Now you might be forgiven for thinking that that's just because we've had to answer the same question three hundred thousand times before (because no-one these days ever seens to buy more than one issue of the same magazine, or at least doesn't read any of the actual words in it), but that's not the reason. After all, that would hardly be fair - it's not your fault that we've been doing this job for years, it's ours for not being able to find a proper one where you don't just have to sit around playing games all day.

No, the reason we get all shouty and stamp our little feet is because it's SUCH A STUPID BLOODY QUESTION, the answer to which is ALWAYS THE SODDING SAME. And that answer is "It depends." It depends which games you like. Less specifically, and more helpfully, it often depends which sort of games you like.

After all, if traditional 2D one-on-one beat-'em-ups are the only thing you like to play, then the polygon-shifting, texture-mapping, millions-of-colours-ing abilities of the Playstation or the Saturn or the Ultra 64 are totally irrelevant - buy a Neo Geo, mate.

So just this once, instead of shouting at you, we're going to be informative and helpful. We've divided the entire video game universe into 7 easy-to-manage categories, and, based on WHAT ACTUALLY EXISTS RIGHT NOW, tried to say which of the four main contenders (that's the Playstation, the Saturn, the 3DO and the Jaguar - sorry, CD-i, CD32 and VIC-20 owners) is the best bet for each genre. We've almost completely ignored the huge catalogue of potentially great upcoming games on each machine - however exciting Ridge Racer 2 or Ace Driver or Sega Rally MIGHT turn out, nobody actually knows a damn thing about them yet, and don't let anyone tell you different. We're giving you facts here, not idle speculation.

And what if you're just a good old-fashioned game fan who wants to know which machine is the 'best' all-round? Well, this article isn't really for you. Perhaps you might like to make up some kind of league table, awarding machines four points for each gold medal, three points for a silver and so on. It'd be a pretty silly idea, because the categories are only relevant to themselves, not each other (ie the difference between best and second-best could be tiny for sports games, but completely massive for shoot-'em-ups, for example), but hey, it's a free country. We're not going to stop you.

RACING GAMES

Let's get one thing straight from the start, once and for all. In the wacky and wonderful world of video games, there's NOTHING, that's NOTHING, more pathetic than a company diehard. You know the type - "The Ultra 64 will be the best next gen console for sure, because it's by Nintendo"; "Sonic is better than Mario because it's by Sega". Sega and Nintendo (and Sony and Atari and SNK and all the rest) aren't your big brother or something - they're huge multinational corporations with absolutely NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER in anything other than parting you from your cash. So let's judge their 'products' on what they are, not who they're from, okay? And that means, amongst other things, getting real about Saturn Daytona USA. It's a rushed, shoddy, tatty-looking so-so conversion of a neat but unremarkable coin-op, and that's that. On current evidence, there's only one machine to buy if you want to play racing games, and that's a Playstation, because that's what Ridge Racer runs on. Support for the near-perfect arcade conversion with the gorgeously playable driving feel comes from the quirky and lovable, but short-lived in one-player mode, Motor Toon GP. The only competition of any realistic kind comes from the 3DO's Need For Speed and Road Rash, but they're both really a different, less arcadey sort of drive. The Jaguar's Chequered Flag is possibly the worst driving game of the last five years on any system, and none of the other next gen racers seen so far (the over- in-five-minutes Gran Chaser, the dismal Club Drive or, God forbid, Gale Racer) are worth wasting the two seconds it would take you to think their name.

GOLD: Playstation (Ridge Racer, Motor Toon GP)

SILVER: 3DO (Need For Speed, Road Rash, Crash'n'Burn)

BRONZE: Saturn (Daytona, Gran Chaser, Gale Racer)

ALSO-RAN: Jaguar (Chequered Flag, Club Drive, Super Burnout)

SHOOT-'EM-UPS

No contest here of any kind. Tempest 2000 is the best video game of the last decade, full stop. Doom on the Jaguar is better than the PC version, and runs on a £99 console. Jag Wolfenstein is a great blast too, and there's even a fairly decent version of Raiden. If you want to shoot things, buy a Jaguar. But if Atari just aren't cool enough for you, then (a) you're an idiot (see RACING GAMES), and (b) get a Playstation and play the totally mighty Gunner's Heaven. Probably the most unfairly maligned next gen game to date - who the hell CARES if it doesn't use the fantastic 3D abilities of the machine, or if it's an old genre style? It's a GREAT GAME - Gunner's Heaven is an all-out platforming massacre with imagination and challenge bursting out all over it's shrapnel-scarred face like some kind of deadly oozing virus. On Playstation you can also play an even better Raiden and Raiden 2, as well as Ultimate Parodius and the great-looking Philosoma. The Saturn's got Parodius too, and the pretty but short- lived Panzer Dragoon, but that's about it. 3DO? Shoot-'em-ups? Hello?

GOLD: Jaguar (Tempest 2000, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Raiden, Cybermorph, Aliens vs Predator)

SILVER: Playstation (Gunner's Heaven, Raiden Project, Ultimate Parodius, Starblade, Cyber Sled)

BRONZE: Saturn (Panzer Dragoon, Ultimate Parodius)

FAILED TO QUALIFY: 3DO (Starblade, Total Eclipse)

PLATFORM GAMES

I'm a bit worried about the future of platform games in the next generation, to be honest. Given that desperately stupid journalists are given to slagging off games purely because they "don't use the full potential of the machine" (whatever that means), platformers are going to have to try harder than most games to look 'special' enough to justify their existence on these powerful new machines. Yeah, like Super Mario World was really stretching the SNES to its limits. Cretins. Anyway, a variety of approaches have been tried so far, from the "Make it old-style but make it really pretty" (the horrifically dull Astal and Clockwork Knight on Saturn) to "Make it old-style and, er, that's it" (3DO's Gex) to "Make it completely bonkers" (Jumping Flash, Playstation) to "Er, let's not bother doing any platformers at all" (Atari). Jumping Flash has been the most successful of these (although I'm going to cheat a bit and include Gunner's Heaven in this category as well, since it's very much a platform game and since it's so bloody great), but the Saturn looks like it might well have a couple of good tricks up its sleeve in the shape(s) of Bug and Shin Shinobi Den. For that reason, we'll call it a tie for first, but this could be a fascinating category to watch in the future, Mrs Brown.  

GOLD: Playstation (Gunner's Heaven, Jumping Flash), Saturn (Clockwork Knight, Astal, Bug, Shinobi)

BRONZE: 3DO (Gex)

NOWHERE: Jaguar (Bubsy, Zool 2)

BEAT-'EM-UPS

The most hotly-contested category so far, with all four contenders pulling out some pretty big guns. We'll get the Jaguar out of the way first, though, because if you take away Mortal Kombat 3 (which is appearing on practically every format, and isn't very interesting anyway) its stable of Kasumi Ninja, Ultra Vortex and Double Dragon V looks very sad indeed. Now, though, things get a bit tougher, and it's only the existence of one stand-out champion that enables the challengers to be separated. Tekken is a genuinely stunning game, beautiful-looking with more and more gameplay buried in it the deeper you get, and it makes Virtua Fighter look like a sorry, slow, primitive mess in comparison. VF's a good game in its own right, but it's a pretty Porsche beside the drop-dead Lamborghini of Tekken, and even fixing the graphic glitches for the UK version won't save it. And funnily, it's for this reason that the 3DO sneaks into second place - Sega only has the one kind of beat-'em-up so far (the 3D one) and if you want that style you're better off with a Playstation and a copy of Tekken. The 3DO, on the other hand, is (ironically enough) strong on the more traditional 2D sprite-based game, with a great version of Super Street Fighter 2 and a good port of Neo Geo classic Samurai Shodown both offering you the opportunity to step outside. Things could change dramatically with the release of the magnificent (on coin-op) Virtua Fighter 2, but until that happens Sony and Namco are convincingly out in front.

GOLD: Playstation (Tekken, Toh Shin Den, Magical Beast Warriors)

SILVER: 3DO (Super Street Fighter 2, Samurai Shodown)

BRONZE: Saturn (Virtua Fighter)

FIRST ROUND KO: Jaguar (Kasumi Ninja, Double Dragon V, Ultra Vortex)

SPORTS GAMES

All the next gen consoles are struggling a bit for sporting action right now, although there's plenty of (mostly football) stuff in the pipeline. The honours are taken at the moment by the Saturn's under- rated Victory Goal, which is two-player mode especially is more than a match for the correspondingly over-hyped FIFA Soccer, a beautiful- looking game with all the gameplay flaws of the original Mega Drive title. The Saturn also plays host to Pebble Beach Golf, a competent but unremarkable golf sim worth seeing if only for the comic value of seeing Fat Craig Stadler lip-synching to a dubbed Japanese voice track. Otherwise, armchair athletes are stuck with the always-dull John Madden Football (what is it with people and this horrible game?), or the Jaguar's half-hearted version of the classic Sensible Soccer and a skiing game which appears to be practically the same as the ancient 16-bitter Eddie Edwards Super Ski. The message for sports fans here would appear to be "Hang on to your Mega Drive".

GOLD: Saturn (Victory Goal, Pebble Beach Golf)

SILVER: 3DO (FIFA Soccer, John Madden 'Football')

BRONZE: Jaguar (Sensible Soccer, Val d'Isere, Brutal Football)

POSITIVE DRUG TEST: Playstation (Er...)

HEAD-TO-HEAD ACTION

A special category here, including several games we've already covered, but dedicated solely to games where you get to take it all out on one (or more) of your mates. Two-player games are more and more becoming the favoured style of video gaming, and otherwise massively popular titles like Ridge Racer and Daytona USA have attracted fierce criticism for being one-player only. Their strong beat-'em-up stables obviously give the Playstation and 3DO a head start in this category, but the Saturn and Jaguar fight back with their football games, and with Cyber Sled and the mighty network Doom (if, by some fluke, you've got several friends with Jags). There are also good pinball games on Playstation and Jaguar (Fantastic Pinball and Pinball Fantasies respectively), and Tempest 2000 has both competitive and co-operative two-player modes, although they're the weakest weapons in the game's fearsome armoury. The prize, though, goes to the 3DO. It's got the beat-'em-ups, it's got the football, but it's also got the awesome Return Fire, a tank battle game that's essentially an update of the Atari VCS' seminal Combat cartridge, only about nine million times better. Play it for yourself and see. Do, however, watch out for the Saturn's forthcoming Virtua Racer, which at its heart (and on all other formats) is a two-player racing game so competitive and so good that even Time Warner shouldn't be able to balls it up.

GOLD: 3DO (Return Fire, FIFA Soccer, SSF2, Samurai Shodown)

SILVER: Jaguar (Doom, Sensible Soccer, Tempest 2000, Pinball Fantasies, er, Kasumi Ninja)

BRONZE: Playstation (Tekken, Toh Shin Den, Cyber Sled, Fantastic Pinball), Saturn (Victory Goal, Virtua Fighter, Gran Chaser)

BONKERS JAPANESE STUFF

And finally... Fancy yourself as a bit of an adventurer? Reckon you're hard, do you? Then why not play some totally incomprehensible games in a foreign language that doesn't even have any proper letters in it? Fiendish grey importers have been making a mint in the months between the Saturn and Playstation launches in Japan and Europe, by flogging people Japanese RPGs and puzzlers which make NO SENSE AT ALL if you can't read Japanese. Not only that, but the Playstation also boasts Victory Zone Pachinko, a game which took me nearly five minutes just to reach through the labyrinth of pre-game options screens twisting and turning and doubling back on each other. (And when you do get to the actual game, things get REALLY weird). The Saturn tries to fight back with dull RPG Virtual Hydlide and the not- very-complicated-at-all-really Deadalus, but the Playstation comes storming back with a 3-hit combo of King's Field, Powerful Family and Space Griffon VF9 (totally nonsensical, every one of 'em), and it's a knockout.

GOLD: Playstation (King's Field, Victory Zone, Powerful Family, Space Griffon VF9, Mah Jong)

SILVER: Saturn (Virtual Hydlide, Deadalus)

NON COMPRENDE, SENOR: 3DO, Jaguar

AND SO, IN CONCLUSION

Driving: Playstation

Shooting: Jaguar

Jumping: Playstation

Beating: Playstation

Sporting: Saturn

Heading: 3DO

Bonking: Playstation

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