GAMES : Set-Top Boxes Are Alive and Kicking PC Butt

With the personal computer growing ever more powerful, a lot of people are beginning to wonder whether the video game machine has a future. After all, if a multipurpose PC can offer the stellar graphics, blistering speed and crystal-clear sound of a console game system that sits atop a TV set, why would anyone need them both?

But it’s still premature to write the obituary of the set-top game box. Despite the promises of the Windows 95 PC operating system, anyone who’s ever tried to get a computer game up and running knows how frustrating it can be. And while PCs still handle some adventure or strategy games better than consoles, the vast majority of arcade-style games--including many designed for PCs--look and play better on advanced set-top units such as Sony’s PlayStation or Sega’s Saturn.

The PlayStation version of Doom, for instance, makes the classic killfest come alive with new sound and enhanced graphics. Doom created new levels of atmosphere for PC games, but the PlayStation version from Williams Entertainment features eerie shading effects and audio cues that make the environments that much more engrossing.

Same goes for Descent, which broke new ground when it introduced 360-degree mobility to PC games. On PlayStation, everything about this already great game is done better. Interplay, which created both the PC and PlayStation versions, beefed up the game with a new soundtrack as frenetic as the action itself--and with graphic touches that add to the realism.

For example, in dark tunnels, players can fire their weapons to illuminate the enemy, and the tracer effect of live ammo hurtling down a dark tunnel is absolutely beautiful.

Another Interplay title, Cyberia, doesn’t measure up quite as well, though. It loses nothing from its PC incarnation, but the PlayStation version gains nothing, either.

Sega’s slow-starting Saturn also hosts two PC reincarnations that demonstrate the good and bad of console gaming. The Saturn versions of Myst and Sim City 2000 take quintessential PC games to new technical levels, but fall short in other respects.

Myst on Saturn allows players to use all the features that probably slowed down their desktop systems, such as the scene dissolves that make movement look more fluid. And there is no danger of faults or of video slowing down.

But set-top rigs are inherently bad at adventure-style games because of their dependence on the joy pad. On a PC, players can manipulate on-screen objects fairly easily with the mouse. But the joy pad makes that sort of movement close to impossible. It’s a small glitch in most games, but in an intuitive environment like Myst, it becomes a deadly flaw.

The same is true for Sim City 2000. Play is identical to the PC versions, but again relies on the joy pad for fairly precise movements. Zoning individual parcels or laying streets and sewer pipes are headaches that make the console version not much fun in the end.

Sega is trying to bridge the gap between console performance and PC playability by designing some of its top titles, such as Virtual Fighter and Panzer Dragoon, for PCs. The catch is that they require a video accelerator card with a Saturn-compatible plug-in as well as 2 megs of video RAM--hardware that costs more than a new Saturn. And then you still have to get it running.

Staff writer Aaron Curtiss reviews video games. His e-mail address is aaron.curtiss@latimes.com

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The Top 10

Leading personal computers in the United States, based on unit shipments for 1995*

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U.S. shipments Market 1994 ‘94-95 Rank Company In millions share rank growth 1 Compaq 2.76 12.2% 1 +18% 2 Packard Bell 2.55 11.3 3 +21 3 Apple 2.50 11.1 3 +16 4 IBM 1.88 8.3 4 +13 5 Gateway 2000 1.14 5.1 5 +19 6 Dell Computer 1.04 4.6 6 +31 7 Hewlett-Packard 1.00 4.5 10 +127 8 Acer America 0.82 3.6 9 +80 9 Toshiba 0.78 3.5 8 +15 10 AST Research 0.54 2.4 7 -26

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* Preliminary data

Source: Dataquest

Researched by JENNIFER OLDHAM / Los Angeles Times