The first
console video game to let players speak to each other with a
microphone. It pits 8 players together, four as humans and four as aliens, in a tank
deathmatch. The most social mode is
capture the flag, which makes players to work together to capture and protect the flag. One generous feature is that AFO only costs $30, yet it includes the microphone and unlimited play time online. Most of the time over 50 other players are online, so getting into an 8-player game is easy.
AFO has some flaws. It has only 6 arenas to play in, only one player can speak at a time, the speech is more muffled than a
telephone call, and movement is slow. Also, speech is harder for aliens than humans because the aliens' vehicles have legs that clank while the humans' tanks' treads are almost silent. The upside is that even in 8-player mode on a
56k modem, the gameplay almost never lags.
It's made by
Sega and Wow (half
American and half
Japanese), for
Dreamcast.