The year is 2052 and Anti-Gravity Racing is the hottest thing on the planet. Winners of these races walk home with fame, fortune, and glory. The losers stagger home with a bad case of whiplash. Fortunately, you’ve got your pick of the four fastest sleds on Earth. It will take all the skill and timing you can muster to finish high enough to be the circuit champion.

WipEout will take you through six different race courses located at all points of the globe. Each track is unique in look, feel, and racing surface, and you’ll want to figure out which sled works the best with your own style of racing. In addition to simply turning left or right, you’ll sometimes have to incorporate your left and right air brakes to make the tight turns. Also, you’ll have control over the up and down tilt of your sled, which should be used when you are going up and down steep hills.

Without the shackles of gravity, your sleds will reach speeds previously attainable only in your dreams. The sleds move fast all by themselves, but the courses are also riddled with boost pads which will thrust you forward so fast you can almost feel the skin stretching back on your face. Be careful, though, because if you hit a boost pad while from the wrong angle you might be rocketed right into a retaining wall.

You job will be to finish ahead of the other seven racers on the track. In addition to fancy driving you’ll be able to grab some power-ups that can put you one step ahead of the competition. There are dumb fire missiles, two types of homing missiles, and mines you can use to smite your foes. There is also a shield for protection purposes, and a super booster which, when properly used, can shave some major seconds off of your time.

The game on its own is 1-player, but if you happened to have the PlayStation’s link cable you can play head to head against a friend. If you can’t get enough high speed action, wipeout is definitely a game you should try.

Toshinden is the ultimate battle of the underworld. Some have come to fight for glory, others for more personal reasons, but they all have come to see who is the best. In Battle Arena Toshinden the odds are against you, but with time and practice you too can rule the underworld.

The overall look and feel of fighting games is changing, and Toshinden is just another example of the evolution of video games. This game takes 3D fighting to the next level with the addition of lateral movements around a 3D field. What this means is that when you press one of the top left or right buttons your character spins in the appropriate direction to either side of your opponent. This enables you to avoid ANY attacks if you time your movements perfectly.

Toshinden is a benchmark in fighting games not only because it excels in graphics and sound but in play control as well. Battle Arena Toshinden’s use of over 90,000 polygons not only shows off the PlayStation’s graphic capabilities, but reminds us what 32-bit gaming is all about – fun and entertainment. The true name of the game.

In many ways, Monster Rancher 2 is a different game, but the addiction it inspires is just the same.

As a sequel to one of the most widely overlooked PlayStation titles on the market, Monster Rancher 2 shows true signs of growth, and once again delivers a unique gaming experience that sets the standard for all virtual pets to follow. With Pokemania sweeping the nation, and the new Monster Rancher cartoon airing on BKN Kids Network, there’s a chance that Monster Rancher 2 may actually become a mainstream title rather than a sleeper hit.

For a game that could have been an update, Tecmo went back to the drawing board and redesigned this product. One of the big complaints with the original was the overabundance of loading. Every little action, like heading to the shop or placing a monster in a training exercise, was bogged down with obnoxious loading delays. In Monster Rancher 2, this problem has been not only addressed, but eliminated. To accomplish this feat, Tecmo was forced to trash most of the 2D artwork and replace it with streaming polygons. The traditionalists out there may not like it, but the 3D aspect actually works quite well. You really can’t whine about the increased speed, and the incorporation of new camera angles certainly doesn’t hurt the play either.

Considering its strange demands of additional games and CDs, it seemed likely that Tecmo would change the way that players receive new monsters. But alas, this is not the case. To get the rare beasts, you’ll still need to track down specific music CDs and games. Tecmo has also made save game files from the first game compatible, and a handful of monsters can also be bought at the shop. Many of the creatures that battled in the first game are back and, of course, are joined by a slew of new species.

Other than developing a parental link to your monster, which you come to love like a child, the sole purpose of this game is to train your critter to become the ultimate fighter. The life span of these beloved monsters is once again short, lasting roughly four to five years. In this time, you’ll need to power-up your monster’s attributes through several different training exercises. Since all of the training was 2D in the original, it has been overhauled with a 3D appearance that is lightning quick and loaded to the hilt with different animation sequences, one for success, failure, cheating, truancy, and greatness. Another way to power-up your beast is to send it on expeditions. As expected, these missions are quite different than those in the first game and are now constructed as hilarious real-time movies. The only part of this sequel that has not been reworked or partially tweaked is the combat. Sure, there are new moves and attacks, but the fighting dynamics are unchanged.

In many ways, Monster Rancher 2 is a different game, but the addiction it inspires is just the same.

Spring training is over, and baseball has begun another epic 162 game season. For every sport there are thousands of couch jockeys who feel that they could play the game better than the professionals and run the team better than the managers. For these people, there is video baseball, where anyone with some skill can be an All-Star. To fill the baseball void on the PlayStation, Konami is releasing another game in their sports line-up called Bottom of the Ninth (BOTN).

BOTN features all rendered players and stadiums. They have acquired the MLBPA license, so you’ll have over 700 genuine baseball professionals with which to play. They even have pictures of the players which appear when you are batting or pitching. In addition, some of the top players have signature moves such as Nomo’s high reaching wind-up and Edgar Martinez’s bat waving stance. Unfortunately, the MLB license was not secured so you’ll be playing in imaginary stadiums with the Minnesota Buildings and the New York Statue of Liberties.

Play mechanics are rather innovative. The top and bottom split-screen pitching mode keeps the batter from knowing what the pitcher is doing and vice-versa. Once a pitch is released, the batter will see a cursor which gives a general location of where the pitch will cross the strike zone – curves, sliders, and other breaking pitches will cause the cross hairs to move, so be careful. At this point, the batter moves a target and times his swing in an effort to hit the ball. You can also practice everything from pitching and batting to running and fielding in the Training Camp Mode.

Bottom of the Ninth seems to be one of the most interesting baseball titles to come down the pipe in quite some time. Fans of the great American pastime or ordinary schmoes looking for a good time will want to check out this game.

Interplay originally believed that the PlayStation version of Descent would be just as popular as the PC offering. They even loaded their warehouse full with thousands of copies to ensure that no one would have a hard time finding one. Well, at the time, the PlayStation was growing enormously, but the consumers that bought the unit picked it up to play MK3, or some kind of fighting or sports title, not a complicated first-person war simulator. So Interplay is to this day stuck with an abundant amount of Descent, but that didn’t stop them from giving those who live off games like this another shot. Thus, Descent Maximum is upon us with a handful of new features and the oh-so-familiar disorienting gameplay.

While this `Maximum’ offering is basically the same as Descent 2 for the PC, a few things have been added and taken out as well. The new options are mainly level upgrades, but for a Descent junkie this is all that’s needed. Descent Maximum is in a way easier to understand than the original offering. Parallax Software added a new Guide Bot feature, which on certain levels will help you find keys, power-ups, and whatever you command it to find. The mission objectives are basically the same. Once again, you’ll need to either destroy a reactor or boss (which there are more of), and then find the exit before the whole mine blows.

Solid control is the key to success in this game, and luckily, Interplay has kept the user configure option in the game. Finding a suitable controller configuration will help ease the burden of being completely out of control on a new level. Most of the time you’ll find yourself in a state of disorientation, you don’t know what is up and what is down.

Descent Maximum is a surprise to all of us since Descent sold so poorly, but we love the game, and we hope that this time around you’ll come and see how much fun it can be. Plus, it’s one of the few games left to still use the prehistoric (or thought to be so) Sony Link cable.

Originally released on the PC in ‘94, X-COM is a complex game of strategy and resource management. Aliens are mysteriously appearing all around the globe and it is your job, as a member of Extraterrestrial Combat (X-COM), to do everything you can to stop them. Build bases, outfit your men, manufacture an air force, and research alien technologies and you just may have a chance. X-COM is a difficult game that takes patience to master, but the fruits of your work are plentiful. Unfortunately, this game is best when played with the PlayStation mouse, so make sure you have one or are ready to make the investment!

The original PC version of Wing Commander 3 may have been one of the best games of its time but was crippled due to its straining system requirements and massive load times. Translation to the Playstation has solved both of these problems but only at great cost to the game’s detail. The cinematic scenes are just as acceptable as they were before (although some of the more grim scenes have been cleaned up a bit (Angel’s death for one), but the action itself has suffered a fair bit. Missiles are downright “Afterburner” and there is no true cockpit view (the art for the details of the cockpit isn’t there), but there is less loading time and PS-X owners not biased by the PC original will probably have a good time.