We store cookies, you can get more info from our privacy policy.

The N-GDC Experience

by Billy Berghammer - March 16, 2000, 2:19 am EST

Ed Shih proves his worth and gives you an in-depth look at what it was like to be at GDC 2000. Don't miss this!

Ever wonder what it was like to be at the GDC? Well our Boy Darth Ed Shih was there and brought back bags of fish for all. Well not every one. Just me :). He went to one of those schools where you didn't have to bring treats for the whole class. Just the ADD kids in the back! Kidding. I'd really like to thank Ed for his valient efforts! First brew on me at E3! Here's what he had to say...

The Nintendo GDC Experience

First off, for all those hoping for some exciting news regarding Nintendo’s Dolphin Project, well you must’ve seen what IGN got from their interview, so you should know better than to expect anything more from a lowly non-IGN correspondent. Having said that, it wasn’t a completely empty trip from a Nintendo point of view. There was definitely activity going in the back rooms of the suite and there seemed to be a fair number of developers stopping in for information. Unfortunately, some of them were asking about the status of Dolphin development kits (not the squish toy) which is a pretty sure sign that they don’t have them in hand. Nintendo did prominently display the Nintendo Dolphin Picture (Mario swimming with dolphins) on the walls of their suite and handed out the Dolphin Development Kit bags (with the squishy dolphin) to anyone who stopped by. So, Nintendo may not have publicly shown any new Dolphin info, they were definitely giving the Dolphin exposure to the development community. Yes, it’s the least you’d expect from a system that’s launching in less than a year, but at least they weren’t trying to sell people on the future possibilities of the N64 (that’s for the marketing people to tell us gamers).

Speaking of the N64, Nintendo was showing off near complete versions of Excitebike and Perfect Dark, along with the already released Ridge Racer. Both games look and played extremely well. Excitebike, in a nutshell, is Wave Race on a motorbike. The play control was easy to learn and very responsive. Stunts seemed to be fairly simple to pull off (I did a couple different tricks a few minutes after picking up the controller). Perfect Dark was equally impressive in the gameplay department and looked exceptional (great lighting effects and environments). As for the ever present framerate issue, I felt it was running fine. It’s easily better than Turok 2 and seemed to be better than Goldeneye. So, if you found either of those games fun, you shouldn’t have any problems with Perfect Dark. The game felt familiar, but the environments were a lot more interactive. There’s also a lot of voice work in the game (not just in cut scenes, but from enemies and civilians within the levels). I didn’t personally get to try any of the multiplayer modes though I did watch Peer and Aaron from the IGN crew have a go at counter-op mode on the DataDyne Building level. It seemed to be pretty solid and should add even more replay value to the game. I also caught Peer playing Matt in counter-op on the Villa level (lots of open areas) and unfortunately the framerates seemed to suffer there. Well, they’ve still got another month or so to hammer things out. Even if they don’t fix it up, I’ll be at the front of the line on May 22.

I know this is supposed to be a Nintendo GDC article, but like it or not X-box needs to be mentioned. The opening keynote of the conference, as you’re probably well aware of, had Bill Gates unveiling the X-box. I’m not sure if the demos have been put up on net but they were definitely impressive (especially since it was running on hardware that’s supposed to be about 33% of the X-box’s total power). Yes, demos and specs are supposed to look good in theory and the actual performance of games on the X-box are still very much up in the air, but the same could be said about Dolphin (which doesn’t even have any publicly revealed demos). The most interesting point of the Gates presentation, though, was the fact that Microsoft has asked developers what they want and seem to be going out of their way to cater towards them (which they have to do anyway, since they’ll rely on them even more than Sony). Also, they have big name developers working for them already (Konami, Acclaim, Capcom, Namco, Koei, and Bungie to name a few). So, don’t simply ignore the X-box. Sure there’re still a lot of question marks about it (cost, exclusive titles), but X-box has too much going for it already to just dismiss it.

Of course, Nintendo’s stance on X-box is somewhat like that. They seem to act as if it’s a completely separate entity and not a direct competitor. When I asked the rep in the suite what Nintendo thought of X-box, he said that Dolphin will be a game machine only and that X-box is a multi-purpose set-top box, which is really more competition for PS2 than Dolphin. I know that’s been the Nintendo mantra for Dolphin, but I wonder if it’s a good approach. After all, X-box and PS2 are going to be pushed as game systems first and multi-purpose boxes second. Hopefully Nintendo’s “games-only” Dolphin will have enough superior technology and games so your average consumer can similarly see that it is the game machine to own, different and better than PS2 or X-box. As usual, time will tell. For now, we’ll have to play the usual waiting game that Nintendo fans are certainly familiar with.

Got a news tip? Send it in!
Advertisement
Advertisement