News, rumors and other information (originally posted 04/17/95)
Color Virtual Boy
Ain't happening. We recently talked with Reflection Technologies (the guys behind the Virtual Boy's LED technology) regarding the possibility of using new Green and Blue LED technologies in a color unit. Sure they said, they were working on it, but they are in pre-pre-development stage at this point. The representative for Reflection told me it would be "three to five years" before we saw a working prototype in their hand-held fax viewers... let alone in a Nintendo unit. So, the word is No Color Virtual Boy... sigh...
Saturn maybe not so stellar
We recently ran across some information regarding the internal hardware for coin-op games like Daytona USA, Desert Tank, and Virtua Fighter II. It turns out that one of the main components that makes these games so graphicaly stunning is a piece of hardware manufactured by Martin Marietta called REAL3D. REAL3D is a family of graphics engines based on technology developed for astronaut training and high performace combat sims. This hardware is capable up generating a minimum of 500,000 visible, textured polygons per second with 24-bit true color mapping... Sounds great doesn't it? Well in a call with Martin Marietta, Ferrari Man learned all of this and more. It turns out that Sega never aquired the liscensing rights to include this hardware in it's Saturn consoles! So... this leads to the question of how accurate the new coin-op translations will be on Sega's flagship system?
Color Dreams still in the game
Not long ago, I spoke with Color Dreams again about their work on a new Hellraiser game which they had mentioned to us in a previous interview (see Remember When...: Hellraiser). Well word is that the project has been scrapped for a rework. Color Dreams got wind that the studio producing the movie Hellraiser 4 (yeah 4) liscensed a different software firm than Color Dreams to do a CD-ROM game based on the movie. So... Color Dreams decided to revamp their project to CD-ROM so that their game can be the better of the two coming out. Personally, I would love to just see any of these versions released.
GameTek's Robotech game
As many of you have heard, GameTek released a 30 second animated trailer for their new Ultra 64 game, Robotech. Well, we have it here for you to download. One note though, it is a QuickTime format movie (.mov), so you must have a QuickTime viewer to see it. As soon as I reach GameTek, I'll be posting more information about this title.
Mortal Kombat III for the Ultra 64
Many of you know about the exclusion contract Sony got on MK3 for their PSX system... Well, while this delays MK3 from hitting other systems for several months, when it does come out, it will fall under the juridiction of Nintendo's exclusion contract that basically says that if you release a game on the U64, you must wait a year before putting it out on another platform. The twist on all of this is that Williams, who is doing the port, will get around this by releasing a totally different MK3 for the U64 that takes full advantage of the machines capabilities. Did I mention that it will be completely different from all the other versions? We'll get more news on this as it becomes available. (thanks to Salamander for this little tid-bit)
3DO stats
Well, recently as many of you may have noticed, there have been some stats on 3DO's M2 upgrade floating around... Well we called 3DO and talked with them about this, and the official word is, there is no word. Not only have they not officially announced any specs, but their hardware manufactures haven't even decided on a price for the M2! The only solid information that was available as of my writting this is that the M2 unit will be capable of processing one million polygons per second (no clarification on if these are shaded, texture mapped, or what), the core of the unit will be a PowerPC 602 processor with multiple support processors. I was also told that in preliminary benchmark testing at 3DO, the M2 unit is "processing" at roughly 7 to 10 times the power of Sony's PSX unit.... Hmmm... that's one to chew on. Now while this does back up the posted stats to some extent, 3DO told me that even if those stats were correct they would not confirm it.
3DO buyout/stock news
Other news I checked on... No, 3DO is not selling out contrary to rumor, even if Electronic Arts is bought out by another company. And on the stock front, 3DO has heard no news that Time/Warner is consider selling there shares, this sell out only seems to apply to Atari (but that's a rumor covered elsewhere). Also, in regards to the big stock jump on 3DO shares... the best information I can offer is that 1)In mid-March, one of the companies that marks stocks as hot or not for buyers, changed their listing on 3DO from "neutral" to "strong", 2)Apparently on March 20th, 3DO set a record for volume on the stock exchange (couldn't confirm if this was for 3DO specific, or stock volumes in general), and 3)Speculation spinning off of CNBC's news broadcast talking of a possible buy out of EA by the ABC Network. Eh, go figure, people will read everything into anything.
Color Virtual Boy