Subject: Final WCES Report (w/ Pictures)
From: horwitz@acsu.buffalo.edu (Jeremy B Horwitz)
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 1995 02:41:36 GMT
Message-ID: <D2J3HC.4Ap@acsu.buffalo.edu>

CES Report Wrap-Up (with Photographs)
by Jer Horwitz

Photographs mentioned herein can be found at the BUSOP.CIT.WAYNE.EDU FTP
site, in (sys/) pub/pselect/WCES95. Please forgive the occasional yellow 
blotches in a few pictures (Virtua Fighter, Rayman) -- they're artifacts of 
my quickie screendumping procedure.

Nintendo

	What should have been Nintendo's mission at this Consumer Electronics 
Show? Essentially, to continue interest in their current platforms and 
inspire interest in their upcoming platforms. Part one of this mission: 
have enough great SNES games on display that the average player wouldn't 
dump their 16-bitter and purchase another company's 32- or 64-bit game 
system in the next few months. Part two: impress people with next-
generation hardware and win their confidence. Nintendo succeeded in part 
one. They drew mixed reactions on part two.

SNES
	There's little doubt in my mind at this point that the SNES is 
entering the NES phase of 1989-1990 -- plenty of games, but a decreasing 
number of developers interested in devoting the time to refine an older 
system's aesthetics. The big surprise of Nintendo's booth was the utter 
lack of Nintendo in-house Advanced Computer Modeling (ACM) titles -- games 
which certainly would have drawn crowds like those from Summer CES's debut 
of Donkey Kong Country. ACM was not in plentiful use, though Squaresoft 
announced the Secret of Evermore, a Mana-esque game using ACM and hand-
drawn artwork in tandem, and a handful of other games were using the 
technology in small ways.
	...but ACM wasn't necessary. Nintendo's improved (CPU-quadrupling) FX 
chip, "FX2," was the star of their booth. Making a somewhat surprising 
appearence was StarFox 2, packed with just about every feature people have 
been asking for since StarFox was released. Not on rails, StarFox 2 allows 
great freedom of movement within an innovative map screen, then allows full 
navigation through 3-D flight and mech-walking scenes. Confusing? Here's 
the lowdown:

	* The game begins with a full-screen polygon-generated cinema 
intermission completely eclipsing the intro from StarFox. As a flying 
robotic dragon starship wipes out an entire fleet of spacecrafts, you'll be 
gawking and cheering on the graphics... until you realize that those blue 
and gray exploding ships are what remained of your fleet. Andross is back. 
He's not very happy about his previous defeat at your hands. The camera 
movement makes the epic introduction even better.
	* Choose from six characters, including the four pilots from StarFox, 
a female fox, and a female puppy poodle. In one player mode, the game on 
demo gave you 10 hit points and two pilots with which/whom you complete the 
game. In two player mode, you have a split screen. Ships can morph into 
several forms depending on the outer space or planetary environment they're 
in. Pilots have different flight dynamics and ships.
	* When in outer space, you have a flat map of several planets and 
your mother-world Corneria. Andross launches missile and fighter attacks 
against Corneria from other planets; you control either StarFox or a 
comrade and respond in real-time to each attack, heading towards planets to 
scour them of villains.
	* When attacking an enemy or chasing a missile, your craft 
looks much the same as StarFox until you hit the select button -- then you 
morph into a battle cruiser with more powerful guns and less 
maneuverability.
	* When attacking a planet, you either stay in your ship and fly above 
the surface, or transform into a walking mech robot to conduct a walking 
Space Harrier-like attack. Maze scenes inside buildings, weapon power-ups 
and boss encounters are plentiful and well done.
	* Still early in development, some people (myself included) were able 
to get to the demo's "ending," reaching a huge Andross battle and the words 
"To Be Continued..." It wasn't all that difficult, but it was damn fun 
getting there.
	* The music was brand new and great, using the same John Williams-
derived style from StarFox. Somehow, the musician manages to evoke feelings 
from the player of heroism and dismay through simple manipulation of 
orchestra instruments; quite a technique Nintendo has down, eh?

	FX Fighters, GTE Interactive's personal computer and FX2 polygon 
game, was also looking pretty sharp for the SNES. Motion capture technology 
and proper pacing made the overall mood much better than Atari's 64-bit 
Fight for Life, though the polygon count, resolution, color palette and 
texture-mapping were all much lower on the SNES. Some of the game's cool 
features include short ACM-style computer rendered character images (akin 
to watching the pre-game animation in the character select screen of Art of 
Fighting 2 or Killer Instinct), player-controlled left and right camera 
movement, and moves that look more like Street Fighter 2 than Virtua 
Fighting. Imagine a move with the coolness of Guile's backhand or Ryu's 
crouching sweep kick -- this time, moving even more fluidly and rendered 
entirely in polygons. FX Fighter convinced those of us who saw all of the 
polygon fighters that *moves* were more important than graphics.
	While we're on the subject of polygon fighters, let's do one of those 
infamous cross-platform comparisons everyone seems to get so rabid over. 
This is bound to be a subject of much disagreement between Jaguar lovers 
and SNES devotees, but here's my take on it: while at WCES, I saw Virtua 
Fighter 2 (arcade), I saw Tohshinden for the Playstation, Tekken (arcade), 
Virtua Fighter on the Saturn, FX Fighter on the SNES and Fight for Life on 
the Jaguar. In the order listed above, that's where the games ranked (from 
best to worst) on an overall appeal scale for me. 

* VF2: fast, has a great number of moves and characters, terrific music and 
the best graphics overall. Texture mapped backgrounds and characters were 
absolutely mind-blowing, from the subtle (catch Shun hopping so slightly 
over a sweep kick, then landing with a hard counter attack) to the blatant 
(oh, we're floating down a river under 3-D bridges and everything is moving 
at 60 frames per second?). VF2's play engine is of a stronger design than 
VF1, also. Down side: Only available as an arcade machine for now, VF2 will 
-- at best -- be 75% of the arcade game visually when it's released for the 
Saturn.
* Tohshinden was close, and definitely a must-see. Gouraud-shaded complex 
polygonal characters with weapons and incredibly fast motion were only part 
of the experience -- some of those 3-D moves were similar to the awesome 
SNK animations Takara has been translating for the last few years. (World 
Heroes' Hanzo and Fuuma should be thanked for their Dragon Punch 
animation...) The best part? Forget about the arcades, Tohshinden is 
already out for the PlayStation in Japan and it's cooler than any other 
home system fighting game.
* Tekken and Virtua Fighter 1 had their own advantages and disadvantages. 
Tekken is arcade hardware based on the PlayStation, but it wasn't as cool 
as VF2 or Tohshinden because of the overall graphic style and some weird 
character poses. Virtua Fighter 1 for the Saturn was nice and fast, fluid 
and reasonably high resolution, but wasn't quite a perfect translation of 
the arcade game. Fewer polygons per character and a smaller selection of 
moves made VF1 pale in comparison to VF2 and Tohshinden, but people will 
love seeing the cool animation and poses of VF1 on their home Saturns.
* FX Fighter had really smooth animation but fewer polygons than any of the 
aforementioned games. Even with only two of the characters on display in 
the SNES version, FX Fighter showed a lot more potential than Fight For 
Life for the Jaguar (which was nearly complete at the show). The wicked 
body slams, throws and attacks -- all extremely fluid -- made FX Fighter 
better than I had expected to see on the aging SNES.
* Fight For Life: See the Jaguar section of this report.

	Nintendo's other major games were an odd bunch to say the least. 
NovaLogic's Comanche also used the FX2 chip, was a great conceptual idea 
but was about as poor graphically as any SNES game to date. Based on the PC 
game with 3-D terrain, Comanche is a helicopter title which actually will 
allow two SNES units to be hooked up (via a joystick port cable) for head-
to-head competitive anti-air attacks. It's a fun game which unfortunately 
is blockier on screen -- though this may change by July ...? -- than 
anything I can recall for game systems in the past couple of years. 
Earthbound is Nintendo's unexpected USA release of the Japanese RPG Mother 
2, which has been under development for literally years at Nintendo Japan. 
Graphics are, again, exceptionally bad for the SNES, but the quest is long, 
Japanese players swore by Mother 1, and Nintendo employees really like the 
Mother series. It's a 24-meg cart with probably 2-3 megs of graphics data 
(slight sarcasm intended; only photographs will do my statement justice).
	Kirby's Avalanche is Nintendo's release of the awesome Japanese 
puzzle title Super Puyo Puyo (by Compile), which was formerly unveiled for 
the Genesis as Doctor Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. It's one of the best 
Tetris-like puzzle games to date, with richly-colored liquid blobs as 
pieces. Kirby's Dream Course is a terrific miniature golf/croquet title, 
featuring the Kirby character as a powerful ball. It's one of the most 
challenging golf titles in game history, with 70-some holes and Kirby 
literally taking on the abilities of the obstacles he bumps against. Both 
of these were already released in Japan, and are solid titles for certain.
	Third-party highlights included Konami's release of the third game in 
the NCS Assault Suits series, now titled Metal Machines. Remember the SNES 
game Cybernator, which was the sequel to Target: Earth for the Genesis? 
This is the latest installment, with zero title continuity in the USA. 
Metal Machines looked completely great, with even better side-scrolling 
mech action and a very long introduction sequence. Tecmo's big 
announcements were three new sports games for the SNES -- Super Baseball, 
Super Hockey, and Super Bowl II: Special Edition. Super Bowl II is a 
limited release Tecmo Super Bowl with a 3-D scaling field and generally the 
same perspective as the last Tecmo Super Bowl -- it looks cool and it's 
limited to a tiny run of cartridges, so today is the day a fan should get a 
reserve order in for TSB2. 
	Capcom's Mega Man X2 was a cool follow-up to Mega Man X -- fans of 
MMX will definitely want to see it -- and Mega Man 7 shockingly enough was 
a Super NES continuation of the NES Mega Man series. Want another surprise? 
The Mega Man character in MM7 is actually larger than MMX2's, and the 
overall screen layout is more on the bulky, cartoony side for MM7. 
Acclaim's NBA Jam Tournament Edition was looking good for the SNES, though 
the enhancements weren't glaring (still no scaling characters, etcetera). 
Electro Brain's Dirt Trax FX was, believe it or not, much cooler than the 
32X Super Motocross title, with a nice polygon environment and real 3-D 
movement. Hudson Soft's The Sporting News Baseball was their USA release 
(finally) of the awesome Super Power League game for the Japanese Super 
Famicom, Playmates had a funky afro-edition Earthworm Jim on display (plus the 
great Fatal Fury Special translation they snatched from Takara), 
Sunsoft had the decidedly great Justice League Task Force fighting game, 
and Namco had their own cool new fighting game Weapon Lord on display (with 
some character designs from ex-Capcom Dee Jay creator James Goddard). Those 
were the best games on display. 
	Some other interesting announcements were made... Secret of Mana II 
confirmed, MK3 confirmed, Primal Rage confirmed, Prince of Persia 2 
confirmed, Revolution X confirmed, and 12 or more new ACM games in 
development for debut at the E3 show in Los Angeles (May). Nintendo has 
enough quality software in development to keep the SNES going for another 
year at least.

NES

	For the first time in Nintendo home history, the classic Nintendo 
Entertainment System had zero mention in the Nintendo first half '95 source 
book. It's official: eight bit is dead.

Game Boy

	I didn't do too much looking around at Game Boy software, but 
Nintendo sheepishly announced at an early morning press conference that 
they were finally releasing a color GameBoy... but it's not quite what 
people wanted. To spur more GB sales, they're releasing five "Play It Loud" 
casings for the GameBoy, in Clear, Red, Yellow, Green or Black. (The Black 
and Clear ones are the best.) Too bad they didn't fix the screens, because 
that's what people have really wanted now for several years. 
	The GB is getting a ton of great software this year, though. Kirby's 
Dream Land 2 -- a title that should have had SNES written all over it, will 
be out in May for the GameBoy, as will Donkey Kong Land, Primal Rage, 
Earthworm Jims 1 and 2, NBA Jam TE and Batman Forever. Sales of the GB were 
reportedly down markedly this season -- 25% or thereabouts. Will new 
casings bring it back? Ummmmm.... 

Virtual Boy

	This was my first stop at eight in the morning on the first day of 
CES --even before the floor officially opened. Virtual Boy is the $200 
self-contained "virtual reality device" you've been hearing about. Basic 
answers will suffice here, so let's get to them:

	* Is Virtual Boy really virtual reality? Well... no. Don't get me 
wrong; this is a cool device with neat hardware features and great 
potential, but you can't change your visual perspective by moving your head 
around. That's an intregal part of VR.
	* ...but... the 3-D effects are great. There is most certainly an 
illusion of depth with any filled objects that move in 3-D, which is a 
major plus for the system -- this is both a product of the display 
technology (stereoscopic lenses, etcetera) and the system's built-in 
graphics hardware for object scaling and polygon manipulation. The best 3-D 
effects were in a deep well of Space Pinball's brick-enclosed machine, the 
parallax of Hudson Soft's newest Star Soldier game, and in a demo of water 
and dolphin effects Nintendo was showing off. Unfilled polygons (used in a 
T&E Soft game demo) weren't overly convincing as 3-D effects and looked 
like nothing more than something you might see on a low-resolution, red-
palette SNES. 
	* Only two games were playable. Nintendo's exhibit was a two-part 
walk through an enclosed area -- part one had people holding up cardboard-
and-plastic stereoscopic glasses (in Virtual Boy/binocular-shaped holders) 
through a room with six video screens. Standing directly in front of a 
given screen with the glasses on, you could see the visual stereo 
separation and get the same 3-D effect found in the Virtual Boy game units. 
	* Screen one was a T&E Soft pterodactyl flying game which used 
unfilled polygons to attempt the simulation of a 3-D mountainous world. 
This was the least impressive title on display, as everything just seemed 
like a bunch of lines moving around.
	* Screen two had Space Pinball, a five-machine-in-one pinball title 
with some really neat 3-D depth, though the machines themselves were 
certainly pretty simplistic (no scrolling; just fixed on screen like Super 
Pinball for the SNES). Spinning 3-D stars were among the most memorable 
parts of this game.
	* Three was Telero Boxer, a pretty lame robot boxing game I couldn't 
really enjoy, even though it had a three-dimensional perspective a la Super 
Punch Out. There wasn't anything overly alluring about it -- some standard 
scaling boxing gloves and goofy robot opponents. Virtual Punch Out would 
have been cooler.
	* Four was the aforementioned Dolphins and Water demo, which was 
extremely cool -- a few dolphins were just swimming on their sides, and 
water was being shown as if you were looking at a side view of rippling 
water within a transparent bathtub. This demo alternated with an early 
Super Monaco GP-like driving game, which wasn't anything special. The 
contrast in the two demos seemed to be "shading," whereas the dolphins were 
nicely shaded and looked more 3-D, and the driving game was cartoony and 
looked like nothing special.
	* Five was simply titled "Shoot 'Em Up!" but was clearly a Virtual 
Boy incarnation of Hudson Soft's Star Soldier; Hudson's name did appear on 
the game. An overhead perspective was enhanced by 3-D parallax scrolling.
	* Six was the most intriguing, featuring a StarFox filled polygon 
spacecraft (looking much better than the unfilled T&E Soft game) and 
alternating with a short demo of Mario VB. The spacecraft did a lot of 
zooming in 3-D -- really cool -- and Mario VB was a return to the classic 
SMB 1 with a new twist: imagine SMB 1 is its own game going on in the 
foreground, and there's a completely separate game of SMB1 going on in the 
distant background. As you walk on bridges between the foreground and 
background, you move in 3-D between two separate (but connected) worlds. 
Other "drop into the pipe" scenes were exactly like Zelda scenes, with cool 
overhead dungeon rooms and the constant danger of falling through floors to 
a scaling and zooming demise.

	Virtual Boy units themselves waited in the second room of the VB 
area, and two games were playable: Telero Boxing and Space Pinball. VB 
units included a single controller incorporating two separate 4-directional 
joypads, start and select buttons, A and B buttons, and buttons on the 
bottom of the controller, directly under the joypads. The images were in 
multiple shades of red. When you first use the VB, you need to adjust it 
for the width of your eyes, and four VB logos appear (one in each of four 
corners) for purposes of lens movement and focusing. When all four logos 
appear on screen, relatively clear, you're set to play. Stereo headphones 
are right at the correct level for hearing while you're watching, and the 
device -- while not attached to your head (it sits on a table, propped up 
by a bi-pod) -- is certainly immersive even with so-so games. 
	Virtual Boy is a better technology than Nintendo has been given 
credit for, as the overall experience is pretty cool even when you're 
playing the so-so boxing and pinball titles they were showing. With better 
titles and dedicated hardware than Sega had for their Genesis VR headset, 
plus the disadvantage of more color limitations,  Virtual Boy is the 
classic mixed bag. Even though it has a lot of potential, it's bound to be 
raked over the coals by competitors and the media alike despite the fact 
that neither could offer people a better dedicated "virtual" system for 
$200. VB is a relatively inexpensive, totally portable 3-D game system -- 
remember that fact when you see people knocking it for what it is *not*.

Ultra-64

	Very little was said about Nintendo's new system, save the following:

 * Set for a worldwide debut -- on time -- in May, at the E3 in Los 
Angeles.
 * Chipset completed and will be in silicon production as of this month 
(January).
 * Developers are being licensed for the system. Current teams include 
Williams (Doom, Cruis'n USA), Paradigm Simulation (Pilotwings 2?), Acclaim 
(Turok the Dinosaur Hunter), Spectrum Holobyte (Top Gun) and Rare (Killer 
Instinct ... and KI2(?)).

	The industry's rumor-mill continued to fly on Ultra-64 despite those 
announcements. Developers -- some of them PlayStation backers and long-time 
Sega allies -- were claiming that they were hearing about one of three 
Ultra design problems: [a] a snag in U64 hardware development, of some 
unspecified nature, causing Nintendo to completely re-design the U64 
hardware specifications; [b] a final chipset with a price over $400; or [c] 
that the entire Ultra-64 project was vapor -- a hoax -- from the beginning. 
Nintendo -- at every official level -- denied these rumors completely. They 
claim that everything is precisely on track for a pre-Christmas 1995 
release.

Photographs:

Ethbound.gif: Just shown for illustrative purposes, this is a 24-meg RPG. Not supposed to be impressive visually..

fxftr/2.gif: FX Fighter's title screen and a fighting scene -- this game 
has SGI Killer Instinct-like animations for character selection, too. The 
polygon movement (with motion capture) was great.

mtlmchin.gif: Konami's sequel to Cybernator, Metal Machines. (aka Assault Suits 3, by NCS.)

paradgm1/2.gif: Why does this SGI demonstration from MultiGen's booth 
matter? Well, these are graphics on the SGI Onyx RealityEngine2 system 
(~$100,000), which will supposedly be possible on Nintendo's new U-64. This 
flight simulator by Paradigm Simulations may be a starting point for that 
company's new development with Shigeru Miyamoto (Mario/DK's creator, etc.) 
-- they're rumored to be doing Pilotwings 2. That plane moves totally in 
real-time with full texture mapping at a resolution you wouldn't believe -- 
completely fluid and awesome. The battleship? You can fly over this tiny 
speck in the ocean until it gets as detailed as what you're seeing on the 
screen. The possibilities are incredible. This was NOT a Jurassic Park-like 
movie you watched - you control everything totally in real time.

sgicar/2.gif: Another incredible MultiGen booth demo, this was coded in 6-8 days by a MultiGen employee using some SGI and MultiGen development 
software. In under eight days, this guy had a car with more realism than 
Namco's Ace Driver and a course modeled on a real racetrack -- the fluidity 
was unreal and the camera could be moved absolutely anywhere. Anti-aliasing 
made this completely seamless visually. I kept these two pictures because 
they were the best closeups of the car, but you could take any arcade-style 
view (including "in the car") and this was just an eight-or-less day 
project.

starfox2/2/3.gif: The great StarFox 2; title screens shown (the dragon 
spacecraft attacking and eating part of your fleet, and the 6 characters 
you can choose from) and one free-roaming in-game shot with your craft 
seeking out three targets.

Sega

	Sega needed to fulfill the same objectives as Nintendo: continue 
interest in their 16-bit hardware while getting people interested in their 
upcoming Saturn platform. Sega's 16-bit library had some solid new software 
coming, but Sega wasn't taking the Nintendo route -- their most 
aesthetically innovative titles were, by and large, either 32X games that 
were on the floor or Saturn titles on video tape only. Batman and Robin for 
the Genesis was amazing, but everything else 16-bit was a lot like last 
year's Genesis software. Sega's good stuff is intentionally all rolling out 
at E3.

Genesis

	Hands down, the best Genesis title was Batman and Robin. With Gunstar 
Heroes-style play mechanics, unfathomable 3-D graphics for a Genesis game 
(all sorts of effects, from full-screen line scaling to warping), and a 
soundtrack with a good beat, this is one of the best Genesis games to come 
along in a while... except for a slight repetitivity factor early on... but 
them's the brakes. Comix Zone is an interactive comic game where artists 
are continually drawing new adversaries for you to fight within the 
confines of a comic book's pages. You'll actually control the movement of 
your fighting character as he crawls from panel to panel -- this had some 
great spot effects and characters, plus the idea was really neat. Ristar 
("the Shooting Star") is a Sonic-type platformer, cuter than Sonic and now 
officially slated for U.S. release. X-Men 2: Clone Wars featured character 
animation extremely similar to the Capcom SNES title X-Men, with less 
colorful backgrounds but more interesting map design.
	Sports fans will probably love the updated and even cooler 
(aesthetically) World Series Baseball '95 and Sega's NHL All-Star Hockey 
(which is now an unabashed clone of EA's style), but will probably frown 
upon the suddenly non-3-D Sega basketball title (it's overhead, 3/4 
perspective). Deion Sanders was at Sega's party on the Thursday night 
before WCES, announcing a new multi-year deal with Sega for football games 
(and likely baseball, as well). He'll replace the aging Joe Montana license 
next year, adding some of his trademark spunk to the last ten yards of any 
touchdown drive or punt return. RPGs incl