Unsung Heroes: old and obscure sims and games

Off Topic
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Hey man you missed the best modern bit of Daytona USA stuff, although not sure it could be called much of an unsung hero amongst games. However it’s inspired me to write this overly long pointless post.

I was very much on the side of Daytona USA when I was growing up, it was far more common a find here in the 1990s (although I never did manage to find the holy grail 8 player setup anywhere). There wasn’t an arcade around back then where you wouldn’t hear repeated DAYYYTOONAAAAA and RALLEEEEEEEEEE every time you blinked - Sega racing stuff was king.

Over the years those machines all but died out here along with a lot of the arcades that housed them, you still find occasional battered Sega rally machines at heavily discounted prices amongst the quid-a-go NFS and F&F machines, if you’re very lucky.

Now in 2017 a bit of the child still in me was brought back out when they announced they were releasing a new redone version of Daytona USA to arcades. Knowing perfectly well there were only two arcades round here for miles, I wasn’t holding out much hope and tried often after it’s release, but never found one. Hell the only look I had on my search, as one of the places ripped out their WMMT 4 player setup in favour of another Fast and Furious bank of machines.

Fast forward to November and I was away for a couple of days in a little seaside town, the only real place with any arcades left here. 3 or so along the front street, 2 small ones with a big one at the end with crazy golf, bowling inside etc. The first two were just the usual, overpriced grabber and stacker machines, nothing fancy. Went along to the last one for a round of crazy golf - I know, seriously rock and roll.

As we got up the back of there it ran alongside the arcade with a crappy perimeter wall inbetween, and faintly in the background I suddenly hear the doots of DAAAYTOOOONAAAAAA. Go back round for a look and what have they got stuck in the back corner, getting absolutely 0 attention from anyone, despite flashing it’s best neons and blasting out tunes?

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Yes it was just a 2 player setup, didn’t really care, felt like I was 6 years old again. It played like the original, it sounded like the original, it was outstanding. And just look how terrible that carpet is they’ve got it standing on!

10/10, would recommend to anyone, one of the finest remasters around, and possibly your only chance of playing Daytona on a cabinet that’s not mashed to hell with the tracking out (although some may argue that’s part of the experience). Anyway, please carry on with intended programming of ye olde obscure stuff.

Oh, and I got absolutely blasted on mini golf. Lost by about 9 or something.

7 Likes
82

Also celebrating its 25th birthday this year is Road & Track Presents: The Need For Speed, the first installment in the best-selling racing game franchise ever. It laid down all the fundamentals for every subsequent game in the series: a great selection of cars, absolutely gorgeous locations, and a killer soundtrack. Originally released for the Panasonic 3DO in 1994, it received a PC port the following year; that version would be re-released in 1996 with the Special Edition subtitle - the same year as the PS1 and Saturn ports came out. So here’s a comparison of the 3DO, PC, and PS1/Saturn versions.

One thing worth noting is that all of them featured eight fully licensed cars: the Mazda RX-7, Toyota Supra Turbo and Acura NSX in Class C, the Porsche 911 (993) Carrera, Dodge Viper RT/10 and Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1 in Class B, and the Ferrari 512TR and Lamborghini Diablo VT in Class A. Each of them had its own showcase detailing their specifications, performance and history, plus a short live-action video showing the car in action.

The 3DO version not only had a completely different main menu screen from the subsequent ports, but also had only the three point-to-point tracks (City, Coastal and Alpine) and limited the player to five lives - crashing resulted in the loss of a life, or a DNF (did not finish) if the player had no lives left. Unlike all other versions, it also included live-action cutscenes featuring an obnoxious opponent reacting to a win, loss, etc.

The PC port introduced minor graphical improvements and four closed circuit tracks (Rusty Springs, Autumn Valley, Vertigo Ridge and Lost Vegas, with the last one being unlockable) and an all-new Tournament mode. Of note is that this mode restricted all players (including the AI) to a certain car class for different tracks - Class C for City and Rusty Springs, Class B for Coastal and Autumn Valley, and Class A for Alpine, Vertigo Ridge, and Lost Vegas. This port featured a redesigned HUD (which incorporated a mini-map) and main menu interface. In addition, the Special Edition release of the PC version added two more tracks (Burnt Sienna and Transtropolis, which require the use of Class B and Class A cars, respectively, in Tournament mode) and the option to change the time of day; this was set to midday by default, but could be changed to sunrise or sunset depending on the track selected.

The PS1 and Saturn ports were mostly very faithful to the original PC release, but featured a completely different HUD design to that version, and the controls felt more arcade-like as well, due to a revised physics engine. Also, in the Saturn port, the player would be arrested after receiving two speeding tickets, instead of three as in the other versions. Of note is that AI-controlled opponent cars in the PS1 and Saturn ports sometimes have different color schemes, but since there is no way to select car colors (unlike in subsequent games), these alternate colors cannot be used by the player at all. Finally, these versions have two unlockable reskins of Rusty Springs, both of which are treated as separate tracks: Lunar Springs (basically Rusty Springs on the Moon) and Oasis Springs (Rusty Springs in the Egyptian desert).

Even now, seeing footage of the very first game (especially the PC version) brings back pleasant memories for me - back in 1994, I had no idea that any of the cars featured in this game existed. Then I started playing it and I was absolutely gobsmacked. At the time, nobody else had managed to capture the feel of driving an exotic supercar at high speeds like Electronic Arts did. Revisiting it today reminds me of how different the series was during its early years, and how it grew into the multi-billion-dollar franchise it is today - but the more recent games feel so different to the earlier ones (especially the original) that they seem unrecognizable as true NFS games to some. And with (almost) all other arcade racer franchises on home consoles having come and gone, it’s virtually the only one still standing - a testament to the effectiveness of the concept behind the original game.

2 Likes
83

I just have to mention Gran Turismo 4, it may not be that obscure but it’s just so amazing how developers accomplished to make such a beautiful and detailed game for the PS2.

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4 Likes
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Man Gran Turismo 4 is great. There are lot of GT4 players.Even GT group have time trial challenge in GT4 that only 2 people starts (me and one guy) cause cars needed to start are 25% completion cars.
GT4 got the best graphics on PS2 , the most cars and it aged very well.

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OutRunners wasn’t the only arcade racer to use the Sega Multi 32 system - there were a few other racing games running on this hardware which showed off what were, at the time, considered to be highly impressive graphical capabilities:

Rad Mobile - The first Multi 32 game ever released on arcades, it was a spiritual successor to Turbo OutRun in that the objective was to complete a cross-country race, but in the opposite direction (from Los Angeles to New York, rather than vice versa) against 14 opponents (instead of just one) and with 20 distinct locations (compared to 16). It also marked the debut of Sonic The Hedgehog as part of a plan to promote the first game in that series - he appeared as an ornament dangling from the rear view mirror. Three years after its release, it was ported to the Saturn as a launch title under the name Gale Racer, with fully 3D graphics for the cars and all-new CGI cutscenes, but the technology of the time was so primitive that the original arcade version looks better, in my eyes at least.

Rad Rally - A stripped-down rerelease of Rad Mobile with only four tracks but identical gameplay. Although it omits the Sonic cameo, it introduced a two-player mode - a first for Sega, and a sign of things to come.

F-1 Exhaust Note - It was originally intended to be a sequel to Super Monaco GP, and it showed - among other things, the cars’ liveries bear a striking similarity to those used during the real-life 1991 F1 season. Sega pulled off a masterstroke by giving players the closest thing possible to driving an actual F1 car with the technology available to them at the time. The only thing it lacked was actual licensing - that would have to wait until its immediate successor.

F1 Super Lap - Released in 1992, this was the last arcade game ever to use the official Formula One license; Psygnosis’ acquisition of the rights to the series shortly afterwards (followed by their decision to sell it to CodeMasters) made it permanently impossible for anyone to make officially licensed F1 games for arcades. Being based on the real-life 1992 F1 season, it featured all the teams from that year (except for March, Brabham, Fondmetal and Andrea Moda, all of which collapsed during the season or shortly afterward) but, like its predecessor, featured only one track - albeit with a different layout from the one used in F-1 Exhaust Note. Other new features included revamped audio and visuals, a boost button (with a limited duration) and multiplayer for up to eight players (instead of two); the latter would be a feature of Sega arcade racers for many years to come.

Sadly, the days when arcade games provided a superior (or at least equal) experience (especially in racing games) to that which could be obtained from home consoles are long gone. In part this is due to arcades having lost much of the popularity they had in the 1990s, but also because home consoles are now more capable than ever before.

Moreover, arcade racers on home consoles are now few and far between, and when someone actually manages to release a new racing game for arcades, more often than not, it will never receive any console ports at all (I’m looking at you, Daytona Championship USA, Cruis’n Blast and Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 6). This downward trend can be blamed partially on poor sales of the much-hyped duo of Blur and its chief rival, Split/Second; that on its own may not have been enough to kill the arcade racer, but when combined with the growing popularity of highly realistic sim racers with as many licenses as possible, managed to destroy almost the entire sub-genre, with the exception of the long-running Need for Speed franchise - and even it could be on its last legs.

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Where did you get this game? I have head a lot about it and i would like to try it, but i cannot find it on steam or anywhere like that.