Sega Entertainment Inc announced full support for Intel Corp’s MMX and Videologic Group Plc’s PowerVR technology in its personal computer games at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Atlanta, Georgia last week. Sega, which has been in the personal computer games business for the past year, says MMX machines and machines with the PowerVR graphics board enable improved graphics and faster gaming action for arcade games converted on to the personal computer. The first MMX-enabled game will be Virtual On Cyber Troopers, a three-dimensional robot combat game, now capable of delivering higher frame rates and more detailed backgrounds with high polygon counts on the personal computer. It also uses PowerVR to offer an arcade experience with improved translucent effects, real time character shadows and fully textured and shaded polygons. Sega’s Daytona USA Deluxe will be the first of the company’s games to support Microsoft Corp’s Direct3D applications programming interfaces and will use Microsoft’s Sidewinder joystick that gives the home user the real jolts and bumps associated with a car race as players speed down the runway. The announcement comes as Andrew Grove, Intel’s chairman and chief executive told the Wall Street Journal prior to his keynote speech in Atlanta that new technologies such as faster modems for accessing the Internet, circuitry for high- quality video and three dimensional graphics and high capacity storage in the form of DVD Digital Video Disk, are about to turn personal computers into superior environments for creating games.
