An Underworldly Discovery at CES

You have to dig through a lot of singing cats and poorly animated Sonic the Hedgehog parodies to find them, but YouTube does contain some hidden gems. Today's example is a home video of the 1992 Summer Consumer Electronic Show in Chicago, where Sega announced the SegaCD lineup... including Wing Commander and another never-released Origin port!

Origin balanced a complex, turbulent relationship between Sega, Nintendo and a number of outside licensors through the 'console wars' of the 1990s, which lead to a number of 'false starts' where games were announced but never released. The discovery here is that their deal with Sega to support the Sega CD also included a port of Ultima Underworld which never saw the light of day!

Like Wing Commander SegaCD, Ultima Underworld was likely ported by an outside developer and advertising would have been handled by Sega rather than Electronic Arts. As a result, the project has remained hidden for years, despite the public announcement seen in this video. A console port of the game was eventually released--for the original Playstation and only in Japan.

You can watch the whole video here. The SegaCD trailer starts at the 2m50s mark. The whole segment is a great look at 1990s trade shows (which seem here to feature Chester Cheeto instead of half-naked women)--and you can't help but feel some pride seeing the Wing Commander trailer appear first on the giant bank of TVs.

Video Game Exhibit Finalized

The Art of Video Games is one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. The exhibition will feature some of the most influential artists and designers during five eras of game technology, from early developers such as David Crane and Warren Robinett to contemporary designers like Kellee Santiago and David Jaffe. It also will explore the many influences on game designers, and the pervasive presence video games have in the broader popular culture, with new relationships to video art, film and television, educational practices, and professional skill training.