Perhaps one of the bigger surprises of this year's Tokyo Game Show was the unveiling of Virtual On: Marz, a new Virtual On game in development for the PlayStation 2. The demo at the show only had one mode available (story mode), but it was more than enough to show that Hitmaker's taking a somewhat different approach with the latest home installment in this traditionally arcade-focused series.

　　The story mode in Virtual On: Marz can best be described as a survival mode in which you pilot Temjin (one of the original mechs, or “virtualoids,” in the Virtual On series) through several different missions that are structured in such a manner that you can't move on to a new area within the level until you've defeated all the enemies. The first level is pretty easy because you'll only have to fight a couple of weaker virtualoids at once, but once you get into the third or fourth section, you'll have to start fighting up to three relatively skilled mechs at once. Needless to say, for those who haven't played the four-player Virtual On: Force, it's pretty weird to see so many virtualoids stomping around on the screen at once. Throughout the demo, you move from battle to battle until you reach the level boss, which in this case, was a tank capable of firing a barrage of projectiles and a large energy beam that does quite a bit of damage. It's also worth noting that, at some point in the demo, you'll be joined by a computer player piloting a virtualoid that looks similar to one of the Apharmds, but with a cowboy hat. This computer player will assist you in defeating enemies and the boss, and its pilot will make comments that correspond to the onscreen action.

　　Unfortunately, the only control scheme available in the demo didn't make very good use of the Dual Shock 2. In the arcades, Virtual On uses a two-stick controller for the purposes of maneuvering the mechs and making them jump in the air, but instead of using a similar setup with the two analog sticks on the PlayStation 2 controller, Hitmaker opted to use the face buttons for turbo and jumping abilities. Hopefully, this will be changed before the game's final release.

　　Virtual On: Marz has incredibly vibrant colors that are used to excellent effect on the indidivual virtualoids. The texture quality on these models also appears to be quite high, but as far as the environments are concerned, the demo featured only a generic canyon area that wasn't particularly impressive. But what was impressive was the fact that the frame rate remained steady even when there were around three or four virtualoids onscreen at once.

　　We'll have more on Virtual On: Marz as it becomes available.