Sega Genesis CD-ROM
Sixteen-year-old Glenn Rubenstein has played more than 1,000 different video games. Glenn can load a tough new game onto one of the many machines in his bedroom and beat it in eight hours. He's become such an expert that his local newspaper started carrying a column of his game reviews, which is now about to go national. Here's what Glenn is raving about these days:
The most exciting type of CD video games by far are the Sega Genesis line. These new multimedia games use full-motion video, digitized sound, full-length musical scores and interactive storylines. They are almost movies - Sega has set up an entire studio and hired professional composers, animators, and scriptwriters to create these multimedia CDs.
Of the 20 games delivered for Christmas 1992, two are real standouts: "Night Trap" and "Sewer Shark."
Picture this: A group of villains have taken over a house where college co-eds are planning to spend a weekend. In "Night Trap," it's up to you to save them. The house is loaded with all sorts of booby traps, including trap doors, springs on beds, explosives, and others that you must set off at the right time to defeat the villains. The interface for this game is easy: point and click. You can switch the room you are viewing on the screen with just the push of a button. And, as if the game weren't challenging enough, in every scene there is full-motion video for the backgrounds which seem to show you something different every time you play it.
"Sewer Shark" is a shoot-'em-up game with a difference. You are racing down a sewer at top speed. Your mission is to clean it up - not of litter, but of evil forces. Your targets (primarily rats) are fast moving and you never know what will come at you next. Like "Night Trap," "Sewer Shark" runs in full-motion video, which makes it extremely fast paced and sets new standards for non-stop action. In fact, there is so much action and so many scenarios, the game comes on two discs, making it an exceptional value. Sega is putting forth a tremendous effort to make sure that their CD-ROM unit is not just another average peripheral. The multimedia system is technologically superb, but the key is that it now has the games available to make use of its abilities.
Sega Genesis CD Player, $299, Night Trap, $60, from Sega of America, 800-872-7342 or 415-591-7529. Sewer Shark, $60 from Sony Image Soft, 310-858-3777.
STREET CRED The Machines Take Over War in the Age of Intelligent Machines
Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier
Game Boy
The Law Catches Up
