Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 142

Battling Big Biz And Other Evil Life Forms -t even if almost completed the Finally like other premium Nintendo 64 games Perfect Dark is pricey at $70 But compared to the dozen or so hours of entertainment you get for $70 worth of movie tickets Perfect Dark will keep you and your friends engrossed for weeks or even months lants in a multiplayer game And because Perfect Dark is exponentially bigger than other Nintendo 64 games you can only save completed missions That can be frustrating since missions have three to five objectives and you have to start the entire sequence over again when you die Arts So Perfect Dark set in the future (2023) features a nubile heroine Joanna Dark who battles an evil corporation allied with malevolent extraterrestrials In the single-player game you see through her eyes guiding her through interactive three-dimensional sets from Chicago skyscrapers to Air Force One to an alien crash site at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean overcoming enemies by knocking them out with a pistol butt or disposing of them with a 35-weapon arsenal Three skill levels offer increasingly difficult challenges adding to the replayability The playing options are unprecedented in a video game You can for example have a friend or a simulant play along with you as your backup in split-screen cooperative mode Or in counter-operative mode your friend plays the bad guys switching around amongst them until there are none left standing In the plotless multi-player game up to four persons and eight simulants in any combination can compete in free-for-alls or as teams in 16 arenas The simulants are tough and sometimes amusing adversaries They come in a dozen types including Kamikazesim who attacks recklessly Revengesim who singles you out to hunt (town if you attract his attention and Pacifistsim who runs around collecting loose weapons to prevent them from being used The weapons many with dual functions allow players to make up with guile or 'firepower for what they may lack in fast reflexes The Laptop Gun a sub-machine gun that looks like a laptop PC can be mounted on the ceiling to ambush your pursuers The FarSight an alien gun allows you to see and shoot enemies through walls and floors Perfect Dark pushes the aging Nintendo 64 video game console to and at times beyond its technical limits For starters you must have the Expansion Pak which sells for (30 or you cant play two-thirds of on the game cartridge Even with the extra memory boost the movie-like action slows and picture quality deteriorates in proportion to the number of live players and simu- DAM SPRINTING through an underground laboratory zig-zagging to avoid bullets that kid up sparks as they ricochet off walla in a percussive blits Over my right shoulder I see a telltale puff of smoke: A pursuer has fired a rocket-launcher I veer left run for cover Hie oncoming rocket responds with a graceful U-turn having been programed to follow its target me taunts the rocketeer as the missile explodes and my sector of the TV screen goes red We laugh I press Start And Fm resurrected as a combatant in the multi-player mode of Perfect Bat called a deathmatch My opponents are two skillful gamers Rob end Mack and four simulants cunning Artificial Intelligence-operated characters Similar virtual ahootouts have been taking place in a milium American living rooms and dormitories since Perfect debut in mid-May The dazzling Nintendo 64 espionage sci-fi thriller is a party game for hardcore action fans Ingeniously designed to offer a variety of social and ado experiences it can accommodate up to four live players and eight simulants in multi-player contests on a TV screen divided into four sectors and one or two players in an epic 17-mission scenario Perfect Dark is a higher-tech follow-up to blockbuster game GoldenEye 007 which was based on a James Bond movie Two years ago the original game grossed nearly a half-billion dollars worldwide And Nintendo expects sales of Perfect Dark to rival the box office revenues of this summer's top popcorn movies Though Perfect Dark is another Bond-style fantasy adventure from the Nintendo-owned British studio Rare that created GoldenEye 007 Nintendo has lost the James Bond license to rival publisher Electronic For Adult Eyes Only and rating it (Mature players 17 and older) it made characters more realistic and pumped up the graphic carnage as well as adding a lot of innovative multi-player game options As evidence that it trying to entice young gamers the marketing campaign for Perfect Dark is targeted at a specific audience: adult males Instead of the usual Nintendo video tie-ins with fast-food joints for instance Perfect Dark is being promoted in adult venues bars (think cocktail napkins) restaurants and nightclubs The ads have run in college publications magazines and on late-night television And since the game is a movie-like experience produced for adrenaline-addicted guys a 60-second trailer has been running at theaters that are showing R-ratod action spectacles like Most important perhaps is been left out of the game the abili- Sto put feces of retd people on virtu-characters whom you can shoot Since the 1999 Electronic Entertainment Expo Nintendo had been promoting a feature that would let you snap a photo of someone on a digital Game Boy camera and using a Transfer Pak paste the face on a character in the Nintendo 64 Perfect Dark game Nintendo contends the feature included because it needed more NINTENDO'S decision not to sell Perfect Dark to kids younger than 17 is an acknowledgment that the issues raised tor school shootings over the past couple of years cannot be ignored by the leading maker of video games for children Hie electronic-publishing equivalent of the Walt Disney animation studios core audience is pubescent children Its most profitable franchise is For the rest of the industry been business as usual since the Columbine High School massacre even after the political and media outcry over how violent video games may have contributed to events But stock in trade is being trusted by parents targeting this game to adult director of corporate affairs Perrin Kaplan told GameWeek "We do not recommend it for anyone under age 17 and strongly recommending that parents keep this title out of the hands of children" As a result Perfect Dark is the most conspicuous instance yet of how societal attitudes can affect the interactive entertainment industry Perfect the blockbuster hit GoldenEye 007 had a game rating equivalent to a PG-13 movie It was the most artful and popular first person-perspective available for any video game console A game in which you shoot animated human characters was not then off-limits for teens Now that it is Nintendo has figured out how to do the and still sell games In repositioning Perfect Dark to appeal to the hardcore action crowd LIVE FROM CYBERSPACE I i I surreal mix of chat music soap opera his girlfriend girls in bikinis and more on-demand (wwwvirtuetvcomlife stylafapudgoodman) tpaca Ikettla landing to launch Webcast looks behind the scenes at Kennedy Space Center re-playing the launch of STS-98 June 14 noon (wwwJiveonthenetxom200Qfaaaaihflw39) Chat with Olympic Gold Medalist and fitness expert Inn Jenar about realizing your fitness and other goals June 148 pjn (chatlplanetrz camchatmiridhtmllnginza html) -Director Mi ttMn chats about remaking the 708 classic 1 June 14 10 pjn (AOL keyword: live) Mrc' chats about her TV show and the fell re-release of But Electronic Gaming Monthly reports that editors played a few deathmatch rounds at E3 wing th Perfect Head feature The game seemed to work fine then which makes us wonder now if maybe other more recent social considerations are The Exorcist" June 16 7 pm (wwwsomidbrnahccim) Bob Sutcr at work here not hard to imugiw.