E3 2004: Spikeout Hands-On & Media

Classic AM2 arcade action as Spikeout finally makes its way to console. Our impressions.

Update: Video coverage added.

Back in 1997, Sega's famed AM2 department released a 3D beat-em up powered by the unrivalled Model 3 Step 2 hardware. While Spikeout supported single player action, and allowed you to choose from four different characters, what set it apart from the rest was the massive size of the levels. With only three levels to play through, Spikeout made up for that shortcoming with the size and scope of the 30 areas throughout the city you could explore and do battle in, allowing players to choose their own routes and take shortcuts through urban areas.

Another key feature that set Spikeout apart from the competition was a networking system that allowed up to four people to battle against the enemies in the game via networked arcade units. Later versions of Spikeout expanded on this even further by allowing gamers at separate arcades to play together. Unfortunately, this ultra cool setup was relegated to Japanese arcades and never saw the light of day anywhere else.

Later in 2001, Sega's Amusement Vision released a Naomi powered version of Spikeout that finally featured support for 2 player simultaneous play on the same machine. However, even with that much needed addition it lacked the popularity of the original Spikeout and pretty much seemed to come and go without making much of a whimper.

With Sega passing on the chance of releasing Spikeout on the Dreamcast, despite a build existing somewhere deep inside Sega (we can guarantee that), fans were disheartened by their decision and almost lost hope of ever seeing a home conversion of the game. In 2002, news of an Xbox version surfaced and was buried just as quickly only to resurface a few months ago.

And now after experiencing such a long wait, the wish of many a hardcore gamer has finally come true. Or so it seems. Shown in playable form at Sega's E3 booth this year was their Xbox Live compatible action game, Spikeout: Battle Street.

In Spikeout Battle Street, the turf war that occurred between two legendary gangs ten years ago - Team Spike and Team Inferno - has been revisited. Spike Jr. has continued on with his father's, er, 'legacy' by starting a new war against Team Inferno which, incidentally, is still being led by his father's nemesis, Michael.

The Xbox edition features Xbox Live compatible elements such as multiplayer competitive and cooperative play, along with bonus online features that provide you with access to new characters, sound files, stories, and downloadable items to customize your characters with among other things.

While the game's feature list sounds great on paper, the most important question that remains concerns the gameplay. The E3 build we played was pretty average and suffered from occasional camera problems and control issues. Graphically the game looked pretty sharp but the E3 build was still quite early and didn't really grab us the way we'd hope it would. The 'kill off 50 bad guys within the allotted time' gameplay grew a little tiring fast, and the time limit provided in order to complete such a task was unreasonable for a beginning level.

While the demo we played featured only 4 selectable characters with a decent range of combo moves, there are a total of 16 different playable characters planned for the final version.

Spikeout: Battle Street is due out later in the year, let's hope this one shapes up before it ships out as it's currently lacking in a few areas. Stay tuned for detailed updates.

Joseph Jackson
Staff Writer, Kikizo.com