An explanation of what's going on here can be found in the intro post.

In the previous post, we took a break to consider what was going on with Namco on the Playstation.

Last time with the PS1, we looked at the 1996 PS1 releases of Hardball 5, Starblade Alpha, Slam 'n' Jam featuring Magic and Kareem, and Skeleton Warriors.

Last time with the 3DO, we kicked off 1994 by looking at Total Eclipse, Microcosm, The Horde, Iron Angel of the Apocalypse, and MegaRace.

This time we're moving deeper into the explicable part of the 3DO's '94 catalog with Soccer Kid, Family Feud, John Madden Football, Jurassic Park Interactive, and Shock Wave.

**This post is also featured on my site, fifthgengaming.blog, and can be found here.**

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Soccer Kid

Developer: Krisalis Software

Publisher: The 3DO Company

Release Date: 5/2/1994

Time to Losing 2-1 Against Italy: 27 Minutes*

One of these days, I'll need to fully grapple with the Amiga. Or maybe I won't. Maybe my stubbornness will outlast the presence of mid-90's ports of Amiga games, and the subsequent consolidation of the British game development industry. There were a ton of small British studios dotted around those dismal isles in the early-to-mid 90's, but by the 2000's, the international game market was only receiving output from a handful of enlarged survivors, mainly Rockstar, Bizarre Creations, Creative Assembly, Media Molecule, Molyneux's bullshit, and the Sony-owned corpse of Psygnosis. My instinct is that the expansion and contraction of that industry was tied directly to the fortunes of the Amiga. Yet, that's not what we're here to talk about.

Soccer Kid was originally released in late '93 for those ill-fated computers. It apparently did well enough to see international SNES and DOS releases before making its way to the 3DO. Seems odd for this thing to make the jump to this platform instead of something reasonable like the Mega CD, because even though Sega's add-on didn't sell well in the UK, it was still more than the 3DO ever accomplished. Regardless, what we have here is a 2D character platformer where you play as some English kid who has to travel the world with the mission of reassembling the World Cup trophy. The main gimmick is the soccer ball that this kid brings with him. Kicking the ball around is the only way to attack enemies, with the presence of different handling options and *physics* offering the primary gameplay in this game.

The closest point of comparison I could think of for the design, look, and overall feel going on here are the old Bubsy games. You run around in straight forward levels collecting stuff, some of which are important to beat the game and the rest being used for score. The movement feels bad, the combat feels worse, and everything related to the ball sucks. The primary moves you have are to kick the ball straight ahead or charge up for an arced kick, and the ball damages any enemy it touches but is also instantly destroyed when it encounters any environmental hazard. There's some basic platforming, but the ball doesn't go with you, so you don't want to stick around on the platforms too much. That's the biggest issue here, the ball is a finicky physics object that doesn't like sticking with the kid. It'll bounce when it hits an enemy, but if it doesn't connect or you don't catch it, it'll fly away off screen and leave the game. When it fucks off or gets popped by hazards, it'll sometimes respawn but usually not. That leaves a lot of the experience without the thing, which turns the game into a dodging-platforming thing which sucks so badly because of the aforementioned crap movement.

Everything is made worse by the lame and haphazard level design. For example, in the second area there's a section with multiple spike pits separated by thin pieces of ground, even kicking the ball for distance won't clear the whole section, and if you get it to land on a piece of ground it'll just roll into the pits. That section forces the ball, which is the entire gameplay hook, away from the player for an extended section. Everything just feels badly thought out. I eventually gave up in disgust when I fell down into a small sewer section without any way to get back up. There wasn't any kind of high-jump option that I could suss out, so it turned into a soft lock situation. Still, I'm probably fortunate to not have made it past the first zone, as each zone represents a different country and I absolutely do not trust this game with interpreting world cultures.

While we're here, let's throw shade at the underlying premise of this thing. The opening scene gives the impression that the trophy is stolen from a British stadium and that the titular kid is English. Maybe I misinterpreted that, because England hadn't won a World Cup since 1966; since then, the best they had done was placing 4th in 1990. England's national team isn't exactly a powerhouse, and I'm saying that as an American. Maybe the game was supposed to take place in the future, but the idea of the trophy returning to Perfidious Albion is a bit optimistic.

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Family Feud

Developer: Eurocom

Publisher: GameTek

Release Date: 5/6/1994

Time to Good Answer: 36 Minutes*

On July 12, 1976, at 1:30 PM (in the part of America that matters) the first episode of Family Feud aired on ABC. After a slow start, it spent several years in the late 70's and early 80's as the most popular game show in the country. This success was helped along by the compelling nature of the game, in which two different five-member families competed in guessing the results to mundane or silly survey questions, and the sex pest charisma of its host, Richard Dawson. The show was eventually unseated by both Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! and was cancelled in 1985. Yet, the idea was too good to leave on the table, so it relaunched in 1988 with a new set, tweaked ruleset, and a new host in the form of Ray Combs. This version was slightly less kitschy, and it gained some success for a few years. But again, because daytime TV is a fickle beast, the show was partially cancelled in 1994, after which the producers tried bringing Dawson back for the 1995 season to no avail. The damn thing was re-re-launched in 1999 and was able to finally find its proper place in daytime TV under a variety of comedian hosts.

Because everyone likes easy money, there is an entire genre of cheap video games based on game shows. Family Feud has been one of the main subjects in that genre since the late 80's. After obscure origins on early computers, the world received its first video game adaptation on the NES in 1991. This game was for some reason based on the Dawson era of the show and got on shelves right before the launch of the SNES. An updated release would come out for the Genesis and that new Nintendo system two years later in '93, that time based on the contemporary Combs era show. This finally brings us to the 3DO game. I would like to brush this entry off as an up-port of the Genesis version, but it's a bit weirder than that. If you've paid attention to the dates, you might have noticed this game's release date lines up with the Combs-Dawson switchover which heralded the show's second cancellation. This thing hit shelves in the inter-season gap between Combs being fired and the Dawson show being filmed. This awkward timing led to the game using the Combs set and rules, but with a Dawson host. So, on top of being a poor use of next gen hardware, it's also kinda dark, considering how everything turned out. Not only did the show go away less than a year after this release, but the whole debacle of being fired and replaced devastated Ray Combs on mental, personal, and financial levels. The man's whole world completely fell apart in the aftermath of all this, and he would take his own life in 1996.

That's a lot of background for a bad, cheapo game show video game from 1994. It shouldn't surprise you to know that there's nothing much to write about the game itself, there's only the one mode and highly limited options. The interface for inputting answers is bad, and the game's answer thesaurus is even worse. Now, those two gameplay complaints could be levelled against any attempt that has been made to turn Family Feud into a video game, to differing degrees of severity. That's why they've all been bad. Some kind of Family Feud game exists on almost every major console since the NES, and they're all crap. This game is cheap and bad. It's shovelware, and the fact this is one of the few 3DO games which I could find release info on should be ominous.

The only thing to note is the graphical style, which was likely decided on by someone suffering from terminal multimedia brain. Eschewing the sprites of previous versions, this one enters the brave new world of FMV, kinda. That FMV is the only part of this experience I would recommend, and for good reasons. The developers here opted (likely out of necessity) to put rotoscoped actors in digital backgrounds with very limited animations. Even though it's implied, I need to comment that the rotoscoping is poor and the video is compressed to hell. Everything about the way this thing looks is a disaster, and worth looking up for anyone who is a sicko like me. Just don't play the accursed hunk of crap.

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John Madden Football

Developer: High Score Productions

Publisher: EA Sports

Release Date: 5/6/1994

Time to Being Weird About Busts: 18 Minutes*

Now we have football. And not just any football, but THE football. John Madden's own personal football. The football that John Madden gave me when he said, "Borgmaster, make my bust proud." I might have embellished a bit, but this is definitely a Madden game, and it apparently came out on the 3DO.

I had a bit of trouble getting a usable history of the Madden franchise, which feels wrong. These games spent an absurdly long time as one of, if not the, best-selling video games every year. It's easy to learn that the series was Trip Hawkins' pet project, and it took a couple of years to get the features worked out as it got ported to various platforms. There was a whole entire thing with Sega and Joe Montana, and It wasn't until '93 that they got the actual NFL license. It makes an abundance of sense that EA would premier its first 32-bit entry in the franchise on Hawkins' other pet project, the 3DO. The result is, well, fine I guess.

This is a licensed Football game very much in the style of the early 90's but with wildly unnecessary multimedia nonsense bolted on. Though, the FMV winds up as the main draw for this unyeared Madden game. The man himself provides short, shockingly coherent video intros for each current and historical team in the game, and other random FMV is thrown in where possible, such as with the badly compressed referee. The in-game graphics itself goes down the upgraded sprite route as opposed to anything daring, such as Zito-esque FMV or anything remotely polygonal. That's for the best really, as I imagine neither the dev team at High Score nor the 3DO hardware would have been able to pull off anything else.

The gameplay itself would have likely been in-line with the contemporary SNES and Genesis versions, but with a reworked UI. This is probably fine at a basic level. I didn't find any analysis on the differences between this 3DO one-off and those previous gen versions like I was able to find for Road Rash. That's why I'm unable to tell you what the superior games were, and I'm not going to put any amount of time into Madden '93 or Madden '94 to find out. So, without any additional context, all there is to say is that this is a Football game. You choose plays, pass the pigskin, and run at least five yards before getting sacked. As always, I have no idea how these things are supposed to work, though I was able to pass the ball multiple times, so I'm getting better at this genre. It plays well enough for the time, such that I have nothing additional to say on the subject. Maybe I'll win a match in one of these before getting to the Dreamcast launch.

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Jurassic Park Interactive

Developer: Studio 3DO

Publisher: Universal Interactive Studios

Release Date: 5/10/1994

Time to Eaten By Raptors: 46 Minutes*

On a system defined by its multimedia catastrophes, I have yet to experience anything quite as catastrophic and misguided as this one. I tend to use those words lightly, but there are no other descriptors for Jurassic Park Interactive. I'm not even sure how to describe this thing, so let's start with what it isn't. This isn't a direct adaptation of the story from the hit 1993 movie nor the novel it's based on. It doesn't conform to any single genre. It doesn't really have a plot or any kind of storytelling whatsoever. It also isn't particularly hefty, with it being possible to see everything worth seeing in less than an hour. I'm not going to say it isn't good, as it feels wrong to evaluate this as a piece of media that could be categorized as good or bad. This thing is a bizarre, half-remembered screw-up that the world happily forgot.

In this game, the player takes the role of some kind of off-site security person who has to guide some number of the movie characters across the titular park to safety. This is done on a basic map screen with several nodes representing generic locations. The player needs to move the various characters across the gameboard map to the end square helicopter and do some other kind of thing I never figured out. Each move requires completing one of three possible minigames, which are each terrible in their own special way. The most common of the three is a straightforward shooting gallery where you taze the ever-loving hell out of waves of those little spitter guys, this one is almost impossible to fail. Next is a first-person driving section where you're being chased by a t-rex, which controls so hilariously poorly that it would work better as a Warioware microgame. Finally, there's a Doom-style first person corridor section where you get eaten by velociraptors. That last one feels next to impossible. Other than the scandalously low variety and quality of minigames, the main downside is that your controlled character dies after a single failure.

The primary other gameplay section contains the security level minigames. Some of the map spaces are only accessible with a high enough security clearance unlocked. The way to obtain that clearance is to play a variety of extremely derivative Nedry themed minigames that will feel to modern players like mediocre flash games. Other than the game's time limit, that's all there is to playing the thing. This is a glorified minigame collection, and the only thing to recommend it are the hilarious production values. The developers seem to have had close to zero time or resources to do anything with this project, and that includes getting convincing lookalikes for the FMV. It's the kind of thing which needs to be seen to believe. The one positive I can think of is that this is apparently the only Jurassic Park game to feature clips from the original movie, and thus the rights to use that soundtrack. From that single, narrow perspective this would have been the most advanced of the infamously terrible first wave Jurassic Park tie-in games.

The idea that this product would have been a part of the initial marketing push for the 3DO is kinda horrifying. On a system known for its abundance of cheap trash, this is a game that has no reason to exist. I'm not saying that it's without redeeming value or that it's especially egregious, I'm saying that there is no conceivable reason as to why this should have existed. This is archetypal shovelware, and it deserves to be forgotten.

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Shock Wave

Developer: The Advanced Technology Group

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Release Date: 6/27/1994

Time to Shot Down Over Cairo: 30 Minutes*

We last saw this game a whole nine months ago in Part 012 of the Playstation series. At the time, I referred to that game, which was an improved and retitled version, as a product made "by assholes, for assholes." After looking at a hundred or so more games from the early 90's since then, I have become somewhat desensitized to its ignorant and shitty worldview and storytelling. I didn't go into this project looking for high art or anything like that, but after seeing the likes of Loaded and Crazy Ivan, I no longer hold any pretense as to the existence of basic human decency. All of that said, revisiting this forgotten hunk of crap left me bored more than anything else.

Shock Wave is still very much what it is. You fly through linear, badly textured levels shooting badly rendered polygonal enemies at embarrassing draw distances with unsatisfying weapons. The controls are even more unwieldy in this original 3DO version, and everything looks and sounds slightly worse than the PS1 rerelease. I originally had a difficult time classifying the gameplay, which includes ground-hugging flight combat which would later be seen in games like Black Fire and Agile Warrior combined with restrictive invisible walls which create flight corridors closer to Total Eclipse than anything else. This game combines the worst impulses of both Flight Combat and Rail Shooter game design from its era.

Genre blending in game design is usually an admirable endeavor, even when the ultimate result is disastrous. Yet, I'm not inclined to give this game any credit. Even though '94 was still early for the industry, there had been successful blends of earlier genres. Examples would include River City Ransom with Beat 'Em Up and RPG elements, and the rise of Action Platformers in the late '80's. In the years immediately after this game, genre blending became increasingly popular, especially with the success of Resident Evil and Tomb Raider popularizing the Action-Adventure concept. Yet in this case, Shock Wave is trying to blend Flight Combat and Rail Shooter gameplay, which are similar enough that blending the two could almost happen by accident. On top of that, this game misses the appeal of either genre, which are free movement and tightly paced combat encounters, respectively. What we end up with is nothing more than a mess of frustrating nonsense. In the end, the trashy writing and corny FMV end up being the only thing that I could even ironically recommend about this game.

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This post was bleaker than I had originally intended, but sometimes it really do be that way. Now that we're fully staring into that abyss which devours sanity, let's update the Ranking Of All 3DO Games without any shame.

1. Escape From Monster Manor

…

4. John Madden Football

13. Soccer Kid

16. Family Feud

19. Shock Wave

21. Jurassic Park Interactive

…

24. Microcosm

I'm not even going to pretend to know when I'll get the next post will go up, but when it does, we'll pick up with the PS1 by looking at Battle Arena Toshinden 2, Silverload, Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition, and Tecmo World Golf.

When we're next with the 3DO, we're going to truly cross a point of no return when as look at Road Rash, Alone in the Dark, Trip'd, Way of the Warrior, Road & Track Presents: The Need for Speed, and Plumbers Don't Wear Ties. If that doesn't break me, nothing will.