Response to Hyper’s Complete History of Racing Games

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I want to pre-empt this post with a foreword.

I continue to admire Hyper’s presence in the Australian market – it’s amazing that it continues to hit shelves each month with plenty of great content and coverage of the gaming sector and flies in the face of the downturn being experienced locally and overseas. Even in the wake of US stalwarts, our amazing piece of home-grown gaming journo goodness still comes out each month. Amazing stuff. So this post isn’t meant in any way to take a jab at the magazine, because I have a huge amount of respect and nostalgia-infused love for the publication.

I finished going through the Complete History of Racing Games special in the February 2012 issue (#220) this morning and wanted to write my thoughts on the piece. On the whole, it’s a very nice read – there was great attention paid to the early development of the genre in the arcade and at home, and I really liked the attention given to the home computers of the 80s (especially the C64!). My issues come with a lack of coverage and a bit of bias once things heat up and we hit the mid-90s.

On the arcade side, Virtua Racing was given it’s due, but Daytona was given less attention than Ridge Racer. While the latter’s important as a response to Daytona, the impact Daytona made was enormous as it arguably became the peak of racing games in the arcades, with no title that followed proving as successful. In fact, the success of Daytona was a huge boost to the Model 2 arcade platform Sega used in the mid-90s and saw it become one of the most successful arcade platforms ever, easily putting it in the same realm as the MVS and the Naomi. Namco still did well with Ridge Racer and the System 22 platform, but it is no way comparable to the magic of AM2’s accessible creation.

Another area of contention was the complete disregard to the Saturn. Multiple paragraphs are dedicated to the PSone, and that’s fine – the machine played host to some amazing output from Psygnosis, Polyphony Digital and Namco. But the only mention of the Saturn is comparing Daytona USA to Ridge Racer at launch; while the comparison is apt that the Daytona port looked several shades of rubbish, the game actually plays really well, surprisingly so (especially when played at 60hz). The Saturn also played host to an amazing port of Sega Rally, but going beyond that is a bit of an arguable stretch. Sega Touring Car had a lot of promise, but CSK ruined it with the frame rate issues, and Tantalus’ port of Manx TT didn’t do the machine any favours (though it’s still really cool that an Australian developer got the opportunity to do the port – they also handled the House of the Dead, Wipeout and Wipeout 2097 ports). Daytona USA CCE was highly anticipated, but ultimately failed to deliver in the gameplay stakes (though technically, it looked really nice).

I guess there’s nothing wrong with the amount of space dedicated to the PSone, but it does show things to be a little one-sided. Even Mario Kart 64 rated barely a mention, which I thought was a little odd.

The last issue I wanted to point out was the lack of time dedicated to the Dreamcast or Sega’s arcade movements post-Sega Rally. Model 3-based games such as Daytona USA 2, Scud Racer and Sega Rally 2 were part of the final wave of arcade games where the arcade visuals were unable to be matched at home. While Crazy Taxi earned a mention, it was distinctly offhand – Criterion’s Burnout series arguably owes more than a little inspiration to Crazy Taxi, so it’s a little disappointing when the latter gets a lengthy (and deserved) amount of attention despite the former’s influence and success in the arcade and at home. Also on the DC worthy of discussion are Daytona USA 2001, as it was the first game to almost nail improving on the arcade original’s visuals with almost getting the handling perfect (Daytona HD wins the prize for getting everything perfect) and Le Mans 24 Hours for bringing 24-hour racing in real-time for the DC (plus it was developed by Melbourne House and also looked very pretty). In addition, Bizarre Creations’ Project Gotham Racing is given acknowledgement, but the spiritual predecessor, Metropolis Street Racer on the DC, is given none.

Beyond this though, there’s no mention of OutRun 2/SP/2006, which brought the OutRun franchise back to life in the arcades (powered by the Chihiro board, which closely resembled the Xbox architecture) and also came to home consoles.

Now that I’ve written this little whinge out and have looking it, two things are apparent.

Number one, where I’ve decried Playstation bias in the original article, it’s clearly obvious I’m being just as bad (if not worse) with my bias towards Sega. Thus, my arguments above can be taken as tentative at best if my grand vision for the article was to have the space dedicated to the PSone retracted for Sega ramblings.

Number two, most of the above, when not defending the Saturn, has focused on arcade gaming, which in the late-90s was in serious decline; Napieralski rightly gives the reader a literary cue that discussion was naturally going to start focusing on home platforms instead of covering the last desperate sighs of the arcade sector, so the lack of coverage is definitely acceptable (and to his credit, the Initial D and Maximum Tune series’ were given mention to cap off the discussion).

So, I’ve effectively gone around in circles and have espoused in areas that probably didn’t need to be expanded in the original article. Except for maybe MSR 😉

But then again, this is the internet, where passionate discussion on unnecessarily niche topics are allowed to flourish. Thus, it’s better to look at this as purely a response rather than a criticism of the article (hence the title of the post). Accordingly, with this in mind, props to Napieralski and Hyper for giving some dedicated space covering the history of the genre, as it made for an otherwise great read 🙂

Daytona USA is coming to PSN and XBLA!

Last week Siliconera reported that Daytona USA was coming to PSN and XBLA, featuring enhanced graphics (including widescreen support), 8 player online multiplay and all sorts of fun amazement. This comes on the heels of my previous post (which came via Retro Gaming Australia), where I hoped for nice HD visuals of the original assets and online multiplayer awesomeness. To say I’m chuffed would be an understatement 🙂

If this proves to be successful, perhaps we’ll see some other Sega arcade racers make it over. Sega Rally 1 and 2, Sega Touring Car and Scud Racer would all make wonderful additions to this lineup.

The only question that remains in my mind is the longevity of playing the game online – how long until online participation wears off? Take OutRun Online Arcade as an example – I love the game to bits, but nobody’s playing it on PSN much these days. Not that I can talk – I don’t get a lot of time for gaming these days, so I’m equally guilty of it as well.

So, in a perfect world the game would also support local multiplayer via split-screen and network (or both – 4 players on two networked PS3s for example). The thought of having 8 consoles hooked up for LAN Daytona is mind-blowing – if you ever had the luxury of going to an arcade with 8 Daytona machines hooked up with 8 mates in their respective cabs at the same time while duking it out with another 32 CPU cars on the track, you’d know such a thing is an amazing moment in arcade gaming.

Anywho, enough chatter – here’s the trailer:

We’ll apparently be seeing the game in November, while the US and Canada will be able to get started at the end of the month. Nice to see Daytona USA reflects the time it was developed by delaying the game for PAL territories 😉

Driving home to the sounds of Outrun Online Arcade

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The other day I hopped in the car to head home from work and had a conundrum – I’d finished catching up on the last round of Retronauts podcasts and wasn’t sure what to listen to on the way home. So before turning the key I took a quick look through my playlist, saw Outrun Online Arcade, and thought, “Why not?”.

Turns out it was a great choice. There’s more than a hint of spring in the air, so I wound down my windows to let some fresh air in and listened to the golden, joyous remixes and original tracks from Outrun Online Arcade (which is basically Outrun 2/2006 but in HD with online play [that nobody plays anymore :(]).

So, inspired by this, I went through my Saturn games over the weekend just passed to add some redbook audio from a few games to the playlist – Daytona USA, Sega Touring Car and Sonic R (with that Richard Jacques magic) made the cut, then to mix it up I added in a few others, including Asuka 120% Limited – Burning Fest. Limited, Virtua Fighter Kids and (don’t laugh!) Keio Yugekitai – Katsugeki Hen.

The latter definitely put a smile on my face on the way in to the office. It reminds me I should fire it up some time soon for another round, it’s such an amazing little gem of a title.

Actually, this whole rant suggests I should do a dedicated post (or perhaps a couple of dedicated posts) on the joys of redbook audio in the 16-bit and 32-bit eras. Stay tuned, I’m sure I’ll get around to it at some stage!