FIrst full-motion console videogame

Playing out like an interactive movie, rail shooter Sewer Shark was a CD-Rom game for Sega’s short-lived Sega CD add-on to the Genesis/Mega Drive. A major improvement on Astron Belt (Sega, 1983), Sewer Shark employed full-motion video, which was directed by the Oscar-winning American visual effects supervisor John Dykstra. With a larger storage capacity than the console’s regular games cartridge, the CD-Rom could play video smoothly at a rate of 60 frames per second. The actual game was perhaps rather less inspiring, tasking players with fighting off giant scorpions, mechanical moles and mutant alligators while keeping the sewers of Solar City clean.