Future Entertainment Show, Earls Court 2, London
28th October

First impressions of the show were good, ie the hall wasn't packed to the
brim with sweaty 14-year-olds.  However, after a quick wander around,
I realised that some of the advertised attractions were not there (what's
new?).  3do were not there, and neither was Killer Instinct.  I did
see Cruis'n USA, running on the Williams arcade setup.  It looked rather
good, but I didn't get a chance to have a go.

Atari were at the show, but their stand was a bit disappointing for me,
because most of the Jag kiosks were running AvP, with only a few running
T2K and Wolf3d.  I was hoping to see some new games.  I guess there were
about 15 Jgs on the stand.  There were lots of kids playing AvP, with 
others crowding round for a look.  There didn't seem to be any instructions
on how to play the games, so the younger kids were randomly pressing
buttons and not getting anywhere, but the older kids seemed to have worked
them out.

The only new Jag games were on the Jaguar owners club stand, and their
neighbour, Telegames.  Telegames had BSF and Troy Aikman football.  I 
couldn't see whether TAF was on a finished cart because the machine was
hidden away.  I had a short play, but since I know next to nothing about
American football (apart from the fact that it's rugby for wimps ;-) ) I 
didn't get very far.  They had flyers for the game, showing the finished
box, so there can be no lame excuses about 'waiting for the box art'.

The Jag owners club had BSF, Double Dragon V, AvP and Sensible Soccer.
DDV looked finished as well, as far as I could tell.  I played against
one of the kids helping to run the stand.  He thrashed me.  The game
seems OK, but nothing that the SNES couldn't do.  Sensible soccer was 
great, I beat some guy 2-nil.  The EEPROMs were dated 20th October, so
I guess it was the final version, or very near.

They also had a video of the forthcoming games, including Kasumi Ninja
(version 0.42, 6th August), Checkered flag, Zool 2, and Iron Soldier.
KN looked OK, but it was the first time I've really seen it, so I can't
comment on any improvements.  CF looked good, but the frame rate was pretty
low. I have no idea how old that footage was, but it did have fog effects but
no other cars on the track.  

Iron Soldier.  What can I say apart from "I want it. Now!'.  It was
incredibly smooth, and the scrolling backgrounds of mountains looked superb.
I loved the bit when the robot looked down and stepped on a tank.  It was
only a short clip, but it looked like the foot was gouraud shaded.  I'm
not really sure, after all, how often are you going to be looking at your
feet?

I spoke to Darryl Still (sp?), the marketing guy for Atari UK.  The games that
have gone into production are:
 
Club Drive, Dragon, Doom and CF

in that order.  We should see a game a week from the second week in November.
Syndicate is finished, and Theme Park should have been finished that day
(Friday), but Darryl wasn't sure, as most of the Bullfrog guys were at
the show.

They have just flown Eclipse out to Sunnyvale, to finish Iron Soldier.
He said they usually fly teams out for the last two weeks of development.
If they get it finished in the next 10 days (speaking on friday) then it
will make it out before Christmas.  Darryl also mentioned something about
KN and Cannon Fodder, but I've forgotten what.  OK, shoot me, but I was
too excited about Iron Soldier.

About the Sega deal.  Sega is getting T2K but not AvP, and Atari will get
the Virtua series but not Sonic.  Darryl mentioned something about
the reason for developing FFL was that they knew there was a chance of them
getting the rights to do Virtua Fighter.  Are they going to change the
characters and setting at the last minute?

Jeff Minter, Jason Kingsley and Darryl Still were all involved in discussions
at the various theatres at the show.  Jeff Minter is one _funny_ guy.  He kept
plugging Atari, and mentioned that D2K 'may have a secret level where there
are some very large camels, and there might be a code to turn all the humanoids
into llamas...'.  It will _not_ be 1st person perspective, but will stick 
to the original format.
Jeff got a lot of praise.  The guy from PC Format, who was chairing the
discussion, introduced him as 'programmer of the best shoot-em-up ever.'
Tempest 2000 is coming to the PC...

Oh yeah.  I spoke to Jeff Minter.

Cheers,

Paul Donovan