Exceptions to the Rule, These Characters Play Well Off the Big Screen

By AARON CURTISS

Dec. 21, 1998 12 AM PT

Good movies often make bad video games. But as film studios jump into the game business, executives and designers are hungry for recognizable franchises that distinguish their titles from the hundreds of others crowding shelves.

What that generally means is some celebrity’s face gets slapped on an otherwise humdrum game, which is then snapped up by suckers who happened to like the movie. So, unless a title comes highly recommended by someone trustworthy, I tend to avoid games with the words “based on the blockbuster movie” on the box.

Twice in the last month, though, I’ve been surprised by movie-inspired games. First by “Rogue Squadron,” a “Star Wars”-based flight shooter for Nintendo 64 and the PC. And then by “Trespasser,” a first-person PC adventure based on the “Jurassic Park” series.

Both games succeed because neither tries to duplicate their filmed inspiration. They understand that film is film and video games are video games. Like games such as “The X-Files” did with television, “Rogue Squadron” and “Trespasser” borrow scenery and scenarios from their respective movies, but then use these familiar assets to tell new stories.

The advantage: Players are already familiar with the characters, so it’s possible to create detailed stories without wasting program code on lumbering dialogue or cut scenes. Action can launch immediately.

“Rogue Squadron,” for instance, takes place between Episode IV and Episode V in the original “Star Wars” trilogy series--after the destruction of the Death Star but before the Empire’s successful counterattack on Rebel forces on the ice planet Hoth.

Players assume the role of Luke Skywalker and lead a series of missions through locales referred to in “Star Wars,” but never actually seen--from Han Solo’s home planet of Corellia to the spice mines of Kessel.

Each level swarms with Imperials in TIE Fighters, TIE Interceptors and TIE Bombers, and players pilot Rebel ships, such as the X-Wing, A-Wing and Y-Wing, through some of the hottest flight combat to date on the Nintendo 64. Control is dead-on and varies from ship to ship.

Console action is enhanced with the Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak, a module that pops into the N64 and adds 4 megabytes to the system’s base memory of 4mb. The module allows programmers to add crisper graphics and superior artificial intelligence.

“Rogue Squadron” is the first game to take advantage of the Expansion Pak, although titles such as “Turok 2: Seeds of Evil” also use it to create images comparable to those on a PC with high-end graphics hardware. Games designed for the Expansion Pak will still run without it, but the graphics will be a little clunkier.

“Trespasser” touts itself as the “evolution of first-person 3-D gaming.” Get it? It’s a play on words. The game is about dinosaurs. Rarely, though, does witty box copy so accurately describe a game.

Video gaming is a brutally Darwinian environment and “Trespasser” demonstrates that not all first-person games are created equal. It’s definitely better than most. But the laws of nature dictate that “Trespasser” will not long rule unchallenged. Its strengths will be copied and its weaknesses dropped in future generations of games.

Unlike most first-person games, “Trespasser” is only marginally a shooter. Sure, players cap dinosaurs, but the only way to get through the game is to explore environments and understand how things interact. Players can grab and move things as they explore the island known as Site B.

The game takes place after “The Lost World,” and players assume the role of a tourist whose plane crashes on a remote island off the coast of Costa Rica. It’s a female tourist, a fact I discovered when I used the mouse to look around and found myself staring down at a pair of tattooed breasts.

With voice-overs by Minnie Driver and Richard Attenborough, the game offers hints and guidance to getting off the island. It’s useful stuff because the puzzles and obstacles can be tricky.

My only complaint about “Trespasser” is with control. When players pull out a weapon or try to grab something, a skinny arm appears and flops around like a dead appendage. Using the mouse allows players to move the arm, but only in fairly spastic increments. It’s a cool idea, but a little too floppy to be anything but annoying.

PC owners need a Pentium 200 with 32mb of RAM and a 4mb graphics accelerator to run “Rogue Squadron.”

To run “Trespasser,” players need a Pentium 166 with 32mb of RAM.

‘Centipede’ and ‘Asteroids’

Like the movie business, the video game business is so hard up for the next cool thing that it too often finds itself simply repackaging the last cool thing. How else to explain the mania for taking games from the 1970s and burning them onto CD-ROMs?

But recent remakes of “Centipede” for PC and “Asteroids” for Sony PlayStation reveal how careful tweaks can make the difference between a bang and a bomb in the marketplace.

Designers updated the technology, but left the souls of the games intact. Both boast great new graphics, but play is just what older players remember. A cool feature in “Centipede”: The ability to play the game in first-person mode and fight on the level of the Centipede.

Times staff writer Aaron Curtiss reviews video games every Monday in The Cutting Edge. To comment on a column or to suggest games for review, send e-mail to aaron.curtiss@latimes.com.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Essentials

Rogue Squadron

Platform: Nintendo 64/PC

Publisher: LucasArts

ESRB* rating: Teen

Price: $59.95/$39.95

Bottom line: The Jedi of flight combat

Trespasser

Platform: PC

Publisher: DreamWorks Interactive

ESRB rating: Teen