In the same way, technological advances of computers have also affected games. Because the chips can manage more data, they can support richer audio and visual output. The color palette produces pictures of near-television quality; motion is more fluid. With CD-ROM-based machines, actual digitized soundtracks approach the quality of music CDs.
Companies have hired Hollywood script writers, animators, and video directors, as well as engineers and computer programmers from leading high-tech companies--even composers and musicians with successful backgrounds in the recording industry.
Some companies, looking ahead to a marriage of game technology and educational multimedia efforts, have coined the term infotainment to describe their products. (Educational multimedia software companies are calling their efforts edutainment.) Interactive television is potentially another area for joint efforts. Merger possibilities are endless.
The release of Road Rash in August 1994 marked the first integration of motion picture technology with video games and alternative rock music videos. This game integrates video footage of the bands and several of their music videos mixed with extensive motorcycle racing footage.
Another next-generation product, Wing Commander III, uses the conventions of film to tell a story. But the viewer and players become part of the action by interacting at key points in the plot, advancing and changing the course of events as they unfold.
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The latest version of FIFA International Soccer, a sports game, is complete with crowd chants available in four languages, eleven different camera angles, and instant replays directed by the user. John Madden Football has also been rereleased for the next-generation platform.
From the sci-fi menu comes Shock Wave: Invasion Earth 2019. From the cockpit of a space aircraft, players fly over texture-mapped landscapes created from aerial photography. Players experience real video and radio broadcasts from other pilots as they fly combat missions around the world.
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Escape from Monster Manor provides Halloween-type entertainment in a fast-paced action game featuring special effects.
Twisted: The Game Show lets a whole family interact with various game show formats, challenging the players' hand and eye coordination, manual dexterity, logic skills, and memory.
Preschoolers are not ignored. Sesame Street: Numbers brings Elmo, Bert, Ernie, and Big Bird to life. Children learn as they interact to solve math-based games and activate animations.
USA Today (June 28, 1994) reviewed a number of next-generation games showcased at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago.
Virtua Racing (Sega) zips your race car through three race courses from four camera views. Other high-tech games that Sega is introducing include Doom, Star Wars Arcade, Super Motocross, Super Afterburner, and Fahrenheit. Golf and basketball games are also scheduled to be released.
In The Lion King, the player grows up from a cub into a full-sized lion. At one point, Simba gets caught in a wildebeest stampede, and the players experience wildebeests seemingly "leaping right over their heads."
Beavis and Butt-Head has the look and feel of the hit MTV show, according to USA Today. Others are Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse, Earthworm Jim, Ecco: The Tides of Time, and Ecco Jr. Urban Strike allows the player to "make like Rambo."
New hardware introduced at the Chicago show includes a virtual guitar that chords while the player strums, two new virtual reality headsets, and a wireless mouse that straps to the user's index finger.
A far cry from solitaire, computer games now have something for everyone.
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