper limit goes way beyond that. I think it’s a case of parents buying tapes on the pretext that they’re for their kids when in fact they’re just as keen to watch them themselves.

“Although technically they are cartoons, there’s nothing childish or lightweight about Manga videos. The animation’s superb; the characters and plots are fully developed the same way they would be in a normal feature; and a lot of the issues dealt with are very contemporary in theme.”

McAlister’s enthusiasm is shared by Mark Oakley, Video Product Manager at Virgin Retail, who comments that, “Manga is to adult animation what Disney is to children’s animation.” Chrys Mordan, Chief Buyer at Forbidden Planet, is even more to the point when he remarks, “We can never get enough of Manga!”

AKIRA

2019. The world is on the brink of absolute destruction. Tokyo shimmers with technoir fetishism, gangs of cyber-punk bikers cruise the sprawl of the post-atomic city and rioting crowds surge under the neon-topped buildings looming a thousand storeys into the sky.

Now, old gods return to battle with Akira and something more than comic book ultra-violence is unleashed . . .

If that sounds like Sigue Sigue Sputnik meets Mad Max meets Blade Runner but even more so, you’d be absolutely right!

Clocking in at just over two hours, the ‘15’ certificate Akira has become the yardstick against which all other adult animation is judged and is now available together with a special documentary on its production as a Collectors Edition Double Cassette.

Akira was also shown recently in its original wide-screen format at the Irish Film Centre.

“Business the first week was slow,” admits Scott McAlister, “but as word-of-mouth spread, the audiences got bigger and bigger and by the end of the run, it was playing to completely packed houses. I know the IFC were delighted with the response and there’s talk in the future of maybe staging a Manga festival.”

Response at retail level is just as encouraging.

“We took over the Irish distribution last year,” continues Scott, “and since then sales have developed far faster than anticipated. It started off a cult thing but now that Virgin, HMV, Tower, Golden Discs, Xtra-Vision, Forbidden Planet and a whole network of independent retailers are stocking the videos, I’d say the majority of people in our target market know what Manga is.”

DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS Chapter 4: The Final Challenge

Tokyo 1925. The evil sorcerer, Kato, persists in his rage of destruction against the city by using the young psychic, Keiko, to awaken the Dragon of the Heavens. The ancient Chinese mystics believed that the mere breath of this dragon would be sufficient to blast all the planets out of the solar system. Will Kato’s devastating desire finally be sated?

CRYING FREEMAN Chapter 4: The Hostages

For sixty years Los Angeles’ Chinatown has been controlled by the Wong family. Now this dominance is dangerously threatened when three members of the family are taken hostage by the K.O. - a world terrorist syndicate. When the $3 million ransom paid by Wong, the head of the family, fails to release his children, the 108 Dragons are his only hope . . .

For wholesale enquiries

about these and other Manga titles, contact

CABCON,

80 Ashgrove Industrial Estate, Kill Avenue, Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin. Tel: (01) 284 5097/ 284 5098/ 280 7653/ 280 7675.