The latest video games
Christmas 1991. Lines stretch for miles outside stores stocking the $200 Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Riots presage the release of Zelda III. A $60 million movie adaptation of Super Mario Bros. is in the works, starring Bruce Willis as Luigi.
In your dreams, Nintendo. If the giant Japanese video-game maker expects its new 16-bit Super NES to create the same fire storm as the 8-bit NES did in the late '80s, the company seems to be in for a zonk. More bits (i.e., greater speed and capacity for the unit's central processing chip) mean more detailed graphics, better sound, and more intricate game play, but with most of this new generation of games the advances are merely impressive, not spectacular. Archrival Sega has a two-year head start with its 16-bit Genesis, and the game that comes with Nintendo's system, Super Mario World, will inspire admiration, though probably not awe (see below). Here's a sampling of software currently available for the new, improved Nintendo (none of which is compatible with your old, quaint Nintendo).
Super Mario World
Included with the Super
NES system, this fourth installment in the Super Mario series (the
fifth if you count Super Mario Land for the Game Boy system) gives
you the feeling that Nintendo is beating a dead Koopa. Mario bops his
enemies, eats power mushrooms, crawls in and out of drainpipes...all
the things he's been doing for the past five years, and in settings
not remarkably advanced, graphically, from those of previous
eight-bit games. Super Mario World amounts to advertising, a vehicle
intended to show off the capabilities of the Super NES as well as
goad brand- conscious kids into buying the system in the first place.
B
U.N. Squadron
U.N. Squadron is the kind of
game cynical journalists had in mind when they derided the gulf
conflict as the ''Nintendo war.'' Set in the desert kingdom of ''Aslan,''
it has players flying punitive strikes against air, sea, and ground
military targets. The combat scenes are dizzying, the explosions
crisp, and the sound effects awesome. In short, U.N. Squadron is a
Pentagon planner's fantasy: a high-tech, low-casualty aerial assault
that's over as soon as you turn off your TV set. A
Gradius III
This is a standard space shooting
game that doesn't seem to take full advantage of Super NES' 16-bit
capabilities and that repeats, practically pixel for pixel, some
scenarios from the previous, 8-bit Gradius. Sure, Gradius III is
competent — you'd expect nothing less from Konami — but if I'm going to
plunk down 50 bucks for a 16-bit game to play on my new $200
system, I want to be the one who's blown away. C
F-Zero
This hovercraft racing game
plays like an exhilarating cross between the Indy 500 and the Star
Gate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It has everything aficionados
could want: twisty, neon-lit tracks, you-are-there sound effects, and
streamlined, brightly colored speed machines in place of boring old
cars. Well, almost everything. The vertigo- inducing graphics and
feather-touch play control apparently didn't leave enough memory to
allow two-player, head-to-head competition. A-
Sim City
The perfect gift for
big-city mayors presiding over crumbling infrastructures, Sim City
lets you construct your own metropolis from scratch, a task that
entails everything from zoning commercial districts to laying down
power lines to funding mass-transit systems. Like many
municipalities, the game can get a bit complex, but in a crisis
(plunging opinion polls, incipient tax revolts, enormous lizards
ravaging downtown) you can count on a nerdy bureaucrat to pop up
on-screen and offer some helpful advice. B+
