Official UK PlayStation Magazine Disc 41

Released on 23 December 1998

FEATURING:

Michael Owen's WLS '99, Rollcage, Rival Schools, Akuji the Heartless, Wild 9, Pool Shark, Monkey Hero, Total Soccer

Michael Owen's WLS '99

It's football innit. Lighting is pretty nice and you get a lot of guys on screen at once. Coincidentally the same amount as a regular football game. We played as England and got our asses kicked by the Poles. A true dream match of the ages for all football fans. We know fuck all about Michael Owens but a quick Google reveals he's sexting and soliciting nudes from reality TV stars nowadays. Rock on.

1/10 ⭐

Rollcage

An extremely barebones racing demo with one simple and short track. The handling is nuts, with a simple tap of the d-pad sending you veering to the other side. The physics feel pretty good, being able to loop de loop in the tunnel is pretty fun for about 10 seconds. Apparently this specific demo was a competition, with the winner being awarded with a Ford Puma. It has yet to arrive at our doorstep.

7/10 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rival Schools: United by Fate

A classic Capcom fighter with cool designs, cool mechanics including skyscraper height launchers and air combos and some great tag team supers. Ofsted would implode if they found out about these schools. I had already played this game and it's sequel Project Justice, but my brother appreciated a fighter where you don't have to work out which blonde blue-eyes shredded white man is which.

8/10 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Akuji the Heartless

The Shadow the Hedgehog to Crash Bandicoot. Play as not-the-Predator in this mediocre action game slashing and breathing fire on enemies resembling that one Indian mystic guy from the X-files who crawls up people's asses. Thank god for the PS1 and it's ability to render tribalist aesthetics for the first time ever.

3/10 ⭐⭐⭐

Wild 9

The NTSC box art for this game is adorned with the tagline "Torture your enemies!"; and goddamn if torturing your enemies isn't fun as fuck. In this 2.5D platformer you are equipped with a Ghostbusters style beam you can use to wallop your enemies back and forth like a rat in a sock, and that's all you really need to sell an impressionable mind. Torture is kinda neat!

8/10 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Pool Shark

Pool is a pub sport. You play it while pissed and occasionally use the chalk on your cue to make it look like you know what you're doing. Pool should not be on the PlayStation. The CPU in this game is BRUTAL. We played a couple games and making one mistake is truly fatal; the titular pool shark Ed Case pockets every single colour in rapid succession. Truly the LeBron of pub sport.

1/10 ⭐

Monkey Hero

A top-down Zelda-like game loosely based off Journey to the West, or simply 'Monkey' if you don't smoke Chunghwa. A very barebones demo that gives you little time to get to grips with the game. The full game advert splash screen at the end promising "mean gypsies" and "stinky hermits" was pretty convincing however.

2/10 ⭐⭐

Total Soccer (Net Yaroze)

The Net Yaroze was a PS1 devkit marketed towards hobbyists and essentially, a new gen of console indie devs. Total Soccer was created by the delightfully English named Charles Chapman, who went on to develop handheld ports of popular sports games with his studio Exient. The fact that a publically available devkit that allowed a bunch of bedroom-dwelling teens to make games even existed is worthy of a few stars, but put simply; we do not care about football.

2/10 ⭐⭐

PlayStation Demo Discs