Usually I don't harbor the philosophy of basing a hardware review upon the software bundle but in the Raven's case I won't make an exception but I'll at least take it very much into account. Quantum3D have certainly gone to town with the Raven's games bundle. Nope there's no Incoming, Battlezone, Forsaken or even MechWarrior 2 to be found. Instead they're sewed their oats with Midway and secured the rights to bundle NFL Blitz (see Amer's review), San Francisco Rush: The Rock and Gex: Enter the Gecko. Top of the pile has to be NFL Blitz. Every single 3Dfx party that I've ever been to has always been crowded in two areas. Firstly the bar is extremely populated (can't imagine why?) but secondly the NFL Blitz machine's are just as much a crowd pleasure. I won't go into too much detail (read Amer's review instead) but as a Brit who apparently knows bugger all about American Football, I'm definitely a fan of the game. The graphics are top notch, either in Glide or under D3D at resolutions as high as 1280x1024. The action is fast paced, unlike most other NFL games, which take up the 'sim' approach and the player animations wouldn't look out of place on 'Monday Night Raw'. Best of all is the abundance of violence and foul play, face masks, power slams, suplexes et. al. Without any referee's or flags, the violence is unparalleled (except in Quake clones) and two player games will most likely cause more than the occasional curse, bruising and slapping (what's an occasional slap amongst good friends?).

Arcade frequenters will also know Midway for their 3D racing game, San Francisco Rush. Well the PC version isn't yet done/finalized but if you're a fan of the game you're in luck. The Raven comes bundled with a full version called San Francisco Rush The Rock: Alcatraz edition, which may be the only way of ever getting the game. Midway may not release this version in retail. This means that fans will have to wait until the sequel next year. Although the version I was given wasn't the final 'bundle' version, it was still blazingly quick and looked spot on (with the arcade version in mind). I was happy to see that the crash sequences and outrageous jumps were as ever present. Another successful port from the arcades by Midway you could say. A point worth mentioning is that Quantum3D have protected their software and made sure that ONLY Raven users will be able to play the game. What this unfortunately means is that multiplayer games will be a rarity and only possible with multiple Raven users. After having spoken with many other board vendors it's certainly a direction in which I'd expect to see the industry go in a bid to protect 'exclusives'. I also think that in the long run it might benefit consumers that frequently buy hardware and end up with 49million OEM versions of Forsaken.

Last but not least, the Raven comes bundled with Gex: Enter the Gecko. Um… just as Sharky Extreme caters for all the family, you could say that Gex caters for the younger generation too. Gex: Enter the Gecko (also by Midway) is your typical Mario-clone 3D platformer. You jump, dodge and save the world as per norm. Actually instead of 'saving the world' Gex returns and your mission is to keep the nations television airways free. Hmm… I think that's just some twist on saving the world?

In the past, Quantum3D has tweaked 3Dfx's reference drivers but this time around they've gone for making full use of 3Dfx's own set in order to get to market the same time as anyone else. Yeah as the saying goes, "If it ain't broke then there's no need to fix it" is applicable. As ever the advanced display properties allow you to disable the V-Sync, which is the most important feature. Other than that the usual gamma tweaks are also fully inclusive.