Day One

Welcome to the first day of E3! The excitment has been great here - especially since the announcement of Sega's Saturn units immediate sale. You read it correctly, start harrasing your local store - they are out now! Sega debuted the Saturn with a complete line up of games including Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, Daytona USA, and several others. Sega plans to have 15 titles for release within two weeks.

Cooling down from Sega's heat were both Nintendo and 3DO. These two system makers made sure to let gamers know that their current systems are not to be forgotten... and their new systems not to be seen. An uncomfirmed early 1996 release date is slated for both systems. However, the new 3DO and SNES games previewed were hot! Nintendo was flaunting their new Donkey Kong Country 2, and Killer Instinct for the SNES and Gameboy. First impressions of the new DKC were awesome. The SNES Killer Instinct looks impressive, but pales in comparison to its arcade counterpart. Doom for the SNES using the FX2 chip was demoed at Williams. More titles for the Virtual Boy were announced. Nintendo announced that they are planning to price the Virtual Boy at $179.00 with a pack-in game.

Don't forget about the 3DO this early, however. They previewed 50 new titles at the show today, and some were very hot. Also, a short development video of the M2 was shown. Current specs for the system include a wide variety of 3D functions that the demo tape really showed off.

In the Sony PlayStation corner an official release date has been set to September 9th, with a suggested retail price of $299.00. Expect to see many new games on this killer new system. The floors were flooded with developers rushing their PlayStation CD's to completion. Namco was leading the pack with Ridge Racer, and Tekken - an intense 3D fighting game. Psygnosis showed an impressive Destruction Derby preview that supported two-player simultaneous dual-system play. Williams PlayStation preview of MK3 was a near perfect rendition of the arcade version. Mindscape announced several new titles to be cross licenced on the PlayStation as well as the PC (ie. Warhammer!)

The PC Gaming arena had a little action on the Windows95 front with promised Windows95 ports of the Warhammer series, as well as a hot new cyber-racing game. Thrustmaster (the joystick folks) announced a new electronic golf club, that is fully interactive. Hopefully it will be as sensitive as their flight-stick series. Also, the PC version of MK3 was announced. Microsoft announced further upgrades to their Arcade series, but had no real new exciting news. IBM also announced that they are producing several new educational games for the Windows platforms. No new news on OS/2 gaming... yet.

Take me back to the E3 coverage home page, or read Day 2.