Tag Archives: racing game

PS2 Essentials: Auto Modellista

Even today, Capcom’s 2002 racing game Auto Modellista stands out as a bold and striking experiment.

By combining relatively conventional arcade-style racing gameplay with an eye-catching cel-shaded visual style, the game successfully distinguished itself from many of its peers — though sadly, relatively mediocre reviews, mostly focusing on the game’s handling and its attempts to straddle the line between deep simulation and arcade racer, meant that it sold fairly poorly.

That doesn’t mean it’s not worth checking out by any means, however — particularly if you are someone who, like me, enjoys the customisation aspect of deep sims but hates “realistic” handling. Let’s take a closer look — and keep an eye on Sunday Driving for the next few weeks to see the game in action for yourself!

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Sunday Driving: Feel Nothing Without Vibration – Auto Modellista #1

Last week, I actually wanted to cover Capcom’s Auto Modellista, but instead ended up taking a look at Jaleco’s questionable (but actually quite entertaining) World Super Police.

The reason for this was that the copy of Auto Modellista I picked up a while back… uh, it didn’t work. I’d put it in the PS2, the drive would make chirpy zappy noises and then nothing would happen. There didn’t appear to be anything wrong with the disc itself and the PS2 was working fine, it was just a dead copy for whatever reason.

I still wanted to take a look at it because it’s a game I’ve been curious to explore for a long time. So I tracked down another copy and… well, hit the jump for the video to see how I got on.

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Sunday Driving: Flagrant Disregard for Civilian Safety – World Super Police

Although there’s still a bit of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed to go, we technically “beat” the game (or saw the staff roll, at least) last week.

With that in mind, I thought I’d change up the format of Sunday Driving a little for greater variety: instead of focusing on one game exclusively, I’m going to cycle around a few games a bit, try out some new things and also act a bit on viewer feedback if there is any.

With that in mind, today I grab something random (but arcade racery) from my shelves and fire it up for the first time. If you want to see more of this particular game, let me know in the comments here or on YouTube! Hit the jump to see the vid.

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Sunday Driving: Arrow of Light – Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed #2

Let’s get ready to, uh, drive!

Yes, it’s that time of the week again when I rev up my engines, grab my controller and jump into some of my favourite arcade racers from over the years. This week we’re once again continuing with Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed on PC, one of my all-time favourite kart racers, particularly for its single-player mode.

Hit the jump for the new video.

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Sunday Driving: Blur – Powered-Up Racing

Following some discussion on the podcast recently, I decided to revisit some old favourite arcade racers, including Bizarre Creations’ swansong Blur.

For the uninitiated, this “powered up racer” features a delightful blend of real-world cars and locales with purely fantastic, neon-coloured power-ups. This makes the racing enormously aggressive and a huge amount of fun, and it’s a crying shame that Activision completely failed to market the game effectively.

But, well, the game still exists, so I’m damn well going to play it and enjoy it, and you can join me for the ride! Hit the jump for the first part of this new video series.

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Ridge Racers: The Greatest Hits

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I wasn’t originally planning to cover the PSP titles in the Ridge Racer series, but after being well and truly glued to them for the last week there’s no way I can’t say something about them.

Known as Ridge Racers in Japan, the two PSP games are almost identical to one another, so we’ll be taking them as a single “unit” today. The main difference between the two releases is that the confusingly named Ridge Racer 2 has more tracks than its PSP-launching predecessor — most notably incorporating all of Ridge Racer Type 4’s circuits instead of just two — plus a few additional single-player modes, including the return of a “checkpoints and countdown”-style arcade mode of the type that hasn’t been seen since Ridge Racer Revolution.

Other than that, they’re pretty much the same game. It’s fortunate, then, that they’re pretty much the same brilliant game.

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Ridge Racer Unbounded: The Black Sheep

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Over the last decade, we’ve seen a lot of series attempt to “reboot” themselves for one reason or another.

In many cases, this is an excuse to go back to older games and remake them with a more modern aesthetic or gameplay conventions, but in others, it is in an attempt to completely reinvent the series for one reason or another — usually as an attempt to respond to the ever-present phantom that is “market forces”.

The Ridge Racer series underwent such a reboot in 2012 with Unbounded. Not only was this an attempt to turn the ageing franchise on its head, it marked a shift in development strategy, too; Unbounded was developed not by Namco itself, but by Bugbear Entertainment, a Finnish outfit who had previously been responsible for the FlatOut series and Sega Rally Revo on the PSP.

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