JVC back Sony with strong line up

JVC. Not a company one might associate with the publishing of PSOne and PlayStation 2 games, but they've actually been in it for as long as anyone. Thanks to a close relationship with Sony, JVC have a fairly strong line up of titles to release this year, and after visiting their London-based headquarters this morning, we'd back quite a few of their titles to do well. The first game we were shown was a Japanese title awaiting translation called "Power Diggerz". As the title suggests you control a JCB look-alike and smash things up. The game is surprisingly addictive, with some interesting challenges to overcome, generally either against the clock or hot-seating with a friend. For instance, during one game our host demonstrated a section where you smash up an expensive limosine, and spoke of another where you race against a clock to dig a trench. Slightly more amusing are ten-pin bowling with a huge beach ball that you bounce around with your digger's claw, and a take on the old fairground game of moving the loop around the wire, only this time with the jaws of a digger. Another game on the JVC agenda is "Panzer Front", an action-strategy tank game from Japan. Unlike other titles of its class (ho ho), Panzer casts you as any of several major nations with no discernible "evil" to stave off. With plenty of campaigns based on real-life tank battles and hundreds of the big hulks to choose from, the game should be quite a force to be reckoned with, and one of the PSOne's final full-priced games. Quite a swansong. Elsewhere, we were shown a couple of SNK games picked up in light of the company's fall from power; "Samurai Shodown" and a new "Fatal Fury" title, and finally footage of "Wing Over III", a PS2 title in development, again in Japan. WO3 features a half-and-half mix of commercial aircraft and fight planes, with some astonishingly intricate detail in the cockpit and on the outside. Although the ground could yet do with some work, Wing Over III will be a very interesting prospect when we finally play it in September.