Introduction
As most of you know the famous E3 Convention has just come to an end this last Saturday, May 15th. This year it was held at the L.A. Convention Center in California. It is this show where both the entertainment software & supporting hardware companies show off their latest and greatest. Companies that attend include console companies like Nintendo, Sony, Sega, and every software company you can imagine (e.g. Activision, Shiny, Sierra, Capcom, etc..) This show makes for an interesting visit given the amount of money that is spent by each of the attending companies.
Cool New Games
There were plenty new games being demonstrated at the show this year, way to many! Of course the coolest games being demonstrated are still not available in the stores yet. Five of these games captured my attention.
Quake 3 Arena
The most popular, given the activity, was Activisions booth at the Quake III Arena section. Here they had four systems setup in multi-player mode for the attendees/Quakeheads to enjoy. Each system was equipped with an Nvidia TNT 2 and Pentium III processor. The newer version of Quake 3 Arena being displayed included some new maps and the addition of spent shells from the weapons.
Messiah
A playable version of Messiah, by Shiny, was being demonstrated at 3Dfx’s booth. At the last E3 convention in Atlanta this game was only displayed behind closed doors. This game sports some nice 3D graphics and cool story line. You are this little baby angel that is able to take over your enemies body, this is truly “God Mode”, and kick some butt. Messiah is targeted for release later this winter.
Team Fortress II
http://www.sierrastudios.com/games/teamfortress
It was also cool to see the upcoming version of Team Fortress II, by Sierra. This team oriented multi-player game should be a huge hit given the popularity of the current “Team Fortress” which is based off of the Quake I engine. The new Team Fortress II game is based off of a modified version of the Half-Life engine. Some of the objects will be comprised of up to 3000 polygons! The Team Fortress II demo looked great. Can’t wait for its release.
Besides all of the titles being displayed in the convention center I was invited to check out some new upcoming titles that are due out next year. These demonstrations took place outside of the convention center in a fenced off area. In this fenced off area were several recreational vehicles and a bunch of young ladies dressed in catholic school uniforms. However, I doubt these girls purchased their outfits at the Catholic uniform shop! Enough said. Anyway, I was treated to a demo of two really promising titles.
Fly!
Fly! is a really cool flight simulator. The graphics are extremely realistic. Definitely the coolest feature of this game was its clouds. Really! As the plane would enter the cloud(s) they would whiz past you just like the real thing. I must admit I’m not much of a flight simulator junky. But the graphics on this game might be enough to get me behind the controls.
Heavy Metal (on a AMD-K7)
http://www.ritual.com/FAKK2/index.html
Heavy Metal was the coolest game I saw at E3. This game is based off the same ideas as the very popular “Heavy Metal” animated movie. Heavy Metal uses a modified version of the Quake III engine. The demonstration consisted of a top-heavy woman running around a very cool world. There was this one scene where the lady character had to maneuver through some obstacles including milk spewing from several ver huge breasts. Kinda weird but the graphics were excellent! The breast milk also affected the traction of the character as she ran through the obstacles. The K7 based system! The frame rates looked great given the complexity of the graphics. One of the Heavy Metal game level designers also showed how each of the objects in the game could have varying polygon counts depending on the performance of the system. Of course, the AMD-K7 system was able to handle the high polygon counts with no prob! Anyway, both Heavy Metal and the K7 system were the highlights for me at the show.
3D Hardware Attendees
I was surprised that Nvidia cancelled from attending the show. However, a majority of the booths demonstrating their games were using Nvidia TNT2 based accelerators. Including Activision with their Quake III Arena demo systems, and Sierra with its Team Fortress II demo.
3Dfx had a very nice booth! In the booth they demonstrated a lot of titles including Quake III Arena and Messiah.
3Dfx obviously spent a great deal of money on advertising. It seemed that everywhere I looked there was some sort of 3Dfx advertisement. My hat is off to 3Dfx for their advertising efforts. Besides 3Dfx’s booth, Microsoft’s booth was the only place I recall seeing Voodoo3 based accelerators.
Summary
Looking at upcoming entertainment software it is very clear that PC gaming is moving forward as the hardware permits. Most of the software company spokes people I talked to all mentioned that the video accelerator is the systems limiting factor. Hopefully the introduction of faster CPU’s, buses, and video accelerators will allow the software developer community to raise the level of complexity/realism for the next generation of PC gaming.
