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A.P.I Review:	SPICE WORLD
Developer:	SCEE	OPTIONS:	SCREENSHOTS: No.1   No.2   No.3
Distributor:	Sony	1 Player
Game Type:	Party	Memory Card
Review Date:	June 1998	Standard Joypad

Setting the Scene

Sony’s bosses have stated that they aim to eventually get a PlayStation 
into every home around the world. In order to help achieve this dream 
they have begun to diversify in the types of game that they are 
releasing, hoping to attract the people who currently have no 
interest in the console. Parrappa the Rapper was a great example 
of their strategy in action and the forthcoming Kula World is another. 

There is no denying that the largest problem for Sony to overcome is 
that the majority of Females would still rather do something else 
other than play videogames. Spice World is a major attempt to start 
to rectify this situation by producing something specifically 
designed for the "Girl-Gamer".

Genre

It would be fair to day that Spice girls is not a video-game, but 
more of a video-experience. The game design is unlike anything else 
we have seen on the console in that there is nothing to define if you 
have done well or badly, no scoring system and nothing to tell you 
that you have completed the game. 

The aim is to create your very own remix of any of the five tracks on 
offer, choreograph a new dance routine for this track and then direct 
and record a new video that can be saved onto your memory card and 
played back at will. Every time you play this game it will be different 
in some way as the mixing, dancing and editing are all very flexible.

Graphics

Each of the girls in the group are represented by a very realistic 
cartoon character (even the recently departed "Ginger" spice). 
Each character has twenty or so dance moves are that are all nicely 
animated. 

By contrast the background graphics are all very plain and bland in 
comparison with the standards we know can be achieved on the PlayStation. 

Sounds and Effects

Each of the five Spice Girls tracks on offer have been taken 
from the actual official recordings as opposed to being re-recorded 
by a session group. Each of the songs are split into blocks and 
played back as samples (rather than just playing them as C.D song 
tracks), so you have to be impressed with the quality of the sounds 
when considering the tiny amount of memory that the programmers can 
use within the PlayStation for this task.

Spot effects are used sparsely in the game and although adequate, 
are nothing special.

Playability

To term this product a "game" would be missing the point. The idea 
behind the game, although almost unique in gaming history, is very 
simple and as such will possibly only appeal to fans of the group.

You start by choosing your favourite spice girl: Sporty, Scary, Posh, 
Baby or Ginger.

Next you take her to the mixing room and after picking one of the 
five hit songs on offer, you make a personal re-mix of the song. 
The mixing is a simple affair. Each of the songs are split into nine 
musical blocks. Each block contains a sample of a few seconds of 
the actual track. By selecting the blocks in different orders you 
can re-arrange the song to form something completely new. The actual 
samples have been cleverly edited so that they will sound alright 
when mixed up into just about any order, making this process something 
that can be done by fans as young as five or six years old.

With your new mix saved, you can now head off to the Dance studio, 
where you will firstly be taught how to dance (using a "Parrapa 
the Rapper" style - press various symbol buttons on your joypad 
in time to the beat -  interface) and then it will be up to you 
to use some of the moves you have learned to choreograph a new 
dance routine for the whole band. It’s worth mentioning that while 
you are in the teaching stage, you should write down a few of the 
button combinations that make up each dance step. Failure to do 
this will make the choreography stage seem a little dull and 
pointless as random button pressing will rarely make your Spice 
Girl do anything more than sway from side to side. Once you have 
created the steps to go with your song you can then get all of the 
Girls to dance to it simultaneously, or better still give them 
all completely individual routines to dance to.

Younger fans may need a little help from their older sisters or 
parents to get through this stage of the game, but anyone over the 
age or ten should still find it pretty simple to get through. 

With your dance routine saved you can then put everything together 
in the television studio and record your very own video.

Your task in this final stage of the game is to become the director 
of the video-shoot, moving the camera position from girl to girl, 
zooming in and out while they perform their dance routine to your 
re-mixed track.

You can re-record the video until you are happy with the final 
result whereupon you can save the whole thing (song, dance and 
video) onto one block of your memory card. I must say that within 
a couple of hours of picking up this game, you can have a few 
very impressive tracks saved on your card. I guess the next step 
would be to connect your PlayStation to a video recorder and put 
them on tape for everyone to see - this would also prevent you from 
continually filling up your memory card!

Value for Money

The mere fact that Sony are selling this game at half 
the price of many new releases is acknowledgement of the 
lack of long-term playability in this product. Once you 
have re-mixed all five tracks a few times I feel sure that 
the interest level in this game will slowly disappear. 

Even the fifteen minutes of interview video footage with 
the Spice Girls on offer is hardly enough to keep gamers 
coming back for months.