ReMEMBeR #2: June, 1999 - GamePro

Magazine: GamePro
Cover date: June 1999
Issue: 129
Country of origin: USA

In this second instalment of the ReMEMBeR series of posts we jump ahead 10 years to the year 1999.

News

The big news in mid 1999 seems to revolve around the imminent releases of Sega and Sony's next generation consoles. Sega is said to be releasing the Dreamcast in the fall, and Sony should be ready for a release in the wintertime. As per usual, the publicity guys at Sega and Sony are using extremely big words when describing their upcoming consoles - Sega going as far as calling the Dreamcast not merely a gaming console, but rather a "a living organism that can grow as the player grows", thanks to its built-in Internet connectivity. The COO of Sega of America, Bernie Stolar, is cited for saying: "I once had a friend tell me, 'Go big or go home'. I'm here to tell you Sega is going big."

Presumably to steal some of Sega's thunder, Sony is touring with some tech demos of their upcoming system: the PlayStation 2. The release of their console is further off in the future, but they have some early demos ready to awe the gaming press with the graphical prowess of the PS 2.

In hindsight, the Dreamcast was actually released in September 1999, so they stuck to their promise of releasing it in the fall, whilst the PS 2 wasn't released before March 2000. Even with that head start, we all know that Sega didn't win this battle. The PS 2 ruled the next gaming generation (along with the Xbox, which was released in November 2001).

This issue of GamePro also had a multipage section on upcoming arcade games - none too memorable if you ask me, but then again, I do tend to gravitate towards the arcade games of the late eighties, not the late nineties :) The list of games is: Savage Quest, NBA: Showtime, Hydro Thunder, War, Silent Scope, Street Fighter III: Third Strike, Crazy Taxi, and Pinball 2000: Revenge from Mars.

Finally, the news section of GamePro issue 129 had a massive section on their expectations for games being presented at the upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). They are listing a lot of games of which I will only give a few here: Resident Evil: Nemesis, Crash Team Racing, Driver, Medal of Honor, Um Jammer Lammy, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Hydro Thunder, Shen Mue, Soul Calibur, Sonic Adventure, Final Fantasy VIII, Quake 3: Arena, and Conker's Pocket Tales.

Previews

The previews in this issue are both of Star Wars games. Episode 1, The Phantom Menace, is just about to come out in cinemas world wide, and of course LucasArts are there to release tie-in games in the newly expanded Star Wars universe. The titles on display are Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, an action/adventure game that has you go through the plot of the movie. The reviewer seems very pleased with this title, but he does worn readers that they should probably watch the movie first in order to avoid plot spoilers.

The other game being previewed is Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, a pod racing game that has you in Anakin Skywalker's pod re-living that awfully boring part of the movie over and over again :-)

Reviews

Seeing as a huge amount of pages were spent on the E3 expo coverage, there wasn't a lot of room for reviews in this issue. It only has a handful, and of those only two stood out I think: the fighting game Bloody Roar 2, and the 3D platformer Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko.

Conclusion

Interesting times were definitely ahead in this summer of '99, with both Sega and Sony readying themselves for another big console launch, and given that the E3 expo lived up to the expectations of GamePro issue 129, the line-up of games coming out in the near future was impressive as well. In hind sight we all know that Sony came out victorious in the battle between Dreamcast and PlayStation 2, but reading about the expectations in these early days of information about the two machines can be quite entertaining nonetheless.