Sega teases next-gen titles

Sega is displaying a respectable next-gen lineup at E3, with playable versions of Xbox 360 games Full Auto and Condemned: Criminal Origins available at its South Hall booth. But behind closed doors lurks the first indication of the games that will likely most excite diehard fans of the company's legendary Japanese development teams. A real-time demo reel in Sega's closed theater contains footage of next-generation versions of Virtua Fighter, Afterburner, House of the Dead, and Sonic the Hedgehog, and while the company won't confirm titles, platforms, or release plans for any of these games, it's a safe bet they'll form a significant portion of Sega's next-gen lineup.

The Virtua Fighter and Sonic demos on display are presented as technical demonstrations rather than actual gameplay. The former shows series stars Akira Yuki and Sarah Bryant individually performing kata--or choreographed sequences of fighting moves--in a number of different environments similar to those seen in past installments in the series. Both characters are exceptionally detailed, looking close to the quality of the prerendered CG in many past games.

The Sonic segment doesn't exactly seem to be a game, per se, although it was the only demo to contain a sequence being directly controlled before our eyes. It depicted Sonic racing through a forest and into a temple, at which point it allowed the presenter to switch to a first-person perspective to look around the temple and throw coin containers in every direction. Afterward Sonic squared off against a veritable army of robots in a plains setting; this section seemed to indicate the hardware's capability to render a huge number of characters onscreen at once.

On the other hand, House of the Dead and Afterburner look like you could pick up a controller and play them right now. Scores of zombies and some larger, more gruesome creatures populated the House of the Dead demo, which didn't have any sort of heads-up display but nevertheless proceeded from a first-person, on-rails perspective identical to that of past games in the arcade light-gun series. We got to see a bunch of those high-poly zombies getting shot up real nice-like, which means House of the Dead is right on track.

Finally, Afterburner looked by far the most like a complete game--not only was it shown from a behind-the-plane perspective just like in the classic F-14 combat games of the same name, but it even had a proper HUD and other onscreen cues like missile lock-on brackets and a targeting reticle. More importantly, the demo showed off exquisitely detailed landscapes and water effects, all running at a smooth frame rate. It's been so long since Sega has released an Afterburner game that this is potentially the most exciting addition to the company's upcoming titles.

A Sega spokesperson inside the theater stressed that all of the footage shown in the demo reel was running in real time on next-gen hardware, and if that's actually the case, the company's future lineup looks rosy indeed.