Let me admit my biases up front -- i like my technology portable... like a cell phone, and my powerbook... i even have a modem that hooks my computer into my cell phone, so when i'm feeling especially obsessive, i can check my e-mail from the top of some mountain. So when my friend Steve at work started talking about his new Sony PlayStation video game player, i wasn't too interested -- it has to be hooked into a TVand my TV has never been something i liked interacting with... i have my little nintendo gameboy I can play on the plane or in the car, or on that mountain top... andf I want to play Doom, I can play it on my laptop. Plus, I had Pong and Atari's TV video game player as a kid -- and frankly they were kinda lame.

but then just the other day i was in a mall here in boston-- looking to drive the economy a bit, and i stopped by circuit city... there in the back of the store, behind all the cool portable phones and walkmans.... was a crowd of people checking out this decidely wired technology -- the Sony PlayStation, 3-DO, and Sega Saturn were competing with Nintendo's game player for TV time. These games were just like the ones in the arcades and at movie theatres -- all of the sudden I was hooked in. .. and I'm thinking OK maybe steve was right and these games are way cooler than what I'm playing on my PC at work.

I watched for bit -- little kids playing virtua fighter and Ridge racer... moving from one station to the next trying to figure out which box was the best.... Finally, the crowd thinned enough for me to have my turn... well, lets face it, the crowd had more than thinned -- all the kids had been pried away by their parents-- now i could be embarrassed by my Myst- level playing speed alone. Myst is that game where you figure out puzzles... in these video games you bash other people. cool.

First I tried the 3-DO player.... having no clue how to start the game, i pushed a bunch of buttons and found myself racing the streets of san francisco on a motorcycle... knocking out fellow bikers, mowing down pedestrians and hitting the pavement at 100 miles an hour.. all in a quest to do what else... win. Like many of these games, neighborly behavior is not encouraged... and its certainly not fun... in fact, you're deemed a loser in the pejorative sense if you don't take advantage of everyone else's weakness to win. This game has an appropriate name... road rash. I was completely hooked at this point and could have cared less about some 10 year old trying to score some free time of the box.

What makes Road Rash, and many of the other 3-DO games so appealing is the amazingly detailed graphics... even as they fly by, you can appreciate the detail of the pedestrian you almost creamed. Powered by a 32 bit processor, this machine is brought to you by the same guy who used to head one of the best CD-ROM game makers.

Oh, that 32 bit word i just threw in -- unless you are a real technofile, just know that 32 bit is much better than 16 bit... and won't hold a candle to the next generation 64 bit machines due out next year. One of those 64 bit machines will be made by 3-DO and will be able to plus into the existing machine.

The nicest thing about the 3-DO game player is that they finally figured out, several years after its introduction, that people won't pay 700 bucks for the hardware to play games. Its now priced down around 300 dollars. It comes with three games, but the ones you'll really want will cost you around 60 dollars.

After 3-DO's killer graphics, Sega Saturn was kind of a disappointment.... lots of polygon looking people and decidely lower- tech backgrounds. Its best game by some accounts is virtua fighter which is a game where you beat the heck out of your opponent. Technically, there are some impressive moments in the game, but it lacks the attention to detail found in the 3-DO player. The

Saturn has suffered from an apparent lack of games, but in reality has as many to choose from as some of its competitors.

I was not personally impressed with what I saw, and judging from what the kids in the store were playing, nneither were they... plus Saturn's sales haven't been up to expectations. But Sega has a strong hold in the home market as well as the arcade industry.. just check the machines in your local movie theatre and you'll see what I mean. Industry watchers say Sega's prospects will be even brighter in 1996 and with a new crop of cool games, you'd probably be happy owning one of these.

The Saturn costs about 300 dollars without a game, and 350 with virtua fighter.

Before I talk about my favorite video game unit... a word about Nintendo, which has been pushing the same tired game platform for the last three or four years -- Super NES. They have a new machine called Virtual Boy, and the name itself should tell you something... having the word virtual in your title is kind of like saying Information Superhighway... its a cliche that means very little, and the reality is pretty disappointing. VirtualBoy lives up to that billing.

Its graphics, if you can call them that, bring to mind the first digital watches with their red LED numbers... its like you got a defective pair of 3-d glasses with two red lenses. The unit sits on a stand that looks suspiciously like the machine you use to take your vision test at the department of motor vehicles. Despite its name similarity to my favorite game boy... Virtual Boy is by no means portable. Worst of all the game carries a warning against letting your kids use it because permanant vision damage can occur.

OK, so for 180 bucks, we're supposed to buy a toy that is slightly dangerous and boring. Virtual Boy is a truly bad product... so what is Nintendo thinking? Remember the 64 bit thing we talked about before? Well Nintendo has one in the works. Developed with Silicon Graphics, the computer geniuses behind almost all cool things 3-D, it should put Nintendo right back up on top. That is, if you can wait until the middle of 1996, when the Ultra 64 is released for an unknown price.

Me, I can't wait that long... video games are an instatnt gratification device... whether it's destroying other civilzations or just driving really fast, the machine to have NOW is Sony's PlayStation. Once you play Sony's PlayStation, I can guarantee you will need it. The graphics are far superior to Saturns' and even 3-DO's... there are plenty of good games available now, and the speed of play is superior to both Saturn and 3-DO.

I played one very cool game where you are a roller blader competing with mountain bikers and skateboards who don't play by any discernable rules other than win by trying to make you lose. The road surface and sideline flew by perfectly... unlike some of PlayStation's competitors which can't redraw the screen fast enough to deal with this level of detail. It too is a 32 bit machine and runs about 300 dollars without any games and 350 with Ridge Racer, a car racing game.

If you are a casual user, any of the three -- 3-DO, Satrun or PlayStation -- will probably satisfy your urge to beat small cartoon competitors. Other systems out there like Atari's Jaguar, Saturn's 32X, even your PC's CD-ROM are bound to disappoint... and the real game geeks out there who must buy now probably need... not want but need... the PlayStation. Just a fair warning, though... don't go testing these games unless you want to be sucked into the TV-based game world and away from your 80 dollar game boy.