Zogging Hell!!!

The Nuon was a spectacular flop, which is a shame as it had so much to offer. Basically a powerful additional chip that came within a DVD player, the Nuon not only offered a chance to really revolutionise DVD watching and film but also play N64/Dreamcast quality games as well. All this for what was at the time, only slightly more than a standard DVD player. Unfortunately only a handful of DVD players (mainly from Samsung) carried the hardware and only a small amount of DVD films featured Nuon enhanced features, most notably the Planet of the Apes remake and Elizabeth Hurley vehicle Bedazzled (though a Nuon enhanced Liz is not something to be sniffed at... if your a man anyway). The game catalogue was also depressingly small, with less games coming out for it than Amstrad's GX4000, which was incredibly unsuccessful..
As I say though, this was a shame, Nuon's DVD enhancements, such as super zoom and an ability to watch the film from several perspectives at once are quality additions. The virtual light machine (courtesy of the one and only Jeff Minter) is brilliant (now featuring in a slightly more advanced form in an X-Box 360 near you). There were also a few quality games in there, which considering they were first generation, really leaves one with feeling of 'what if...'

The N504....

Specs

Aries 3 Processor (On later machines). This is the daddy of the system giving most of the Nuon power. Runs at 108mhz

16mb of ram - split in 8mb of System ram and 8mb of Main ram

System Bus at 54mhz

Other features were dictated by the DVD player the Aries 3 was fitted into, extras could include joypad ports and other enhancements.

Joypad ports on the N504

Nuon DVD players

Samsung

N504 - The best of the bunch as far as Nuon goes and only coming out in mainland Europe as far as I'm aware.
N501 - Similar to the 504 in styling, and probably the best North American version.
N2000 - The first Nuon DVD player.
N505 - Same as 504, but lacks the joypad ports!?!?!

RCA

Released a couple of players which utilised crippled versions of the Nuon technology.

Toshiba

SD2300

Games

Tempest 3000

Jeff Minter's Jaguar fav makes it to the Nuon in a newly enhanced eye watering form. A feast for the eyes, ears, brain and just about every other sense you can possibly imagine is probably the only way of describing it. The visuals are to be fairly frank, jaw dropping. You will have seen nothing like this. Textures and light effects swirl all over the place as you spin round the web. Under the surface however this is the same Tempest 2000 as before, though there are a few tweaks here and there in the gameplay. It's fantastic, but for some reason I still prefer the Jaguar version. Maybe it's because there is so much going on that you can't really concentrate on what your meant to be doing, and that all the swirling colours make your eyes ache if you play it for too long. I can't quite place what it is, but something's not quite as good as in 2000. The music is very similar to that of 2000, but this time it comes from the 'exclusive' Tempest soundtrack CD, which Atari gave away with their CD add on. Still despite the not quite 'feeling' right this is a damn good blaster, and definite 'must have' for any Nuon collector.

Zogging Hell Rating: 8/10

Merlin Racing

Another Jaguar favourite, Atari Karts, makes it to the Nuon. Gone are the 2D karts of the Jag version, and instead we are blessed with an entirely 3D game, with more than a touch of inspiration from Mariokart 64. Quite simply this is my favourite Nuon game, and I actually prefer it to the aforementioned classic. Control is spot on unless your using the Logitech gamepad (which is a dog) and never gets in the way of playing, Gameplay is further enhanced by a two player option. The story mode is a bit silly and the final witch race is ridiculously hard compared to the rest of the game, but is enjoyable nonetheless. Graphically it fills the hole between the N64 and the Dreamcast and it's quite pretty in a somewhat sickly cutesy sort of way. Yes that's right, Merlin Racing is a tad vomit inducing, with some of the characters making you wish they hadn't banned hunting after all. The characters are similar in style to those found in the N64 game Banjo Kazooie. Gone are the 'scary' ones from Atari Karts (which was bordering on bed wettingly sweet itself), so no Skully or the one that looked like a Halloween Pumpkin. The sound is for the most part good and the tunes are more in keeping with the game than Atari Kart's haunting efforts.

Zogging Hell Rating: 9/10

Freefall 3050 AD

Iron Soldier 3

Space Invaders XL

Ballistic

The Next Tetris

A number of shareware games have been released (are still being released) as well and there are a number of 'unreleased' games knocking about.

Movies

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Controllers

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