The futuristic 3D tank-buster Wild Metal is roaring its way from PC to Dreamcast, and a couple of our lads have already been 'track to track' in the dunes...
Gideon Kibblewhite

Hmm... I remember this title when it came out on PC. Mech Warrior with tanks, wasn't it?
Sort of. The PC Wild Metal was a pretty impressive tank extravaganza, actually. Set on a group of distant planets made barren by a race of machines, your mission was to explore the huge alien environments in your state-of-the-art hunk of metal, destroying enemy machines and collecting the 'power cores' that would bring the planets back to life. It was large and addictive, but...

...it was a bit of a dog to drive.
True, and not many people at the time gave Wild Metal the benefit of the doubt because of that fact. Grappling with two tracks, a rotating turret and a cannon that you could raise for greater range was indeed a bit of nightmare on the keyboard.

I take it that the DC version is superior to the PC one in the driving department?
Happily, yes. The numerous tank commands seem well suited to the Dreamcast's controller. The triggers rotate your turret left and right, leaving you free to use the stick to control the direction in which you drive. As for the firing process, that's very clever: the longer you keep the A-button depressed, the higher the angle of fire and thus the further you can sling a shell. In other words, there's no more fannying around.

So it doesn't take long before you can get stuck in and start mixing it with the machines?
Mate, you're off and rolling in no time, but this game was never a shoot-anything-that-moves fest; it's more of a sim than that. You trundle around barren landscapes of ice, desert and blasted rock, searching for enemies in the form of bizarre gun emplacements, missile towers and other tanks. It's a game of caution and exploration as much as combat.