GIANTAFALL PREVIEW SEE WHAT SONY, SEGA, MICROSOFT AND 1 NINTENDO HAVE IN Û Ü STORE FOR YOU METAL GEAR SOLID 2 TWISTED METAL: BLA CRAZY TAXI 2 AND... TEKKEN 4! PS21G0ESIONLINE a 08> æ August 2001 $4.99/$ о 714024 06960 "8 DISPLAY UNTIL AUG Real motocross racing with 30 pro riders on 15 MX and SX race tracks Set the record in the Bus Jump and Step Up Challenges Pull insane tricks in 7 arenas and wide open freestyle environments E 3 H % 8 5 E 3 H H £ Е š s 8 | E Е Е Н š E H 1 8 š š 3 З 5 : 8 = Ë š g = 8 | reserved. "PlayStation" and the “PS” Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Nintendo, Game Boy and Game Boy Advance аге trademarks of Nintendo of America, Inc. Mimic “Mad” Mike Jones and his Kiss of Death EVERYONE Backflips, frontflips, 3605 Mild Lyrics ...need we say more? МХ" 2002 featuring Ricky Carmichael Game and Software—© 2001 THA Inc. Ricky Carmichael used under exclllsi trademark of Kawasaki Motors Corp., U.S.A. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. All rig ЕЕ <=, PlayStation.2 PlayStation.2 OFFICIAL = LICENSED = PRODUCT] vasaki www.thq.com у SPORTMOTORCYCLES vod in the U.S, Patent and Trademark Offic 158511000 and Sega Sports or Ë nak: GA Corporation or Sega of America Dreamcast, Inc. «ЕСА Corporation E a and may not be reproduced without written con and руг dS 5 gue ай Properties MLB.com. (OMLBPA-Oflicial Licensee, Major League ваде Baseball 00 / МЕВРА, EDITORIAL Bright Times Are Ahead By Dan "Shoe" Hsu • shoe@ziffdavis.com tarting this fall, we’re going to witness a system war unlike any we've seen before. Remember the big ones from the past? Sony PlayStation vs. Sega Saturn vs. Nintendo 64...Super Nintendo vs. Sega Genesis...Atari 2600 vs. Coleco Vision vs. Intellivision.... Those times were great. Everyone had several consoles from which to choose, and video games were practically gushing out of toy stores and Sears catalogs. Later this year, everything will become great again. It’s not like the past couple of years have been disappointing, mind you. But we haven’t had the raw excitement of a full-on system war in quite some time. I’m talking about the excitement “it’s going to he a system war of walking down the aisles of Toys ‘R’ Us and see- ing rows and rows of games from competing con- soles. I'm talking about the excitement of flipping through a gaming mag (it better be EGM, by the way, or you’re going to get a swift punch to the neck from me) and seeing how similarly powerful systems compare to each other. I’m talking about the excitement of trying to figure out which machine to buy, or bug mom and pop for. You see, over the past couple of years, we haven’t had that same energy or enthusiasm because of staggered system launches or uneven competition. The Dreamcast was way more pow- erful than the PS or N64 (yet Sega had a major enemy: its own reputation in the hardware busi- ness). Later, we got the PlayStation 2, which, while having significant advantages over the DC, has had a freshman year full of yawns. Later this year, we’re going to see a strong PlayStation 2, with killer apps upon killer apps, from Metal Gear Solid 2 to Tony Hawk 3. We're going to see a strong Xbox, with over a dozen launch titles and the marketing bucks of Micro$oft backing it up. And best of all, we’re going to see a strong GameCube, from a Nintendo who’s learned from its past mistakes and is ready to reclaim the glory it once had in the 8- and 16-bit days (was it that long ago?). On Wednesday, May 16, the three major powers threw down their gauntlets. At the press confer- ences for the 2001 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the world’s largest trade convention for all things video and computer gaming, each compa- ny got a chance to show off their future plans for video game market domination. Then at the show itself, they backed up their words by letting us unlike any we've seen before.” put our dirty paws on their games. Read on inside to see what Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are going to bring to the big, upcoming rumble. Like | said, it’s going to be a system war unlike any we've seen before, and in this issue, we're giving you a sneak peek of what's to come. Ву the way, we gutted out the Previews section this month and put all that coverage in our special feature. Check it out, starting on page 46. Next month, be sure to keep an eye out for EGM. The cover story is going to be Final Fantasy Х, Square’s first RPG for the PS2. М/ете going to have two covers: a normal one with rendered art from Square, and a limited release special edition with hand-painted art, made specifically for us by none other than the world famous Final Fantasy artist, Yoshitaka Amano. His beautiful creations have adorned the packaging of several FF games, and he has even published books and ran gal- leries with his work. Our Amano cover will have a very limited run, so look for it. Shoe Contributing Writers John Ricciardi EGM veteran Ricciardi flew in to help find a bigger Nintendo nut than him. BDA, more? Let us know. ELECTRONIC GAMING MONTHLY (ISSN #1058-918%) is published monthly by Ziff Davis Media Inc, our GameCube special feature. You won't David’s excellent “Where Are They Now?” series wraps up this issue. Want to see Look around the issue for quotes or references from The Simpsons or some famous movie. Find one, email it to us at EGM: davis.com (subject: Eat My Shorts—Augi and you may be one of five lucky winners (choosen at random) who will win copies of this issue's us with t Issue), two Review Crew Games of the Month. 28 East 28th Street, New York, NY 10016. Periodicals Class Postage Paid at New York, NY 10016 ‘and additional mailing offices. Single issue rates: $4.99. The one year (12 issue) subscription rate is $24.97 in the U.S. and $40.97 outside the U.S. Checks must be made payable in U.S, currency only to Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Electronic Gaming Monthly, P.O. Box 55722. Boulder, CO 80322-5722. For subscription service questions, address changes, or to order, please contact us at: Web: htip://service.egmmag.com (for customer service) or hitp://subscribe.egmmag,com (to order); Phone: U.S. and Canada (800) 779-1174 ог (85) 682-7624, elsewhere (303) 604-7445: Май: Electronic Gaming Monthly, P.O. Box 55722, Boulder, CO 80322-5722 (please include your mailing label with any correspondence as it contains information that will expedite processing) Fax: U.S. and Canada (850) 683-4094, elsewhere (303) 604-0518; E-mail (please type your full name and the address at which you subscribe; do not send attachments): egm@neodata.com. The editors and the publisher are not responsible for unsolicited materials. Without limiting the rights under copyrights reserved herein, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored i any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the the prior written notice of Ziff Davis Media Inc ог trans v introduced into a retrieval system, use any material in this publication, ‘obtain a permission request form at worw.icopyright.com/zifdavis/, or have a form faxed or mailed to you by calling (425)430-1663, © 2001 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Electronic Gaming Monthly and EGM trademarks of Ziff Davis Media Inc. TM and © for all other products and the characters contained therein are owned by the respective trademark and copyright owners All materials listed in this magazine are subject to manufacturers’ change and the publisher assumes no responsibility for such changes. The Canadian GST Registration number is 140496720 RT. Printed in the USA. Audit Bureau O Creations ELECTRONIC Number 14.08 GAMING August 2001 === MONTHLY WWW.egmmag.com Editor in Chief, Dan "Shoe" Hsu е shoe@ziffdavis.com Managing Ec Executive E Е Features Edi Nea МІЗ Boyer • crispin_boyer@ziffdavis.com "Chris lo Johnston • chris_johnston@ziffdavis.com Previews £ Greg Si g_sewart@ziffdavis.com г ager dean_hager@ziffdavis.com MacDonald • mark_macdonald@ziffdavis.com jonathan. _dudiakexifidavis сот rS com Te Mi h e tricks @ziffc m qup ue un е Chou che! chou@zitfdavis. com Contrib ІШІ борпо, David Hodgson, Sam Kennedy, ап Leahy, John Ricciardi Japanese. Correspondent Yutaka Ohbuchi EO СО Correspondent Senior Art Dire К cy Wocho ШҮ cyril_wochok@ziffdavis.com Mike Reisel * mike_reisel@ziffdavis.com Managin' A M Director Pre is cdo КІШІ Advertising Production Coordinator Wen Laws . Assistant Production Manager Teresa Newson Project Leader Mark Lefebvre е ma lefebvre@ziffdavis.com Gusta: Support Anal Peter Felonk е peter | elonkOzifdavis. сот Vice President/Game Group Dale Strani Busine: Я Director sendoff Circu ation Director Joan McInerney Circulation Director Senior Newsstand Sales Manager Don Galen SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE NUMBER: WEB sire http://: PLEASE БЕНИ АН, SUBSCRIPTION QUESTIONS TO: DO NOT CONTACT THE EDITORS RE: SUB. PROBLEMS Ааа 81 me Grou Ts Contact: E Beale, 12th floor, сап Francisco, СА 94105 hone: 1! А crop ЫЫ Ws 5:547-8783 Lee ШОШ | keGziffd 10 * lee uniackeGziffdavis.com Gro dede) Publisher Шари ШЫ ler E 5-357 4 9 • suzie@ziffdavis.com | Regional ales lanager/East Coast Territory Marc Callison 630-382-9034 * marc_callison@ziffdavis.com Dist aes REE Коше еШ ‘East Coast Territory 0284 ' . $ ае fishburne@ziffdavis.com jan! ‘East Coast Territory an 5226 е emily_olman@ziffdavis.com Р а ў Manager! Patric Northwest & Bay Area Peninsula. vus “4925 e ian_sinclair@ziffdavis.com мейі RU ву Pacific Northwest & Bay Area Peninsula 2 • тагу grayGziffdavis.com . бр атау eae Territory (5042 2-4 6277 • karen landon@ziffdavis.com accu Hor а west Territory hilapilOziffdavis.com "I. EMEN ues San Francisco Terri! ory yee TES) iuc 52357-4 7-4944 * marciy@ziffdavis. .com Account АНА Teras, fashington, San Francisco Territ mei ighan O'Rourl d n ihe 920 ө meighan_orourke@ziffdavis.com зе El iting Manager & Creative Director Account ЕТІ a ІЗДІ CA ledda@ziffdavis.com el ing С nnie Lipscoml 547-8248 * amie »_lipscomb@ziffdavis.com aver ШЫ ола Б? ler ubbelohdet к и ‘ipler_ubbelohde@ziffdavis.com var M Founder Steve Harris Nyss rs A EE WEEKDAYS 5-7 PM ЕТ/РТ (ЈА ДАТ ДОШ ЕК ИН TM & © 2001 Салат, Network. DRAGONBALL 2 and ай logos, character names.and distinctive likeness thereot are trademarks ot Toci Ammalo Со, Lid TENCHI MUYO 15 a trademark of Pioneer Entertainment. BIG О © Sunrise Inc: GUNDAM WING ® Sotsu Agency and Sunrise WW. LEGACYOFKA he же... A STORY BEYOND TIME. AN ADVENTURE BEYOND BELIEF. CONTENTS Game Directory Advance Wars Airforce Delta Storm Alien Front Online Bloody Roar 3 Bomberman Online Capcom vs. SNK 2 CART Fury Cel Damage Crazy Taxi 2 Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX: Maximum Remix Dave Mirra 2 Dead or Alive 3 Dead to Rights Devil May Cr Digimon World 2 Dragon Warrior VII Escape from Monkey Island Eternal Darkness Final Fantasy X Final Fantasy Chronicles Fur Fighters: Viggo’s Revenge Gran Turismo 3 A-spec білі Valkyrie alo Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ICO Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legac Jet Grind Radio Future Kameo: Elements of Power Kingdom Hearts Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons, The Luigi’s Mansion Mad Dash Racing Madden NFL 2002 Maximo: Ghosts to Glo Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Metroid IV Metroid Prime MX 2002 Featuring Ricky Carmichael NBA Courtside 2002 Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee Ooga Booga Phantasy Star Online Pikmin Project-Ego Project Gotham Racing Propeller Arena Shrek Silent Hill 2 Sonic the Hedgehog Advance Spider-Man the Movie Sports Jam SSX Trick Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet Star Wars: Obi-Wan Star Wars: Racer Revenge Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron || Shenmue 1 Super Monkey Ball Super Smash Bros. Melee Syphon Filter 3 Tenchu Time Crisis 2 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2X Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 Twisted Metal: Black Twisted Metal: Small Brawl Universal Studios: Theme Park Creation Unreal Championship Virtua Fighter 4 Wave Race: Blue Storm Wario Land 4 Wipeout Fusion World’s Scariest Police Chases WWF Raw is War WWF SmackDown! “Just Bring It” X-Men Mutant Academy 2 August 2001 Issue 145 —— B RTAINME === NN You Are HERE3 In case you weren't lucky or rich enough to make it to video gaming's biggest event, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, we did the dirty work for you. Inside this 41-page feature is a meticulous and exhaustive compilation of everything you could have possibly seen if you walked the show floor to death like our editors did. Turn to page 46 to experience the show. NINTENDO GAIVIECUBE Rogue Leader and Luigi's Mansion blew our mullets away. Find out why on page 48. Find out if Halo and. Tony Hawk 2x made Xbox a contendah or a pretendah on page 74- SONY PLAYSTATION 2 With games like Silent є Hill 2 and Jak and Daxter, Sony will be hard to beat. See their wad on page 88. _ — - 10 (& Editorial 6 @ Letters 14 (Y Press Start/News 22 Find out when you can buy ап Xbox or a GameCube and whether you'll need to take out a loan to afford them. Also: a spooge-inducing update on Tekken 4, Metal Gear Solid 2, and how the video-game term “Easter Egg” was invented. 6) Gossip 36 © NW = = № Sir Previews 46 Head on over to our E3 spectacular and you'll see more game previews than you can swing a stick at. And we're talking one of dem big ’ol Texas-sized sticks. Review Crew 108 It’s an EGM road-rage feature! Twisted Metal: Black, Crazy Taxi 2, World's Scariest Police Chases and CART Fury take our driver's test. And if throwing around tons of metal at high speeds isn't for you, then maybe a dual review of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons might catch your eye. @ Tricks 114 © The Final Word 118 The EGM Review Crew shares a huge bowl of mac n’ cheese while they discuss who won and lost big at Ез. And мете not talking about the cart full о’ cash that Previews Editor Greg Sewart won, either. Dreamcast Nintendo 64 PlayStation Game Boy Color Game Boy Advance | Xbox Arcade | < PlayStation.? p PlayStation. ES WWW.SCea.COM Twisted Metal: Black is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. © 2001 Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. “Play! T gutertainment logo are ей trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. y W > • Letters from gaming teachers: 2 Letters welcoming Shoe back: 87 • Letters listing every system and game ever owned by the writer: 63 • Letters asking which system to buy: 99 Rants about PSO У.2 pay to play: 15 Letters to the Editors m a x S — Congratulations. You win an InterAct controller. You will be receiving a Barracuda (PS), an Alloy Arcade Stick (DC) or a SharkPad Pro 64: (N64). See page 121 for official rules. s= ` => а o e —— DE A Gamer Dad Who Takes Responsibility Hi EGM crew. | represent the “non- audience” in most gaming magazines, the 30-something dad. | ат now а teacher, but grew up plunking down numerous quarters on Pac-Man, Asteroids and Space Invaders. | phe’ means the up with some games that are rated “E” but contain profanity? Like SSX for the PS2! To me, “Everyone” means the same as a G-rating for a movie, and | don't expect to hear “sh*t” in a Disney flick. Thanks for hearing me out, peace to gamers everywhere of all ages! Paul F. Eudora, KS continue to feed my gaming hobby/ habit by purchasing two games per month, minimum. | wonder why so many gaming mags and their ads are almost always aimed at the teens when gamer-parents like me are the ones spending money to purchase the games for their families. We are also the ones scouring the game mags to see what's new, and we have the final say on what is (or is not) bought for our families. | purchase and play only games that are appropriate for my two young sons; so when a game 15 rated “E” for everyone, I’m checking it out! Games like Conker's Bad Fur Day for the N64 shouldn't exist, as it is in the same league as Joe Camel’s “We aren’t trying to appeal to America’s youth” ad campaign. Joe died, and so should ex-Diddy Kong racing stars with inappropriate mouths. And what’s While we may not agree with all of your opinions, we respect your right to express them. And we definitely salute you for taking such an active role in selecting the entertainment your children are exposed to. If more parents had this “You got a f***ing problem with my language old man?” same level of participation in their kids’ lives, there would be much less finger pointing at games and entertainment as the source of society’s ills. Plus, how cool is it for your kids that you’re into games as much as they are! K-Mascot | was wondering (which is rare for me) who is going to be Microsoft’s mascot? Sony has Crash, Nintendo has Mario and Luigi, and Sega has Sonic (OK, so you knew that already), but Microsoft hasn’t breathed a word about it. Most companies develop a game about their mascot first; why should Microsoft be any different? Unless theirs is going to be a car from Project Gotham, Microsoft needs to get with it. I’m not saying Microsoft is bad, but it would be kinda cool to see a mascot on Xbox sometime soon. Oh, and please don’t tell me it’s going to be a little MS Office icon with eyes (that would be...uh...different...). That's all for now, you diaper-donning people! Nik A. Bermuda banjoeverything@hotmail.com Things are changing, Nik; Crash is no longer PlayStation-only (with his Xbox adventure in the works), and now that Sega is developing for all the major systems, you'll be seeing Sonic go multi-platform as well. Microsoft does have Abe from Munch's Oddysee, although he hasn't quite become the icon for Xbox in the same way Mario has for Nintendo. But other than that, Microsoft doesn't have set plans for any rodent, tradesman or marsupial of their own. They seem to think that will take care of itself in time. Their focus right now is on the games, so we'll all just have to wait and see who or what emerges as their spokesmodel. Come to think of it, no one has used a monkey yet. Kids love monkeys. And they wear diapers. We say use a monkey. Young Teacher Vows to Crush 6th Graders Lam a 24-year-old junior-high and high-school teacher and a complete video game freak. It is to the point that | drag my wife (who is not a video gaming enthusiast in the least bit) to Wal ЕШР у NED: 2 x GET BO NOW ON VIDEO AND SPECIAL EDITION DVD ITH CENTURY FOX s ИШ? nono A HENRY SELICK rau BRENDAN FRASER BRIDGET FONDA MONTEYBONE AR KATTAN GIANCARLO ESPOSITO ROSE MEGONAN ua WHOOP! GOLDBERG JAM SOLER ШШДЕ "MARK WARNER JON POLL NICHOLAS C. SMTH, u: ESL BOES ms ANDREW DUNN, a ace AA RYAN HEY EL. SAM HAMM CHRIS COLUMBUS ШЕ ИШ MARK RADCLIFFE it een KAJA BLACLE "SAM HAMM REA SELICK (PG 13,2, FA mme] © nemen poemas] ВЕР maman (xum... Й %<---------------------------------------------------------- 6001 Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, nc, АИ Rights Reserved. "Twentieth Century Fox," "Fox" and their associated logos are the property of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, LETTERS every pawn shop and video game store, just to look! (i.e., 30 minutes to an hour of my wife sitting in the car, waiting for me.) Well, | know that there are many other video game freaks out there my age, but | will say that this up-and-coming generation just doesn’t have the passion. | polled my 6th grade class (see, video games can be useful in schools—math, polling, it’s all good). Ninety percent of them say that they prefer console gaming to PC gaming, but do they go to stores and stand and sweat over which game to get today? No, they wait...they wait until some- thing like a birthday, or dare | say it, all the way ’til Christmas to get a game. My question to you, EGM, is: Do you find that gamers from the NES and Genesis generation tend to be more adamant about gaming than the 12- year-olds of today? And to any of my 6th graders, | will crush you at any console game! You have been challenged! Dwayne Sheridan White House, TN switchfootx6@yahoo.com Really Dwayne, crush them? We appreciate your passion, but they’re just kids. Sheesh. You might want to back off the faculty lounge coffee a bit. We're pretty sure the current crop of young gamers has the same level of mania as yourself, just not the disposable income, drivers license, car or wife to make wait in the car. Other than that, you’re on a level playing field, prof. Once your class gets a load of this letter, | think you'll have a glimpse of their passion. Strap in for some challengers looking to do some crushing of their own. Reader Ponders The Emotionless Che | see all of the Review Crew's pictures and Che Chou is the only one who doesn't have a smile on his face. What's wrong Che? You hate working at EGM? Jason Cho Choman100G hotmail.com EGM@ziffdavis.com Send us your thoughts, your wishes, your innermost weirdness...or your pictures, crazy screenshots or photos of bizarre game-related Try as we might, we can’t get our young West Coast Editor to flash his choppers. He’s what they call “street,” or “down for his.” Let’s just say it takes a lot to get evena smirk to well up on his jaded mug. In light of this, we worked a little Photoshop magic and transplanted Previews Editor Greg Sewart’s smile onto Che’s sour puss, with staggering results. It ain’t pretty, but it’s all you’re gonna get. Enjoy. Cries Go Up For More Werewolf Action For as long as | can remember, there have been more vampire games than werewolf games. In my opinion, being a werewolf would be more gratifying than being a filthy vampire. What we need is a game like Soul Reaver with a dead werewolf hunting down whatever. Just don’t use Castlevania 64/5 engine! Tim tim942@home.com You know, we never thought about this, but you’re right. Why the bias against Wolfmans? Nobody seems to have any problem with Draculas, or Frankensteins, or even Creature from the Black Lagoons—what gives? After some exhaustive research (one interoffice phone call) the only examples we could come up with of our furry friends in gaming are some Castlevania appearances, Altered Beast and Features Editor Crispin Boyer’s Monster Parties. Hmm. Chalk it up to yet another conspiracy concocted by the CIA, or the FBI or the Free Masons. 16 | SHORTS | Direct, to the point, here they are. This month’s shorts: Just wanted you people to know the picture on page 43 of EGM #144 really freaked me out, Please, never do that again. hopkins66@ hotmail.com Why so hostile? The man enjoys his pizza, what’s wrong with that? In last month's Final Word section I noticed that Shoe grew himself a nice. little caterpillar on his upper lip. The mustache makes him took like a porn star. He’s not into that “stuff” is he? Poopzilla@aol.com Hey, get off our editor in chief's tip. We think he looks rad with a *tache, he’s all Sabotage and stuff. As for his involvement in porn—no comment. Why can't you say pork on the PSO server? Is it some kind of bad word in another country? If so, then PORK YOU PSO, YOU PORKING PORKITY PORK. ape@ evilarcade.com Ouch. We're sure the top brass at Sega are going to sit up and take notice to that kind of scathing indict- ment, ape. Question of the Moment Game Boy Ativance: Portable Bliss or Resounding Miss? The first wave of dominators from the Nintendo Empire has come to take over. All hail Nintendo, for they are supreme. aaronxb@earthlink.net The power of the Super Nintendo but 1/10 the size. Perfect. Fruityfruitgcn@aol.com | don't really care about the Game Boy Advance. | got the PS2 and that is all | need. myear1@hotmail.com It's Nintendo and it’s a handheld system; what do you think? matt_e@saber.net Two words: Virtua Hamster. jamminsthebest@hotmail.com The F-Zero’n Game Boy Advance has F- zero'd so many F-Zeros that it will F-Zero all those F-Zeros that are left to F-Zero. valorum152@yahoo.com I'm not really impressed by the GBA. It’s just like the GBC as far as I'm concerned, only зо bucks more. I'm happy with my GBC! perfectdark121@hotmail.com Game Boy Advance is gonna be awesome. I’m getting Tony Hawk 2 for sure, and | hope Crazy Taxi comes to GBA. That would be awesome. Rocky32189@aol.com | think that the Game Boy Color was a good thing because going from boring grey/black/white or yellow is a big step. As for me, more durability and a little better graphics are not enough—’ll wait for back lighting. mad_hatter_1234@yahoo.com Next Month’s Question of the Moment: After reading our E3 feature (page 46), what are your thoughts on the upcoming system wars? Send your short but sweet responses to: EGM@ziffdavis.com with the subject heading: S-Wars ` @ Meer т Ste fe mute -to~ E S fo zarî Ега р begins August 13 on ABC Sacrificial offering nerves a итми = a Я) : i ENS Kus mide} оре ie 22125 Н «е = berries => big corm dog De sar CA em Aspirin calluses \ Lon bor acomms Ё < « {TE 2 feconsivuctive Attitude Surgery e. ا‎ E сачу ЕНИ JOE s iN lotes Vined kentucky waterfa\\ алыса а" Fostero Goofy -FooY © е ЫЎ Swit Frontside сода noses [idt rash 2 t 5 N өз EE: $5 58 28 oc та Е ES ms 55 Ж << бш шқ Ф9 > 5 gô 8% = = < 89 Еш бо # 53 28 28 $9 84 ЕО ET = 2s 58 5 5 of ш 5 nO $5 eu ЕФ = 5 30 ЕСЕ ЗЕ 85 ЕЗ 55 РЕ 82 E? 58 55 ¿> x2 Oe 55 22 Ез ЕЕ 28 2$ $$ 55 2g ga 5B 23 55 us at You can write ЕСМ at: EGM Letters Please note: We reserve the right to edit any correspondence for space purposes. If you don’t want your name, city/state or e-mail P.O. Box 3338 address printed, tell us so (but please include your phone number Oak Brook, ІШ and mailing address for Letter of the Month consideration). 60522-3338 Also note: although we can only respond to a few letters each month, we read and appreciate (most) all of them. So keep ‘em coming, eventually e-mail: EGM@ziffdavis.com you might see your handy work turn up here! “1 won't beat come is introducing you to the guy Girl Gamer Swoons around the who restocks our vending machine. For Snake bush any He's a little older than Snake, a little longer—1 АМ paunchier, but he has a huge set of Dearest Electronic Gaming Monthly... keys on one of those retractable uh...people, I’m 19 years old, I’m IN LOVE WITH wheel things and a gruff voice. Is a girl, and I'm a gamer. Over the SOLID SNAKE. that close enough? Get back to us. weekend, | purchased the excellent Head-over- Metal Gear Solid, and have success- heals, can’t fully beaten it (thanks to my best eat can't pd + жырт» A friend, Mr. GameShark). 152 қ sleep, in love nt 0 оду Is with him. I Do you guys know if Konami has don’t know expressed any interest in releasing a what it is." Metal Gear Anthology Disk, complete with old-school and revamped graphics? (I may be asking too much for the revamped versions.) | would pay $60-80 for it, and I’m sure the legion of Metal Gear fans would as well. TonePro@aol.com We haven’t heard anything, but it would definitely sell more than Gradius III and IV did, that's for sure. They could even include the sequel for the (Japan-only) MSX system that never made it to America. Quick, everyone, start mailing, e-mailing, calling, and generally bugging the crap out of Konami for it, right now! | won’t beat around the bush any longer—! АМ IN LOVE WITH SOLID SNAKE, Head-over-heals, can’t eat, can’t sleep, in love with him. | don’t know what it is. His gruff voice, his stylish clothes, his barely noticeable five о” clock shadow, his less-than- subtle similarities to Wolverine (who | am also in love with), his rugged good looks, his go-get-’em attitude (with a great body to boot)...who can decide? Help me, EGM. You guys have connections. Maybe you can hook us up? Convince Snake that Meryl is Chris Kau Canadensis, PA Ро. вох 3338 OAK, Badon Ei LETTERS What's Up With Sega Sports? 15 Sega developing a golf game (maybe something like Virtua Tennis but with golf)? Are they going to make а non-arcade soccer game? | mean a realistic soccer sim like their 2K sports franchises with the FIFA and MLS licenses, Lastly, is Sega developing an NCAA basketball game? | know they are doing an NCAA football game. loco20420 yahoo.com Our sources say there is no golf game in the works and no “non- arcade” soccer games—just another arcadey Virtua Striker for GameCube. No NCAA Basketball game either, although we're told it'll be considered if college football does well. It’s still hard for us to believe, but we do occasionally make a mistake. Here's one from last month: We incorrectly listed the developer of Rayman Advance as Jester—it should have read Digital Eclipse. dd 1 s A Bad luck to these guys... better luck next time. Feel free to e-mail us artwork as well. о И | actually а man? Perhaps you could start being a little nicer to Konami, if ya know what | mean. Hmm? HMM?! Susan Kidman roguemcallister@hotmail.com Ya, he’s pretty cool. You forgot to mention his flowing mullet though. Still, it’s a nice change of pace to hear a female gushing over an animated character. But see, that’s just it. Hate to break it to you, but he’s animated—he’s not real. So we can’t “hook you up.” Closest we can Congratulations! Your prize is on the мау- an ASCII Specialized Control Pad for the PlayStation. It features rapid-fire controls for all buttons and slow motion for those intense moments. Put your creative skills to the test by decking out a #10 EGM Letter Art envelope (the long business type) PO Box 3338 with your own unique touch. епа Oak Brook, IL your letter art to: 60522-3338 (МІ entries become the property of Ziff Davis Media Inc. and will not be returned!) 20 Dwayne Goodrum Killeen , TX Nathaniel Avery Holmen, WI >. — 2 -а > > www.sprite.com 62001 The Coca- Соја Company. “Sprite” and “Obey Your Thirst” a istered trademarks of The Coca-Cola Company. By Chris Johnston chris_johnston@ziffdavis.com & Jonathan Dudlak jonathan_dudlak@ziffdavis.com Press Start Let th to hit retail three days apart from each other planning on getting both а The Hottest Gaming Info on the Planet GameCube and Xbox at launch, here’s your warning: Start saving those pennies now. Microsoft and Nintendo made their launch plans official the day before the doors opened for the 2001 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles (see our feature this issue). Microsoft took the first shot. At an early morning press conference, Microsoft’s Chief Xbox Officer Robbie Bach told the crowd of barely awake journalists that Xbox would be a reality on Nov. 8 at a suggested retail price of $299.99. At Nintendo’s press conference later in the morning (when everyone was a little more coherent), the company threw a live grenade at their Redmond neighbors. The Big N announced that GameCube would be released in the U.S. on Nov. 5. The price was announced a week later in Japan—$199.99 25,000 yen for Japan (a This is the first time tl systems have launched for the U.S. market, and bout $204). at two video game in the U.S. this close to each other. Then there’s PlayStation 2, which will be replenishing its ammo stock with second-generation games and online gaming (see story on the next page) just as developers are getting to the meat of the new systems. And The Players don’t forget Dreamcast, a system that will take its last gasps this year, with a few great titles still on the slate before Sega turns into just a third party publisher. One thing is certain: this is going to be an exciting year. Hm launch Dat Nov. 8, 2001 Nov. 5, 2001 Oct. 26, 2000 Sept. 9, 1999 launch Price: Built-in Ethernet port; No online gaming 'til 2002 Computer-savvy guys with big hands, deep pockets, and the understanding that a console needs its space. Turn-Offs: $299.99 15-20 Cheapskates, Mac users, and prejudiced gamers who can’t look past a name. $199.99 6 Not built-in; modem and broadband peripherals TBA Guys who aren’t intimidated by a taller console, enjoy visiting with old friends, and will participate in four-ways. Gamers who watch a lot of DVD movies or value good looks over personality. 22 $299.99 Impatient “players” who are always looking for a new and better relationship. $199.99 18 With optional Network Adapter (Nov. 2001) Yes, at launch; Online gaming with SegaNet in Aug. 2000 Gamers who appreciate a well-bred console and are ready to jump right into a commitment. Gamers with a sense of humor, who communicate well—even over long distances, and gamers who appreciate a cheap date. Gamers who are afraid to get involved with an older console for fear it has nothing to offer. Sony’s E3 press conference was so long, it felt like the company was filibustering to keep the attendees’ minds from wandering off to thoughts of Nintendo or Microsoft. Buried within the two plus hours of PR speak from software publishers and developers, at least, was a little nugget of information about Sony’s online strategy (finally). SCEA President and COO Kaz Hirai unveiled a prototype of the PS2 network adapter, which will allow both broadband and 56k narrowband (phone line, for you laypersons) users to go online to play games, download levels or trade information. The unit plugs into the back of your PS2, you know, where that huge gaping hole was left for the...4o gigabyte hard drive!? Remember that? Well, it's on the way alongside the network adapter in November—hey, you have to store your downloaded data somewhere! The adapter will debut at $39.95, but Sony has yet to announce a price for the hard drive. Anatomy of a Computer Entertainment System Go go gadget PlayStation! Later this year, Sony will introduce a host of peripherals for your PS2 that will transform the machine into a lean, mean, Internet-surfing machine. Here's the rundown: Monitor Price: N/A Available Winter 2001 AMERICA 4 Announced at E3 To help the new hardware get off on the right foot, Sony has made some new friends in the online realm. The company announced alliances, with AOL (imagine Web browsing, e-mailing, and chatting with friends on your PS2), RealNetworks (makers of RealPlayer—why not have the PS2 download A/V clips from the Web?), Cisco Systems (ІР software...you know, tech stuff), and Macro- media (makers of Flash, which enhances Web sites with animation and sound). Now some of you may be envisioning persistent busy signals and low-quality compressed video chugging through your pipeline, but let’s wait and see before we make snap judgments, shall we? To complete the transformation from game console to computer, Sony will market a VGA/ NTSC/PAL LCD monitor, keyboard and mouse. What's next, word processing software? The Sony computer kit includes everything you see here, each sold separately by late 2001/early 2002. ж Hard Drive Price: TBD Available November Network Adapter Price: $39.99 Available November Keyboard & Mouse Price: N/A Available November UNLEASH A NEW REALITY THE SPIRITS WITHIN ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK Music from the Summer’s most anticipated, animated blockbuster. SOUNDTRACK CD CONTAINS AN EXCLUSIVE PREWIEW OF FINAL FANTASY X VIDEO GAME Available at CIRCUIT CITY. Imagine that music stores and Circuitcity.com sony www.sonyclassical.com % and "Sony CL Ta. Off. ADY DS => ` FORAO'EA. = 2566701 ч * PLUS 1 МОРЕ АТ GREAT SAVINGS! E Н TNCS з ў SEE DETAILS «а ~ T y er ON OTHER ^j Jin 2 w FAs THE NR sa 7 CooLES ` ? 2411601] Y) FORMA AN OFFICER AND 5 AGENTLEMAN 0202101 ^ [1959600 PRINCESS MONONOKE 2531705 URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT 2556207 STARGATE - MVP: MOST VALUABLE SPECIAL EDITION 2410702 PRIMATE 2556603 m SHANGHAI NOON. 2537306 NEW ON DVD 63 THET3TH WARRIOR — 2435907 COLLECTOR'S r APOCALYPSE NOW 0200105 EDITIONS THE CREW 2577302 š | DOUBLE JEOPARDY ^ 2434207 CRUEL INTENTIONS 2 2525103 5 MEN IN BLACK - THE MUMMY (1999) - DESTINY'S CHILD: COLLECTOR'S SERIES 2509107 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2388007 THE PLATINUM'S ON THE WATERBOY 2321404 AMERICAN PIE - | THE WALL 2596401 BIE DADDY 2409803 | COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2424307 THE LEGEND OF 22220000 FAST TIMES AT BAGGER VANCE 2582906 ВН RIDGEMONT HIGH - THE LEGEND OF E Lu COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2424406 DRUNKEN MASTER 2587509 eC NATIONAL LAMPOON'S LITTLE NICKY 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY- ANIMAL HOUSE - PLATINUM SERIES — 2563102 REMASTERED EDITION 1095108 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2253904 HAPPY GILMORE 1937507 | NUTTY PROFESSOR II: NURSE BETTY 2573004 HAPPY GILMORE 1937507 2539807 THE KLUMPS - Ер A 2585305 ШАД АЗЫ 2005700 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2550705 R > | JURASSIC PARK - CON AIR (WIDESCREEN) 2167302 |” COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2513208 THE BEST МАМ (1999) 2438208 THE LOST WORLD: SPECIAL EDITION 2448900 ARMAGEDDON THE WIZARD OF0Z 2383602 RUSH HOUR 2301505 JURASSIC PARK ` (LETTERBOX) 2284602 LOVE & BASKETBALL- 2532901 Fla HEAT 2005809 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2513307 CASINO 1922707 PLATINUM SERIES 2518009 ws DEEP BLUE SEA 2421006 | APOLLO 13- THE TOMBSTONE 1254200 RUNAWAY BRIDE 2433803 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 1937200 CELL- PLATINUM SERIES 2545002 PRETTY WOMAN-10TH VARSITY BLUES 2347904 JAWS ANNIVERSARY- ERIN BROCKOVICH — 2495307 ANNIVERSARY EDITION 2436608 "MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 1999200 THE PRINCE OF EGYPT 2381705 nie 2489706 TOP GUN 0426908 CHICKEN RUN- NEXT FRIDAY - THE GENERAL'S 9 BLADE 2294809 __ SPECIAL EDITION 2520708 PLATINUM SERIES — 2469203 DAUGHTER кз | vas tena {2 ENEMY OFTHE STATE 2345304 FACE/OFF 2152007 PITCH BLACK UNRATED- POKEMON: COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2233203 = FRIDAY 1434406. DEUCEBIGALOW: DIRECTOR'S CUT 2521805 ТНЕ MOVIE 2000 2823405. | END or DAYS - 5 ANY GIVEN SUNDAY- MALE GIGOLO 2490704 _ THE ROCK 2018406 — HOLLOW MAN - COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2452407 $ SPECIAL EDITION FREQUENCY- GONE WITH THE WIND 2258300 SPECIAL EDITION 2541001 | THE TRANSFORMERS: = DIRECTOR'S CUT 2508109 PLATINUM SERIES 2521201 THE USUAL SUSPECTS 1479401 COYOTE UGLY 2557601 THE MOVIE -SPECIAL S PINK FLOYD - THE WALL- THE BONE COLLECTOR 2449700 THE EXORCIST: THE VERSION FINAL DESTINATION | 2503407 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2399400 = DELUXE EDITION 2425205 ROMEO MUSTDIE __2495406 YOU'VE NEVER SEEN 2551802 “BAD BOYS (1995) - roma S È THEREPLACEMENTS _ 2540300 28 DAYS- LEON: SPECIAL EDITION 2478907. | МЕ HURRICANE (1999). E RESERVOIR 0065 1106905 — SPECIAL EDITION 2513406 THE PROFESSIONAL UNCUT RULES OF ENGAGEMENT 2532802 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2480408 | Š © TURES OF ENGAGEMENT 2932802. 3 2 THEFIFTHELEMENT 2145506 INTERVIEW WITH INTERNATIONAL VERSION 2497303 “SLEEPY HOLLOW 2480200 || LIAR LIAR- 3 = THE TEN COMMANDMENTS THE VAMPIRE- SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, GETTYSBURG 1213305 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2411908 | Ë = (1956) 0202606 SPECIAL EDITION 2469906 LONGER AND UNCUT ° 2420503 “YOU'VE GOT MAIL 2331205 | THE SKULLS - = = THE SHAWSHANK ENTER THE DRAGON - AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY DISNEY'S THE KID 2557700 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2516904 Е 2 REDEMPTION 1345503 25TH ANNIVERSARY WHO SHAGGED ME - THE UNTOUCHABLES MALLRATS - 8 = THE ROAD ТО EL DORADO- SPECIAL EDITION 2208205 PLATINUM EDITION | 2423002 (1987) 0432104 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2355006 | 2 A со Алм И BFRDE RUNNER: AUSTIN POWERS:INTER JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH CONAN THE SAAB ARIAN 5 = TWISTER- THE DIRECTOR'S CUT 1097906 NATIONAL MAN SPECIAL EDITION 2588101 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2462406 8 SPECIAL EDITION 2470003 101 DALMATIANS 2057503 OFMYSTERY 2144509 THEODD COUPLE 0206607 =~ скон a 2224608 2545101 2521904 2587400 MORE TO CHOOSE FROM ON OTHER SIDE. —* 2562304 ADVD A ~ FOR ДА PLUS 1 МОРЕ Pm GREAT Pee. SEE DETAILS BELOW. 2571206 LETHAL WEAPON- THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT- DESPERADO 1485101 DIRECTOR'S CUT 2473601 SPECIAL EDITION 2419802 PAYBACK (1999) 2380301. LETHAL WEAPON 2- CRUEL INTENTIONS 2363703 JFK: SPECIALEDITION- DIRECTOR'S CUT 2473700 FULLMETALJACKET 0632505 DIRECTOR'SCUT 2540102 LETHAL WEAPON 3 - A CLOCKWORK ORANGE 0600403 THE LONG KISS MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY DIRECTOR'S CUT 2473809 DAYS OF THUNDER 0827303 GOODNIGHT 2052009 GRAIL 0192005 LETHAL WEAPON 4 - KISS THE GIRLS 2195204 THE PLAYERS CLUB 2232908 THE HUNT FOR RED 2448801 PREMIERE COLLECTION 2273803 ^ LED ZEPPELIN: THE SONG SNOW DAY 2532109 OCTOBER 0825000 GALAXY QUEST 2476307 REMAINS THE SAME 0605907 THEWAYOFTHEGUN 2546109 GOOD WILL HUNTING - BICENTENNIAL MAN 2490308 LEGENDS OF THE FALL- WHAT DREAMS MAY COME- COLLECTOR'S SERIES | 2515104 HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL SPECIAL EDITION 2519403 SPECIAL EDITION 2341204 THE WATCHER 2556405 (1999) 2459709 40 THINGS | HATE ANALYZE THIS 2355204 HEAVY METAL - THE NEGOTIATOR - CATS - ABOUT YOU 2413706 AS GOOD AS IT GETS 2206605 COLLECTOR'S SERIES 2430106 PREMIERE COLLECTION 2283307 COMMEMORATIVE EDITION 2528008 "WHEN HARRY MET SALLY- BEOWULF (2000) 2537603 AMERICAN HISTORYX 2320604 ІНІ. INTERRUPTED — 2470201 PSYCHO- SPECIAL EDITION 2551406 DAZED AND CONFUSED 1188606 CADDYSHACK - TAXI DRIVER- COLLECTOR'S EDITION THE WOOD 2434108 GROSSE POINTE BLANK 2137909 20TH ANNIVERSARY 2469708 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2338903 (1960) 2201309 BLAZING SADDLES 0001208 ЈЕВВҮ MAGUIRE 2071207 THE CIDER HOUSE RULES 2512200 ^ STEEL MAGNOLIAS- BOILER ROOM 2481208 © CASABLANCA 2274702 MEET JOE BLACK 2325900 THE CROW 1374206 SPECIAL EDITION 2499606 CARLITO'S WAY 1229301 THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE 2179802 MY DOG SKIP 2481406 KEEPING THE FAITH 2537900 THREE KINGS 2430403 THE TALENTED DRAGONHEART- NATIONAL LAMPOON'S STARSHIP TROOPERS 2207306 ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK 0311308 МВ. RIPLEY 2532208 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2035301 CHRISTMAS VACATION 0952507 AIR FORCE ONE 2160000 REINDEER GAMES 2512309 DOWNTO YOU 2511806 FIELD OF DREAMS- POKEMON: ANTZ - U.S. MARSHALS- GHOSTBUSTERS 0174201 SIGNATURE COLLECTION 1932300 THE FIRST MOVIE 2438901 SIGNATURE COLLECTION 2324507 SPECIAL EDITION 2234201 "SPACE JAM- THE JACKAL- THE RUGRATS MOVIE 2324408 THE ART OF WAR 2545200 BLUE STREAK 2434405 SPECIAL EDITION 2481505 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2184307 SELENA 2129807 JUMANJI- PATCH ADAMS- THIS IS SPINAL TAP- SHE'S ALL THAT 2352003 STUART LITTLE 2464501 COLLECTOR'S SERIES — 2431708 COLLECTOR'S EDITION — 2346401 — SPECIAL EDITION 2340404 TOMMY BOY 1433903 SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE- LIFE 2399202 DUMBANDDUMBER 1374107 WILD THINGS 2247609 COLLECTOR'S SERIES 2434801 SCOOBY-D00'S THE IRON GIANT 2421105 BACKDRAFT 0559005 FOR LOVE OF THE GAME 2438109 — ORIGINAL MYSTERIES 2438703 BORN ON THE FOURTHOF JULY- BATTLEFIELD EARTH 2516409 STIR OF ECHOES 2425502 HIGH FIDELITY 2512507 SPECIAL EDITION 2507200 “BILLY MADISON 1389402 THE WHOLE NINE YARDS 2480507 OUT OF AFRICA - MISSION TO MARS 2512606 © _ABRONX TALE 1221506 EYES WIDE SHUT 2429603 COLLECTOR'S EDITION 2431500 “THE INSIDER 2471001 DEEP IMPACT 2274009 Columbia House DVD Club, Dept.7DQ # P.O. 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If you want a movie on DVD that you don't see here, just call us and ask or visit our website. ыы DVD CLUB Over 600 stores nationwide AOL KEYWORD: EBGAMES ORE DETAILS ur main feature this month may give you the experience of being at this year’s E3, but the one thing it can’t do is give you the feeling of seeing the new Metal Gear Solid 2 trailer Konami unveiled at the show. Despite the already deafening year-long MGS2 hype, the almost 10 minutes of new footage had people talking. If you have a computer, go watch it—now—at the MGS2 page on www.konami.com. But come back, because whether you’ve seen the trailer or not, over the next four pages we've got a full breakdown, including quotes from our interview with MGS2 creator and director Hideo Kojima, plus new info we learned about the game and details you might have missed. Oh, and we finally have a solid release date for the U.S. М652: Nov. 13. Mark your calendars (man, that’s gonna be one hell of a month!) and join our attempt to give meaning to our lives until then. THE CHARACTERS: (in case you don’t already know) The stealthy, chain-smoking, gravelly-voiced special agent hero you play as. Metal Gear Rex: Super weapon you stopped from destroying the world in the first Metal Gear Solid. New and improved super- weapon on test in MGSa, it might just make all the older Rex models obsolete. Ocelot: Boss from the last game, he survived (minus his right hand) and sold plans for Metal Gear Rex on the black Ss market to any country with Á % 2 enough money. Bastard. ( в) ка Russian who was part of ће plot to steal Rex, he’s back with Ocelot to nab Ray. Liquid Snake: Your genetically engineered brother who led the mission to steal Metal Gear Rex in the last game. You stopped him and left him for dead. Or so you thought. Our name for the U.S. military leader trying to protect Metal Gear Ray. Key word: trying. Fortune: New boss lady with a really big gun. All we can ау is see scene 3. And yes, we made that name up. Ninja: Former friend of Snake's, then enemy, then friend again. Who knows which he is now. He's part man, part machine, but all psychotic ninja rage. THE SETUP The trailer begins, like any trailer ought to really, by filling us in on the backstory. Since it's a big long speech from the Commander, and most of the information is contained in the first MGS2 trailer and playable demo, allow us to summarize: There are some bad men in the U.S. government "seeking to control national affairs for [their] own purposes." Since everybody and their next-door neighbor has a Metal Gear Rex now thanks to Ocelot, Metal Gear Ray becomes the new hope. The commander tells his troops the future of the country rests with them. With Ray's help, they will flush out and rid the country of these corrupting forces. That is, unless a group of terrorists can trick them and steal the giant weapon using an old high-school football ruse that wouldn't fool a dog with short-attention span disorder. But the odds. of that happening are...well...read on. “Let us just say this before we start: Metal Gear Solid 2 on the Xbox—no comment.” -Scott Dolph, translator for Mr. Kojima, setting some ground rules before our interview METAL GEAR SOLID 2 WATCH CUE COUNT The railgun: When you absolutely, positively got to CHOPULA kill every mofo in the room, accept no substitutes. A group of soldiers sprays bullets throughout this hallway in a panic, frantically trying to hit an invisible enemy who is slicing them to pieces one by one. Finally, the lonely last soldier standing gets a good look at his assailant —the nameless goth- type fellow you see here (who we'll call Count Chopula for hopefully obvious reasons). The soldier tries one last time to shoot him as he approaches, but the Count pulls a tornado-like spin move that deflects all the bullets and puts him behind the soldier, where he proceeds to custom tailor the waist, shoulder and neck-lines of the Soldier's uniform while he's still wearing it. Count Chopula bathes in a fountain- ous spray of blood as the scene fades. Yikes. Kojima has said the final version won't be so graphic (in fact, the trailer on Konami's Web site has hardly any blood at all), and as much as we are against any kind of censorship, we fully understand why. In any case, this is where you realize —bloodless or not (a blood-free option is planned for the final “I vant to suck your blud.” FORTUNE DOESN'T SMILE ON SNAKE Next, the trailer introduces us to Fortune, the blond-haired, cocoa- skinned hottie boss with a railgun almost as tall as she is. She starts off asking Snake to “Hurry, kill me please!”, but apparently changes her mind, immediately unleashing a barrage of rails at him and utilizing a very non-suicide-friendly shield that causes all of Snake’s bullets to curve away. Melting, deforming or exploding anything in its path in real time (including crates, barrels, the ceiling and even a forklift), Fortune’s railgun inevitably brings the phrase “hot knife through butter” to mind. After she shows off the incredible graphical and programming wizardry of Kojima and company by blasting just about everything in the entire room, the scene fades out with crates still burning, dirt and debris falling from the ceiling, and the swinging overhead lights blinking on and off. Kick freaking ass. Kojima told us this scene was handled by the same programmer responsible for the playable MGS2 demo's wet bar and cargo storage room (with all the fruit and bottles you could blow apart). “This guy is like Mr. destructible environments,” says Kojima. He also told us that you will face Fortune and her railgun again elsewhere in the game, but Snake won't ever be able to use the super hole-puncher himself. Damn. game) —MGS2 is likely getting a “Mature” ESRB rating. ENTER THE NINJA Meet the only guards with worse luck than those the Count just took care of (note to guards: Stay the hell out of hallways). This gruesome footage is spliced in with the Count's in the trailer, but the two scenes are actually of different hallways and aren’t related to each other at all. We’ve seen this kind of blood- smeared Manson family interior decorating before, in the last MGS, and it looks too much like the Ninja’s handiwork to ignore. But wasn’t he crushed by Metal Gear Rex in MGS1? The katana-wielding wonder himself pops up toward the end of the trailer, but answers Snake’s very fair question about who the hell he is by coyly replying, “Рт like уоц— | һауе по name." 21 [Metal Gear Solid 2] is definitely going in the right direction, but when we started planning the game, way before we got the tools for the PS2, we had all these ideas we wanted to implement. What we were able to realize in this game is only about 20 percent of what we initially came up with. -Hideo Kojima METAL GEAR SOLID 2 WATCH THINGS GET HARRIER Unlike other bosses, the harrier doesn’t waste time with small talk about its childhood or its current problems in life; instead it launches about five dozen missiles at the bridge Solid Snake happens to be standing on. He understandably tries his best to run, roll, weave and generally dodge them, bringing to mind the rooftop battle with Liquid Snake's helicopter in the last game. The big question is who is piloting the flying deathmobile this time? Everything from the air pumping through the Harrier’s jets, to the missile trails, to the blossoming explosions just looks fantastic. 1: Whaszup! Enough talk, now Ray smash! THE SHOWDOWN Ha! We have you! Tired of sitting around watching the cinema scenes unfold, Metal Gear Ray finally With spurs a’chingin’, Ocelot struts into the same cargo hold housing Metal Gear Ray where we saw the Commander talking to his troops before. Defenseless and alone, yet sarcastically clapping his hands (yes, he has a right hand again, more on that later) at the Commander's speech, Ocelot calls him a liar, and tells him what a nice machine Metal Gear Ray is. The Commander asks Ocelot if he’s planning on stealing it. “Steal? No, no, I’m taking it back,” he says. Enraged by the size of Ocelot's balls, the Marines all crowd around the commander and aim their weapons at the gutsy Russian. Big mistake. Gurlukovich suddenly appears behind the Commander and takes him hostage, holding a gun to his head while terrorist soldiers repel down ropes around them. The Commander and his troops just fell for the oldest trick in the book. Next, when Snake suddenly appears and yells Ocelot's name, the Ruskie cowboy's right hand (which Kojima later explained is actually Liquid Snake's hand grafted on) goes haywire, causing poor Ocelot to double over in pain. He regains himself and removes his glove to reveal a normal-looking forearm and hand (although it does have a barcode on it), then it's almost as if Ocelot has been possessed by Liquid — he calls Solid Snake "brother." в 4: Wait, who’s got who now? г ) 5: Ow! Arm...tingling...Solid Snake? 28 wakes up (мете given no idea who's behind the wheel). After breaking loose of its moorings, Ray crushes a few Marine soldiers the way most people casually step on ants. Then it goes all-out berserk, Godzilla- style: thrashing its giant tail around, spewing deadly lasers out of its “mouth,” even emitting a very un- mechanical weapon-like roar of glee. After Ray’s temper tantrum in the ship’s cargo hold, it’s no surprise Snake is wading through neck-high water later. Cont. on page 30 GameCube Metal Gear? When І pick hardware to do a game, | don’t look at the specs of the machine. | don’t really care about that stuff. | don’t care about how good the system is, because all consoles right now аге at about the same level of power. | look at the audience that it has. Releasing a Metal Gear game on a Nintendo console would be ridiculous. | don’t know about GameCube, but [their] machines [until now] have been for younger kids. —Hideo Kojima METAL GEAR SOLID 2 WATCH Cont. from page 28 0005 & END WATER SNAKE Even though they reminded us a bit too much of DiCaprio in Titanic, the scenes with Snake charging down a hallway with a giant wave in close pursuit and sloshing through chest-deep water were two of the most awe-inspiring moments in the new trailer. Нго rippled and splashed with incredible realism, yet Kojima shrugged it off when we asked about it. “I don’t think it’s anything that special. Other systems might be doing the same thing, like Wave Race on GameCube.” Well yeah, maybe, but that’s the entire point of the Wave Race engine and it’s just one little aspect of the MGS2 experience. The level of detail in this game is just amazing. ONLY THE SHADOW KNOWS That shadow Snake sneaks up on during a quick throwaway scene near the start of the trailer—is it... could it be...Vulcan Raven? It certainly looks like the profile the giant machine gun- toting, bird- loving bigman boss would cast. But you left him for dead after shooting 20 missiles up his rear, to be pecked apart by his raven brethren А FEW GOOD МЕН From their brief appearance in the new trailer, these guys don’t seem like your typical “radio for help, arms up in the air, peeing in their pants anytime you point a gun at them” terrorists. Someone spent a {Це more on their uniforms, and it looks ike they're worth it (the sword-wielding one below even deflects Snake's bullets with his blade). The background where you fight them looks like it may be a ocation off the ship... in the last MGS. Is it really him? Or perhaps a clone? Or maybe we are just reading entirely too much " g into this? Kojima chuckled when we asked him. “That's a secret,” he told us. “We'll leave it up to your imagination. We don’t want to spoil anything.” Where is this tunnel? Has Snake finally gotten off the tanker transporting Ray? NEW YORK CITY? (GET A ROPE.) When we asked Kojima how much of the game will take place off the tanker, he replied, “It’s a secret.” But we've seen the harrier fight on a bridge, and another quick clip shows Snake walking down this tunnel, which doesn’t look like it belongs in a boat. Kojima did mention that, as part of their research, his team visited a nuclear power facility...hmm... 50 WHAT'S NEXT? Nothing for awhile. As of E3, Mr. Kojima and his team are “submerging,” refusing to grant any interviews or new screenshots so they can concentrate on getting MGS2 finished. The next time we might see anything significant is the fall Tokyo Game Show in early October, but even that is still up in the air. When we asked Mr. Kojima for a few final words for his fans, he had this to say, “As of E3, we're going to submerge. But submerging is not sinking. We're going to keep moving forward underwater. So until we resurface and the game comes out, | hope you keep imagining your own М652 іп your minds with what we've provided, and talk to your friends about it.” Check back for the MGS2 Watch next month, and every month until the game’s Nov. 13 release date, where we will do just that. As always, send us all of your questions and comments at egm@ziffdavis.com, subject “MGS2WATCH.” Ж, nH -Mark MacDonald £ = 5 5 2 ROB DYRDEK’S NEW SIGNATURE MODEL, THE EXACTA. AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL SKATEBOARD SHOP. ТО FIND A LOCATION NEAR YOU, SEE THE LATEST NEWS, TEAM INFORMATION AND SHOES, VISIT OUR WEB SITE AT WWW.DCSHOECOUSA.COM SMOOTH DANBUCK UPPER FOR ABRASION RESISTANCE AND DURABILITY WRAPAROUND HIGH ABRASION PAL AB2000 TOE CAP HIDDEN NYLON LACE LOOPS SHOCK-ABSORBING HEEL AIRBAG DOUBLE-LASTED UPPER WITH HIDDEN POLYURETHANE MIDSOLE IN FOREFOOT PROVIDING LIGHTWEIGHT CUSHIONING HEEL PULL STRAP FOR EASY INSTALLATION AVAILABLE IN: (BLACKIDK RED (MIDNIGHT/GI (CHARCO/ FOR STICKERS, PO! ос STICKERS, 770 SYCAMORE AVE! Where Are They Now? Warren “Adventure” Robinett Gamefather of the Easter Egg Single-handedly creating one of the first action-adventure games and the first hidden surprise was a real Adventure for one ex-Atari programmer. We ask the man about Easter Eggs, miniscule amounts of ROM and a very special Atari club. nspired by coin-op pioneer Ed Logg's first love—a text adventure with the public- domain name Adventure — programmer Warren Robinett spent the majority of 1978 and '79 crafting an Atari 2600 action- adventure title (an early Zelda, if you will) that took the same name, left the plot, and added graphics to the mix. His boss at Atari Against all odds, Robinett finished the game, and you readers with Adventure " experience know full well 8 that the quest itself was epic— “to retrieve the Holy Grail and bring it back to the castle,” Robinett says, “but Atari’s marketing department sanitized ‘Holy Grail’ into ‘Enchanted Chalice.” More promoting” secret, in honor of “the secret messages hidden in Beatles records in the late '605." But instead of playing the game backward to hear the message, this surprise was hidden in the gameplay. “There was a one-pixel object—the smallest possible m dot—that was the same color gray as the background,” Robinett says. “It was hidden in a little chamber surrounded by walls. You couldn’t see it until you ran into it. If you took this object around throughout the game world, you might eventually discover that it let you go through thought he was crazy, but that was only one of the hurdles Robinett faced. “We only had 4 kilobytes of ROM available in the video game,” he tells us, “whereas the text adventure ran on a mainframe with hundreds of kilobytes available.” Robinett served as the sole designer, programmer, artist, sound designer and tester. “It may be hard to believe nowadays, but that’s the way things were back then. And yes, | wasn’t that great of an artist—my dragons looked like ducks.” importantly, this was the first game where the player could pick up objects and interact with them. “For this, | used collision between [your character] and an object to mean ‘pick ир,” he explains, adding that the joystick’s single fire button was used to drop the object. “There needed to be some way that objects could interact. | again used ‘overlap’ to trigger actions—touching the sword to the dragon killed it.” Add a quartet of mazes, relentless dragons and a bat “as a confusion factor to spice one of the side walls near the Yellow Castle into the secret room that contained my signature.” Thus, he invented the first game secret. But would Atari approve of a hidden room with Robinett’s John Hancock? He circumvented that problem by not revealing his secret to anyone. Consider it payback for the company’s domineering attitude of the time. “Atari had a monopoly and did not choose to give the game designers credit on uU Hidden in Adventure: Robinett's я dirty little secret. When good Atari programmers without royalty checks go bad... Warren Robinett shared with us another secret: the tale of a small clandestine group of ex-Atari staffers who never got royalty checks from Atari. These are the members of the Dumb Sh*ts Club. “In 1979, there were about 12 programmers designing for the Atari 2600,” Robinett says. “Four left to start Activision, and another three started Imagic— both of which sold $50 million worth of video things up,” and you have the first stab at the action RPG. But that’s not the full story. Miffed at Atari’s less-than- star treatment of its programmers, Robinett also managed to squeeze in what he calls a “devious, insubordinate and self- the published games,” Robinett explains. “We were anonymous. We also got no royalties, just a salary—mine was $22,000 a year. So creating the secret room with my signature in it was a way for me to sign my work. And hey, if | was going to do it, why not fill in the games in their first year of business. All those guys were multi-millionaires, and what did that say about those of us left at Atari? We were out drinking one night, and after about six pitchers of beer, we decided to form the Dumb Sh*ts Club. The requirements for membership were you had to have designed games for Atari and never made any money from them [other than salary]. We later elected Jim Huether, my office mate at Atari, president of the Dumb Sh*ts Club because he stayed there the longest of the original dozen.” No word on whether they had a secret handshake. Electronic Gaming Monthly - 32 - www.egmmag.com screen with my name in flashing colors?” His hidden addition went unnoticed for over a year. “Atari manufactured several hundred thousand Adventure cartridges, sent them to stores all over the world, and sure enough, some ids here and there did discover the secret room.” By mid-1980, when Atari caught wind of Robinett’s stunt, he had already left the company. “1 figured they would expunge the secret when they found out,” he says, “but the manager of the Atari game designers...said he thought it was kind of cool to have hidden surprises in video games, ike searching for Easter Eggs on Easter Sunday.” And so the video game term Easter Egg was born. With Atari's new relaxed and groovy attitude, the Egg stayed— possibly out of respect to Robinett, but probably because “it would have cost $10,000 to make a new mask for the ROM chip used in the cartridge,” he says. “They did assign а programmer to track down where [my name was] in the code. He later told me that if he'd been asked to remove it, he would have replaced ‘Created by Warren Robinett’ with ‘Fixed by Brad Stewart.” Where is he now? After co-designing a microscope virtual-reality interface called the nanoManipulator (which allows a scientist to be virtually present on the surface of a microscopic sample), Robinett created software for NASA's Virtual Reality Workstation—a pioneering VR project. He also co-founded The Learning Company, a big publisher of edutainment software, and designed a game called Rocky’s Boots. It taught logic design to schoolkids in the early "805. Currently, he is a research associate professor at the University of North Carolina. You can find out more about Robinett and Adventure on his Web site: www. warrenrobinett.com. -David S.J. Hodgson š š T Photography by Bob Rives Deus EX Jumps From PC to PS2 The cat’s out of the bag. Eidos is bringing the acclaimed PC first-person shooter (FPS) Deus Ex to the PS2 for holiday 2001. Often dubbed “the thinking man’s FPS” in PC circles, Deus Ex combines RPG elements with pre- scripted events (like those found in Half-Life) to draw the player into its cyberpunk-inspired story. How does one bring Deus Ex to the PS2 without watering it down? The challenge for game creator Warren Spector and his team at lon Storm was to rethink their design from a console perspective. Spector tells us that they’ve reworked the interface so that all the menus you need are accessible from the shoulder buttons. In fact, they found this arrangement to be even more efficient than using a mouse and keyboard. After seeing the game in motion behind closed doors at E3, we can see, even at this early stage, Deus Ex is shedding its PC roots to blossom into an authentic console experience. TimeSplitters 2: Getting it right this time Anybody who's played Eidos’ PS2 game TimeSplitters knows it was more a technology demo than a cohesive single-player experience. Heck, it didn’t even have a stellar multiplayer mode, and this was the same group who left Rare after GoldenEye and Perfect Dark to form Free Radical Design? Nobody laments this fact more than the guys at Free Radical, who blame the original’s shortcomings on the critical timing of the PS2 launch. TS2 promises to be a smoother experience, complete with story cutscenes, mission goals and а co-op story mode. They're shooting for a release sometime in the winter. For two days in Japan, June 23 and 24, and while supplies last in the U.S., Sega will sell a special edition of Sonic Adventure 2 for the Dreamcast called the Sonic Adventure 2 Birthday Pack. It includes the game, a special music CD, a 10th anniversary gold medal and a Sonic the Hedgehog series history booklet. Since you’re probably reading this story after it’s already gone on sale, we figured we’d tell you about it now so you can try to get one on eBay for inflated prices. Anoble quote embiggens the smallest man, so we here at EGM assembled these musings from some of the industry’s best and brightest for you to ponder. Some of them may surprise you— they sure caught our ears. “1 want to be able to kill an innocent. That’s the sort of thing that turns me on.” Lionhead Studios founder Peter Molyneux (Populous, Theme Park) on the type of open-ended gameplay he'd like to see in a console RPG. He’s currently working on Project-Ego, an RPG for Xbox. EGM: When you think of a hard drive, you think of personal computer... Tomonobu Itagaki: No. EGM: No? ТІ: No! Tomonobu Itagaki, head of Tecmo’s Team Ninja and director of the Xbox hard-drive-usin’ Dead or Alive 3, stopping our interviewer dead in his logical tracks. EGM: What do you guys like to do with your free time? Takayoshi Sato: What, at the hotel? Silent Hill 2 team member Takayoshi Sato, illustrating just how little free time they’ve had between development and E3. EGM: Are you happy to see that Sonic is still around after all these years? Yuji Naka: Yes. | А concise response by Yuji Naka (left), head of ¿A Sonic Team, followed quickly by crickets chirping. “If it’s that particular aspect [game innovation over technology] of it, then Sega and Nintendo are very close, at the highest level. If it’s a business level, a drive to get units out there, then we're closer with Sony, with Kaz and his entire team. And if it's sharing in the belief that the future of the industry is online, sharing and networking games, then we're close to Microsoft.” Peter Moore, president of Sega of America, when asked which of the console makers Sega relates to the most. “Microsoft was finished before it even got started. They have no games.... Retailers in the U.S. are already disappointed.... All the games were just extensions of PC games. Nobody needs to buy an Xbox.” Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony CEI, tells the Financial Times what he thinks of the Xbox. “Internet games available today are for hardcore gamers. | don’t believe the general public is going to be very interested in them. And 1 doubt that Net games will turn out to be profitable.” Hiroshi Yamauchi, president of Nintendo Co. Ltd., speaking as candidly as ever about using the Internet for games. Source: The Nihon Keizai Shimbun. 34 \ GET.XTREME. GET RIGHT GUARD. Xtreme protection against odor and wetness that goes on clear and doesn’t quit. Even under the most Xtreme conditions. RSE р ‘Anti-Perspiran ‘Anti-Perspirant m) (Gump) Which platform had the best showing at E3 2001? Source: GameSpot poll, 5/23/2001 Е тата ЕТЕП en n di ¡FTE 1 _ — I THQ/Volition's PS2 title Red Faction just hit store shelves a while back. So what does James Tsai, the game's assistant producer think, post-release? What did you guys hope people would really notice or enjoy in Red Faction? *A lot of obvious features, like the different weapons and their alternate fire capabilities, the infrared sensor that allows you to detect your foes through | walls, stealth missions, the Al reacting to explosive charges." What are some of the limitations of the Geo-Mod engine? “We had to anticipate problems like players digging their way out of levels, destroying critical areas that need to stay intact to progress through the game, etc., which therefore influenced things like our level design and our physics models." Any suggestions for gamers on how to tackle the later levels in the game? “Don’t go using up all your ammo for a gun that none of the enemies may be carrying anymore while passing up all of the magazines they drop for a weapon that you've got fully loaded." “For the time being, we're putting all our efforts into the PC version of the game." How's it been developing in the Midwest? (Way to represent Illinois!) "You're faced with the constant challenge of finding innovative new activities here. ‘Backward Tractor Ride’ and ‘The Grain Elevator Drop of Doom' resulted in only a few injuries and arrests..." dispi Sa alas u ; jig Have you started planning for a sequel? | Quartermann - Game Gossip & Speculation Phew! That E3's gotta be the most exciting show this old geezer has seen since the Sega CD went head-to-head with the Super NES at the Consumer Electronics Show. | have returned from the West Hall with a bountiful harvest of scoops for y'all. So here goes: ...Sega has some good stuff in the works for Xbox that's still hush:hush. One of the more exciting titles The Q has seen is none other than a redeux of the Dreamcast RPG Skies of Arcadia. Maybe now it'll get its due pittance, eh? Speaking of Xbox...| must apologize. Seems in the flurry of rumors, yours truly got Project K-X mixed up with Microsoft's Bruce Lee fighting game, called Quest of the Dragon. They are separate games! Chalk that one up to insect politics, kiddies. ..Word has it that Namco, purveyors of all that is Pac-Man, fighting and driving, is warming up to a new system — GameCube. Му main man Teri Aki hasn't been able to get the info on exactly which titles are coming, but we do know Tidhits PSO Ver. 2 Pay-to-Play Just before we went to press, Sega announced that the U.S. release of Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2 (which hits DC in July) will be pay-to-play via a presumably monthly access fee. The original PSO will remain free. Sony Readies PS one Screen At E3, Sony announced it will release its own LCD screen for the PS one in two versions—one for $129.99 that will include a 5" screen, AC adapter, headphone jack and A/V multi-out. Another one will include headphones and high- end video output for $149.99. Both are expected out in November. In other Sony news, the DVD Remote for PS2 will be out in August for $19.99. Next Bleemcast Release is... Reportedly bleem! is putting the finishing touches on their next release for Dreamcast, which will make Konami's PS1 classic Metal Gear Solid playable on Sega's system. No word on a release date, but expect it soon. 36 they are working on something for the big N.... Hold onto your panty hose, fighting game fans. Guilty Gear X is coming to the U.S. (in more ways than one) from Sammy's new American subsidiary. This year we'll get Guilty Gear X on the Р52, followed by a GBA version, And if that wasn't enough, an upgraded edition called Guilty Gear X Plus will show up in 2002. That's a whole lotta GGX!... Team Ninja's Ninja Gaiden is as visually stunning as Dead or Alive 3, but is a total action game, continuing the story where it left off all those years ago on the NES.... One thing was made perfectly clear to Microsoft at E3: People don't like the hulking mass of plastic and silicon they're calling a controller. But wait—on the last day of the show, the rumor began circulating that they may redesign it entirely. Power to the people... „апа that's this month's installment of Quartermann. Now І gotta go put the Icy Hot on my sore legs (damn you Еҙ!). If ya feel like talkin’ to The Q, drop me an e-mail at quartermannGziffdavis.com. -TheQ | Dragon Ball Z Game 4 Coming! You wanted it, and Infogrames will | soon be giving it to you. A Dragon it'll show up on remains to be seen, but the company did show a teaser 4| video at Ез featuring rendered landscapes from the planet Namek. More info as soon as we get it. Acclaim Digs Up Wrestling Legends Do the names George "The Animal" Steele, Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka, and Jake *The Snake" Roberts ring a bell? If they do, you'll probably be happy to know you'll soon be able to control them in the ring. Since they've kinda lost the licenses to the major wrestling federations, Acclaim is doing Legends of Wrestling for PS2 and GameCube starring these and other classic names from the sport. TDK Does Robotech Robotech, the popular mid-"80s Japanese animated TV show, is finally coming to (as yet unspecified) consoles, courtesy of TDK Mediactive. Developer Vicious Cycles will do the honors on the first game, due out in 2002. Always wished you could get Joanna Dark alone, in your room? Blue Box Toys has answered your prayers! But probably not in the way you’re thinking, you sick puppies. Coming to stores in July is a 12” collectible figure of Joanna, star of Rare’s Nintendo 64 game Perfect Dark. Dean Earwicker We know what you're probably wondering. Wasn't Tekken Tag Tournament Tekken 4? Yes, but technically, Tag was more of a side game. This winter, the latest installment of Namco's Tekken fighting series will hit arcades, utilizing Namco's PS2-based System 246 hardware. As you can see, Namco has spent a lot of time tweaking the little details of the characters, with Paul Phoenix's hair just as gravity-defying as ever. It'll be 2002 before Tekken 4 hits home consoles. Since it uses the PS2-based System 246 kit, our guess is it'll be on Sony's machine faster than you can say Dean Earwicker (the new character at the top right). Soul Calibur 2, by the way, will be right behind it. Paul Phoenix COMIC MISCHIEF (зді Hongo • Toei Animation. TM and 101 Bandai. DIGIMON, DIGITAL MONSTERS and all related logos, names, and distinctive likenesses 101 Bandai Co., Ltd, PlayStation and the Pl n logos are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Used under lic PRESS START The Top 20 Best-Selling Games of April 2001 Nintendo’s unholy union of Pokémon and a little pink blob is back in dominating form this month, once again holding a phalanx of PlayStation 2 titles at bay, Capcom’s gotta be wondering what they have to do to beat the Big N. Meanwhile a motley crew of PSa games charted this month, including the surprise return of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation. Well, it ain't much of a surprise considering the new $10 price tag. In fact, other than Digimon World 2, all the PS1 titles on this page are $20 or less. Who'd have thought the market would slow down this fast? Pokémon Stadium 2 Nintendo $? Chris 0 6.0 6.5 2 Pokémon Silver Nintendo 4. 90 8.5 8.5 kg Chris Crispin | Mark 3 Pokémon Gold Nintendo А. - 1005145 4 Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble Nintendo 6.5 5.0 7.0 Chris | Jeanne | Mark 9 Onimusha: Warlords Capcom © 15 9.0 90-: Mark | Milkman | Ryan 6 ATV Offroad Fury Sony Computer Entertainment P - 8.5 9085-. Danl. | Dean | Greg 1 Madden NFL 2001 Electronic Arts a 4 3.0 9.0 90 = 8 Zone of the Enders Konami A ww 15 15 80 = 9 Dr. Mario 64 Nintendo 15 10 6.0 Chris Jonathan Shoe GAME BOY 10 Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation Eidos PN - Nm 38 св бз = ер ел со м = Рарег Mari A H cho © @ ç — ДА 12 праана гер 18 Gran Turismo 2 Sony Computer Entertainment 14 Super Mario Bros. DX Nintendo 15 Digimon World 2 Bandai 16 Rocket Power: Gettin’ Air ТІ Mario Tennis Nintendo 18 spec Ops Take 2 19 55% Electronic Arts 20 Tiger Woods PGA 2001 Electronic Arts Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec Sony CEl World Stadium 5 їй Ыз ЛШ +. Hamtarou 2 Irus Adventure. Enix Ruka Journey enix SD Gundam 6 бепегайоп-Е/.. Bandai Mobile Golf Final Fantasy II а WS COLOR Nintendo Super Mario Advance (САМ Nintendo [МОМ ЧЕ! Dragon Quest Monsters 2: GAMEBOY Dragon Quest Monsters 2: pr +. ШЫН сок. 10 One Piece Grand Battle! p Source: NPD TRSTS Video Games Service. Call Kristin Barnett-von Korff at (516) 625-2481 for questions regarding this list. Chart description written by EGM Staff. 2 | No, that “WS” next to Final Fantasy 11 isn't a typo. Square's FFII remix for Bandai's - WonderSwan portable | has given the system some choice chart real estate. How long will it be before Square starts making GBA games? | Hopefully soon, but | they'll have to atone for ditching Nintendo during the N64 days by doing some major sucking up. Final Fantasy II (WS) Source: Weekly Famitsu, week ending 5/13/2001 WO) YOA00Z MMM WO) OO0ZVUNLN IV GNIW ЗПОЛ (NVdX3 ` 54311533303 INIONNOS №932 AYOA 007 ` INVSNOHLOMIVINLNA ` LUVIH SIH NI ОМУ ONVH SIH NI АТОН NVW INO d3MOd JHL JIVWIISTUIONO WAIN 1008V ЗМ IVHM GOM IHL MOHS ` 101113834” FUNLINI-ANS JAISAJA-9NS ALO AYOA MAN %001 "ОШ TVALDY IHL” HOA MIN ` ALD AJOA MIN ` 9/61 (3HSI18V1S3 ` MIU MAOA 007 SNONLISATI IHL —> Fa Је ГІГІ Sms mon три — uet ———— 2 HINL ааа WADY Compiled By Jonathan Dudlak jonathan_dudlak@ziffdavis.com Game Boy Advance 1 F-14 Tomcat— Majesco Simulation Final Fight—Capcom Action Fortress— Majesco Puzzle/Strategy Копоа— Namco Action Mega Man Battle Net— Capcom Adventure Pac-Man Collection—Namco Action Game Boy Color Alone in the Dark 4—Infogrames Adventure Dragon Warrior III — Enix RPG High Heat Baseball 2002—3DO Sports Pokémon Crystal — Nintendo RPG Toki Tori — Capcom Puzzle Trouballs — Capcom Puzzle VIP —Ubi Soft Action PlayStation Digimon Card Battle — Bandai Final Fantasy Chronicles —Square EA RPG PlayStation 2 Ephemeral Fantasia — Konami RPG Extermination —Sony CEA Action Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec— Sony CEA Racing Gundam Journey — Bandai Adventure Klonoa 2— Namco Action NCAA Football 2002 —Electronic Arts Sports Rune: Viking Warlord — Rockstar Action Supercar St. Challenge—Activision Racing Dragon Riders—Ubi Soft Adventure Outtrigger—Sega Action Phantasy Star Online Ver. 2—Sega RPG Game Boy Advance Lady Sia—TDK RPG Mario Kart Advance—Nintendo PlayStation Hoshigami—Atlus Strategy/RPG PlayStation 2 18-Wheeler—Acclaim Racing Alon D'ar—Ubi Soft Adventure Commandos 2—Eidos Strategy Conflict Zone—Ubi Soft Action Giants: Citizen Kabuto—Interplay Adventure Half-Life —Sierra Action Herdy Gerdy—Eidos Misc. Ico—Sony CEA Adventure Jekyll Hyde—Dreamcatcher Adventure LeMans 24 Hour— Infogrames Racing Okage: Shadow King—Sony CEA RPG Portal Runner—3DO Adventure Project Eden—Eidos Action/Strategy Soul Reaver 2—Eidos Adventure Test Drive Offroad — Infogrames Racing Dreamcast Alien Front Online —Sega Action Conflict Zone —Ubi Soft Action Evil Twin — Ubi Soft Adventure Floigan Brothers — Sega Adventure Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX—Activision Sports NCAA College Football 2K2— Sega Sports Ooga Booga—Sega Misc. Propeller Arena — Sega Action World Series Basebell 2K2— Sega Sports September Breath of Fire—Capcom RPG CUBE —Ubi Soft Misc. Dark Arena — Majesco Action ESPN Skateboarding — Konami Sports Harry Potter— Electronic Arts Adventure Jedi Power Battles — THQ Action Jurassic Park Builder— Konami Misc Mat Hoffman Pro BMX— Activision Sports Spider-Man —Activision Action X-Men —Activision Action PlayStation Digimon Grand Prix— Bandai Racing Sheep Raider— Infogrames Misc. Spider-Man 2— Activision Adventure X-Men Mutant Acad. 2—Activision Fighting PlayStation 2 Baldur's Gate— Interplay Action/RPG Batman Vengeance — Ubi Soft Action Duke Nukem — Rockstar Action ESPN Skateboarding — Konami Sports Evil Twin — Ubi Soft Adventure Run Like Hell —Interplay Action Silent Hill 2— Konami Adventure Spy Hunter— Midway Action Time Crisis 2— Namco Action October Batman Vengeance — Ubi Soft Action Shaun Palmer Snowboard —Activision Sports Tarzan — Ubi Soft Action Playstation Arc the Lad Coll. —Working Designs RPG DDR Disney Mix—Konami Misc. Doom —Activision Action Dragon Warrior VII —Enix RPG Monsters, Inc. —Sony CEA Misc. Syphon Filter 3 —Sony CEA Action Tales of Destiny 2— Namco RPG PlayStation 2 Shaun Palmer Snowboard —Activision Sports SOCOM: US Navy Seals—Sony CEA Action | 7/19 Import Pick of the Month: Final Fantasy X, Square (RPG). Square's latest FF game hits the PS2 this summer in Japan. And it's expensive — 8,800 yen (about $74) — So expect to pay a heavy price for it from import shops in the States. You'll also notice this month that a few systems (PS1, N64, GBC) have dropped off the radar. That's because there really isn't anything cool coming for any of them— they're dead. PlayStation 2 6/21 Ka (Mosquito), Sony CEI (Action) June Gitaroo Man, Koei (Music) 7/5 Gundam 0079 Zeonic Front, Bandai (Action) Harvest Moon 3, Victor Interactive (RPG) Final Fantasy X, Square (RPG) Devil May Cry, Capcom (Action) 7/5 8/23 | Dreamcast 6/28 Gundam Battle Online, Bandai (Action) 7/5 U.S. Shenmue, Sega (FREE) 7/26 Outtrigger, Sega (Action) Game Boy Advance 6/21 Tactics Ogre Gaiden: The Knight of Lodis, Nintendo (RPG) Choro Q Advance, Takara (Racing) Breath of Fire, Capcom (RPG) 6/29 7/6 | 7/13 Super Street Fighter II X Revival, | Capcom (Fighting) | 7/14 Mario Kart Advance, Nintendo | (Racing) 7/19 Klonoa: Empire of Dreams, Namco (Action) | July Golden Sun, Nintendo (RPG) | *Schedule subject to change without notice. Even though game release dates are taken more seriously in Japan than in the U.S., they | can change! Consult your local import game | store for the latest release information purple monkey dishwasher. о US RMS ғ "У Destroy Dracula's minions Choose from 5 sub-weapons Animated Blood = Mild Viol KONAMI кана! ® Castlevania® is a registered trademark of KONAMI CORPORATION. Circle of the Moon"" is a trademark of KONAMI CORPORATION. КОМАМИ is а registered trademark of KONAMI CORPORATION. © 1986, 2001 KONAMI. All rights reserved. The ratings icon is a registered trademark of the Interactive Digital Software Association. Game Boy Advance is a trademark of Nintendo. © 2001 Nintendo. FoR THOSE AMONG You Wii EXCEPTIONALLY IGNORANT, "ЕЗ AMERICA'S LARGEST VIDEO Амо, GAMING EXPOSITION, WHERE SCORES O! INDUSTRY PROS COME To SHOW OFF THEIR WARES ! THERE 15 ALL KINDS OF NEAT STOFF SEE AND COOL GAMES To PLAY, MAK! YT A VERITABLE GAMERS’ PARADISE, HELLO, VIDEO GAMERS! ARE WSU ~ Cham GAME DESIGNERS IN. THE TRADE SHOW - DIARIES WEREN'T PLANNING ON GETTING ANY REAL WORK DONE TODAY, ANG WAY. 909 HEARD МЕ, GATES! OF STANDING BY THE ENTRANCE DRESSED AS YOUR FAVORITE GAME MASCOT 15 GONNA GET You 1 15 COMPUTER EXCEPT THAT IT's А TRADE SHOW ANG THOS NOT OPEN To THE PUBLIC, AND NO APPUNTI HERE WE ARE IN L.A., FRESH FROM THE AIRPORT! CALIFORNIA, IN GENERAL, 15 LESS А “STATE THAN IT 15 A HOLDING Tank FOR OUR NATION'S PSYCHOTIC DEVIANTS, HENCE THE SAFETY ALL RIGHT, ENOUGH Back STORY! WE NOW PRESENT ло You OUR ЕЗ MEMORIES, AS fiLMED BY OUR INTREPID PART-TIME ASSISTANT, F то NG FILTH! J> — | ON OUR FIRST DAY, WE SNUCK INTO THE PRE-E3 PRESS CONFERENCES, HOPING TO GAIN A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF OUR COMPETITORS, А боор UNDER- STANDING OF OOR CORE COMPETENCIES, AND А Focus ом OURGOALS ALL THROUGHOUT. IT WAS TIME FOR ACTION! HERE 15 SOME FOOTAGE OF THE GRAND UNVEILING OF THE HERE WE ARE GATHERING INTELLIGENCE ON THe SONY CORPORATION ! NESS SENSE AND SERIOUS DEDICATION THE GAMING CRAFT, NOTE THE monkeys! GRUNT! SET DAY TWO! VALUABLE INFORMATION OBTAINED, TANAKA BROTHERS’ GAME DEVELOPMENT BOOTH! WE DESIGNED іт To CONVEY OUR STRONG BUSI” то DAY THREE! DESPITE A LACK ОР SLEEP, Hsu AND ! TAKE TOTHE BOOTHS To SEE SOME OF WHAT THIS YEAR'S ЕЗ MAS То OFFER, SUCH AS GIRLS IN MINISKIRTS AND PEOPLE WEARING GIGANTIC ANIMAL COSTUMES! HERE'S A SHOT OF SOME GAI EAGER To ВЕ AMONGST THE Finer To TRY OUT A FEW OF OUR LATE- FALL RELEASES, SUCH AS "FIGHTING FIGHTERS THREE” AND THE PREMIERE TITLE OF OUR NEW SPORTS LINE, “TOTALLY UNBELIEVABLO EXTREME SHUFFLE BOARD." OUR SECURITY STAFF 15 DEPLOYED TO ENSURE NO LINE - CUTTING, NLOLATORS АВЕ DEALT wmn WHEN EVENING FELL, WE RETURNED To OUR HOTEL To CATCH UP ON SOME MUCH-NEEDED Resv.. WE BECAME SIDETRACKED, HOWEVER, AND INSTEAD SPENT THE NIGHT POURING SHAMPOO ON THE DOORKNOBS OF RIVAL GAME DEVELOPERS. AN EVEN TRADE, | Trunk. THE REST OF THE Stiow 15 SOMETHING OF A BLUR, ALTHOUGH WE DO HAVE APPROXIMATELY 5\х HOURS OF FOOTAGE OF HSU AND MYSELF DODGING SECURITY GUARDS AND SHOUTING RANDOM SENTENCES IN AN INDECIPHERABLE SORT OF PIG-LATIN. DAY FOUR - THE LACK OF SLEEP BEGINS To TAKE ITS TOLL AS GIVE А GAMING WES SITE AN INTERVIEW WHEREIN | MISIDENTIFQ “TWISTED METAL: BLACK" AS `A KIND OF TURNIP” AND HSU SNEAKS OFF TO STALK THE HEAD OF MICROSOFT WHOM HE CLAIMS To BEA HOSTILE ALIEN FROM THE NETHER DIMENSIONS DEMON! оном YOURSELF! BEGORRAH! WHAT DO You THINK AND FINALLY, HERE WE ARE BIDDING А FOND FAREWELL TO THE CONVENTION CENTER, OUR MINDS FULL OF HAPPY MEMORIES, OUR SUITCASES FULL OF BUSINESS CARDS AND HOTÉL TOWELS TUNE IN NEXT TIME, WHEN WE'LL SHOW ч LıpES OF OR ime TO AINSH COUNTRY | DITOR'S NOTE: THERE 15 CURRENTLY NO EVIDENCE to SUGGEST THAT THE HEAD OF MICROSOFT 1$ A HOSTILE asc FROM THE NETHER DIMENSIONS, So NO STALKING, oU Lie E . оте. THANK You, www.ape-law.com/evilmonkey г pouches ап 6.75 fl. oz. juice boxes УГШУ. FINAL FANTASY IV is the game that introduced features which helped make FINAL FANTASY the most popular RPG series in the world. Play the completely restored version with all-new CG cinemas and added features. www.playonline.com Published by Square Electronic Arts L.L.C. Mild Violence ©1991, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001 Square Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. SQUARESOFT logo, FINAL FANTASY and CHRONO TRIGGER are registered trademarks of Square Co., Ltd, Suggestive Themes PlayStation FINAL FANTASY CHRONICLES is a trademark of Square Со. Ltd, CHARACTERS ©1995, 2001 Square Со. Ltd. ©1995, 2001 BIRD STUDIO/SHUEISHA. All Rights Reserved. ILLUSTRATION ©1991 YOSHITAKA AMANO. U.S. Patent No. 5390937, 5649862. PlayStation and the PlayStation logos are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. IT'S ABOUT TIME - TWO COMPLETE, CLASSIC ADVENTURES IN ONE PACKAGE. AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME ON THE PLAYSTATION® GAME CONSOLE. — — Chrono Trigger is the unique time-traveling adventure and prequel to Chrono Cross™. This new PlayStation® game console version includes animated scenes created by Akira Toriyama which expand on the original story. SQUARESOFT — WE'LL TAKE YOU ы y ee wa By Crispin Boyer, the EGM staff Photography by Shuji Kobayashi, Joe Torino and the EGM staff han’ skode ме: re "taking you tol /'gaming;s s greatest : Show on Earth: nii Entertainment. Expo ИЗ”. Tech-heads trek to their Consumer Electronics Shows to ogle the latest gadgets—and maybe a little porn while (һеуте at it. Heck, even plumbers have their yearly Pipe Line Contractors Association Convention. But in the game biz, we get our game on at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), an annual three-day bombardment of mega announcements, hardware introductions, to-the-hilt parties, outrageous displays of Technicolor gaudiness and, of course, new video games and lots of them. Мете fresh back from the seventh annual E3 in Los Angeles, and you know what? Our industry’s expo easily licks those other guys’ shows (yep, even the tech-heads and their ollywood has its Cannes Film Festival. + 4 porno). Especially this year. But that’s not because this E3 was any bigger than the past few. In fact, although more than 60,000 folks crammed into the L.A. Convention Center, the show was a wee smaller than usual, with many game companies running keyed-down booths after a year of battered bottom lines. And if you think it was all the launch- announcement hubbub that made this E3 so special, you're only half right. Yes, Nintendo and Microsoft drew their lines in the sand, announcing system launch dates that are mere days apart. Combine that with a pile of killer—not to mention a few online—PS2 games on the way, and this holiday season is shaping up to be a drool fest for us gamers. It’s really this happy-days-are-here-again 46 John Ricciardi and spirit that made E3 2K1 so rockin’. Everyone we talked to, from the dev guys up to the top execs, left us with the same impression: Buck up, kiddo—the lean times are nearly over. “I think that we're back on the uptick,” Sega Prez and CEO Peter Moore tells us. “The transition that we all bitch and moan about is almost over, and we're going to have a hell of a November.” Even the companies with the most to lose if things go sour are optimistic. “This isn’t going to be a console war,” says ) Allard, general manager of the Xbox platform. “It's going to be a console renaissance. Everyone is going to win this year.” It’s just a darn shame most of you readers weren't at E3 to feel its energy, bask in the glow of its optimism, play its games—or even watch the new, supremely cool Metal Gear Solid 2 video. So here’s our promise: Over the next до pages, мете going to bring the show to you. Now that you’ve read about all the big announcements in our Press Start section, we want to give you more in-depth analysis of E3 on a system-by-system basis, kicking off with our coverbox, Nintendo's GameCube. More importantly, you'll notice we don't have a previews section this month. That's 'cause we've packed this feature with hands-on previews of all the biggest games from the show floor, not to mention tales of the tape from any titles shown only on video. And as if that wasn't enough work to do in the week between the show's end and our deadline, the editors locked themselves in a janitor's closet and hammered out our Best-in-Show awards, which you'll find scattered throughout this massive E3 featurama, starting to the right. So we hope you appreciate our efforts. Hey, do you think Heating and Plumbing Monthly gives its readers this much coverage of the Pipe Line Contractors Association Convention? Not bloody likely. On with the show... п “ Best of Show: GAMECUBE Seeing all our fave Nintendo franchises resurrected on the big N’s new box got us giddy inside, even though the company didn’t have anything of Mario 64 caliber at E3. The GameCube was all we could talk about—besides the new MGS2 trailer and stealing Previews Editor Greg Sewart’s money (see pg. 105). hile Microsoft seems intent on cramming as much as they can inside their portly black box (hard drive, broadband, DVD, etc.), and Sony is determined to become the all-encompassing “center for creativity” in your home, Nintendo is taking an entirely dif- ferent route. With Nintendo, it’s not about DVD movies, or e-mail, or instant messaging. The big N’s focus is, as it has been for nearly 20 years, on one thing only: games. And judg- ing from the response Nintendo received at this year’s show, we think it’s safe to say that they're on the right track. We'll know for sure on Nov. 5, when GameCube launches—a mere three days before Microsoft's Xbox—at the critical mass-market price of $199 alongside THE E3 TOY EVERYONE WANTED TO PLAY WITH six launch games (more on them later). The Cube hoopla kicked in a day before E3 opened its doors, at Nintendo's annual pre-show press conference. After Nintendo of America (NOA) VP of Sales and Marketing Peter Main gave his opening speech, a minute-long video of Super Smash Bros. Melee hit the big screens, which sent the crowd into a frenzy, setting the precedent for the rest of the conference, and the show. Heck, even the GameCube boot-up sequence drew cheers and whistles. The wild applause continued when game god Shigeru Miyamoto walked onto the stage, GameCube in one 48 hand, wireless Wavebird controller in the other. “This is our baby,” started Miyamoto. “Like all babies, it is small. But it will make lots of noise!” He then proceeded to demo his first two GC projects, Luigi’s Mansion and Pikmin, both of which captivated attendees. The actual show floor was no different. Crowds gathered around all nine playable NOT NINTENDO'S GAME PLAN... In stark contrast to the upbeat tone of the Microsoft and Sony press conferences, the Nintendo presentation warned against what the company sees as disturbing trends: too much emphasis on graphics, too many sequels, and almost every game appear- ÓN ing for multiple platforms. They even had some charts to illus- trate the point (below right). First, a company makes a hit game. That success compels them to release the same game across dif- ferent platforms. Then come the sequels, which are basically the same game over again. The sequels get ported to all systems, other copy-cat games appear, a movie comes out based on Mega Game staring Angelina Jolie, etc. People think all games look alike and there's nothing new out there. Nintendo, however, feels an obligation to fight these trends and give “fresh surprise and joy,” as President Hiroshi Yamauchi likes to say— that's The Nintendo Difference™ games in Nintendo's booth for the duration of the show, making it difficult to move, let alone get some play time with each game. Nintendo had glass displays set up to showcase the system's peripherals, as well as the unit itself and the slightly redesigned controller. Also on display was the company's new wireless Wavebird controller, which can transmit sig- nals of up to 33 feet, and the sleek hybrid GameCube/DVD player from Panasonic, which is slated to hit the U.S. sometime in 2002. Despite showing both the Modem Adapter and the Broadband Adapter, Nintendo was mostly silent about their current online plans for GameCube. They confirmed that the modem would not be included with the sys- tem but did not go into detail as to how the unit would eventually be distributed. As for the eventual network strategy, Ls. Satoru Iwata, Nintendo Corporate Limited's director and general manager of corporate planning, tells us, "If we can find a way to come up with a network sys- tem that's going to support a worldwide audi- ence, and be sustainably profitable, then we'll definitely go in at that point. But right now we feel that we're a profitable company offline, and there's no need for us to run to the online market to try to boost our profits at this point." Fair enough, we suppose. Still, one of the biggest challenges Nintendo faces is finding a way to regain the support of third parties that flew the coop during the "dark" years of the cartridge-based N64. 49 ASH BRAS. Mito Nintendo insists that the lessons learned from the №64 will bring big dividends on GameCube—the system was designed to be extremely developer friendly, and the 1.5 GB proprietary disc-based media means that developers will no longer have to deal with expensive cartridges and three month-long production times. In fact, Nintendo feels that it’s this developer friendliness that will help put them back on top. “It’s ironic,” says George Harrison, VP of marketing and corpo- rate communications at NOA. "We've learned from our (past) challenges, and fixed things NEW AND IMPROVED... The final GameCube controller (right, top) has been slightly modified since its debut last August at Spaceworld (bottom). The handles are slightly larg- er, the Start/Pause button is now grey, and the В button has been changed to а small red circle. The long-awaited “secret function” was revealed, as well, though it’s nothing mind-blowing: In addition to having built-in rumble capa- bilities, the GC controller features ana- log Land В buttons that have а sec- ondary “click” feature. By pressing either button all the way in, you can actually register a button press. So how does it feel? Now that we've with GameCube, and it appears that Sony has done almost the exact opposite with PlayStation 2, making it more complex and less developer-friendly.” This may be true, but the fact remains, the one most- desired third party of them all, Square, is still hanging out in Sony’s camp. If Nintendo can woo Square back with GameCube, the tides would turn heavily in their favor. The next stop in Nintendo's road to domination is their annual Spaceworld show in Tokyo, which takes place Aug. 24, a mere three weeks before the Sept. 14 launch of GameCube in Japan. At Spaceworld, according to Miyamoto, we'll get our first taste of the next-generation For about the price of a PS2, Panasonic's slick-looking DVD/GameCube combo (left) will let you play GC games, DVD movies and audio CDs. AU.S. release is likely, but don’t expect this deluxe model to hit until next year. had extensive hands-on playtime with the controller, we’re pleased to report that it’s super comfortable. Both of the analog sticks and the D-pad are extremely accessible, and the buttons all feel great, with the possible excep- tion of the Z button, which is a bit stiff and awkward. Of course, some of us would’ve preferred having the B button the same size as the A button — mainly for games like Smash Bros. Melee. Don’t forget, Game Boy Advance will serve as a GameCube controller, though it wasn’t demonstrated at E3. According to Nintendo, we can expect to see the first usage of this feature at the upcom- ing Spaceworld show in August. m- pal de Mario and Zelda games, along with what- ever other surprises the big N has in store. But for now, take a gander at the GameCube games unveiled at E3. Nintendo says the first-party titles that were playable at the expo—namely, Luigi’s Mansion, Pikmin, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Wave Race: Blue Storm, Star Fox Adventures and NBA Courtside—are scheduled to hit the Cube at launch or within its first 30 days, but a final day- one lineup hasn't been hammered out yet. Perhaps some of the Spaceworld titles will hit in that launch window, too. Clearly, the excitement has only just begun—and this latest battle in the con- sole wars is gonna be a doozy. The Pokémon Card-e- Reader plugs (left) into the GBA cart slot and can read Nintendo's upcoming “Card-e” cards, which use a special technology to store monster stats, secret information or even GBA mini-games. IF YOUR PARENTS KNEW Seb) THIS GOOD, THEY WOULDN'T LET YOU HAVE ONE. PERFORMANCE CARRY 1 AVAILABLE AT GART Srortmant Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Nintendo Release: November 2001 What's it all about? Originally shown as a “tech demo” at last year’s Spaceworld show in Japan, Luigi’s Mansion turned out to be, well...nothing at all like we expected. It’s not a 3D platformer, nor is it a smaller part of a gigantic Mario game. What it is is a genre- breaking ghost-busting romp through a haunted mansion, and a unique one at that. In order to free the huge house, Luigi must traverse it room by room, armed with only a Game Boy Color and a trusty combination flashlight/vacuum. The GBC helps determine if any ghosts are nearby (they’re invisible, ya know), and the flashlight is used to startle them, making them visible just long enough for you to switch to the vacuum and suck 'ет up, Ghostbusters-style. Smaller ghosts go down easy, while larger ones put up a bit of a One of the things Nintendo is touting about GameCube is its virtual lack of load times. While not all the games at the show were completely load-free, titles like Luigi’s Mansion did boot up without a hitch and loading pauses were minimal. fight before submitting to the powers of your Hoover. There are plenty of puzzles in the mansion’s many rooms, too. Control-wise, Luigi stands out as well. The entire game takes place in a full 3D environment, but the camera is stationary, making for a mostly 2D-style experience. The C Stick moves Luigi, while the Analog Stick controls the direction of his flashlight-vacuum. R is used to operate the vacuum, and Z can be used to spray water out of its hose. The controls take a bit of getting used to, but they’re hardly unintuitive. What do we think of it? The Luigi demo was brief and didn’t offer much variety, but what was there was undeniably fun, and the game looks stunning. The controls aren’t as immediately intuitive as most Miyamoto games, but after a couple of minutes we felt as comfy as we did the first time we picked up and played Mario 64. Almost. Some gameplay elements (like the hose) weren’t playable at the show, which leads us to believe we’ve only had a taste of what Luigi will offer. We'll find out in November. OK, but why Luigi? “A lot of my staff members have been saying for a long time, “Can't we do something with Luigi?”” says legendary Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. “So we decided that maybe between the time that we showed the last Mario and the time that we do the next one, we could squeeze Luigi in there somewhere.” MIDWAY www.midway.com YOU WON'T NEED A SAFETY BELT TO KEEP YOU IN YOUR SEAT. Lo‏ ر 250-mph asphalt-scorching action, plus "On-Fire" turbo boost. 7 wana, 15 of your favorite CART drivers on 18 electrifying tracks. 5 intense sub-games that will keep you driving for hours. Music from Outkast, H2504, Nullset, and Disturbed! Car-shredding, high-adrenaline crashes and multi-car wrecks. ==) Playstation.c E — | © CART FURY © 2000 Midway Amusement Games, LLC. MIDWAY and the MIDWAY LOGO are trademarks of Midway Amusement Games, LLC, © Official Licensed Product of Championship Auto Racing Teams, Inc. All Logos and marks of CART, its Teams, Drivers, Tracks and Sponsors are the property of CART and its respective Teams, Drivers, Tracks and Sponsors and may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of CART Licensed Products, Inc. Distributed under license by Midway Home Entertainment Inc: "PlayStation" and the "PS" Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. MIDWAY and the Midway logo are trademarks of Midway Amusement Games, LLC. www.cartfury.midway.com NINTENDO GAMECUBE и SUPER(SMASH:! 1S" MELEE Publisher: Nintendo Developer: HAL Laboratory Release: November 2001 What's it all about? Super Smash Bros. Melee is the long-awaited sequel to 1999’s hit №64 brawler Super Smash Bros., which proved to be a, well, smash both here and in Japan because of its fast and furious four-player action, simple controls and most importantly, its all-star cast of classic Nintendo characters. Super Smash Bros. Melee looks to up the ante by introducing more of everything: more characters, more modes, more items, more interaction with the stages and even a brand- new one-player mode. The demo on the show floor featured 10 playable characters: Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Pikachu, Ness, Mario, Samus, Link, Bowser, Fox McCloud and Captain Falcon. Of these, only Bowser is new (the rest were in the original Smash Bros.), but we spied other characters in the demo footage, including Kirby, Ice Climber, Sheik from Ocarina of Time and princesses Zelda and Peach. There were plenty of empty slots in the character-select screen, too, So expect even more guest stars. Once again, the four-player battle mode is the heart of the game. The fighting engine isn’t all that different from the N64 version, although it seems you'll be able to pull off more in-depth juggles and combos. What's different—and better—is how improved the stages are. Aside from new arenas, many of the №64 levels are back in enhanced form, with larger, more interactive playfields. In one stage— Mute City from F-Zero X—the battle takes place on the actual racetrack, and every minute or so a pack of 30 F-Zero X cars comes screaming around the turn, forcing you to get out of the way or get flattened. You'll find new modes too, including a Coin Battle and a 64- player tournament, not to mention a ton of new items and power-ups (ма уои see the Super NES Super Scope 6 rifle!). The one-player mode is back, only now it rocks. Before you take on the character you're supposed to fight, you have to play through a mini-stage inspired from a past Nintendo game, such as a Mario-esque level with Goombas and Koopas, or the escape sequence from Super Metroid. Once you clear the level, then you can fight the enemy. It's like a Nintendo fan's dream. Nintendo mentioned some other features, such as hidden mini-games, new camera controls, a snapshot feature where you can take pictures, and a bit where you can trade in points for figures of Nintendo characters. We're sure there's plenty more, and we'll be back with more hands-on as the GameCube launch approaches. What do we think of it? While шш this was one of the most popular GC games at Ез, opinion among the EGM staff was divided. Most of us loved the game, though a few felt that SSB Melee was little more than a high-res version of the N64 hit, with an identical fighting engine. We all can’t wait to get our hands on the game, though, so we can unlock all the secrets and master the new juggles and combos. That is, as long as we can get used to playing with the GameCube controller. Since the B button is smaller than the A button (and you really need to use both quite a bit), the button pressin’ didn’t feel quite right for us veterans of the N64 game. The EGM Smash Bros. Melee Wish List: Hey, Nintendo —if it's not too late, we'd like to see the following classic Nintendo characters in SSB Melee: Wario, Toad, Ganon, Pit (Kid Icarus), R.O.B. the Robot, anyone from Punch-Out!!, anyone from Pro Wrestling (Kin Corn Karn?), Mike (StarTropics), one of the ducks from Duck Hunt, and the fat guy with the great slapshot from Ice Hockey. Oh, and last but not least, Nintendo Corporate Limited Prez Hiroshi Yamauchi. Yoshi, Samus, Fox— the Nintendo boys and gals are back in town in Smash Bros. Melee, not to mention strutting their stuff in the game's sweet intro, seen here. New brawlers such as Sheik and Zelda have joined the brawl now, too. But what about that rumor that we might see Sonic? “It isn't true yet," Sonic Team leader Yuji Naka tells us, “but as for in the future, I don't know. | have а really good relation- ship with Nintendo, so we could do that kind of thing —but it is not realized yet.” обој x a Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Nintendo Release: December 2001 What's it all about? Pikmin (no relation to Pokémon, thank goodness) is a brand-new title from Nintendo game god Shigeru Miyamoto, and it’s certainly unlike anything we've seen before from the father of Mario. Inspired by Miyamoto's recent preoccupation with gardening and the natural world, Pikmin tells the tale of a spaceman whose ship has crashed on an alien planet with a toxic atmosphere. To escape the planet, the spaceman enlists the help of the native “Pikmin,” a race of small, plant-like creatures, to find the missing parts to his spaceship and get on home. Pikmin plays out like a real-time strategy game, but with simpler, more accessible gameplay. The idea is that you pluck Pikmin from the ground at various stages of growth and then guide them around to perform various tasks for you, such as carrying objects back to the camp, building bridges and roads, knocking down walls, and of course fighting enemies. Pikmin come in three colors, each with different attributes, and you can have more than 100 of them with you at any one time, working simultaneously on different tasks. Time progresses in the game, and if you don't round up all of your Pikmin each night, they’ll be gone by the time morning rolls around. What do we think of it? The Pikmin demo at E3 was all too brief (only three areas), but once we got the hang of the controls, we simply could not stop playing. The game is remarkably easy to get into, and the charming atmosphere and addictive gameplay provide for an oddly relaxing experience. While the slower pace and micro-managing style of the game may not be for everyone, most gamers won't be able to resist Pikmin’s cutesy grip and innovative design. Hey, it is Miyamoto, after all. It's like being in Shigeru Miyamoto's backyard... No, really. According to Miyamoto, many of the objects and textures in the game’s environments were taken directly from photographs of the surrounding areas near his home. Hope there's nothing illegal growing back there. Although we wouldn’t be surprised to stumble on some mushrooms and warp tunnels. Funny thing...the GC game that impressed us most packed spaceships and John Williams tunes, not coins and gay Mario music. Since Nintendo didn’t have that Mario 64- quality killer app, we were more wowed by LucasArts’ showing (see page 66) than Luigi, Smash Bros. Melee or anything else first-party. t Каутап5 whole universe т “your hands-60 levels of 32-bit graphic goodness, now on Game Boy Advance. ⁄ ⁄ us | Available - June 2001 Sue 14544444 EVERYONE Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Rare Release: November 2001 What's it all about? Formerly in development for Nintendo 64, Dinosaur Planet has now become Star Fox Adventures: Dinosaur Planet, and is scheduled to launch alongside the GameCube system this November. It’s a 3D action/adventure, similar in style to the N64 Zelda games (even the Z- targeting is the same), but starring Fox McCloud and his fruity-looking dinosaur Sidekick, Prince Tricky. You'll find several massive worlds to explore, new Star Fox- esque flying sequences (yes!), and plenty of hand-to-hand combat involving Fox’s mystical new staff, which can transform into more powerful configurations as you progress through the game. What do we think of it? Star Fox was a bit unpolished at the show, but the potential is clearly there. After all, with Zelda-inspired gameplay and GameCube-quality graphics, how can you go wrong? That dinosaur sidekick seemed kinda whiny, though. The Krystal Method: |п the unreleased N64 version of Dinosaur Planet, there was а second playable character named Krystal. She wasn't playable in the Ез version of the game, but she was mentioned. Could she be playable on GameCube as well? чело [OOJp 0] DISNW mau jo Ájua¡d зиеэш peeuÁqeg 104 und کے 305 ALIAILONde - Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Retro Studios Release: 2002 What's it all about? The long-awaited return gt Metroid comes to us from Texas-based Retro Studios in the form of a first-person-shooter prequel to Samus Aran's previous adventures. Unfortunately, Metroid Prime was not only unplayable on the E3 show floor—the video segments that were featured didn't show any gameplay whatsoever. We only saw some snappy cinema scenes of Samus, her ship, and some huge, nasty enemies. Of course, the videos were nice, and we're certainly. interested in what Retro has to offer. But the question is: When can we see the actual game?! C'mon, we're Starving here! Miyamoto on Metroid Prime: “| am overseeing it and I am working with a lot of the developers from previous versions, and you don't need to worry about anything. The game is going well." her: Nintendo Developer: Nintendo Release: TBA What's it all about? Despite the pre-show rumors, there was no playable Zelda for GameCube at E3. The only footage shown was the same video we saw at Spaceworld last August (just a few seconds of Link fighting Ganon). However, Shigeru Miyamoto did confirm to us that the next chapter in the Zelda series will indeed make its worldwide debut this coming August at Spaceworld 2001 in Tokyo. We've got our plane tickets already. The real legend of "Zelda" One interesting bit we learned at E3 was the origin of the name "Zelda." According to Miyamoto, the name came from none other than Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of the famous American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. “We wanted a good name...a kind of eternal female name, a name that's going to last and have appeal," says Miyamoto. “(She) was a rather famous woman who was kinda strong and so we decided to go with her name." The niat spans thousands meplay quirks, the mos _ Electronic Gaming Monthly - “Hone your swords... the King is back” — Nintendo Power May 2001 | At the end comes the beginning. The powerful sequel to Dragon Warrior?I&Ill is here. Avenge your fathers death and stop the Demon Lord from unleashing a torrent of evil that will destroy creation. You must discover the legend of Dragon Warrior. A world awaits... 5. All Rights Reserved. | Е 0 jd М TENDO OF AMERICA INC. ; d 4 _ ` www.enix.com NINTENDO GAMECUBE |. 0 КАМЕО: ELEMENTS OF POWER Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Rare Release: 2002 Tucked away in the back corner of Nintendo's booth was Kameo, an original 3D title that draws obvious inspiration from Pokémon. The game stars a young girl who possesses the ability to capture small monsters and then raise them for use in battle. They even evolve, just like Pokémon. The catch here is that you can actually get inside the monsters and control them yourself, switching between them freely to make use of their special abilities. The Kameo demo at the show was very early, but the ideas expressed have potential. There wasn't enough there to get a decent feel for the game—chances are good we'll be seeing it again next year at E3. | REPLAY, di Y i К, Ы. Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Left Field Release: November 2001 Courtside 2002 is the latest edition of Nintendo’s Kobe Bryant-endorsed basketball series. The game’s biggest innovation is its unique passing system, which allows players to control their passes independently with the C stick. For the most part, however, if you’ve played the №64 versions, you should know what to expect here. Courtside was probably the least exciting GC game at Nintendo’s booth. It didn’t look particularly amazing, but the gameplay is still solid and the control is tight. ! ы DONKEY And the rest... A few other Nintendo games were revealed on video or mentioned in press materials, but nothing substantial was shown. The most exciting of these is undoubtedly Mario Kart for Nintendo GameCube (tentative name), which we hope to see more of at Spaceworld KONG RACING in August. A brief video was shown of Disney’s Mickey for Nintendo GameCube (also tentative), a 3D Mickey Mouse platformer being worked on jointly by Nintendo and Capcom. Rare showed FMV of Donkey Kong Racing, a new racer where DK characters take to the sky and the ground on jar hly - 84 v ] DISNEY'S MICKEY FOR NINTENDO GAMECUBE RAVEN BLADE now x Ж. ANIMAL ҒО their animal friends. And Retro showed video of Raven Blade, an action-RPG with realistic sword fighting and martial-arts techniques. Nintendo also announced a GameCube version of Animal Forest, the N64 import that we previewed last issue. More new games are scheduled to be announced at Spaceworld. CHEGKTOUTRTHEI HOTTEST, „ БШШШ TT HEWWE 5, FOR A'STORE|NEARIYOU/CALL 1-8002-800- 8166 SHOP ВҮ/РНОМЕ 1-800-800-0032 *PRÍCES AND OFFERS. MAY VARY IÑ CANADA? GAME BOY ADVANCE e eee... 22282222222222222 ¢ \ IIITIIIIIIIIIIIIIII PONE ug S" Ñ НО SKATER, ae .е .. 2% 2 4... хоровое о ооо ово ФФФеееееоеее .9%еееееееееееееее 9, әеееееееегеегесе е ET CRECE TETERA Sa 5, ^ 444 dt tt ttt tts Әзезазәееевеввавзәвезәееевезеевеезеезезезегее-- чөлө чочо челе че е Ө ече чече Чече Ө Хечо Чела о “ече чече ^о EEE EES EEE EEE ED GAMECUBE: Third-party support was abysmal on the N64, but that’s expected to change on GameCube. Several third parties pledged GC allegiance prior to or during Ез, including EA, LucasArts, THQ, Namco, Activision, UbiSoft and Tecmo. The biggest news came from Sega, who announced plans for 10 titles (only three were at the show—see below). Still, the number of third-party games shown at E3 was kinda small. Here’s what we saw... Publisher: LucasArts Developer: LucasArts Release: November 2001 What's it all about? Launch title Rogue Leader is like an 11-level tour through everything cool in classic Star Wars. What do we think of it? Three levels of the game were available at the show, and we shot through them several times. Put simply, this game is the movie. Infamous прред- from-the-flick lines like Obi-Wan's “Use the force, Luke,” ring out at the right times. The virtual cockpits look fantastic (you can peer around them with the C stick). And the game plays great with the GameCube controller. What's in it for the geek in us? Remember the targeting computer that flipped over Luke's eye in the trench run? You can activate it anytime you like and see your targets in weird infrared vision. Just remember to switch it off before you lob torpedoes into the Death Star. « Biggest Surprise: PHANTASY STAR ONLINE FOR GAMECUBE We were pleasantly surprised to see a working PSO for GameCube. What a way for Sega to start off on Nintendo's new console! And since it has split-screen play (and, Sega of America is telling us, online play), you can now physically beat up anyone who tries to gank the goods from your fallen character. TM WWW.pwr2.com © Cini) apd FEL ватре yhe, Publisher: Sega Developer: Amusement Vision Release: November 2001 What's it all about? Sega's debut GameCube title is an enhanced port of Amusement Vision's wacky arcade/action puzzle title, Monkey Ball. The idea is simple: Using the analog stick, you wiggle the floor in order to roll your monkey-in-a-ball toward the goal. Along the way you collect bananas, avoid traps and obstacles, and race against the clock. A four-player split-screen mode has been designed for the home version, as well. What do we think of it? It’s got a monkey encased in a ball, for crying out loud! We love it! Seriously though, the simple yet addictive play had us glued to the controller. This could easily become one of the GameCube's sleeper hits this fall. But where's the banana? The arcade version of this game had you wielding a banana-shaped controller to wiggle the playfield. No such luck at home, unless you slap a real banana on your GameCube pad. But hey, how you Slap your banana at home is your business. Ver. ЕЗ And the rest... scheduled for both GameCube and SSX Tricky, Hot Wheels, Rayman Tribes, Elsewhere on the show floor, Kemco had video PlayStation 2. And a ton of other upcoming Rogue Spear, Donald Duck, NFL Blitz 2002, running of two GC titles, Batman: Dark titles were announced, including: Tony NHL Hitz 2002, Rugrats, Scooby-Doo and Tomorrow and Universal Studios: Theme Hawk's Pro Skater 3, Spider-Man: The more than a dozen others. As you can see, Park Creation. Sega had video of Virtua Movie, Crazy Taxi, 18 Wheeler: American GameCube is already faring much better than Striker 3 Ver. 2002, their popular arcade Pro Trucker, All-Star Baseball 2002, QB the hard-to-develop-for N64 did in terms of soccer game. Acclaim showed brief snippets Club 2002, Dave Mirra 2, Legends of early third-party support, and chances are of the next Turok, called Turok Evolution, Wrestling, Jeremy McGrath, Extreme G3, good things will only get better. augh Till lt Hurts! (OWN THE AWESOME DVD LOADED WITH SW ІШІ ІШІП ІШ ШШ p ІШІНЕ ІШІ | MMM | Mist ШШ [ K ЇШЇН FOR LANGU; SOME SEX v a pas] RRE š 1 о wE] INTEN Е Ev ADVANCE With all the big console buzz at E3, Game Boy Advance was widely overlooked — which is a shame because we saw many solid games on display. Nintendo had a strong showing, with several titles both playable and on video. Rare has some interesting stuff in the works, too. You can see their four GBA titles at the bottom of the page—and note that Diddy Kong Pilot uses the “tilt” technology made famous in Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble. Third-party games included Sonic's GBA debut, as well as a Harry Potter title. 4 ГА footage was on display at ist not for the system ‚ме watched. lot devi Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Nintendo Release: November 2001 Wario 4 features side-scrolling gameplay similar to the past games but with much- improved graphics and one major tweak: Wario is no longer invincible. Now, you must collect heart pieces to increase health, and the treasure you find can be used to purchase items to use against your enemies. It looks and plays great. ) attt МА DONKEY KON COCONUT CRACKERS “i WARIO LAND G DIDDY KONG PILOT t this point, but that’s hopefully for the ADVANCE WARS Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Intelligent Systems Release: September 2001 Part of a long-running, popular series in Japan, Advance Wars is a finely crafted military strategy game that can be played by up to four players using the GBA Link Cable. Even though you’ll have to worry about traditional strategy elements such as unit deployment, terrain, climate, weapons, funds and so on, the game is still very easy to get into, and a lot of fun to play. TO — < لو‎ р ge 10 BANJO-KAZOOIE: GRUNTY'S REVENGE T m Ш ІШІ SONIC THE HEDGEHOG ADVANCE Publisher: Sega Developer: Dimps Release: November 2001 Yuji Naka claims the newest portable Sonic is true to the series’ roots. But the little blue guy won’t just be challenged by obstacles and robots— he'll also have to solve some puzzles. He can even grind rails like in Sonic Adventure 2. ~ №. SABREWOLF The story of a hero. Hiz adventure. And his ears. A villainous force has transformed the dream world of Lunatea into a nightmare. A young hero, Klonoa, Clever has been given the task of rescuing this once enchanted land. A daunting mission, to be sure. But with ears to ride the wind, and a magic ring to control his foes, this hero’s victory cry will surely be heard. eserved. “PlayStation” and the “PS n Te mins PlayStation. Digital Software Association WWW.NAMCO.COM ° EVERYONE rainbow... Ma ® WWW.SCEA.COM А Otiroad Fury is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. © 2001 Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. Developed by Rainbow Studios (8) BIUDON S АТУ racing fully preserved for your enjoyment. Become а fourwheeling, mud-spinning terror when you roar off the dirt path and charge through rocky hillsides, sandy deserts, deep forests and more than 20 huge race courses on your way to the finish line. Of course, you could take your time and enjoy the beauty of the massive terrain, But then you'd lose. ATV Offroad Fury is now open to the public. Conquer the terrain! PlayStation. PlayStation” and the “PS” Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Honda, the Wing logo, Ride Red! and [ourtraxC? are trademarks of Honda Motor Co, Lt. used with permission Irom American Honda Motor Co. ne. Honda trademarks are used under license from American Honda Motor Со Inc and Honda Motor Са, Lid. intendo fans might like to imagine that all holy heck broke loose in Microsoft's HQ the day before E3, when Nintendo announced that GameCube would launch in the U.S. on Nov. 5—three days before Xbox. Truth is, no red- alert sirens or mad cries for battle stations rang out through Microsoft's camp, not even a few days later when Nintendo set the GameCube's price at $199, a full $100 less than Xbox. “We knew Nintendo was going to be out there,” says Ed Fries, Microsoft's VP of games publishing. “That's not a surprise. But | think there's going to be so much excitement built up this Christmas, from all the stuff that's happening, that we're going to sell every Xbox unit, regardless of the competi- BILL'S MEAN MACHINE COMES OUT STUMBLING > eh tors' launch or pricing strategies." Yep, Microsoft is confident. When we point out that PlayStation 2 is hitting its stride this year, Fries sticks by his games, pointing to the nine first-party titles playable in Microsoft's booth. “Sony doesn’t even have that many first-party titles in its year two,” he says. “I'm going to launch with at least half a dozen first- party games, and | mean big ones. Sony launched with what? Fantavision?" When we wonder aloud about the stuttering framerates seen on a few Xbox games on the floor, we're assured they'll run smoothly on the final dev kits, which finally reached developers the same week as the show. And when we bring up Nintendo's booth and its big-name fran- chises, Fries says, “Nintendo’s going to do n Best Xbox Game: Jet Grind Radio Future, Dead or Alive 3 Ў and Halo меге all impressive, but our favorite Xbox game is still Munch’s Oddysee. While we’re not sure this 3D Oddworld game will be better than the previous 2D editions, we are sure this will be one of the finest Xbox titles in this fall’s lineup. See page 78 for more on Munch. some great games. They always have, and they have Miyamoto, who is great. But it takes more than a few great games to win the con- sole war. It takes a steady stream of great first-party and third-party games. Nintendo, they didn’t show a single third-party game at their press conference. What does that say about their support from third parties?” When Xbox hits on Nov. 8, it will launch with 15 to 20 first- and third-party games (you'll find them on the next few pages), all aimed at the same demographic as PS2 titles—as opposed to Nintendo games, which Microsoft claims are more of a “Fisher Price" experi- ence. Fries says he can think of at least 80 games in the works exclusively for the system now. And if the big guns in Xbox's launch arse- nal—games such as Halo and Project Gotham—don't pack the same big-name fire- power of competing megaton franchises like Gran Turismo or Mario, that's what Microsoft's $500 million marketing budget is for. now about Halo by the time we get to launch,” Fries says. “Everyone “Everyone is going to is going to know about Munch. Virtually all our TV advertising will focus on games, and TV ads will almost be all in-game footage.” Meanwhile, PS2 will go online this fall. And Xbox...won’t. Although you'll be able to link two systems together—or several systems via a network—for multiplay in games like Halo, you won't play anything over the Internet on your Xbox until the middle of next year. Still, after eyeing Sony's network plans, Microsoft isn't concerned that the PS2 will get a leg-up. “We asked gamers what they want when they go online,” says Seamus Blackley, manager of the Advanced Technology Group and the man who kicked off the Xbox project. “Ninety per- cent say they want to play games. We asked, “Would you be interested in browsing the Web?’ ‘No,’ they said. ‘Would you be interest- ed in instant messaging?’ “What's that?” Maybe Sony talks to different people.” When Xbox does go online next summer— first with straightforward multiplayer stuff, then with massively multiplayer games six months to a year after that— Microsoft is promising an easy, slap-in-your-game-and-go experience, with one network providing all the online goods. “You're going to have one user name and one password for al Xbox online games,” says J Allard, general manager of the Xbox platform. “You're going to have one place to save your games online. You’re going to have one way to move a memory card over to your friend’s house and have it identify it. It’s going to work. It’s going to be safe. You're going to get one bill, no matter whose content you're purchasing or subscribing to.” But that’s all Allard will tell us right now. He won’t say a word about price, other than it will be afford- able, and that the Xbox network will work with existing broadband online services. But we do know one thing for sure: Microsoft has its work cut out for it when it ships between 600,000 and 800,000 Xbox units at launch. Aside from having to lure gamers from the competition, Microsoft still has to worry about that other thorn in its side—lack of Japanese support. Right now, the company’s first-party Japanese develop- ment offices are cruising along just fine, with a staff of 100 developers and 12 projects in the works (none for the system’s U.S. launch). But what about the big Japanese third parties like Square, who at one time seemed on the verge of hopping aboard. Well, don’t expect them to join the party just yet—for starters, it appears Square’s monthly billing plans for online subscriptions to Final Fantasy ХІ don’t jive with Microsoft’s one-bill-for-everything scheme. Still, the boys from Redmond have made progress on the Japanese front. Of the roughly 2,500 dev kits sent out to developers, about a third are in Japan. And let’s not forget , _ " і A that Tecmo is on board with the Xbox-exclu- sive Dead or Alive 3. Sega announced 11 Xbox games, including Jet Grind Radio Future, Sega GT 2002, Panzer Dragoon, Gun Valkyrie, Crazy Taxi Next and House of the Dead 3. “People think Japan is this mysterious place,” Blackley says, “and it’s not. It’s like a country with some guys in it. Game developers are game developers. You just have to convince these guys that you’re not a big gaijin devil who will take over their business and make them slaves of this western technology and give them a raw deal.” Blackley says Microsoft has made a lot more progress with developers in Japan than is immediately clear. “We're a lot closer than anyone knows,” he says. “It’s just that a lot of the Japanese publishers are super-secret. 15 Many don't like to make announcements until they can show games to go along with them.” Capcom is one of those companies. It just announced three Xbox games at the show: Genma Onimusha, Dino Crisis 3 and a “robot simulation” codenamed Brain Box from Resident Evil producer Shinji Mikami. “We see the Xbox as the system for hardcore gamers,” says Yoshiki Okamoto, president of Capcom- offshoot Flagship. “That's why we're releasing Dino Crisis 3 for it. If we port the game for GameCube, which we don't think of as a machine for hardcore gamers, then it won't do well. | can say the same thing about Р52. | think Xbox is in a similar position to where Dreamcast was. Now Dreamcast is fading from the market, so we can say we'll make games for Xbox instead of Dreamcast.” Aa Y Y Y X! Publisher: Microsoft Developer: Bungie Release: November 2001 What's it all about? Anyone who's seen this xenophobic first-person shooter before E3 knows that Halo is all about massive outdoor environments, squad-based tactics, and tearing up the back roads in a military jeep. This launch game definitely skews toward adrenaline rather than long drawn-out adventures; there's you, an assault rifle in your hands, a platoon of friendly Al, and plenty of purple-blooded aliens to mow down. As a single-player experience, surprisingly little emphasis has been placed on Halo's back-story. To compensate for its online inadequacies, Microsoft had Halo on four linked-up Xboxes running in tandem for a 16- player capture-the-flag skirmish at E3. The game also supports Microsoft’s headset mike for trash talking during network play. What do we think of it? Halo was obviously enjoying its 15 minutes of fame at E3. We had to shove our way through the crowd and wrestle the Xbox controller out of some рітріу dotcommer's hands just to see what all the fuss was about. What we like about Halo is its epic sense of scale. From the intro sequence, where you're flying in a dropship overlooking lush alien landscapes, to the breach and descent into the bowels of an alien outpost, Halo backs its elegant visuals with tight, responsive gameplay. What's this about a slideshow mode? You'd have to be blind—or in denial—not to see Halo's framerate dipping into the teens in both single and multiplayer. But keep in mind that the show version was still running on the early alpha Xbox dev system, which only approximates the final beta kit's power. In fact, all Xbox games at the show ran on the alpha hardware. Microsoft reps said they sent out the final kits to developers just before the show. They also assured us that Halo would run at 60 frames per second, even in split- screen multiplayer, when it’s released at launch. “Bungie's approach is to get the whole world right, put in everything they wanted from a gameplay point of view, and then optimize,” Microsoft's Seamus Blackley tells us. Marvel at the detailed battlefield scenes and mobile suits with breathtaking digital graphics as seen in the movies! Experience firsthand the thrill of guiding your allies in their mission to conquer the enemy in mobile suit warfare. Relive scenes from the TU series or implement your own battle strategies to create whole пеш story lines. RATING PENDING © SOTSU AGENCY + SUNRISE. TM & © Cartoon Network. Program © 2000 Bandai Co., Ltd. Distributed CONTENT RATED BY ESRB by Bandai America Incorporated, 5551 Katella Avenue, Cypress, California 90630. All Rights Reserved. Used under license by Bandai America, Incorporated. Licensed for play on the PlayStation 2 computer entertainment systems with the NTSC U/C designation only. "PlayStation" and the "PS" Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. The ratings icon is a trademark of the Interactive Digital Software Association. Manufactured and printed in the U.S.A. THIS SOFTWARE IS COMPATIBLE WITH PLAYSTATION 2 CONSOLES WITH THE NTSC U/C DESIGNATION. U.S. AND FOREIGN PATENTS PENDING. BAN ` DAI Publisher: Electronic Arts Developer: Electronic Arts Release: Winter 2001 One of the most stunning games of the show, Allied Assault was actually only on display in movie form in a tricked-out EA theater. But that only seems appropriate, since the first level of this game looks straight out of Saving Private Ryan. Allied Assault immediately hits you over the head with a sledgehammer by dumping you from a seafaring transport that's being pounded by machine gunfire. As you storm Omaha beach, your comrades get chopped to bits while artillery fire reigns down on you from every side. But as impressive as Omaha Beach was, the game’s attention to detail is more evident than in a mission (one of 20) called "Snipertown," which is set in a battered French town enveloped in gloomy thunderstorms. Every building is accessible, and finding the best perch to pick off Nazis is essential to survival. The screen here is from the PC version, but we're told it will look the same on Xbox. Publisher: Tecmo Developer: Tecmo/Team Ninja Release: November 2001 See the screenshot of Ryu Hayabusa (that’s the ninja guy) in the forest with all those leaves (approximately 5,000 in the entire scene) fluttering around him? That's all being done in real time thanks іп part to the Xbox's hard drive and its ability to swap data out at a fast rate. Тесто/Теат Ninja brought a batch of hot-off-the-dev-kit real-time trailers of their next-gen fighter Dead or Alive 3 to E3, with new sequences in the forest and of one of the new characters—a young European girl sporting a karate gi. Gameplay will once again feature the one- to four-player tag-battle system, but the environments have grown in size immensely. That means more pounding your opponents through walls and throwing them off cliffs to new areas. The soundtrack will reportedly feature big-name artists, though Tecmo hasn’t announced specifics yet. 18 | A Journey of friendship po ' А Journey, fraught with danger “Зи com 0 save the world- pt DZ £ Saiyuki is a strategy RPG based% o 2 the most popular legends of China, the journey of the monk Sahzo from China to India and back. ion and KOEI Co., Ltd. Man or Beast... The Ultimate Attack Force... “WereForm” ПТ Romp across the battlefield as a huge monster with powerful attacks! An unexpected source of aid... “Guardians” The heavens will support you and provide protection and power! Character Customizing Add special abilities and improve character attributes! Magic Magic turns the tide of battle! Effects range from beneficial healing, to comets that kill all in their wake! EVERYONE MILD VIOLENCE Publisher: Microsoft Developer: Big Blue Box/Lionhead Studios Release: 2002 What's it all about? PC game god Peter Molyneux (Populous, Theme Park, Black & White) is working on one of the most ambitious projects we’ve seen: a console RPG that takes character evolution to new and amazing levels. “You start out as a 15-year-old boy or girl whose family was murdered, and you grow to about 80 in game years,” explains Molyneux. “As you evolve, you can get tan lines and wrinkles if you choose to adventure outdoors a lot. If you don’t participate in a lot of physical activities, your character will grow up to be skinnier than one who does. You can also cut a village kid and return years later, only to find him grown up with a scar where you injured him.” What до we think of it? We're terribly excited about Project-Ego, even though it’s still at least a year away from completion. Molyneux and his teams have revolutionized gaming time and time again, and we just can’t wait to see what they can do here. Who does this guy think he is? We had to ask Molyneux—who after all comes froma PC background—why he thinks he can get away with making a console RPG. “My first thought is that | know very little about making console games, and that what I’m attempting is a very big challenge. But it’s challenge that | thrive on,” he replies, adding that classics such as the М64 Zeldas, the Final Fantasy games and Legend of Mana inspired him to try his hand at a console RPG. “I feel that the key to this is the realization that I'm going to be making accessible entertainment that will be played while sitting on a sofa, perhaps after a night’s drinking...and that a lot of techniques that | find safe on a PC in design terms will have to be revised.” 0110001 i 1000101 1. 101014 000110€ 01000w( 11000n1 001001( 0111100 ‚ 0011086 100104( 01600 í 10t11y1 00t000€ 01p11u( 01.00r€ 00/10 € 10/1180 01i11e] 2091] у. 26943), “Т0е01 S С = - s = 00ғ10с( i %0с00с: || | Меоте( international Counter Terrorism Specie Force | о 1002120 QOm101¢ 01500002 ; = 0 10208 BATTLE ONLINE - IN TEAMS PLIT- Омва CUSTOMIZE YOUR CHARACTER OR ON YOUR OWN! IN A WIDE VARIETY OF WITH INSANE FrREPoWwER aD | | (0004 TACKLE OVER 40 MISS y - 1 0 1 0 1 0% © Dreamcast. (ED 7004 Publisher: Sega Developer: Smilebit Release: November 2001 What's it all about? It's too bad Gun Valkyrie was tucked away behind the great wall of Sega. As one of the more impressive-looking Xbox titles we've seen, it could have given Microsoft a much-needed boost of confidence from E3 attendees. This game puts you behind the shoulders of a Gun Valkyrie taskforce member on a mission to rescue some do-gooder doctor from alien clutches. What do we think of it? Gun Valkyrie has great potential. You use the left analog stick to move and strafe, while the right analog stick controls your aim, like in most console first-person shooters. The music and gameplay reminded us a bit of Panzer Dragoon, sans the dragon. Why is Smilebit making so many Xbox games anyway? “| think what [the teams] looked at was where they could really feel comfortable quickly, and Smilebit liked Xbox,” Sega of America Prez Peter Moore tells us. Publisher: Infogrames Developer: Digital Extremes Release: 2002 What's it all about? Take a gander at one of the first Xbox games that will support online play over the Internet (it won’t launch until Microsoft’s broadband network goes live next year). Unreal Championship will offer online deathmatch for up to 32 players simultaneously, as well as a four-player split-screen mode for the unwired. And how does it look? Let’s put it this way: At least 1,000 polygons were used to build a single weapon and 2,500 to 3,000 for each character, not including a separate count for faces. What do we think of it? UC really was one of the stand-out Xbox games at the show—at least in terms of visuals. We can’t wait to test drive this bloodsport online. How will you control it? Get used to that unwieldy Xbox joypad. According to DE, Microsoft will not allow mouse and keyboard support because the game is solely going to be marketed as a console title. 82 P Ф Ф à> ^ о о ^ + о с www.sprite.com ©2001 The Coca-Cola Company. “Sprite” and “Obey Your Thirst” are registered trademarks of The Coca-Cola Company. Publisher: Eidos Developer: Crystal Dynamics Release: November 2001 What's it all about? It's like a typical mascot kart-racing game, only without the karts. Race across expansive, themed stages, each with numerous paths and shortcuts. And we mean numerous. “The volcano level in Mad Dash is bigger than the entire game of Gex 3,” says Microsoft's Seamus Blackley. What do we think of it? Mad Dash sounds good on paper, but the early version we played at E3 needed a lot of design work. We found some areas that looked like they should take us somewhere...but didn’t. Been there, done that? You're going to hear lots of comparisons between this game and Running Wild (Universal Interactive) and Pen Pen Trilcelon (Infogrames). The first has animals racing around, and the second features very long tracks that you race through only once. Both kinda sucked. Publisher: LucasArts Developer: LucasArts Release: November 2001 What's it all about? The title says it all for this Xbox exclusive. You play as an Episode І-ега Obi-Wan, tearing your way through Federation droids with only a lightsaber and a rather acute mastery of The Force. The game uses the Xbox's twin analog sticks—one for moving, one for saber swingin’—and allows young Obi-Wan some cool Force-related abilities (mostly throws and acrobatics). What do we think of it? The dual-stick control took a little getting used to, but then who said being a Jedi was easy? In terms of visuals, it looked a lot like a PC game. So we're stuck playing the Episode 1 movie? Don’t worry—although much of Obi-Wan follows the plot of the film, you’ll go on some other missions that chronicle his early training. You get a combat arena to sharpen your saber skills, too. 84 Introducing the FIRST Kart racing game on Game Boy” Advance — Konami Krazy Racers. Race through 16 action) packed’, fun-filled courses on your way, То ће checkered flag. Choose fro! nonam ‘of KONAMI CORPORATION. ©2001 KONAMI & KCE Tokyo @KCEO OKCE Japan, In | j, Game Boy Advance and the Official ive Digital Association, : AEN Publisher: Activision Developer: Treyarch Release: November 2001 What's it all about? Imagine а cleaner-looking, slightly updated version of Dreamcast's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, complete with all the levels from the first game and three new skate parks. Developer Treyarch—the AA gang behind the Dreamcast versions of Tony Hawk—has ; + МИТЕ added a few new areas to the old parks, too, as well as heavily tweaked the visuals. What do we think of it? Control takes getting used to, but the game sure looks nice, with lots of lens flare and subtle details like mowed grass and 3D daisies. So is it gonna be online or what? Nope. Microsoft's online gaming network won't be up and running until next summer, so the best you can hope for from this Xbox launch title is four-player split-screen and local-area network play. If you have access to a network in your office or dorm room, you're all good to plug in and play with your pals—as long as they're jacked in, too. You'll have to wait until Neversoft brings Tony Hawk 3 to the Xbox next year to experience full online play. Publisher: Konami Developer: Konami Release: November 2001 The big deal with this Xbox sequel to the Dreamcast flight-combat game is, of course, the hyper-realistic visuals and detailed plane models (although Ace Combat 4 on PS2 looks а bit better). The framerate іп the Ез version was smooth, but the control...ehh. We kept having to look at the controller to find the right button. Biggest E3 Disappointment: E It’s not that the Xbox sucked at E3. After all, we got to see some cool gaming in Munch’s, Halo, DOA3 and Jet Grind Future. But the games didn’t wow us like Microsoft wanted them to. Launch is only a few months away...better get some killer apps in the lineup! How about some broadband Phantasy Star Online? Everyone else is doing it... Oh, and fix your controller, too —those face buttons are too close together. ou can feel the confidence radiating from the folks at Sony Computer Entertainment America. You'd almost think the PlayStation 2 is going to be the only gaming system out this fall—the GameCube and Xbox launch announcements didn’t seem to phase anyone at Sony one bit. “We don’t react to what other people are doing,” says Kazuo Hirai, president and COO of SCEA. “We know what we need to do. We know what our vision is and what the steps are to get there, and we execute on that.” While Microsoft and Nintendo are coming out with their guns drawn, Sony relaxes, comforted in the fact that they will have the strongest soft- ware lineup with sure-fire hits like Metal Gear Solid 2, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, Final Fantasy X and new first- party titles such as Naughty Dog’s Jak and Daxter and the online Rainbow Six wanna-be, SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs. Oh, Sony can also sleep easier at night, knowing they have a huge head start with a deeply entrenched installed base of 10 million PS2s worldwide today and if all goes as planned, an estimated 20 million worldwide by March 2002. Sony also knows it has the ammo ready to combat any online plans the other guys have. SCEA announced at E3 that they will be bringing out a network adapter that will provide both broadband and narrowband connections to the Internet. This winter, they’ll also be bringing out 88 a desktop LCD screen, a 40 GB external hard drive, a keyboard and a mouse. Then they have their strategic alliances with AOL, RealNetworks, Macromedia and Cisco Systems (see page 23 for details). Put all of these things together and what do you get? A PlayStation 2 that looks and acts suspiciously like a PC. “A lot of people say [that],” says Hirai, “but what it’s becoming is more of a computer-entertainment system. We've always said the PS2 is a computer-enter- tainment system. It’s a natural progression and evolution of the PlayStation 2 experience. Our alliance with AOL, for example, will allow con- tent developers to incorporate instant messag- ing and e-mail into their games.” But do gamers want all of this arguably extra- neous Internet business in their consoles, “com- puter-entertainment system” or not? Microsoft, armed with plenty of market studies, is absolutely convinced that we gamers want to play games online right out of the box, and we don’t need or want stuff like instant messaging or Web browsers in video-game systems. MS has even said outright that they don’t think Sony's going about this the right way. To that Hirai says, “Sony has been in the hardware busi- ness for 50 years, and we've also been in the software business for a very long time. We'd like to think we know what the consumers want and what the con- sumers love.” And what's Sony's response to the industry adage that gamers just don't like buy- ing add-ons for their gaming machines (think Sega CD, 32-X, NetLink...well, just about every other thing Sega has tried pushing on us)? “If you choose to go online, we will make the tools to let you do so, but it's up to the consumer whether he or she would like to try that,” explains Hirai. “We're not saying right out of the box you gotta go online, therefore you're paying for some things that you really may not need. What are you going to do with a hard drive? What are you going to do with an ethernet con- nection? You may not even have an ethernet connection in your home. We're empowering the consumer to make the choice [whether to go online or not], as opposed to saying, “Here's something you paid for...oh, by the way...it's something you might not use.” That's sure a nice way of putting it. We'll just have to wait and see how consumer sup- port for Sony's more-than-just-playing-games- online Internet strategy goes, and whether peo- ple are willing to spend the extra dough to par- ticipate in the new PlayStation 2 experience. Does it really matter though? With the games you're about to see over the next several pages, the “PlayStation 2 experience” may finally show its face. After all, it’s been a rather dry run thus far... SONY PLAYSTATION 2 JAK/AND: DAXT ER: All the right moves: Jak can pull off a lot of the same tricks as Crash, including belly flops onto bad guys and double jumps. We’re not entirely sure about how his ferret friend figures into the gameplay, however. Expect comedy relief, at least. '2 THEIPRECURSORILEGACY^ Publisher: Sony CEA Developer: Naughty Dog Release: Winter 2001 What's it all about? The brochure Naughty Dog handed out at the show describes their latest epic as a mix of genres, including action, platforming, puzzles, adventuring, strategy and racing. While that may be true, we have a simpler way of explaining Jak and Daxter: It's like Mario 64. Imagine that Nintendo classic with all the levels connected into one sprawling world (i.e., no central hub castle) and you have a good idea of the gameplay— lots of running, jumping, fighting, racing contests and exploring. What do we think of it? Sony is going to be pushing this game hard, and with good reason—it looks great and it's from the team behind the smasheroo Crash Bandicoot series. Running at a steady 60 frames a second, the animation is so smooth it could pass for a cartoon. And you can forget about the fog; Jak and Daxter allows you to see almost to the horizon in any direction you choose. One distinct landmark, a temple on a high hilltop with spinning rings above it, was visible from anywhere we traveled, even from an entirely separate island far, far away. Along with a day/night cycle and the fact that there aren't "levels" per se (the game just loads new sections with a brief pause as you run along), it makes J&D feel like one big, cohesive world. Controls are as comfortable and solid as you'd expect from the makers of Crash. Break crates open with Jak's spin attack and it sometimes feels like you are back in another Bandicoot adventure. In terms of gameplay, you'll still find particular items— power cells —to hunt (like the crystals from Crash or the stars in Mario), but there are also villagers to interact with and plenty of puzzles built into the levels. In one part you can punch up some stalactites to create a set of stony steps to reach a higher plateau and a special item. What's up with the ferret? That's Daxter. He's actually a human just like Jak (or a Keebler Elf just like Jak, or whatever the hell Jak is), but when he fell into a vat of Black Eco energy he got turned into the little creature you see here. We are also told the Black Eco energy (not to be confused with that other Sony game ICO, which is pronounced the same way) threatens the entire world of Jak and Daxter, perhaps because of its tendency to transform people into marketable, wisecracking sidekicks. Publisher: Capcom Developer: Capcom Digital Studios Release: Winter 2001 What's it all about? Ghosts to Glory is not a sequel but an “homage” to Capcom’s other zombie-infested franchise, the Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins series. It’s mainly an action game: You wander levels, jumping and slicing your way through enemies, opening chests, and gathering items. What do we think of it? Wow. We didn’t know what to expect from this game since it’s from Capcom’s largely untested U.S. division, so we were shocked at how fantastic it looked and played. The graphics are crisp and 60-frames- per-second smooth, the characters look great, and the controls feel spot-on. In many ways it’s pure arcade action—double jumps, different sword swipes, etc.—but Maximo also seems to promise some greater depth. You’ll collect coins to buy items like potions, spells and weapon upgrades, as well as uncover ability power-ups by destroying parts of the environment around you. Some enemies even require block and attack strategies reminiscent of N64 Zelda. Maximo may not pack Legacy of Kain-caliber complexity, but it’s much more than simple hack-‘n’-slash. This game looked great even right next to Devil May Cry at Capcom’s booth, and that 15 saying a lot. But is it really Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins? Actually, yeah. Although the new character designs—by Japanese game mag Famitsu Weekly cover artist Susumu Matsushita— won't remind anyone of the classic series at first glance, the more time we spent with the game the more we noticed all the connections to the old 2D titles. Zombies pop out of the ground in caskets, towering devil totems spit skulls, and earthquakes move giant chunks of the levels around as you run through. Maximo even dresses like old Sir Arthur: He’s clad in standard silver armor that’s upgradable to gold, and when he gets injured it’s down to the patented Ghost ‘n’ Goblins heart-patterned boxers. SONY PLAYSTATION 2 Publisher: Square Electronic Arts Developer: Square Release: Spring 2002 What's it all about? The first PS2 chapter in the seemingly eternal Final Fantasy legacy, FFX centers on Tidus, a pro player of Blitzball, the most popular full-contact sport in Spira. Tidus and Yuna, the main female lead, must journey across the world of Spira to confront “Sin” and defeat its evil ways. The story line might be a bit clichéd, but there’s no denying the beauty of the game. Featuring a redesigned battle system (Square brought Toshiro Tsuchida, director of the Front Mission games, in to revamp FFX's battle engine) and a new spin on the summons system, Final Fantasy X should benefit from both an increase in flashy eye-candy and more strategic, focused battles. The supporting cast looks like a combination of FFVIII's realistically proportioned characters combined with the fantastically designed party members from FFVII (i.e., Red XIII). This is also the first Final Fantasy to feature full-on voice acting. What do we think of it? FFX’s fully 3D visuals look really freaking nice, but they lack the immediate visual impact of, say, Devil May Cry, since everything is viewed from static camera angles. On the other hand, the summons and spell effects are nothing short of breathtaking, and transitions to cutscenes are seamless, since a great deal of them use the game engine. When Square throws CG cutscenes into the mix, they are absolutely mindblowing, partly because the video is now running at a full 30 frames per second at DVD quality, and partly because Square gets better at this CG stuff with every game. Whazzat? Can't get enough FFX? Check next month for our massive cover story, and you might be lucky enough to nab one of our issues with exclusive Yoshitaka Amano cover art—only one out of eight issues has it! We admit it. We’re not even sure there’s a real game in Rockstar’s State of Emergency, but we sure enjoyed having to beat up, smash, shoot, and destroy everything in sight in a rioting city. It appeals to the little anarchist in all of us. Finally...a game for that kid who sat in the back of shop class and mumbled to himself. Publisher: Square Electronic Arts Developer: Square Release: Fall 2002 What's it all about? No one would have expected Disney to approach Square to do an RPG, but it happened. No one would have expected a Disney-based RPG to be any good either, but that’s happening too. Featuring four new characters designed by Final Fantasy legend Tetsuya Nomura, Kingdom Hearts takes Sora (the main character) and Goofy and Donald Duck on an adventure to save their two friends Riku and Kairi. Kingdom Hearts will not only introduce Disney characters to a whole new genre in gaming, it will tie together what was previously a separate collection of character- specific worlds. In Kingdom Hearts, the Little Mermaid’s underwater kingdom will rest Publisher: Activision Developer: Neversoft Release: November 2001 alongside Tarzan’s jungle, Pinocchio’s village and Aladdin’s Arabian environs, among others. Virtually every Disney character you know will make an appearance during the game, with Dumbo having already been sighted. What do we think of it? We don’t know much about the gameplay, but from what we saw on video, Kingdom Hearts seems to be a combination of real-time exploration and turn-based battle scenes, with Sora launching fireballs from a sword- sized key at approaching enemies. And surprisingly, the game seems to contain a dark story line —hardly the sort of thing we'd expect from a game with Disney's name on it. М-1-с-К-е-у M-o-u-s-e might make ап appearance from what we've heard, and you can bet your Britney Spears we'll have our mouse-ears on when he does. If you read our THPS3 cover story a few months ago, you know it packs more interactive parks filled with people and traffic, ultra- smooth gameplay, and an improved create-a-skater mode with female models. But it was the online play that won the most attention at E3, where folks lined up behind networked PS2s to get some lag-free skate time with each other in the virtual parks. y ere (rsa) 1 2 gonna, Publisher: Capcom Developer: Capcom Release: November 2001 Here’s a game with a buzz so strong everyone from the Xbox honchos to the Nintendo bigwigs were talking about it: Survival-horror guru Shinji Mikami’s latest evil action- adventure, Devil May Cry. With its fully real- time and insanely detailed levels, smooth animation, plus gigantic bosses and tons of enemies on screen at once, this is one of the very few games that looks like it’s working Publisher: Activision Developer: TBA Release date: TBA Solid Snake’s stealthy second-cousin on his mother’s side is back for more shuriken-shucking action, this time on the PS2. It seems as if the platinum- haired Rikimaru escaped death after all at the end of Tenchu: Stealth Assassins and is prepared to tackle a whole new crew of demonic baddies in hi-res style. Developed by a new team, Tenchu 3 has some nice rain and smog effects, but it still looks pretty similar to the PS1 games. the PS2 hardware as hard as Metal Gear Solid 2. And they finally threw out those clunky RE controls—swing your sword or shoot your gun (or both), all while running and double jumping in every direction. Mikami has said he wants Devil May Cry to be “cool,” as opposed to “scary” like the Resident Evil games, and so far it looks like he'll get his wish. Let's talk with... Shinji Mikami Producer of the Resident Evil series EGM: Where did the idea of Devil May Cry originally come from? Shinji Mikami: The director of the game was working on what was originally supposed to be Resident Evil 4, but the game became so different from Resident Evil we changed the name to Devil May Cry. The control of the game is very unlike RE. EGM: Why is that? SM: For the gamers who are really into the RE 94 games, the RE controls work just fine, although it’s tricky at first. In DMC, we focused on making it easier to control for beginners. At the same time, we tried to make more room for players once they become used to it, so that they can perform more cool actions and moves. EGM: You mentioned that the theme of DMC is “cool.” So what other things do you think are cool? SM: I think Ed Harris is cool. He can talk with his eyes as in the movie The Rock. And | think Ferraris are cool. But if you drive one in Japan, it’s not cool. You'll be stuck in a traffic jam all the time. It’s not a prancing horse at all. Publisher: THQ Developer: Yuke's Release: October 2001 What's it all about? | think we all know the answer to that, don't we? Get a bunch of large, intimidating men, add some PG-rated posturing (rife with enough cheesy catch- phrases to make Schwarzenegger blush), and proceed to let them beat the living crap out of each other in the most spectacular ways possible. Throw in some busty female wrestlers just dripping with sex appeal and this entire preview writes itself! Yuke's (developers of the first two games in the series) promises an evolution of SmackDown! thanks to the PlayStation 2's extra power, as well as a more involving Story Mode. Hopefully the story will be kept just vague enough to keep up with the ever-changing plot in the weekly WWF broadcasts. Just Bring It will include more than 3o WWF superstars in over 60 different matches. You also get plenty of new match styles, a handy picture- in-picture feature and, of course, the flashy entrances complete with music. Michael Cole and Tazz will supply the play-by-play commentary (we're not sure where Jim Ross ended up in all of this). What do we think of it? Much like when it comes to watching the sport itself, we take a guilty pleasure in playing wrestling games —especially ones as good as the SmackDown! series. Although the game was technically playable on the show floor, THQ wouldn't let us near the controller, citing some unresolved control issues in the E3 build. Still, this PS2 version looks great so far, capturing the high-flying action and overwhelming excess of personality each wrestler brings to the ring. Besides, any excuse to write “Can you smell what The Rock is cookin'?" is reason enough to get excited in our book. XFL mini-game we'd like to see: || works thusly: Recruit a bunch of jocks who never quite made it to the NFL, take away one down, throw in an ex-wrestler-turned-governor and some really hot cheerleaders. Now see if you can attain the lowest ratings in television history faster than Vince McMahon did. = mo Y Triple Н. ЕЗ2. Steve Austin E Lita Г The Rock ee % ӨзвекЕСТ @:CANCEL PRIMED FOR ONLINE We'll'admit it: Sony's online plans=alt their talk of the hard drive and instant messaging and playing Flash movies—have us confused. But the important thing to remember is you only need the $40 network adapter, due in November, to.play this first batch of online games: SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALS SOCOM will be the first title to use Sony's dual- band adapter. Developed by Zipper Interactive, it features rescue and assault scenarios as well as real- | time voice chat and command over your teammates. The squad-based online combat supports up to 16 players. The early version at the show didn't look or play too hot, though. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 Why Skin your knees in a real’skatepark when you and seven friends can rip sick tricks together online in Neversoft’s killer app for the network adapter? The game hits in November. Twisted Metal: Online Essentially, this looks and plays like TM: Black except with a few new fixin’s that make use of its network capabilities. It hits this winter. Tribes 2 І More third-party support for PS2’s online network comes this winter in the form of Tribes 2, Sierra's port of its popular PC first- person shooter. While the console version won't be compatible with PC servers, Sierra promises it will ship with community boards, a server browser and buddy lists. Publisher: Sega Developer: AM2 Release: By spring 2002 The Sega series that put the wind beneath the wings of games like Tekken and Soul Calibur is making a rather unorthodox console debut on Sony’s PS2 (although we only saw video of the arcade version at E3). Producer Yu Suzuki, who is responsible for most of Sega's arcade hits since Hang-On, has made some changes for the fourth installment. “In Virtua Fighter 3, the difficulty was so high it was hard for ordinary people to complete the game,” Suzuki admits. “Virtua Fighter 4 will make it easier for less-experienced users to play.” For simplicity’s sake, VF4 will also return to a three-button configuration, removing the “escape” button that appeared in VF3. With two new characters, more interactive arenas, overhauled graphics, and a return to classic Virtua Fighter gameplay, VF4 has a definite shot at the title belt on PS2. Let's talk with... Yu Suzuki Director of AM2 EGM: Why did you choose to port Virtua Fighter 4 to PS2 rather than to Xbox? Yu Suzuki: Sony wanted a big title from Sega for the PS2. The launch of VF4 is around the same time that they wanted Sega's title out, so it just happened to be Virtua Fighter 4. TII нен анин " ипи чини н m буйн Cial ЕСМ: МЕД is running on the Naomi 2 board. Will that make it too difficult to port to the Dreamcast? YS: Basically, the architecture of Naomi boards and the Dreamcast are such that it is not a difficult thing to convert. EGM: What is your opinion on other fighting franchises that have popped up over the past several years (Tekken, Dead or Alive)? YS: l've been too busy recently to play any games, but because | don't play them, I’m able to create different, original games. Publisher: Konami revamped version of its predecessor (the Developer: Konami E3 demo consisted of a lot of hall- Release: August 2001 wandering and combat by flashlight), and Crank up the brightness on the TV—you're that's perfectly fine by us! The team has going to want all the light you can get for until fall to put the finishing touches on Konami's newest foray into the surreal. the game, which will also feature a brand- Blacker, gorier, and 130 times more screwed- new 3D sound system that really up than the first, SH2 plays a lot like a heightens the experience. Let's talk with... Akihiro Imamura Producer of Silent Hill 2 EGM: Is it difficult to scare modern audiences that have been desensitized to violence by horror films? psychological research for SH2? Al: For Silent Hill 1, we actually did some ink- blot tests, but that was just for the first game. For the second, we just created a lot of high- tension scenarios based on what we already knew. EGM: What kind of people does it take to work Akihiro Imamura: It’s true ona Silent Hill game? that it has become more difficult to get a Al: We have a lot of very talented š reaction from the audience, but a game offers programmers and artists, but most of all we т a different kind of interactive fear that а look for tough people, ones who will be movie cannot convey, and we’ve been using screaming by the end of development that to our advantage in Silent Hill 2. [laughs]. EGM: Has anyone on the team done any пир ERs Best PlayStation 2 Game: à SILENT HILL 2 Since we didn’t get to play ` anything new with Metal Gear Solid 2 (the E3 demo was the same one packed in with Z.0.E.), and since GT3 is practically out, our next favorite PS2 game at the show was Silent Hill 2 (even though we've played that demo already too). So far, it’s living up to the hype. We can't wait to play this game away from the noise and geeks of trade shows. Publisher: SCEE Developer: Studio Liverpool Release: TBA Sony Europe’s on-again off-again racer made a surprise appearance at the show. Buried deep within the booth, WipeOut was on a solitary screen with zero fanfare. It’s looking good, but seems to be more of the same stuff we got from the last couple of titles. As of this writing, Sony in America still hasn’t picked up the game for a domestic release, though the fact it was at the show at all should be a good sign. 91 Publisher: Capcom Developer: Capcom Release: September 2001 In typical Capcom fashion, a good thing is never enough. So much in the same way that Marvel vs. Capcom 2 made a stunning leap in technical prowess over the first game, so too does Capcom vs. SNK 2. This sequel adds a variety of “grooves” PS2 SLEEPERS... Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill 2, Jak and Daxter—those games will sell themselves. But we found a lot of PS2 titles scattered throughout the expo that just weren’t getting the cred they deserve. Behold: The games you didn’t know you really wanted... Dropship Finally playable at E3, Dropship combines tactical strategy with arcade flight physics for some 47 gritty near-future warfare. We took the game for a test flight at E3, blew up some stuff, and switched in and out of hover mode. And while the dynamic mission structure, photorealistic landscapes and spectrum of vehicles have us stoked, Dropship is as of yet still unconfirmed by SCEA for a stateside release. But chances are, Sony Europe's Camden studio will bring the game across the Atlantic next spring. (or gameplay styles) to the mix, for a total of six in all. And let's not forget the big perk: You get 44 combatants split between the formidable Capcom and SNK stables of fighters. Better game balance and some striking 3D backgrounds (a la MVC2) round out this anticipated fighter. Let's talk with... Yoshiki Okamoto President of Capcom- offshoot Flagship EGM: Why do you think fighting games aren't as popular as they used to be? Yoshiki Okamoto: There are many reasons, and Capcom and SNK are to blame. We released so many games in a short time when they should have been spaced out properly, like a year apart. But we, Capcom and SNK, released games with only a two- or three-month interval. So gamers had no clue The wild design style and catchy tunes of this October release from Koei reminds us of another sleeper-hit music game: Sony's.own PaRappa the Rappa. Timed button presses with analog Stick movements keep your thumbs busy while your eyes and ears have all the real fun. | D Stuntman From developer Reflections, the guys behind the Driver series, Stuntman will let you take the wheel in some very cool chases straight outta the 007 and Indiana Jones flicks. Each stage is set in a different film, so the settings and vehicles are always different. Look for it next summer. which games they should master. | don't think it's because the games became boring. EGM: So, is Street Fighter 4 being worked on? ҮІ: Before doing SF4, we have to develop SF3 Dash Turbo X and others. So there's a long way to go before SF4. [laughs] EGM: We hear that after 1942 came out, you got involved in some trouble. Tell us about it. YI: Yes, there was a problem. Think about it— what if someone in the U.S. made a video game about the VietCong beating the hell out of Americans? It wasn't that much of a problem in Japan though. And | didn't care what people said about it. Frequency Another E3, another new music game. But wait— Frequency, due this fall, is actually quite cool. The object is to follow along the guides a la Beatmania to lay down several tracks of music (bass, melody, etc.) and create a complex composition. Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland This series' PS2 debut will feature cel-shaded 3D characters. And the game actually has a new goal; rather than just tend to your animals and get with the local honeys, you've also got to save your farm. Natsume will ship it in October. SONY The trusty PS1 may not have held a commanding presence at E3, but with an installed base of more than 30 million, it’s a hard system for developers—and us—to ignore. So we scouted out the best of the PS1 rest at the expo... Publisher: Electronic Arts Deweloper: Argonaut Release: Fall 2001 All the upcoming Potter games tackle a different genre. For the Р51, Argonaut has conjured a Tomb Raider-style adventure. As Mr. Potter, you'll learn magic in Hogwarts—via mini- games—then trek through the book's locales. Publisher: Enix Developer: Enix Release: November 2001 A 4-million-selling blockbuster in Japan, DWVII has you traveling back in time to lost continents, > solving mysteries that will Lx mr save civilizations in the = future. This traditional RPG features character designs of Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball Z), the music of Koichi Sugiyama, and the vision of the Dragon Warrior series director Yuji Horii. Best PlayStation Game: 4 Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is taking опе more swing at the PS1 this summer. Sure it’s just a sequel and it doesn’t look that much different from Activision’s first game. But in the fast- cooling PlayStation market, the mutated webslinger and his sinister nemeses are the only guys who got us really excited. 99 aving established itself at the past couple of E3s as the irreverent underdog with block-rockin’ stage shows and acres of playable kiosks, Sega was uncharacteristically subdued this year. And even while they screamed “Unleashed!” at the press until we were wip- ing spittle out of our eyes, it was hard for most showgoers to catch any of the excite- ment. The 10-foot wall and headset-wearing bouncers surrounding “Fortress Sega” proba- bly had something to do with it. If you didn’t have an appointment, you weren’t going to check out the goods. Once we were escorted into its hallowed halls, one couldn’t help but feel a little disap- pointed —Sega’s booth was more like a back- room lounge away from the bustle of E3. Aside from new stuff on the GameCube (Phantasy Star Online, Virtua Striker 3 and Super Monkey Ball) and a couple of Xbox titles (Jet Set Radio Future and Gun Valkyrie), most of the kiosks were ignored. Anticipated titles like Virtua Fighter 4 and Shenmue || made appearances only in video form. Overall, it just wasn't the Sega we've come to love for its Ез decadence. But we weren’t exactly surprised. It’s been a rough year for the little white box that almost could. Sega’s booth reflected the company’s transition from hardware to software, and in that context, the company has had very little turnaround time from Jan. 31 to E3. Peter Moore, president and COO of Sega of 100 Although not a true sequel, PSo v.2 will toon offer enough new bits to get all the PSO dorks (and there are a lot of us) logged on 24/7 this summer—even with its monthly fee. Honorable mentions for Best DC Game of E3 include Alien Front Online and NFL 2K2. America, is humble, yet confident about their future. “Well, there was certainly an emotion- al side on Jan. 31, when we made the announcement [to discontinue the Dreamcast and go multi-platform],” he tells us. “But that’s over and it’s down to the business side now. Basically, we need to make great games for all the platforms.” So come next Ез, if all goes according to Moore’s plan, we might see a return of the in- your-face Sega attitude we know so well. “Clearly we have the ingredients to take the top spot,” he says. “It’s not going to happen overnight, but мете smart guys. We'll catch up.” Then he adds with a smirk, “We devel- oped for Saturn, you know. It can’t be that much more difficult to work with the PS2.” Publisher: Sega Developer: AM2 Release: November 2001 Despite the fact that the original Shenmue didn’t perform nearly as well at retail as Yu Suzuki and his AM2 team had hoped, Ryo Hazuki is making a return appearance on the Dreamcast. Our young hero has made it to China on his quest to exact revenge upon his father’s murderer, Lan Di. Unlike the first game, which was only a single chapter in his planned epic, Shenmue || will encapsulate chapters 2-6. The buildings and towns in introduced, including China look much more similar to the original three important female characters. The game tech demos we saw of wasn’t playable at E3, but Suzuki showed a Shenmue two years video clip and promised more involving mini- ago, and an entirely games this time around, plus two new new cast will be undisclosed classic AM2 arcade games. ланы - БА s= 101 Publisher: Sega Developer: Hudson Release: September 2001 What's it all about? Enhancing the classic 2D action with clean, cel-shaded graphics, Bomberman Online hosts huge maps that accommodate up to 10 players over the Internet. Hudson has also tossed in five new levels and four additional gameplay modes—Submarine Attack, Panel Attack, Hyper Bomber and Battle Royal. What do we think of it? We only got to try the four- player mode at the show. But as long as the online game runs smoothly, it’s bound to give PSO v.2 a run for its server space. The gameplay did feel kinda sluggish though....Those little Bombermen should move faster. Exactly how long can Bomberman hold out as a viable franchise? Your guess is as good as ours. With more than до titles on 14 platforms, one would think the little bugger would have gone the way of the Ninja Turtles by now. WIDE WORLD OF SEGA SPORTS First the big news: Developer Visual Concepts confirmed they’re bringing their 2K sports series to every platform. Microsoft even touted that Xbox will get NFL and NBA 2К> this fall—sans online play—as well as full online versions next year. But the only 2K games displayed at the expo were on Dreamcast, and of those, World Series Baseball 2K2 has undergone the most retooling (Visual Concepts is handling dev duties this time). Now you can actually take control of the fielders. And oh yeah, it’s online ready. NBA 2К2 looks and plays the same, only now alley oops are automatic and the lowpost game is more dynamic. Flagship title NFL 2K2 packs improved Al, nicer player models and an online rankings system. We learned that NCAA College Football 2K2 is in the works, although it wasn’t playable. And what about Virtua Tennis 2K2? It looks great...but where's the online play? Publisher: Sega Developer: WOW Release: August 2001 This multiplayer online action-shooter is looking every bit as good as the coin-op original, and you'll be able to use the microphone to rap with your teammates as you play on either the human or alien team in this eight-way frag-fest. The backgrounds are fully destructible, too, so get busy blowing up...er, we mean saving the White House. Let's talk with... Greg Thomas President of Visual Concepts EGM: Now that you’ve gone multiplatform, are you worried about spreading the crew too thin? Greg Thomas: Everyone thinks we are and we’re always spreading ourselves as thin as we сап get away with. But ме’уе had more time to develop than people realize. We've announced Xbox and Р52, and we'll be on GameCube soon but we haven’t announced that. EGM: Who do you think will have the most solid online structure first? GT: From what I’ve heard, it sounds like Microsoft’s going to. They seem to care the most about it. That being said, Sony is a Japanese company —they could have all sorts of stuff planned | don't know about. Nintendo, | don’t know anything about. EGM: What will broadband open up for you that modems can’t? GT: If you want 11-on-11 play, you need broadband. If you want to be the quarterback and lead your team against another across the country іп a league with 10 of your buddies, you need broadband. 102 MORE 15 BETTER. | Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX” Maximum Remix is jammed with all the thrills of the original and more. Like a FREE MUSIC GD featuring in-game music from Rancid, Pennywise and others from the Remix soundtrack. Want more? How about: e 8 brand new levels, plus all 12 levels from the original game remixed with new challenges. ө New Expert mode for the ultimate in demanding play. ө Over 1,300 tricks, including the new Wall Ride. Of course, Maximum Remix is still the only game to feature 10-time World Champion Dave Mirra plus 9 other top pros. And as a special thanks to all of you who bought the original Mirra BMX for the PlayStation? game console, you'll get $15 back when you trade it in for Maximum Remix. You can't ask for more than that. Developed by www.acclaimmaxsports.com Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX” Maximum Remix and Acclaim® & © 2001 Acclaim Entertainment, Inc. Al Rights Reserved. Developed by Z-Axis. ll Rights Reserved. Marketed by Acclaim. Distributed by Acclaim Distribution, Inc., One Acclaim Plaza, Glen Cove, NY 11542-2777. PlayStation and the PlayStation logos are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. IRRE:VOUII Never been to E3? Here's what it’s like... e’re being eyed by a 6-foot Pichu, and мете not sure what to do. Should we squeeze him? Kick him? Or maybe if we stand still, he'll lose interest like that T-Rex in Jurassic Park. No matter—a guy in a Nintendo jumpsuit sprouting Game Boy Advances from 5-foot cords is suddenly thrusting one of his handhelds at us. The Pichu crisis forgotten, we must play GBA. But then a spherical screen in Sony's booth behind us comes alive with footage of Jak and Daxter. Ahhh. Look at the pretty colors. And that's the thing about the three-ring cybercircus that is the Electronic Entertainment Ехро— it’s not the guys in fuzzy costumes vying for our attention, it’s the cinema-size video walls, or the balloon- chested booth babes, or the midgets with mullets (more on them later). But in the end, it’s the games that lock us in their tractor Electronic Gami -XPERIENCED? beam. Games, games, games, games, games—around us, everywhere. Video games, PC games, peripherals, stuff that won’t be out until Christmas or later. It’s like the world's biggest, greatest free arcade. GameWorks ain’t got nothin’ on this place. Did we mention the balloon-chested booth babes? Trouble is, E3 isn’t open to just any gamer who scored a ride to Los Angeles. This is a trade show. To enter, you must be tied into the game-industry food chain. Thousands of gamers fib their way into the show each year, but we’re not going to teach that trick. Sorry, E3’s already too crowded. But we will do the next best thing: Slip on this phony-baloney media pass. We're sneaking you into the expo. Senses overloaded... The Los Angeles Convention Center is the size of a city block, capped at both ends by two main halls shaped like enormous steel-and- glass top hats with their brims yanked down. The E3 atmosphere here is thick even outside. One hall’s tip is plastered with a massive Jak and Daxter poster. A six-story image of Final Fantasy X pretty boy Tidus peers at us from the side of a building across the street. But let’s push through the throng and hit South Hall, where we'll find the booths of big-league third parties like Konami, Activision, Square and Electronic Arts (Nintendo, Sony and Sega are in West Hall, where we started this story). Мете nearly at one of the glass-door entrances to the show floor. Straighten your media badge; the sullen security folks who crew these doors are looking for any excuse to liven up their day by turning people away. Earlier, we saw one guy try to Solid Snake his way in by pretending he was on his cell phone, too busy to show a badge. Trouble is, he forgot to keep up his make-believe conver- sation when security stopped him. Our badges in order, we strut past the glass doors onto the South Hall floor. We've taken this trip before, so мете gonna let a newbie showgoer explain what it’s like to enter the expo for the first time: “Going through the front doors was magical,” says Jamie Stokely, a 20-year-old hardcore gamer from Glendale, Calif., who got in with the help of a connected pal. “1 got a chill up my spine that never went away the entire time | was in the building.” We know the feeling. South Hall's stadium- size innards reach as far as we can see into a gloom colored by spotlights strobing on the big booths before us. And the sound level here would drown out a Dennis Rodman birth- day bash. Although the Interactive Digital Software Association, the organization that runs Ез, imposed stricter noise restrictions this year, the booming mix of game sound- tracks and techno beats is still deafening. It’s a good thing E3 is a three-day deal. When we step onto the floor, our first instinct is to take in everything at once. Impossible. The best we can do is take a wide-angle view of the spectacle. Right now, our focus is locked on EA’s booth, where footage of SSX Tricky is playing on a video wall, set above a Harry Potter castle the size of a two-family house with Potter characters poised on its parapet. To the right of that, we see a WWII- era military command center, tricked out with blinking lights and zipping gauges while game footage of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault plays in a theater tucked within a life-size amphibious landing craft. We wander into Activision’s area, where Tony Hawk, Mat Hoffman and a squad of other action-sports athletes run scheduled sessions on a two-story halfpipe built right in the q booth. Later in the show, Neversoft President Joel Jewett will take a crack at the pipe on his skateboard (don't worry—he survives the ses- sion. Be sure to look for that footage on Tony Hawk 3's bails video). Microsoft's booth is jammed full. We'll use our media cred to mus- cle our way in later, but right now we bypass it for InterAct, where our own Previews Editor, Greg Sewart, just won $6,000 after taking first place in a NASCAR 2001 racing contest. Get some! Sewart’s $6K prize is an extreme example, but it’s really unthinkable to come away from E3 empty-handed. T-shirts are the most common swag—heck, we just walked by a stage where babes in low-cut medieval garb tossed tees to any showgoer who jumped up and down like a doofus. But if you hit all the right booths, you'll come away with а back-breaking load of bags, keychains, soundtracks, hats, pens, temporary tattoos, action figures, cigars, shot glasses, and tiny flashing doohickeys great for...well, we're not really sure what the flash- ing doohickeys are for. The bulk of this stuffis dished out by booth babes, many blond, all with about the same athletic build. It’s only their clothing that comes in different shapes and sizes. For the women manning Activision's Wolfenstein (PC) display, the uniform is regulation U.S. Army, except for the camo miniskirts and exposed cleavage. Futuristic goth is the vogue in Microsoft's area. Booth babes are scarcer than usual at this year's show. Blame it on the tran- Matt Stone, sans Trey Parker sitional slump, we figure—especially since Eidos, which usually enlists a platoon of hot female helpers—has keyed its show way down after a lean year. A few showgoers claim they think the lack of barely dressed babes is a good thing, saying so much skin makes the industry seem juvenile and trashy. Maybe they’re right, but the women working the show don’t seem to mind the job. They don’t even mind being labeled booth babes. “It could be worse—they could call us booth hags,” says Kelli Brooke, a former Oakland Raider cheerleader who’s dispensing tempo- rary tattoos for a digital-video company called Enroute. She and her partner, another former Raiderette named Tani Kristiansen, are wear- ing tight white tops that expose toned tum- mies. “Yeah, it could be worse,” Kristiansen adds. “We could be working for Sony. | hear they work their booth babes too hard.” Occasionally, we catch glimpses of famous game designers walking the show floor. A while ago, we spied Konami's Metal Gear Solid director Hideo Kojima goofing with Resident Evil standees in Capcom’s booth. But to really see your developer heroes en masse, you have to head to the parties. Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony hold heavy-duty bashes on consecutive nights of the expo. Each shindig has its own flavor—Nintendo’s is low key and laid back; Microsoft’s is the loudest, with Blink-182 headlining the stage show; and Sony’s soiree, starring Everclear and set ina sprawling studio backlot, is somewhere in between. It’s not a rare thing to see Shigeru Miyamoto palling with Perfect Dark producer ACUVISION:S action-sports super squad OP a Sewart: 56К richer Mark Edmunds at Nintendo’s party. Wanna meet god-game god Peter Molyneaux? We bumped into him twice, at both the Microsoft and Sony parties. We even played classic coin-ops with Naughty Dog prez Jason Rubin, his voice hoarse from a cold, at Sony’s bash. But if Rubin didn’t talk much, plenty of oth- ers did. Booze at the parties is free. Most folks here drink their fill, then drink more. They start talking: “Pssst, there’s a new LucasArts game on the way for PS2, but it’s not Star Wars and it’s in a genre Lucas has never done before.” Or: “Pssst, The real rea- son for the PS2 launch shortage was because Sony in Japan devoted its most efficient assembly lines to manufacturing more prof- itable digital cameras.” Uh, OK. Мете not sure if the truth is out here or not, but listening to the industry rumor mill at full alcohol-fueled bore is sure a fun way to pass the time while standing in the atrociously long potty line at the Sony party. E3'S WILD KINGDOM We wanted an “outsider’s” perspective on the types of people you can find at E3, so we commissioned Doug Johansen, Wildlife Editor of Huntin' magazine, to work up pro- files. He filed this report: BOOTH BABE: Behavior: Shows up, smiles. Distinguishing marks: Heaving plumage serves to attract fj. males; makeup hides scars. Diet: Celery, water, laxatives. | Mating call: “Excuse me, I'm a г casting agent for Paramount.” JAPANESE DEVELOPER: Behavior: Grants interviews, signs auto- graphs, bows. Often travel in larger herds. Distinguishing marks: Neatly groomed, Japanese. Electronic Gaming Monthly - 106 - www.egmmag.com Strippers? You've seen the big booths. You've hob- nobbed at the parties. But you still haven't fully experienced E3 until you trek to Kentia Hall in the South Hall’s basement. If South and West Hall are home to the mega compa- nies, Kentia Hall is two acres of...everything else —edutainment publishers; Russian and Chinese developers looking for Stateside sug- ardaddies; companies we've never heard of like Azuradisc Inc., whose Model 1600 Six- stage Lapper/Polisher will “resurface every kind of CD media so it will look and play exactly like new,” the booth literature claims. But don't write off Kentia as a gamer's waste- land. Mosey among the 60 or so booths down here and you'll spy big-name developers like Baldur's Gate-creators BioWare and —better still if you’ve got bean to burn—a flea-market strip of tables covered with import games, manga toys and Game Boy Advances for sale. Who knows, maybe some of the small-fry startups in Kentia will strike it big and move upstairs to the higher-traffic halls next year...or maybe they’ll just head outside. Which brings us to the Gathering of Developers’ cheese-a-rama trailer park across the street from the convention center. Here, for the second year in a row, G.O.D. has unleashed a spectacle of string-bikini dancers and triple-6-sporting “Satan’s Cheerleaders” who cavort with jumpsuited midgets—some with mullets—on a stage surrounded by developers in Gulfstream trailers who just want you to sit down for five lousy minutes Diet: Rice, nicotine, fish. Mating call: “Hey, you can smoke over here.” ==" GAME JOURNALIST: r © Behavior: Plays games, con- ` . sumes alcohol, writes about = 4 games (in any order). A Distinguishing marks: WI ( Е Generally unkempt апа mal- у nourished, sometimes wears < game-related T-shirts. Diet: Burger, fries, Coke. Mating call: “Who left all this free food and beer over by the booth babes?" ! PR HACK: Behavior: Corrals and pimps BOOTH BABE. Gets cigarettes for JAPANESE DEVELOPER. Placates GAME JOURNALIST. Ignores WEB SITE FAN BOY. Distinguishing marks: Boiling pot of stress жә AE *Blink-182 rocks Microsoft's world and have a gander at their game. But amidst all the free beer, flying T-shirts and models dressed as schoolgirls, we can't shake the feeling that life is cheap in the G.O.D. booth. We figure we could probably receive any man- ner of sexual favor or even be allowed to hunt a homeless man for sport if we just sat down to watch Duke Nukem Forever for the PC. But who has the time. We've got the itch to play more Nintendo games. It's just too bad that, on the way back to their booth, we're distracted by the abs-of-steel models Tecmo has hired to portray Dead or Alive girls. And that's really the ultimate lesson of E3: Don't even bother bringing your attention span. Leave it at home, in that shoebox where you keep your algebra skills. Mesmerized for a split second, we ogle the DOA models and wonder if, like Pichu, they won't see us if we stand still. OK, here's the part where you jump up and down like a doofus, hoping they'll toss you a T-shirt to prove that, yes, you were here. Фр and mad rage under attractive and well- groomed surface. Diet: Power lunch. Mating call: “Gosh, what should | include in my list of 10 hot games for this USA Today article?" WEB SITE FAN BOY: Behavior: Plays games, collects free stuff, gawks at BOOTH BABES. Distinguishing marks: Even thinner and scruffier than GAME JOURNALIST, wears identical uniforms or headbands. Often travel in packs to hunt JAPANESE DEVELOPERS for autographs. Diet: Pixie sticks, Mountain Dew. Mating call: “Isn't that Miyamoto handing out signed copies of the Famicom disc system version of Zelda?" сг] ` COLLECTOR CARDS 72-card se groundbre film premi Based on interactive Final Fant 30 million Star Power provided by ; | Steve Buscemi, Peri Gilpin, Ming-Na, Ving Rhames, Donald Sutherland and James Woods Included are Character Profiles, The Story, Gear and Vehicles, Behind the Scenes and Foil chase cards Available June 2001 To order Final Fantasy collector cards, call 201-794-9877 or visit www.comicimages.com O ма + This Month... review this issue, but there are actually a Ш lot more quality titles than we’ve seen іп more recent, fatter months. Crazy Taxi 2, Twisted Metal: Black, Escape From Monkey Island, Final Fantasy Chronicles, and of course the amazing pair of Zelda games are all here to help wile away the summer hours; so much for the typically lean sum- The Crew Crispin Boyer By the time you read this, Crispin will already be dead. No, not really— but he will have turned 30, which is close. Now he can finally review M-rated games. Favorite Genres: Action, Adventure As a sign of gratitude that's long over- due, Che would like to thank The Beastie Boys for raising national mullet aware- ness to an all-time high. Favorite Genres: Fighting, Driving To make room for the Еҙ feature, Jon had to sell his review bio space for advertis- ing, so please enjoy this promotion: “Snap into a Slim Jim! Arrrrgh!” Thanks. Favorite Genre: Fighting, Action At the height of the Guns ‘N’ Roses con- troversy Dean freely admitted he liked, and still likes, the band. So what if Axl gained a few. Favorite Genres: Sports, Racing Shoe thanks y’all for the letters welcom- ing him back. He’s happy he’s reunited with his old crew, though he wishes they'd stop messing with his mug shots. Favorite Genres: Whatever Platinum Awards go to games that get all 105, the best and rarest review a game can get. е may have a shorter list of games for Gold Awards go to games whose average score equals 9.0 or GAME BOY г Г = COLOR mer months. Still по GT3 review—Sony hasn’t given anyone the final U.S. version yet (and no, we won't review the import like everyone else). Expect it next issue, along with Klonoa 2, NBA Street, Floigan Bros., Sonic Adventure 2, Alone in the Dark, and another Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. See you again in about 30 days. Until then, stay frosty. С) hopes neutering his kitten will calm it down a bit. If it does, he’s setting his sights on neutering that uppity Sewart guy next. Favorite Genres: Adventure, Puzzle Still trying to quell the dizzying adrena- line rush she experienced after her first Ез with EGM, Jeanne’s realized she’s hooked and there ain’t no turnin’ back. Favorite Genres: RPG, Adventure Kraig Kujawa Kraig’s post-E3 vacation to Cancun was refreshing, and now he’s probably good to review another 100 or so bad games before he needs another. Favorite Genres: Action, Adventure Mark MacDonald Wildlife photographer John Burke spent two weeks tracking a male MacDonald to capture this rare shot of him learning two new Zelda GBC games were out. Favorite Genres: Action, Adventure Having bulked up to a bone-crunching 200 lbs. of yellow fury, Milky will defy the tides of time by turning 31, rather noisily, DJing in Paris on Bastille Day. Favorite Genres: Action, Fighting Greg Sewart The money Sewart won at E3 is nice, but it's not nearly enough to bribe all the immigration officials he needs to avoid deportation. Favorite Genres: Racing, RPG, Action Additional Contributors higher. Despite shirking all responsibility and taking Dan Leahy time off, Leahy is one of the few, the chosen, the Games that average at “additional contributors.” It’s a good life. least an 8.0 receive " j After seeing the Star Trek Voyager finale, John Silver Awards. John Ricciardi would ТАГА to say there's по уа! Chakotay and Seven of Nine would ever get together. No way! 108 Our Philosophy DB 0 EGM rates games based on how they com- pare with other titles on the same system. The highest score we'll give a game is a 10. When a game receives a 10, you can rest assured it’s one of the best games ever made—a revolutionary title that truly stands above everything else in its genre for its time. At the other end of the spectrum sits the lowest score a game can receive: a o.o. This is the kind of game you want to avoid at all costs. It's pure crap. In the mid- dle lies the average grade, 5.0. We repeat: 5.0 IS AN AVERAGE GRADE. Simple, ain't it? g оу SST __ Tella: Oracle of Ages/Seasons Pa, 118 Ladies and gentlemen, we have a tie: Despite being two entirely different games, both of the new GBC Zelda titles got exactly the same high scores from all three reviewers, so they share Game of the Month honors. Now bring on the Game Boy Advance Zeldas! STAFF'S CURRENT FAVES egend of Zelda: Oracle Series ^ GAMEBOY Nintendo COLOR ran Turismo 3 A-spec Sony CEA xz — Super Mario Advance Nintendo Twisted Metal: Black Sony CEA 1 2 3 4 5 astlevaria: ile of the Moon (С 6 1 8 9 ЕШ ғ -Zero: Maximum Velocity Nintendo ed Faction T Advance Championship razy Taxi 2 inal Fantasy Chronicles Square EA 10 Bloody Roar 3 ART BUTTON Publisher: Activision Developer: Eighting Featured In: ЕСМЯ 139 Players: 1-2 Also Try: DOA2: Hardcore Best Feature: Sweet graphics, smooth framerate Worst Feature: Spazzy gameplay, nasty Al Web Site: www.activision.com Lately, it seems I’m incapable of getting excited when it comes time to...perform. No, get your mind out of the gutter—I’m talking about 3D fighting games. At the risk of sounding slightly cynical, | think 3D fight- ers are a dying art. Take Bloody Roar 3 for instance; here’s a game that looks gorgeous, moves fast and has all the surface ingredients for hours of bloody ass kicking. But somewhere between getting the game to run at a liquid-smooth 60 fps, and choreo- graphing all the right moves for those gratuitous panty shots, Eighting forgot to actually design a fighting game. For starters, all the characters in BR3 feel generic. While the combatants (along with their cuddly animal counterparts) are all brimming with aesthetic design, they contribute very little variety to the actual gameplay. Pick anyone you like, big or small, because it won't affect the overall strategy of the game, which is basically to pressure your oppo- nent into a corner by unleashing as many attacks as fast as you can. This brings me to my next gripe: BR3's over-emphasis on chained combos. Sure, it requires a certain amount of timing and memoriza- tion to dish out 10 hits, but it reduces the entire game to a twitchfest. Victory goes to the guy who can jam on the buttons faster. Yes, a winner is you. Casual fighting fans looking for a quick fix of the ol’ ultra-vio- lence might enjoy BR3, but if you’re like me, Soul Calibur 2 can’t get here fast enough. Che BR3 is almost on par with 0042: Hardcore graphical- ly, and plays a lot like the second Bloody Roar. The sidestep is now part of the normal game, which is handy, and the three new fighters are all pretty fun to play. The other major new feature is the Hyper-Beast Form, which beefs up your strength, speed and Beast Meter for a short while, but | think it only contributes to the game's major weakness —it's just too easy to reverse the tide of a battle. You can painstakingly land a ton of combos to chip away at your opponent, but all it takes is one easily enacted super attack to even the score. Even as a fan of the BR games, | got frustrated fast with 3. Jonathan Bloody Roar 3 is a lemon. It offers moves, it offers combos, it even offers technique. On paper, BR3 rivals games like Soul Calibur with an impressive list of gameplay goodies. Some hands-on time will quickly reveal, however, that this game is full of mechanical problems: Characters turn around too slowly (leaving hindsides open to attacks all the time); the evade/escape system requires such pre- cise timing, it's practically useless in a live match; you can heal way too much while in Beast form, etc. BR3 is best saved for those who can enjoy flashy, button mashing gameplay, and who don't really need a technically adept fighting game engine. Shoe VISUALS SOUND INGENUITY REPLAY 8 1 6 CART Fury П ін Publisher: Midway в Developer: Midway Featured In: ЕСМ #132 Players: 1-2 Also Try: Rumble Racing Best Feature: Turbo speed boosts Worst Feature: Weak Sim Mode Web Site: www.midway.com Midway has taken an ultra-precise and often boring form of racing—Indy CART—and turned it inside out. . Real physics are out the window: The cars powerslide, launch airborne, and in general behave like those in Daytona USA. Sounds like a blast right? Well, it is and it isn’t. If you’re simply looking for the home version of CART Fury, you’re in luck—but beyond that simple order, things slow down a little. The additional Sim Mode gives you adjustment options (wing angle, tire pressure, etc.), and a few other real racing features, but tweak as you might, it’s still an arcade racer. It seems like the absence of the speed burst is the only real difference from the standard game. The mini- games are equally so-so. Challenges like Follow the Line, Block Your Opponent and Last Man Standing are only a few degrees different than an actual race. On the other hand, Lock On lets you shoot missiles at rival cars—that's a step in the right direction at least. In general, CART Fury is a decent game but doesn't quite turn the corner to greatness. Maybe if the tracks were more dynamic with hills and valleys (come on, it's arcadey anyway) and featured more interesting shortcuts, or if there were more turbo boost power-ups.... One thing is for sure — despite the landslide of loading screens, two-player is the way to play. It’s fast, the Al cars still race along, and most importantly it’s competitive. Still, try this one before MX2002 Featuring Ricky Carmichael Publisher: THQ = Developer: ^ Pacific Coast Power & Light Co. Also Try: ATV Offroad Fury й Players: 1-2 Supports: None Best Feature: Fun tricks and jumps Worst Feature: Another “extreme” crap soundtrack Web Site: www.thq.com Despite my limited knowledge of the motocross sport in real life, l've seen a few of these titles come down the line for the PS1 and walked away fairly unimpressed. MX2002, fortunately, leans more toward the fun and style of ATV Offroad Fury. The game feels very realistic—using the clutch and shocks to control your rider’s jumps has a huge bearing on your performance, so there’s definitely some skill involved. For freestyle fans, there are several different courses that:open you up to all sorts of stunts and trials (including distance jumping). | was annoyed at how much emphasis was placed on the look of the riders and bikes, though, rather than on the customization of your ride (like | care whether I'm wearing an O'Neal or a Fox helmet— screw that). Give me some new tires, shocks, exhaust options or motor mods. | reckon all the flashy outfits. contribute to the game’s visual appeal, however, which it has aplenty. | never saw the framerate - tank, and you can always see a good chunk of the course ahead of you. The only really lame part of the’ races is your inability to leave the course. Skirt off just a tad and you immediately tumble off your bike. It'd be nice to see some shortcuts or explo- ration potential, but on the whole | was impressed. Just have some music handy to drown out the unimaginative rip-off bands on the soundtráck— Sum 41? Gimme a break. Jonathan you plunk down the big bucks. Dean Before you play this game, make sure you don't have GT3 on the brain because it will absolutely ruin the experience. Speed is the name of the game, and once you understand CART Fury's simple philosophy, there's a bit of fun to be had here. Sure, there's not much depth or finesse involved, but if you're.looking for the beer bong equivalent of a velocity rush, CF gets the job done. While the much-hyped car crashes look good (debris goes hurling everywhere), CF takes the “oomph” out of them by making accidents com- monplace to the point of comedy. Ultimately, CF lacks the charm and final polish of finer arcade racers like Daytona USA or NASCAR Rumble. Ghe What's this? A motocross game that's actually respectable? Yeah, I'm shocked too. But that's what MX2002 is. It's not the prettiest game, the music is far too repetitive, and the bike's engine still doesn't . sound like it's reacting correctly to the throttle. But on the up side we have an excellent create-a-biker mode, some wonderful tutorials, and some surpris- ingly good control. In fact, I'd hazard to say that | like the jumping physics of MX2002 just as much as ATV's— learning to load the suspension and then pop the clutch on a landing shaves seconds off your lap time. Now if only the riders didn't look as stiff as Viagra overdose victims, I'd be happy. Greg Midway did a great job of keeping CART Fury as fast and smooth as it is in the arcade. But the quick races, which play a lot like a lamer, more grounded version of Hydro Thunder, only draw attention to the ghast- ly load times. There are some fun mini-game chal- lenges, and the tracks have really pretty backdrops, but you spend so much time sifting through menus and waiting for loading that it's hard to enjoy the game's few finer points. Flashing up stills of your average-looking female race crew is perhaps the game's way of trying to keep your interest, but mediocre models don't pay the pickle man when it comes to racing games. Jonathan VISUALS SOUND INGENUITY REPLAY 1 6 6 6 w.egmmag.com MX2002 lets you maneuver like уоште riding on the moon. Do a Nac-nac front flip, 360 no-hander, what- ever you want...it’s all possible. Unrealistic yes, but it does make the freestyle events more interesting. In general, the game is fast (а big plus), especially when using the 250 cc bikes, апа the pre-load and clutch features are nicely done as well. They.let you regulate how hard you launch off a jump, just like in ATV Offroad, with the clutch acting as a speed burst ' (if you do it correctly). Manipulating both is the key to timing jumps and establishing the fastest line. MX2002 is а solid title overall, but if anything, | wish the physics weren't quite as liberal. Pean ` VISUALS SOUND INGENUITY REPLAY 8 6 1 8 Publisher: Sony CEA Developer: Incognito Featured In: ЕСМ #144 == Players: 1-4 Supports: Multi-tap Best Feature: Solid game engine, nice graphics Worst Feature: Lack of variety Web Site: www.scea.com п сазе you haven’t already heard, Twisted Metal: Black is a welcome return to the series’ roots. A long time ago, a group called SingleTrac made Twisted Metal 1 and 2. After that, they were acquired by GT Interactive (who in turn, was eventually bought by Infogrames) and together, they pro- duced another excellent car combat game, Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012. Meanwhile, Sony (via 989 Studios) went on to produce Twisted Metal 3 and 4. The results were...well, you can read our mini “reviews” below. Most of the original SingleTrac team went on to form Incognito, whose first game is Twisted Metal: Black for the PS2. Any moron (including all of us) can tell you that this is excellent news for fans of the series. The boys are back in town, and they’ve put Twisted Metal back on track. What Were the Old Twisted Metal Games Like? For your convenience, here’s a handy reviews reference guide for the Twisted Metal games (all Р51) of yesteryear. Space is limited, so here ya go: Twisted Metal 1: Good Twisted Metal 2: Better Twisted Metal 3: Sucked Twisted Metal 4: Sucked Oh, and Rogue Trip, the other game by SingleTrac: Cool. Co-op and Last Man Standing, where two players pick the same cars and go at it to see who's...well, the last man standing. Тһе framerate is always smooth, but the game speed slows down a lot with four players. The new game has a decidedly dark and disturbing look to it. It’s definitely a controver- sial direction, as TM: Black is full of unsettling characters and images, both subliminal and not so subliminal. This chapter in the formerly harmless franchise is not for the faint of heart or for any youngsters, but since it’s rated Mature, this shouldn’t be too big an issue...’cept for parents who don’t pay atten- tion to ESRB ratings then go on to bitch and whine about our industry. (Twisted Metal: Small Brawl, the kid-friendly shoot-'em-up, is due out this fall for the PS1.) Anyway, prepare for а Sezen-ish nightmare experience, complete with The Rolling Stone’s “Paint it Black” jamming in the background during the end credits (a la Devil’s Advocate or Full Metal Jacket). And watch out for those disturbing images. 110 Everyone loves talking about the new Transformer in town, Sweet Tooth. Hey, so do we. When you see the upright ice-cream truck robot bearing down on you, you know you're about to get an ass forking. MISSILE KIT $ My hand really, really hurts. Don’t get any funny ideas—my hand aches from playing this game for hours and hours on end, with too few breaks in between. Part of that is due to how insanely difficult Twisted Metal: Black is. On medium level, it took me an entire frustrating afternoon just to complete a few stages in Story Mode. But the other part is due to how addicting the game is. | just couldn’t get enough. After completing it, | still had to play more. Single- player. Multiplayer. It didn’t matter. Even after my left hand was thoroughly wrecked, | was still a trooper and played on. You see, Incognito really did right by everyone and finally made that long overdue good Twisted Metal sequel. The graphics are sharp, and the levels are clever and rather innovative (like one where you're riding on a giant oil tanker that ends up crashing into an asylum on the shore, thereby making the stage twice as big). More importantly, the game physics are practically perfect for this genre (contrast that to TM3, which had a rotten game engine). The controls feel just right, too, although you really need to use the D-pad and not the analog stick to do the special attacks (this contributed to the hand wrecking). | only wish Incognito would’ve given the game a sprinkle of variety. Each Story Mode chapter is basically the same as the last (except for the boss and mid-boss stages), and the number of multiplayer fea- tures are on the light side. hoe As a fan of these types of games, and this series in particular, | couldn’t be more happy. TM had lost its luster years ago, but now it’s truly back (in black, yeah, yeah). It floors me that the original developers were able to step back into the saddle years later and dig this franchise up from the grave. The gameplay that made TM popular has returned, albeit a little more difficult. The biggest surprise is the Sezen-ish feel that gives the combat a unique edge. It goes beyond just running over briefcase-carrying pedestri- ans; the dark humor knows just when to give you a good kick in the balls. And isn’t that what мете real- ly looking for in a video game? Kraig Forget about the insipid character designs and horri- ble story line, TM:B is all about its relentless pacing and action. This is Twisted Metal like you’ve never seen it before. Screenshots just can’t do this game justice; you’ve really got to see ТМ:В in motion to truly appreciate how much graphical detail it’s jug- gling. Massive environments, morphing cars...you get the idea. Be warned though, ТМ:В will often frus- trate you. In single-player, the Al has a tendency to gang up on you, giving you very little breathing room to enjoy the cacophony. With a friend, ТМ:В is a total blast (especially the co-op Story Mode). A solid effort and a must-buy for Twisted Metal fans. Che VISUALS SOUND INGENUITY REPLAY Publisher; — г== LucasArts Developer: LucasArts Featured In: N/A Players: 1 Also Try: Grim Fandango (PC) Web Site: www.lucasarts.com Best Feature: A savior ina quality game-starved genre Worst Feature: Pop culture jabs get old pretty quickly Everyone knows the PC-style adventure game cate- gory's been hurtin for some action for a while now, and many previously devout followers have strayed from the genre, looking elsewhere to slate their thirst for a good story. But take heart, my comrades in the never-ending battle for quality adventure games, all hope is not lost! A messiah has finally come to deliv- er the faithful from this purgatorial plateau of the banal. Classic Q&A-style storytelling, mind-joggingly scrumptious puzzles, zany wit and over-the-top silli- ness, plus visual candy that'll strip your saliva glands bare from all juices, await for the willing gamer. Doesn't that sound delicious? Of course it does. And yet, all good things do come with a price. Ironically, the pop culture-heavy humor that is Monkey Island tends to go a bit overboard at times (no pun intend- ed), leaving you with a tummy full of sour grog. But then again, what's a piratey adventure without some seasickness, argh? Overall, you really can’t go wrong with this finale to a LucasArts legacy, so be sure not to miss the boat. Jeanne SOUND INGENUITY REPLAY 9 9 8 1 VISUALS Fur Fighters: Viggo's Revenge Publisher: = r= Acclaim Developer: Bizarre Creations Players: 1-4 Also Try: Fur Fighters (DC), Rayman 2 Revolution Supports: None Web Site: www.acclaim.com Best Feature: New cel- shaded look Worst Feature: No improve- ments, just so-so additions There’s nothing | hate more than lukewarm games, except maybe lukewarm spin-offs of lukewarm games. And lo and behold, who was given the covet- ed opportunity to review one of them? Ha, ha, stop laughing. So, I’m just going to tell you straight-up that there is absolutely nothing remarkable about Fur Fighters: VR. The tongue-in-cheek humor of cute animals shooting the stuffing out of each other, and the ability to switch characters (and their unique abilities) mid-play, may have been enough to float Fur Fighters, but Bizarre apparently believed they had themselves a winning formula for FF PS2. No additions worth mentioning (unless уоцте dying to know how many more levels have been added so there’s more of the same to do over and over again), or improvements concerning gameplay that would make what FF:VR offers better, or heck, any different from FF, have been made. Instead, most of the work apparently went into the new cel-shaded look (ooh..aah...zzz). But hey, if everyone else is doing it, why not? Um, right? Right? Jeanne VISUALS SOUND INGENUITY REPLAY 1 1 5 9 Publisher: Sega Developer: Hitmaker fe Featured In: ЕСМ #144 (9 Players: 1 Supports: Jump Pack, SegaNet Best Feature: More Crazy Taxi goodness... Worst Feature: ...But only one new feature Web Site: www.sega.com Considering Crazy Taxi is one of my favorite Dreamcast games, I’ve been anticipating a sequel for a long time now, assuming whatever Hitmaker pro- duced would be...well, a hit. And while that’s pretty much true, | think | was expecting a little too much from Crazy Taxi 2. What we've got here is basically the same game with one major new feature (the jump button), four new drivers that really aren't all that different from the original four, and two new cities to play around in. | guess my biggest problem is that I'm not a huge fan of the new cities (both parts of NYC). Тһеуте too congested and enclosed to real- ly go fast in, not to mention it’s way too easy to lose your sense of direction. Some would contend that part of mastering the game is to memorize each area, and | somewhat agree, but it totally destroys the pick-up-and-play aspect that the first game did so well. Still, once you do master the new jump feature and memorize the courses, Crazy Taxi 2 is a very solid game, easily worth the price of admission. With a whole bunch of new mini-games and secrets to unlock, Crazy Taxi 2 gives fans of the series some- thing to look forward to. The uninitiated should prob- ably save some money and buy the original Crazy Taxi for $20, since the sequel really should have been called Crazy Taxi: New York Edition. But if you liked the first game, go ahead and pick up CT2. Just be sure you know what you’re getting into. Greg Publisher: Agetec Developer: Wow f, ж Also Try: Virtua Athlete (©) Players: 4-2 ` Supports: Jump Pack Best Feature: Tons of events Worst Feature: Too simple, too often Web Site: www.agetec.com After playing oodles of me-too Track and Field games in the past year, it was a welcome breath of fresh air to try Sports Jam's unique spin on the genre. This all- in-one American sports bonanza cuts through all of the boring crap in some of our favorite sports and distills them into easy-to-play mini-games. A handful of them are pretty fun, such as the closest-to-the-pin golf contest and pong-like hockey game. But for every good sport, there's one that's so simple that you’d probably need to be in diapers to enjoy it. Football has been watered down into a button mash- er, and | guess that’s all right, since pounding your fingers into calloused oblivion seems to be a requi- site in this genre. But then you've got basketball free-throwing that put me to sleep, an incredibly easy Field Goal competition that makes every kicker look like Morten Andersen, and lastly, a cycling event that managed to make the sport even more boring than usual. The good news is that if you play the Arcade Mode, you can cherry-pick four events to play, avoiding the bad ones. But in the two-player mode, уоште pretty much stuck playing most of them. Which is too bad, because many of these events play worse as a two-player game than they do solo. You can get around some of the game’s flaws by customizing it in the options menu, but it’s not really worth the trouble unless you're looking for a sports game that your baby brother can play. Krai | wish my little CRX could hop around like these CT2 cabs. Vaulting over bridges, buses and other such obstacles introduces a whole new dimension to the зате— but as the only major upgrade, it's a little dis- appointing. Maybe a few more variables such as destructible building fronts or the ability to eject fares might be cool. But then again, at least they didn't ruin it with too many crap changes. And if any- thing, tooling around the congested New York City streets is a tad more challenging than the hills of San Francisco. So fans of CT need not worry, it's more of the same fun with a few new twists, namely, mul- tiple fares, jumpin’ and new mini-games. Dean There aren’t many games that can say they have golf, hockey, soccer and more, but you could make the argument that this really has none of them. While the graphics may show a hoops or pigskin player, you’re actually just playing a dressed-up Pong or a sim- ple button masher. That said, Sports Jam still could have been great if there was any technique to it. After a couple tries, you can master the short one-player mode, and many events in the two-player matches are mundane. Still, something must be said for SJ's originality. After all, where else can you pulverize tackling dummies into gold coins before catching a touchdown pass with a football player? Dan The Big Apple seems like a natural fit for a Taxi sequel, but | worked up more of a sweat launching off of the hilly streets of San Francisco. New York gives you lots of traffic, tight turns and overpasses, but there aren’t many places where you can put the pedal о the metal or get big air. You can jump at the touch of a button now, but that doesn’t give me the adrenaline rush | got from the original. That isn’t to say this isn’t exciting. It makes me feel alive when | chase gaggles of mimes, and it’s hard to resist crash- ing my cab when they’re paying my fare. With moments like that, it’s hard not to love СТ2, but it’s harder to like it as much as the original. Kraig VISUALS SOUND INGENUITY REPLAY Sports Jam is a little like Track & Field, only not asi depth. Most of the events take only a few tries to master. Once you have the mechanics figured out, like Home Run Derby for example, it’s just a race against the clock. But while some events are easy (bicycling and football), others are appropriately tough. The golf contest Closest to the Hole is great. The hockey events are a blast as well. Out of all the sports you're bound to find something you like. | could see little kids, maybe 8 to 10 years old, taking a shine to Sports Jam, due to its easy learning curve and two-player yucks. But older gamers, or fans of the T&F series will get bored fast. Dean VISUALS SOUND INGENUITY REPLAY 6 6 J 6 Digimon World 2 Bandai Publisher: Developer: Bandai Featured In: ЕСМ #141 Players: 1-2 Supports: Dual Shock Best Feature: Nifty Digimon in blocky 3D glory Worst Feature: Slow like molasses Web Site: www.bandaigames.com My opinion was unique among the Review Crew at this time last уеаг— | rather enjoyed the first Digimon World for PlayStation. | thought it was a charming RPG-lite that captured the essence of Bandai’s portable digital monsters in a neat, prerendered, semi-3D way. Now the Digimon are back, and after a year hiatus they are worse for the wear. While the first game may not have been technically great, it captured the pet-raising Tamagotchi-esque elements of Digimon perfectly; if you liked that sort of thing, then you were happy. Now the whimsy and explorato- ry feel of the first game has been replaced with a monotonous, generic, turn-based, Pokémon Stadium-wannabe RPG. Perhaps this was an attempt to bring the series up to speed, but it loses some- thing in the transition. The three-on-three battles (set against almost solely black backdrops) are tedious enough to cure any insomniac. 22272. Sure there are some nifty conventions, such as “Digivolutionizing” your Digimon (combining Digimon to create stronger beasts), moving around the game world in your high- ly customizable Digi-beetle (kind of like using a Chocobo to travel in Final Fantasy games), and an odd two-player button-mashing contest, but a few nifty ideas do not a great game make. In this case, they do not make a particularly good game, and even the most die-hard Digimon fan is strongly urged to rent this one first. Milkman After this poo-poo ugly, embarrassingly sloppy, and overall just plain boring sequel, the only thing keep- ing this rip-off franchise alive will be overly devoted fans or moms looking for a quick fix to quiet their video game-starved kids. Although DW2 abandons the “virtual pet”-tiness of DW, its attempt at creating a Digi-world RPG is pathetic. No work and absolute- ly no spice went into the regurgitated stew that spawned this game. Recycled animations, laborious turn-based battles, extremely dull dungeon-crawls, anti-slick item/equipment managing, and amazingly bad graphics will make you want to 1) puke, 2) die laughing or 3) punch something. Jeanne Even forgetting that Digimon is, at its heart, a Pokémon rip-off, it’s a wonder anyone would’ve worked their way through the first Digimon World, much less this game. It looks as if the designers of part 2 were fans of Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon, because the domain areas look almost the same: black backgrounds and (mostly) plain floors. Combat is about as exciting as watching paint dry—single Digimon perform not-so-flashy attacks against, yep, black backgrounds. The game's interface is so slow and chunky that it feels like a first-generation PS1 game. Digimon fans may be able to overlook the shortcomings, but Га stay away. Chris INGENUITY REPLAY VISUALS SOUND 2 4 3 2 94871123 тақыр 1075, 11 ITE 2 Tellah 404. Publisher: Square Electronic Arts Developer: Square Featured In: ЕСМ #144 Players: 12 Also try: Final Fantasy Anthology Best Feature: Chrono Trigger and FFIV, man! Worst Feature: Sticky load times Web Site: www.squaresoft.com FF Chronicles is, in my eye, proof positive that there is a God. Or at the very least, proof that Square is willing to pad the dead space between The Bouncer and Final Fantasy X with two classic RPGs that should have been rereleased a long, long time ago. But who's complaining? Not me. Two of the finest RPGs ever to grace the living-room screen, FFIV and Chrono Trigger (goodbye insane eBay prices!) should give role-playing fanatics plenty of reasons to smile over the summer. Between the tale of the ousted air- force commander Cecil and his quest to stop the evil Baron, and the legendary adventure (with its multi- ple endings) featuring Crono and his time-travelling friends, 1 am finally able to pack away my weath- ered Super Nintendo cartridges and go digital. The new features included for the PS version (a dash option and two-player action during battles for FFIV, added CG and hand-drawn animation for both, plus reworked translations, art galleries and other bonus- es) are certainly worth the wait, but there is a rather annoying niggle in the form of pesky load times. Chronicles loses a point for having some long load times before, during and after nearly every battle, which (as you might know) makes up a large part of the game. Nothing on the Legacy of Kain scale, but compared to the SNES carts it's like a mosquito that won't leave you alone. Still, beyond that, FFC is essential playing. Milkman If the term “classic, old-school RPG” conjures up fond memories of playing Final Fantasy VII, then FF Chronicles is not meant for you. This is really old stuff, with antiquated interfaces and graphics. But this “stuff” is also the stuff of legends. We're talking enthralling story lines, great character development, innovative (for the time) play mechanics, and more. If you can get past how outdated these titles look and feel, you'll find a couple of gems in Chrono Trigger and FFIV, two of the best Super Nintendo RPGs ever. Note: If you're giving true “classic, old-school RPG” gaming a shot for the first time, get FF Anthology instead. FFV and VI can't be beat. Shoe I don't get why these remakes aren't perfect. Final Fantasy IV suffers some major slowdown when you use menus in combat, and the load times before bat- tles and switching to the sub-screen in Chrono Trigger are absurd. That said, these are still very playable versions of two of the most important games in RPG history, and taken as such are worth buying. All the old-timers will get to relive their Super NES glory days while all the kids who cut their teeth on Final Fantasy МИ might actually learn something about the genre’s roots. Aside from some nice new FMV and a decidedly better translation on FFIV, though, don’t expect a lot of improvements. Greg VISUALS SOUND INGENUITY REPLAY 4 1 1 9 112 у Mirra Freestyle Publisher: Acclaim Developer: Z-Axis Also try: ra: EVERYONE Mat Hoffman Players: 2 12 Best Feature: Polished ver- Supports: sion ofthe game Dual Shock Worst Feature: Not worth Web Site: paying for twice www.acclaim.com The first Dave Mirra managed to carve a niche for itself by being of a higher quality than the rest of the x-treme wannabes (cough...Grind Session...cough... ТІ Lavin) and more than just a blatant Tony Hawk rip- off. Maximum Remix gives gamers who loved the first more of the same, and, er, more! New tracks, chal- lenges, characters, an expert mode and (finally) wall rides arrive just in time to go head to head with Mat Hoffman. Sure the default controls are less intuitive than Tony Hawk’s (sorry, Z-Axis, but that’s a hard act to follow), but the mighty modifier-button was always Dave Mirra’s equalizer, and so it remains. Clearly the extra time has allowed Z-Axis to neaten things up. The game's graphics seem tighter and less warpy than before, all making this a superior game to its predecessor. For the first-time purchase, this is obvi- ously the Dave Mirra you want, as worthwhile as Activision’s own BMX effort. The problem is if you already own the first version, there isn’t enough new to warrant buying it a second, slightly improved, tme Milkman VISUALS SOUND INGENUITY REPLAY 1 1 3 9 World’s Scariest Police Chases Publisher: Activision Developer: Fox Interactive Featured Іп: EGM #140 Players: 1-2 Best Feature: Variety of Also Try: missions Driver 2 Worst Feature: Sheriff Web Site: Bunell’s spastic voiceovers www.activision.com The prospect of chasing drunk drivers, car thieves and drug smugglers like the guys on television intrigued me, but sadly, this game has been watered down into a long-winded crash and bash fest. “Apprehending” suspects boils down to ramming and shooting their car more than they do to you. Smashing cars to bits satisfies the hillbilly in all of us, but there’s no technique to stopping the vehicle уоште chasing. If the developers watched the show this game is based on, they could have easily lift- ed a few cool things out of it. For example, | once saw an episode that showed the technique that offi- cers use to make a car stop by hitting it with their own. None of that stuff made it into the game. You can use firearms, but you can’t aim to shoot out tires. Instead, you hit the suspect’s car and lower its ener- gy bar. There are a few bright spots, such as a rene- gade tank chase and a two-player co-op mode, but those can’t hide the fact that this game isn’t anything more than a drab Destruction Derby with added sirens and donuts. Kraig VISUALS SOUND INGENUITY -REPLAY 1 6 6 6 Look familiar? The Oracle games mix old Zelda ele- ments in two all-new carts. Publisher: Nintendo wao The Legend of Zelda: e know what you're thinking: two new Zelda Game Boy games in one month? No way. They must be like the different color Pokémon titles—the same game with only teeny-tiny adjustments, right? Wrong. Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages are both completely unique games, with their own plots, characters, dungeons, items, secrets, and tons of other stuff unique to each of them. The two games do have one thing in common with Pokémon, though—the ability to link up to get special items in each. In fact, the only way to open up all of the dungeons and face the true final boss is by finishing one game, transferring a file to the other, and then finishing it. Yes, it seems too good to be true, but two new and awesome 2D Zelda games are out now. Bring on the long plane trips and Oracle Series шынба ы өз се Travel in Time (Ages, above) or across Seasons (below). | "lY Developer: Capcom COLOR Featured In: ЕСМ #143 Players: 1 Supports: Link cable Also Try: Link’s Awakening а Web site: www.nintendo.com Саг rides! While both Oracle games are truly superb, | have to go with Ages as my personal favorite, thanks to the more thought-provoking puzzles and SNES Zelda-esque world | design (the way things are broken up between past and present reminds me a bit of the Light and Dark worlds in A Link to the Past). The dungeons are hardcore, the new | items are sweet (I love the Switch Hook), and even the | music is inspired, despite half of it being ripped directly from Link’s Awakening. As a stand-alone game, Oracle of Ages is great, but when coupled with Oracle of Seasons it becomes one of the most satisfying GBC experiences | ever. || makes for a great GBA game, too... John R | | | | This game is excellent—go buy it. In fact, buy two (this and Seasons)...that's all there is to it. It’s amazing when one Zelda game makes it out every two years—it’s a dang miracle that two old-school Zelda games were released on the same day. It’s not like each is half a game, these are full-length action-RPGs. Ages (and Seasons, for that matter) is a great combination of the sword-slashing action and puzzle solving that makes the Zelda series so classic. The ring system, seeds, mini- games, time travel (changing the future in the past)— you're going to wonder why уоште playing a portable game at home so much. This is a must-own. Chris | 8 INGENUITY 9 REPLAY 8 Take the awesome ability to switch back and forth between two slightly different worlds (like Link to the Past on the Super NES), adjust the visuals to Game Boy levels (like Link’s Awakening DX for the GBC), add a ton of fiendishly clever puzzles and what do | you get? Oracle of Ages, one of the best portable | games ever. Yes, it may look plain, especially now | that the GB Advance has hit, but once you start play- ing this addictive action-RPG you'll forget about all that, trust me. Ages is, at its heart, another 2D adventure in the Zelda mold: helping townspeople, grabbing hearts and rupees, exploring a huge world and dungeons all the while. But the added emphasis | on puzzles here works wonders; it’s all about figuring | out how to use switches, blocks, or any of the over a dozen special items you can find to progress. It’s not | а chess match though—Ages does a great job of forcing you to use your head without straying so far from the action that your thumbs get itchy. Complaints are minor: Switching items (especially rings) could be a lot less annoying with a better inter- face. The overall story never captivated me either, but the characters (including many from the N64 Zeldas) and funny side-plots kept me happy. Great (and tough!) bosses, tons of secrets and more. If you must choose only one, make it Ages. Mark Best Feature: Puzzles Worst Feature: Interface E LIE E E Jš Jš Ë S535! Both new Zelda games feature puzzles in their dungeons, but Ages definitely outdoes Seasons. Here Link ricochets an Ember Seed to light the final torch and open a door to the next room. Best Feature: Link System Worst Feature: All the batteries you'll go through UTICA о www 45990 Here Link uses his Magnetic Gloves (an item not found in Ages) to pull himself across a river of lava in the underworld of Subrosia (also Seasons only). A curious Jawa watches. If you were a fan of the previous Game Boy Zelda, or any of the 2D Zeldas for that matter, then really, don’t even bother reading this. Just go out and buy one of (or even better, both of) the Oracle games. You'll thank me later. Тһеуте both fantastic games, and despite being developed by an outsider (Capcom), are very worthy of the Zelda name. If you decide to go with Seasons, you'll find that it's a more action- | packed affair, with less concentration on puzzles and | character development than Ages. This is hardly a | bad thing, but in my case at least, | found that | pre- | ferred the more puzzle-heavy setup of Ages. The dungeons in Seasons are exquisitely designed, though they don't get incredibly challenging until around level 6 or so. The new items are very cool though (the Magnetic Gloves are my favorite), and the Rings add a nice touch of variety to the gameplay. Ultimately, the thing that really pushes these games over the top is their interaction with one another. The “Secrets” stuff, where you take pass- words from the second game and use them in the | first game (and then vice-versa) to get items is total- ly brilliant, and the only way to see the true last boss and get the “real” ending is to play through both games in succession. An overall fantastic game that should not be missed. John R 13 | Unlike Pokémon, where there are two versions of a game | but you only really need опе to get the experience, every- | one needs both of these games. They share some com- | mon themes and characters, but are totally separate quests. | played Seasons second, and it’s just as good as Ages. The whole idea of linking the games and bring- ing items from one into the other is done so perfectly you wonder why it hasn’t been done until now. In the graph- | ics department, it's about on par with Zelda DX— not any- thing jaw-dropping, but still really good. | can honestly say | have no complaints about this game (or Ages). What a great way to finish off the GBC. Chris Two new awesome Zelda games in one month? Hallelujah! Graphically identical to Ages, Seasons has a bit more of an action slant to it, but it’s still puzzley enough (with the different seasons, alternate world and bevy of items) to earn my love. As with Ages, the overall | story is ho-hum, but nothing so bad | ever lost interest. | Old-school Zelda fans will love the familiar gameplay and all the other references to the earlier games. The difficulty also ramps up nicely, always giving you a gen- | eral idea of what to do next without spelling it out. And | the link-up feature? Kick ass! As if any 2D Zelda fan need- | ed more reason to play both games. Mark 8 INGENUITY 9 REPLAY 8 VISUALS 8 SO Tricks of the Trade By Trickman Terry tricks @ziffdavis.com TRICK OF THE MONTH Zone of the Enters T HEALTH, a= AMMUNITION AND VERSUS MODE Health and Ammo In the middle of the game, press START to pause. Then press L1, L1, 12, 12, La, Ва, La, Вл, R2, R1. Your health and ammunition will be refilled. Note that your level will decrease each time you enter it. 2 Versus On the title screen (where it says, "Press Start But- ton”), press Circle, X, Right, Left, Right, Left, Down, Down, Up, Up. You'll hear a Sound confirming that the code was entered correctly. Press START and scroll through the main menu options until you see Vers- us. Choose it to fight a one- on-one battle with the com- puter or a second player. PLAYSTATION 2 Crazy Taxi TAXI TRICKS On the Mode Selection screen, choose Arcade or Original. Then enter these tricks as shown. No Arrows After choosing how many min- utes you want to play, the *Now Loading" screen will appear. Press and hold R1+START until the Driver Selection screen appears. You will see *No Arrows" on the bottom-left side of the screen to confirm that the code worked. No Destination Mark After choosing how many min- utes you want to play, the *Now B View Changes Loading" screen will appear. Press and hold L1+START until the Driver Selection screen appears. You will see *No Destination Mark" on the bot- tom-left side of the screen to confirm that the code worked. Expert Mode After choosing how many min- utes you want to play, the *Now Loading" screen will appear. Press and hold Li+R1+START until the driver selection screen appears. You will see "Expert" on the lower-left side of the Screen to confirm that the code worked. Expert mode has no arrows and no destination mark. El taxi Bike On the Driver Select screen, quickly press L1+R1, L1+R1, L1+R1 and then choose your dri- ver. You will hear a bike bell if you entered the code correctly. Now you will be picking up pas- sengers on a bike instead of dri- ving a taxi. Another Day On the Driver Select screen, press R1, and then press and hold R1 while choosing a driver. You will see "Another Day" on the bottom-left side of the screen to confirm that the code worked. The locations of the passengers will be changed. (Note: You must have a second controller plugged into port 2 of your PlayStation 2 for this trick to work.) In the middle of an Arcade or Original game, take controller 2 and hold L1+R1. While holding these buttons, press one of the following but- tons to see these new views. First Person: Circle (Press Circle again for Rear View) MPH: Square Third Person: Triangle Normal View: X Gauntlet: Dark Legacy MANY INCREDIBLE CODES When you are asked to enter your name on the Character Select screen, put in any of these cheat passwords for the results shown. Invulnerability INVULN El Infinite Supershot SSHOTS Nine Potions and Keys in Each Level ALLFUL Full Turbo PURPLE El Pojo the Chicken 114 EGG911 Reflective Shot REFLEX Growth and Shrink Enemy DELTA1 $10,000 Gold in Each Level 10000K 3-Way Shot MENAGE Extra Speed XSPEED Rapid Fire QCKSHT X-Ray Glasses PEEKIN Chris CSS222 Waitress KAO292 Karate Guy SJB964 Cheerleader CEL721 Ratface Knight RAT333 Smiley Face STX222 Garm бАВМ99 Sumner SUM224 General ІСЕбоо S&M Dwarf №0069 Chainsaw Guy KJH105 00.1 Widow Maker Sky General SKY100 Castle General CAS400 Punkrocker PNK666 Battle General ВАТ9оо Мија ТАК118 Desert General DES700 B Football Player RIZ721 Invisibility 000000 School Girl АҮА555 Міке DIB626 Guy with Mace ARV984 Town General TWN300 Mountain General MTN200 Sick Garm GARMoo Stig STG33 Pro} а dma ap IN Rumble Racing HIDDEN CUPS, TRACK, ETC. From the main menu, go into the Game Options. Move down to the Load and Save option and bring up the Password option. On the Password screen, enter your name as one of the codes shown below to unlock these results. Pro Cup 2 P1PROCiPU Pro Cup 3 Q2PROC2YT Elite Cup 1 AEPPROPUC Elite Cup 2 ILETECIMB Elite Cup 3 ILCTEC2VB Elite Cup 4 ILQTEC3PU EA Elite Cup LEAITEPUC EA Stunt Cup YEAMPLOWW [ Circus Minimus Track ZEAGTLUKE High Roller Vehicle HGIROLREL РА Vortex Vehicle 1AREXT1AR Sporticus Vehicle OPSRTISUC Van Itty Vehicle VTYANIYTT pr ЖЕТ рор TAtion сеегесе NAINA