Is Super NES a dead system yet? No, but almost there. As of right now, there are only two Super NES games that are listed to be released this year: NBA Live '98 and Kirby's Super Star Stacker. That's it. There might be more games, but it's highly unlikely. Anyway, back about two or three years ago, people projected the year, that the Super NES would die out, to be 1998. This year. So, I'm not too surprised. But, I do think that the system could go at least another year.

Game Boy sort of dropped in the number of games released last year. But all of a sudden, there seem to be more Game Boy games coming out lately and later this year. A lot of companies, that stopped making Game Boy games a long time ago, are coming back. Like Acclaim, Konami, Hudson Soft. Nintendo has a much better line-up than last year: James Bond 007 (which is already released), Wario Land II, Game & Watch Gallery 2, and Pocket Monster. Natsume jumps in with three games (maybe more): Ring Rage, Legend of the River King, and Harvest Moon. THQ comes back for more: FIFA: Road to the World Cup '98, Disney's A Bug's Life, Disney's Mulan, Maui Mallard: In Cold Shadow, Rugrats, Small Soldiers, Yoda Stories. What was that last game? Was it a Star Wars game? Probably. Then you get the Acclaim games, including Turok from December: Bust A Move 2 (which is already released) and something called Brain Drain. Konami has a bunch, too: Castlevania Legends, Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, and (after the success of ISS64) International Superstar Soccer '98 and more. And there are others, too. Wario Land II will probably be the best Game Boy game this year, so you'd better pick it up when it's released on March 9th (the same release date as Yoshi's Story). The Game Boy is far from dead, it's thriving.

Now for the Nintendo 64. Yes! Nintendo's biggest and best system ever. There are almost 100 games coming out this year, so it would take too long to tell about all of them. If you just want to see the names of the games, check out the Nintendo 64 Software section. The big games this year include: Yoshi's Story (Nintendo), 1080' Snowboarding (Nintendo), NBA Courtside (Nintendo and Left Field), MLB Featuring Ken Griffey Jr. (Nintendo and Angel Studios), Banjo-Kazooie (Nintendo and Rare), Cruis'n World (Nintendo and Eurocom), F-Zero X (Nintendo), The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (Nintendo), Conker's Quest (Rare), Quake (Midway), Mortal Kombat 4 (Midway), Rush 2 (Midway), Wayne Gretzky's 3-D Hockey '99 (Midway and Atari Games), Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (Konami), International Superstar Soccer 2 (Konami), Castlevania 64 (Konami), NBA In The Zone '99 (Konami), Forsaken (Acclaim and Iguana UK), Bust A Move 2 (Acclaim), WWF Warzone (Acclaim and Iguana West), Turok 2 (Acclaim and Iguana), Extreme-G 2 (Acclaim and Iguana UK), NFL Quarterback Club '99 (Acclaim and Iguana). Those are just all the BIG companies. But there are more. Take 2 has Robotech: Crystal Dreams. Atlus has Snowboard Kids. Ocean has Mission: Impossible. Crave Entertainment has Milo's Bowl-A-Rama, THQ has Quest 64 (the very first RPG for the N64), EA Sports has a whole bunch of sports games, Ubi Soft has Tonic Trouble, Interplay has Earthworm Jim 3D, and Capcom has Mega Man 64. There are other companies too. But as I said before, it would take a whole lot of time to go through all of them.

Did I forget something? Oh yeah! The 64DD! Well, Nintendo isn't totally sure that it will be out by the fall (it's going to be released in Japan in June), but in case it does, here's Nintendo's line-up for it: EarthBound 64 (this is probably the pack-in game), Mario Artist series, and SimCity 64. Not much of a line-up, but there will be more in 1999.

Well, that's 1998 in a nutshell. At least from the point of view of right now. Remember that Nintendo and several other companies will show "surprise" games at the E3 in May. (Last year's "surprise" game was Banjo-Kazooie, then later it was Diddy Kong Racing.) So ther may be more BIG games than the ones mentioned above, Nintendo 64 and Game Boy. I don't think Super NES has a chance, but we'll see. Check out the next editorial in a couple of weeks.