Double Switch

As a fan of Corey Haim, I really loved this game. It has alot of replayability and even a nice musical score.

The story is original, the acting is nice, the controls are easy to figure out, it's a great game altogether.

My Rating: ***** out of ***** Stars (Based on Comparison to other Videogames of the Genre)

Ah, "Double Switch". I've wasted so much time on this game (SegaCD version). Sure the video quality wasn't great and some of the acting was bad, but that's the case with almost ALL 'full motion video' games.

It was just fun to see Deborah Harry, Corey Haim, and R. Lee Ermey (before I knew who he was) in these roles. The plot was simplistic and almost always a stretch, but this was the new revolutionary technology of its day. The graphics were awesome compared to "Dragon's Lair" (Arcade), "Super Mario World" (SNES), and "Tempest 2000" (Jaguar).

The company that pioneered these "U-Direct Movies", Digital Pictures, made some of the most memorable fan controlled entertainment available in its day. Digital Pictures, I miss you.

Fun? Yes. Quality? No. Perfect? Absolutely not. Memorable? You better believe it.

Double Switch is a game that came before its time. The game is a movie but you are the director. You determine what will happen to each, well, if you do the right things. Double Switch has a great story line along with it being a FMV (full motion video). That game has a rather low VGA view, which, with today's technology, it would be better. Double Switch was out with the Sega CD, which was a under-rated machine. This game is truly my all-time favourite.

Yes, as with all Sega CD movie games featuring actors this game has a fatal flaw that is common theme with about all of them. This one seems to have better actors than most and it has rather interesting gameplay though rather simplistic. You basically use security cameras to monitor rooms, you have mob type dudes and ninjas are something and when they step on certain points on the screen you push a button and trigger a trap and they get bonked or fall in a hole or something. It is somewhat fun watching them fall in these traps and seeing the different types of traps, but it does get old. As for the fatal flaw you ask? Well you have scenes going on while you are monitoring the rooms, explaining motivations for some of the characters and such. Well if you take the time to listen to these scenes you lose the game as to many of the intruders will break in. What is the point of filming these scenes with this actors and actresses if you can not watch them? So you end up just catching random people without really knowing what the heck is going on, however the ending is kind of funny as you put Eddie (Corey Haim's character) through some real hell.

I worked at SEGA when those god-awful SegaCD games came out. They were just dreadful. You switch around from room to room while washed up actors reluctantly read their bad lines. And the premise is always the same. you can't watch the scenes you have to memorize the sequence of going from room to room and pressing a button to release a booby trap at just the right time. Christ almighty I need prozac after just thinking about those horrid Digital Pictures games.