My recent batch of acquisitions included not only a plethora of actual games, but a number of sample discs as well. One is a Generator disc, volume 1 of a series of Sega Dreamcast sample discs. I have yet to delve into this one.

Next is a fairly non-descript optical disc simply labeled “Merchandise Video” and bears the ubiquitous PlayStation symbol. The circumference of the disc lists a number of games. I pop it into my DVD player (which doubles as my PlayStation 2) and it begins playing immediately. The disc plays a brief commercial for each of the games previously listed and loops when it gets to the end of the string. Pressing “Menu” seems to just reset the commercials. This leads me to believe that this disc is meant to be played on autopilot in a sealed PS2 kiosk. The promotional material for God of War is enticing but nothing else on the disc really impressed me.

Next up is the Ubi Soft Product Catalog 2004-2005. This is perhaps the most fascinating disc of the crop if only for the dire message: “Content not approved for consumer use. Not for distribution to the public.” Forbidden material– I’m intrigued. The disc is a CD-ROM that contains promotional material for a number of Ubi Soft games for a variety of platforms. Each game comes with some screenshots and some general artwork. Several come with trailers and other video files that are encoded in a diversity of multimedia formats. Nothing too special so far. The most interesting aspect is that every game entry comes with a “fact sheet” — a .DOC file that describes the game in a single printed page — as well as a directory named “Product Presentation – NOT FOR PUBLIC USE”. This contains a PowerPoint presentation that basically sells the game. My question was, “Sell to whom?” At first, I figured that maybe this was for investor relations, a sort of video game company prospectus. But on deeper examination, it appears that the slides attempt to sell the game to a retail establishment. This is a fascinating glimpse into the video game industry. I’m pretty sure the slides are trying to convince retailers why they should devote shelf space to these titles, or perhaps give particular titles more prominent real estate on the selling floor. For example, many of the presentations have a slide devoted to “THE BRAND” which documents the strong selling history of the franchise (and most of these games belong to franchises; Ubi Soft is not known for taking chances on unknowns, though neither is any other publisher).

A lot of the material reminds me of documents I see on the inside of corporate America that are customarily marked “Company Confidential — Not For External Distribution” (which is something that makes every corporate drone chuckle with the knowledge that no one inside the company could possibly care about the document, much less an outsider). Anyway, I doubt that this is actual confidential material. As mentioned, this is probably intended as industry marketing material. There is also the fact that the marketing material is not yet finalized. For example, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is still known as Prince of Persia 2 throughout the disc’s material.

As for the audio/visual promotional material, there is nothing that really catches my eye. Sure, all of the screenshots and artwork are sharp. But there are no videos that deserve instant YouTube treatment. However, I couldn’t believe the timeliness of this screenshot from Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory:

That brought back fond memories of Crystalis’ prophetic “End Day” (1997/10/01).

The last sampler disc is called Sega Screams Volume 1. It is for the Sega Saturn. I have not explored it using my Saturn console yet, but I can view some of the files on it. Here is one movie that’s fun enough to upload to YouTube, the intro of the Saturn version of Virtual On: Cyber Troopers:

I decided to take a break considering the mental toll I’ve sustained due to the sheer absence of quality in all the Sega CD games over the past few days. The break should do me well while I psyche myself up mentally for the final push of Sega CD games (until I procure more). I will try to catch up on some game entry chores that have been stacking up. I still haven’t collected all the screenshots necessary for Vegas Fever Winner Takes All. The thing has a bunch of games. I start it up and try to play through them to get representative screenshots for each game but I find myself bored to tears after 2 or 3. They’re pretty but I just don’t care about these gambling games. I don’t know how I’m going to handle it when it’s time to tackle sporting games.

2 new games in MobyGames:

• Kombat Kars
• Rocky Racers

Please enjoy this demo video I scraped off of a LEGO CD-ROM game. Apparently, it comes from a title called LEGO Alpha Team. This seems to be LEGO’s answer to Konami’s Metal Gear Solid series:

I was IM’ing with a friend who has traditionally been a bigger gamer than me:

[friend]: I just realized that I haven't purchased a game in over 10 months
    [me]: I ordered 9 games over the weekend
    [me]: they should be arriving in the next day or 2
[friend]: which ones?
    [me]: which games? shoot, I couldn't tell you... :) things you and I have never heard of
    [me]: wait, I remember Sabrina the Teenage Witch being one
    [me]: they're cheap and they look completely stupid and they're not in MobyGames yet
    [me]: that's really all I care about

That pretty much sums up my purchasing habits these days. The things you can find in those eBay stores.

I’m opting out of playing a new game today because I worked so hard getting through my backlog of gaming credits. Many of these credit sets come from instruction manuals that I dug out of a storage box recently. At the current moment, I have credits for 15 games pending in MobyGames’ queue. Not all of these game are created with equal amounts of resources, of course. One game of the 15 (Trax) has a whole 3 credits while another (Disney’s Hades Challenge) goes on for pages. Plus, I am still catching up on a number of new game entries. Don’t get me wrong, I do want to play a new game tonight, but I need to keep up with the bookkeeping.

2 new games in MobyGames: Astro Assembler (with all its cover artwork from various releases) and Trax: The Robot Wars.

Lest you think I have been horribly neglecting this project of late, I assure you that I am doing something, though less visible than playing games. I have taken some time to enter credits into MobyGames. It’s a large, tedious chore, but something that needs to get done. And I have an insane pile of credits. Plus, it’s relatively brainless work and I can listen to a movie at the same time. At first, I hated the task. But it is starting to grow on me. One of the strangest parts of the process (from the newcomer’s perspective) comes at the end of the credits entry for a game, the part where you must select categories for each credit title. For example:

The above screenshot depicts some of the more common and sane categories. The process becomes more like a game when you try to find appropriate categories for the more offbeat credit listings. Take these, from Radio Active:

This looks to be some kind of inside joke among the executive team. I listed it as “Other -> Unknown”. It’s so cryptic (and misspelled) that it doesn’t even deserve the “Other -> Other” catch-all category.