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Every
year a large Victorian greenhouse in London becomes the premier venue for European
games programmers, publishers, retailers and players alike. The show is the
ECTS and the venue is the Olympia Exhibition centre. This years show is the
fifth I've attended, and despite a few nice surprises, it was one of the weakest.
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The
show was dominated by Sony (as it has been for the past few years) and the multimedia
giant made sure everyone knew about the impending Western release of the PS2.
Several gamepods were set up, showing games such as Gran Turismo 2,
Madden Football, Dead Or Alive 2 and Tekken
Tag. Several other games were shown in video form, including Metal
Gear Solid 2 (with new, unseen footage) Bouncer, DropShip
and the very impressive looking Zone Of The Enders. However, it
has to be said that many of the games shown did look very rough around the edges,
and it's hard to believe that they couldn't have been done on the Dreamcast.
Also, the anti-aliasing on several of the games (GT2 included)
looked awful. Out of all of the games shown, Zone Of The Enders
impressed the most. |
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Second
to Sony, Nintendo's stand was the biggest. However, very little in the way of
groundbreaking product was shown considering the size (almost half of the stand
was taken up by Game Boy Color games - not hard to see which machine Nintendo
are pushing at the moment). The N64 was represented in the form of Conker's
Bad Fur Day (looking funny), Banjo Tooie (looking very
much the same as the first) and a few Pokemon titles (looking
annoying). The biggest draw on the Nintendo lot was without a doubt the Game
Boy Advance - shown here for the first time in the West. Several units were
playable, and if the games are as good as the ones shown (Mario Kart
and Konami Racing were stunning) then Nintendo will have a tight
grip on the handheld industry for some time yet. However, the GameCube was no
where to be seen, which was a big shame. The ECTS was a clear chance for Nintendo
to put their new machine up against the competition. It was recently announced
that Europe may not see the GameCube until 2002, but would be getting the GB
Advance next year - so it's not hard to see which machine Nintendo want to push
right now. |
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Konami's
Zone Of The Enders sure turned a few heads |
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The
biggest let down of the show was the fact that Sega didn't show up - this is
the third year in a row that they've failed to make an appearance at the ECTS.
It was up to Sega's UK distributor, Gem Distribution, to show off this years
Dreamcast lineup. Their stand was small and didn't really do the games justice
- a sad sign that Sega have all but given up the fight here in Europe. After
stealing the show at E3 Sega should have repeated the success here, but they
couldn't even be bothered to try. Gem tried their best, even going as far as
to feature dancers taken from the upcoming Space Channel 5 - but
if Sega had really made an effort this year they could have stolen the show
by a long chalk. |
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On
the PC side of things, Black And White was shown and it turned
a few heads - but the release date still seems far off and it's hard to see
what's been added to the game since last year. The official line is "play testing
and getting rid of bugs" which is fair enough. The last thing we want is a buggy
game after all this time. There was the usual glut of flight sims, the best
of which was B-17 2: The Mighty 8th which looked very impressive
indeed. You only live twice, the FPS James Bond/Austin Powers
spoof from developers Monolith looked good, but the gameplay seemed very simple
and humor was a little forced in places. |
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No,
it won't be this big... |
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As
for the X-Box, there was no official showing, and the Microsoft stand was "appointment
only". It's clear that the big M used the ECTS to sign up developers - and the
official word is that they managed to get the signatures of around 15 companies.
The most important of these was Lionhead, which means the X-Box could be the
first console to see Black And White. It seems that the Microsoft
are gathering steam, and it'll be interesting to see what happens next year
when the battle lines are drawn between the big four. |
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Thankfully,
I managed to get a little closer than this to Nintendos new handheld |
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All in all, not the greatest
ECTS ever, but it was nice to see that Nintendo are at least taking the show
seriously and they really pushed the boat out with the GameBoy Advance part
of their stand. It's a pity they didn't show us the GameCube, however. Sony
also put in a respectable performance (as they always do) and with Sega sitting
it out again, the PS2 was pretty much free to steal the show. Let's hope that
next year Sega Europe are still around to improve on this poor showing.
On a sad note, this was
the last ever ECTS to be held at the Oylmpia. Next years show will take place
under the roof of the newly developed ExCel, London's latest and most up to
date exhibition centre. I'm a bit sad to see the ECTS leave the Olympia -
it has bags of character, even if it is a wee bit old now. |
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The
PS2 booth was full pretty much all the time |
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Home
- Reviews - News - Classics
- Anime - About Me - Links |
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