Acclaim Gamers Day Report

Acclaim held a press event in Orlando, Florida, to show off some of its newest titles in development for the N64. The list of games we viewed includes Armorines, Trick Style (formerly Velocity), Shadow Man, Quarterback Club 2000, WWF Attitude, NBA Jam 2000, and Re-Volt.

While most of the titles have already been reported in news or previews, Armorines and Quarterback Club 2000 have remained fairly secret.

Armorines is a first person shooter that looks great even though the game's development cycle is still incredibly early. The story begins as aliens use up all of their planet's resources and naturally begin invading Earth in attempt to colonize. A special group of Marines is assembled to thwart the plans of the alien forces. Each member of the team is fitted with a special armor suit, hence the title of the game Armorines. The game is being developed by Probe and uses an engine that is a cross between Turok 2 and Forsaken. For the most part, Armorines looks and plays like Turok 2, although instead of blasting dinosaurs you'll be capping big aliens resembling giant bugs (think Starship Troopers).

One interesting aspect Probe is working on is a two-player co-op mode that allows you and a friend take on the evil aliens in tandem. Levels range from large open outdoor areas like a volcanic creator to more confined indoor levels like a Siberian missile base. The game is composed of five different environments, each consisting of four stages. Armorines should be released before the holidays.

For fans of the Quarterback Club series, Acclaim promises that Quarterback Club 2000 will be the best ever. Acclaim is putting emphasis on gameplay this year by making it play more realistically. When passing to a receiver you'll be able to pick eight directions to throw the ball to, an action that basically allows you to under throw, over throw, lead left, and lead right to keep the pass from landing in the arms of a defender. This set up is similar to the total control passing of the GameDay series on PlayStation. It's still too early to tell how QBC 2000 will shape up visually, although some of the things that Acclaim says it's going to do sound impressive. For instance, members of the Quarterback Club will have their faces mapped onto polygonal counterparts.

A Dreamcast version is also in the works and is said to run at a smooth 60 frames per second. We might get a chance to see if that's the case later in the trip. We also got to see more on WWF Attitude, Shadow Man, Re-Volt, Trick Style, and NBA Jam 2000. As well as a new, playable version of WWF Attitude, which was by far the most playable version we've seen. The controls and timing are starting to come together and it looks like the game is shaping up quite well.

Getting a little more funky, Acclaim let us play Trick Style, the great looking hoverboard racing game for the Dreamcast, which we've previously reported on. Originally titled Velocity, we played the same levels we had played before without seeing anything new.

What was new was the self-running demo of Quarterback Club. We managed to see an early build for the Dreamcast, and yes, it looked incredible.

Acclaim also showed a demo of NBA Jam 2000 that was just a highly detailed polygonal player standing on the court. Acclaim told us Jam 2000 will be like two games in one. Last year Jam 99 featured a traditional five-on-five simulation style basketball game and a two-player Jam mode. Acclaim is stretching both ends of the spectrum by increasing the realism of the simulation mode and putting the Jam mode even more over the top.

We also played the N64 version of Re-volt for quite a while, and while it doesn't look nearly as good as its PC counterpart, the game does have quite a bit of time left in its development cycle. The remote controlled car-racing game is expected this fall.