VALLEY WEEKEND : Wipeout Is Most Fun You’ve Ever Had at Zero Gravity : Floating ships and terrific ambience help make the PlayStation racing game a clear winner.

Need a reason to go out and buy a Sony PlayStation?

Here’s one: Wipeout, very possibly the most stunning game ever. Even in the technically elegant world of PlayStation games, Wipeout stands out as a winner that will shape racing games the way Doom and Myst shaped their respective genres.

One of the first batch of PlayStation titles from the British publisher Psygnosis--recently acquired by Sony and renamed Sony Interactive--Wipeout is at its heart a simple racing game with simple objectives: Beat the clock and other racers to victory.

Trick is, these racers are high-performance anti-gravity ships that will leave players begging for more than just the six tracks in the game. The environments fill in quickly and the course itself is never obscured or slowed down by disc access.

Wipeout excels, however, in the creation of ambience. Other games try, but most fall flat as they try to create a sense of place and atmosphere. Myst, of course, is the true champ, but Wipeout comes in a close second.

PlayStation has proven with games like Ridge Racer that it can deliver over-the-top graphics and sound, and Wipeout subtly uses the resources well to create a landscape that is alternately familiar and alien and a soundtrack that flows seamlessly between moods.

Even one of my wife’s techno-phobic friends got into the game and took one of the racers for a quick spin, dating herself by comparing it to the primordial days of the Atari 2600.

Don’t be fooled by imitations. Cyber Speedway for Sega Saturn also employs zero-grav racers, but the game quite frankly sucks. Games like Wipeout are the big reason Sony is outselling Sega 7 to 1.

Virtua Cop: Just when you think it’s safe to make a sweeping generalization about how disappointing Sega Saturn is, along comes a game like Virtua Cop--a zippy killfest that shows how great the rig can be.

At the same time, though, it points up how lousy most of the other Saturn games really are. If Virtua Cop shows off what the system can do, then the obvious question is why other games aren’t exploiting the same techniques.

A straight translation of the arcade fave, the home version of Virtua Cop delivers the same high-end game play as the stand-up machines--complete with the big dog gun. Sega calls the gun a stunner, but nobody I shot looked very stunned.

They looked kind of dead.

Parents might worry, with good reason, that the game is too violent for small kids. But for teenagers and adults, Virtua Cop is a sure-fire hit. Let’s hope Sega and its clan of developers look to it for inspiration in the months to come.

3DO Days: After three years as “that other system,” the 3DO Multiplayer is getting ready for the big time. I talked a few days ago with Bob Lindsey, the head of marketing for the company, who said 3DO will come out on top in the war with Sega and Sony.

I asked what made him think that, given that the company has lost money since it was created and sales of the machine have been slow at best. He pointed to the 200 titles 3DO supports and to the company’s 64-bit technology known as M2.

I saw early versions of M2 at the spring electronics show and it is indeed something to drool over. Full-screen, full-motion video as clear as any VCR, raging effects and incredible speed all make the hardware pretty fierce.

Nintendo will beat the M2 to market with its cartridge-based Ultra 64, but Lindsey said 3DO should have a new version of the Multiplayer on shelves by next Christmas. If that’s the case--and everything in the game world is late--then game technology will have doubled in a little over a year.

While that’s good news for die-hard players, it’s not so great for consumers who might face new machines every 18 months. That’s too quick for my taste--and my wallet--as developers will no doubt run from system to system instead of lingering as they did with the 16-bit rigs and developing truly great games.

Staff writer Aaron Curtiss reviews video games regularly. To comment on a column or to suggest games for review, send letters to The Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311. Or send e-mail to Aaron.Curtiss@latimes.com.