SEGA Next-Gen at E3 – The Exclusive Behind-Closed-Doors Preview

Things that are bad about E3: Dorks. Millions of them. Everywhere. SPOnG witnessed perhaps 300 dorks queuing for up to half an hour for a bottle of Mountain Dew. We saw several fall over for no obvious reason. We were late for meetings, unable to penetrate the dawdling dork hordes. Chafing, blisters and jetlag.

Things that are good about E3: SEGA next-generation video previews, of course. SPOnG was treated to an exclusive behind-closed-doors presentation of SEGA Japan’s next-generation videogame offerings, all of which are absent from the showfloor.

First up was Virtua Fighter 5. Yes, VF5. The game, not a dream. We saw it running in all its glory with Akira being shown running through a routine in a beautiful (and of course, very VF) environment resembling a temple. The presentation gradually built Akira, then the background, then married the two perfectly. Virtua Fighter 5, according to sources behind the scenes at SEGA’s booth (who perhaps didn’t know they shouldn’t really be talking to us) was being shown on next-gen, undisclosed arcade hardware and will - and this is the best bit - launch in the arcades of Japan this year. *Calming breath...*

Next up from SEGA Japan was After Burner next-gen. Again, an astonishing, fanboy dream-realising revelation. Afterburner looked fairly advanced, showing an F-14 Tomcat aircraft zipping across the surface of a shimmering ocean, then into deep, Panzer Dragoon-esque valleys and canyons. Perhaps the best news for fans (and the worst news for SEGA’s western sales teams) is that the play mechanic had been left completely untouched, right down to the theme tune you didn’t know still lived in your brain note-for-note. Your plane fires flak on tap from its frontal guns, and locks missiles onto targets as the trademark crosshairs pass across them. There is also a barrel roll. So here’s how you play Afterburner: Hold down the gun fire button. Wiggle the control stick randomly until small blue squares become big red squares. Then press missile fire one time on every square. Occasionally a missile lock will plague your own craft. At this point, perform a barrel roll. Repeat. It was not clear for which platform Afterburner is in development for, though the game looked closer to Xbox 360 expectations than PlayStation 3.

And then onto House of the Dead 4. This we were assured, was again running on next-generation arcade hardware (Naomi 3, perhaps?) and again looked astonishingly well produced. Two new characters, a male and a female, were shown, in a lighter and more modern setting than one might expect from the series. Much of the demo involved a department store and office complex stage, with the developers keen to show off their impressive visual tricks. One scene depicted perhaps 200 independently animated zombies, all reflected in a huge plate glass window. We were also shown a massive, snarling, bleeding boss, with a huge serpentine tongue and very white teeth. House of the Dead 4 looked like the most thoughtful game of the series and also perhaps the most interactive. The demo hinted that a considerable amount of the environment would be destructible, often changing the path of the game’s rails. Oh yes, it’s still a lightgun affair too.

Then we were shown a live presentation of next-generation Sonic the Hedgehog. Words alone don’t really do the experience justice. We have not a Booker Prize between us, so please understand that we might be unable to convey the feeling of awe, the actual physical change you go through when being shown a next-generation Sonic game. Perhaps in keeping with our head office location, we can report that it is, indeed, right good.

The demo began on rails, with a first-person perspective of what an educated guess leads us to believe is a revised Green Hill Zone. The first point of note is that the whole game has been created in a fairly realistic way. The trees looked like trees and were of normal size, the sweeping countryside looking more akin to many RTS titles than a Yuji Naka rodent speeder. As things progressed, the camera fell to the side, giving us the first glimpse of Sonic doing what he does best. Running. Very fast. It was at this point that Team SPOnG remembered why it loves Sonic so much. It’s because he’s just so fucking cool. Mario is - quite simply - rubbish next to Sonic. Sonic would kick Mario’s ass so hard…wow. A Mario Vs Sonic deviation. Like being at school in 1992. We digress…

Unsurprisingly, Sonic continued to run, with bursts of speed upping the level of amazement as the fully in-game demo (all of SEGA Japan’s offerings to SPOnG were fully in-game) progressed to a castle in which the ubiquitous Eggman is installed, complete with his omnipresent robot shell. At this point, the Sega representative took over and controlled the battle in real-time, defeating the Chaos Emerald-thieving villain in something of a blur of blue. The best thing about the whole event? The real-time section was controlled via a modified SEGA Saturn pad leading to an undisclosed future platform…

Things that are good about E3 - the epilogue: Girls, free stuff, comedy, remembering the industry is actually good…