Wirehead

The Good
Full-motion-video was quite loved and hated in the 1990s. Video games were moving to the CD format, and one of the initial genres to come out of this advanced hardware was FMV.

I liked some of the full-motion-video games, albeit sometimes because they had a certain campy, MST3000 appeal. In this case, an "average, everyday" family man finds himself with a hi-tech device in his head.

The silly premise boils down to being able to make a few choices in the character's conduct. The full-motion-video tale primarily centers on the various people who want to get a hold of the new technology, even if that means your painful demise.

The full-motion-video is quite decent for the Sega CD hardware, and while only the 'right' decisions will allow the story to complete, their is some appeal in making bad decisions in a B-minus film that could easily be parodied by mystery science theatre 3000 (mst3000).

The Bad
The Sega CD was saddled with weak hardware capabilities, which hurt the system on many levels.

The quality of the full-motion-video was one such problem and while this game shows how much progress had been made in a few years, it cannot but help serve as a reminder to the systems faults.

The level of interactivity in a game such as this is very limited. The 1990s promise of interactive films was largely a rerun of the 1980s Dragon's Lair.

Once you know what choices to make the game, the reply value evaporates. The full-motion-video is not tv quality, the actual story is fairly short, and is not going to keep you coming back for more.

The Bottom Line
Wirehead was one of the last Sega CD games to be released. It highlights some of the improvements made in full-motion-video technology, and their is a certain campy, novelty appeal to the game. It is not the worst or best full-motion-video game released for the Sega CD.