2022/6/20: 3DO: Crash 'N Burn, Last Bounty Hunter, The

[VideoGameCritic]

Here are two new 3DO reviews for your reading pleasure.

Crash 'N Burn is a re-review. The original was 21 years old (!) and a little shallow. For this one I bumped down the grade but only slightly (A to A-). It's still a really good game.

The Last Bounty Hunter is a very standard light gun shooter. Bought it during my recently re-interest in light gun titles.

Let's get some feedback all up in here.

[JohanOberg]

Very generous review of Crash 'N Burn in my opinion, but in the context of its release it's fine. If I read it from the point of view of 1993 it makes sense.

[matmico399]

Solid review of CNB. I remember seeing this when the 3DO first came out and I was very jealous because I couldn't afford the system at that time. Looking at the other titles for the system I guess I did just fine.

[travistouchdown]

Love me some 3DO! Underrated system IMO. Crash and Burn is fun; solid review.

The light gun games are pretty fun even with the cursor...I never have found or bothered tracking a light gun down. I find they are too expensive vs their reliability. What i mean is even if you find one; half the time they are broken. Or if you even have a working one (like i did for Lethal Enforcers on SNES) they break mysteriously half the time. The only rock solid vintage light gun (pre-1994) is the NES Zapper from my experience.

[DocHix]

Always nice to see new 3DO content...great review. It's easy to forget that in 1993, you couldn't play anything remotely like "Crash N' Burn" unless you had a decent PC (which was even more expensive than the insanely priced $700 3DO!)

[Stalvern]

Crash 'n' Burn is an interesting game because it was the first time fully textured 3D graphics had been used on a home system; it doesn't have the same priorities as what would come in the next few years. At the time, 3D games outside the arcades had a handful of untextured polygons running at 10 FPS on a good day (and they didn't even have textures in the arcades), but Crash 'n' Burn had a zillion textured polygons at 15 FPS or so – the developers had no expectations of a high frame rate in the first place, and they traded that for an immense draw distance and extremely smooth track geometry. The "good enough" frame rate rapidly became obsolete, but the visuals rendered at that rate were far, far ahead of their time. Another iffy decision was to use a curvaceous pre-rendered sprite for the player's car instead of an angular model like the rest, since it doesn't significantly change position; it looks much cornier today than anything else on the track, but it's a deliberate choice, not a technical limitation. Crash 'n' Burn came out a month before the Ridge Racer arcade game, and I have to imagine that the previews for Ridge Racer (as Sim Drive) were a major influence – after seeing what a 3D game can really be in the '90s, why settle for obvious pop-up and cardboard-box "curves"? It only takes a little imagination to see how easily Crash 'n' Burn could have looked like the PlayStation Ridge Racer if it had bitten off less and chewed a bit more, but something about its ambitious, out-of-time oddity is more compelling to me than the norm that shortly followed.

The game itself is also pretty fun. Not as good as The Need for Speed or Road Rash, but pretty damn fun.

[Tron]

Woah…. Is that a Dana Plato icon? Totally awesome! If any FMV actor deserves to have an icon it’s just gotta be Dana Plato. Terrific choice. BRAVO!

Also is the Critic consistently lowering grades on re-reviews? Seems that way to me.

[BlasteroidAli]

The last bounty hunter. Well over in the UK the bounty is a chocolate bar with coconut inside.

You do not seem to like American Laser games so I was surprised you had picked this one up. It does look grainy and not much fun. I might have played it in the arcades and there also was a sci-fi one. It was like all of these light gun games, dreadful.

So I looked you have reviewed it on the Wii. The mad dog collection and you HATED it!!!! At least you are consistent.

[VideoGameCritic]

Also is the Critic consistently lowering grades on re-reviews? Seems that way to me.

I've noticed this too. I think part of it has to do with reviewing a game 20 years later, it may not be aging like wine.

Also, I tend to re-review the best games, and some of their initial "wow" factor may have faded.

Still, it's pretty rare I change a grade dramatically. Usually just nudge it up or down.

[goldenband]

Nice to see the new review for The Last Bounty Hunter. I've been meaning for ages to give that one a real try, particularly as it's one of the only American Laser Games titles that didn't make it to Sega CD. Crime Patrol is the only ALG game I've done much with.

It looks like Who Shot Johnny Rock? is the only 3DO light gun title you haven't reviewed yet, correct? I thought I remembered it as being expensive but looking at Ebay it doesn't look too pricy at all.