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Pen Pen TriIcelon

Dreamcast (Japan)

1-4 players

Ok, now with the Dreamcast out in Japan and the American importers going nuts over the new Sega wonder it is time for some good old fashioned first-gen game reviews. The honorary first title to be reviewed by ZeroTolerance will be the very underated Pen Pen TriIcelon. This game was developed outside of Sega so the third party publisher had no idea what kind of hardware he was about to embark on. The Dreamcast is, by far the best system, as far as specs go that is out right now. With its hi-res graphics and super smooth frame-rate it is destined to become one of the greatest systems ever made. Pen Pen is a wonderful first generation game that really shows off what Sega's new wonder can really do. The stages, although very few of them, are highly detailed and sport some great scenery and obstacles for the racers to surpass. The one-player mode runs at a smooth as ice 30-frames per second. The multi-player modes do suffer quite a bit from minor slow-down and pop-up but this does interfer with the gameplay one bit. The characters are very unique and very very strange, they are all devised from penguins and look just as wacky as the game itself. The tracks consist of walking, sliding, and swimming, in turn adding new dimensions to the field of racing games. The few things that I have beef with start off with the lack of difficulty, the computer AI is just plain annoying, they dont try to knock you out of the way and they never seem to catch up after falling behind. This is just a minor flaw, but where this game shines is its multi-player. This game is loads of fun with two or more players battling it out to the finish. All in all this is a great first gen game and gives great hope for future titles on this amazing system. Be sure to keep an eye out for Pen Pen TriIcelon when it hits US shores sometime this fall.

Graphics-8.5

Sound-9

Gameplay-8.5

Replay-9.5

OVERALL--9.0

This is an excellent first-gen game that everyone should give a look!