Tag Archives: racing games

Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: Night Driver

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Legend has it that some people will drive all night just to buy you some shoes. Some other people will drive through the night just to try and score as many points as possible.

In Night Driver for Atari 2600, you’re presented with the opportunity to do the latter in one of the earliest examples of the “vanishing point” racer being adapted to a home console. While obviously dated by modern standards — this originally came out in 1980, adapting an arcade game from 1976 — there are some interesting ideas in this one, and if you let it get its hooks in it can be surprisingly addictive!

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

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Podcast

The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 43 – Brake for the Snake

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Welcome to another podcast! I’m joined once again by the newly rebranded Chris Caskie of CCaskieArt, and today we’re talking arcade racers.

The MoeGamer Podcast is available in several places. You can subscribe to my channel on YouTube to stay up to date with both the video versions of the podcast and my weekly videos (including the Atari A to Z retro gaming series); you can follow on Soundcloud for the audio-only version of the podcast; you can subscribe via RSS to get the audio-only version of the podcast in your favourite podcast app; or you can subscribe via iTunes and listen on Spotify. Please do at least one of these if you can; it really helps us out!

Enjoy the podcast in video and audio formats below:

And hit the jump for show notes!

Continue reading The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 43 – Brake for the Snake →

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z: Death Race

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Sadly, this game is nothing to do with the movie of the same name. Instead, it’s Atlantis Software’s budget-price attempt to recreate the experience of Sega’s early arcade game Turbo, albeit a few years late.

The latter years of the Atari 8-bit saw a lot of publishers specialising in budget-price, cassette-only releases for around the £2 mark. This put them firmly in “pocket money” territory for a lot of young gamers, but the quality did vary quite a bit, with Atlantis Software’s titles generally not being received all that well by the press of the day.

How does Death Race stack up in the grand scheme of things? Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari ST A to Z: Test Drive

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As a kid, I was always fascinated by games that attempted to simulate experiences like you were “really there” — even if they were fairly mundane.

As such, I found myself drawn to the Test Drive series by Accolade, which promised a realistic (for the time) driving experience in a variety of luxury cars. I only played Test Drive II: The Duel back in the day, so I thought it’d be interesting to go back to where this long-running series began.

Check out my experiences in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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short;Play, Videos

short;Play: Test Drive Unlimited

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I latched on to the Test Drive series pretty early in my life, because it allowed child-Pete the opportunity to pretend that he was driving a real car. This is something that child-Pete was very excited about.

The series has experimented with a variety of different structures and formats over the years, but it finally became what child-Pete (and adult-Pete) always wanted it to be with the advent of 2006’s Test Drive Unlimited, released for PlayStation 2, Xbox 360 and PSP.

Check out the Xbox 360 version in action in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

One-Shots, Racers

Inertial Drift Sunset Prologue: A Bold New Take on Arcade Racing

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I love me a slippery-slidy, drift-centric arcade racer, as you’ll know very well if you followed the extensive Ridge Racer Cover Game feature from a while back, or indeed were kind enough to watch my playthrough of Split/Second Velocity on YouTube.

As such, I was immediately interested when PQube announced its upcoming racer Inertial Drift, developed by an outfit known as Level 91 Entertainment. This game promised a ’90s style aesthetic, exaggerated arcadey racing action… and what sounded like a rather unusual control scheme.

How exactly does a twin-stick racing game work anyway? I fired up the Inertial Drift Sunset Prologue interactive demo to find out.

Continue reading Inertial Drift Sunset Prologue: A Bold New Take on Arcade Racing →

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari ST A to Z: Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge

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There are some games that, when they release, you just know they’re going to be all-time greats, forever regarded as classics.

Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge from Gremlin Graphics was definitely one of those games. It pushed the “vanishing point” racer formula massively with its split-screen two-player action and its variety of interesting courses, and its presentation and gameplay were immaculate.

It would go on to form the basis of the widely beloved Top Gear for Super NES, which would go on to inspire more recent works such as Horizon Chase Turbo. And it still plays like a dream today. So please put your hands together and give it up for a true racing legend.

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Essentials, One-Shots, Racers

Horizon Chase Turbo: Top Gear Returns

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Many people assumed that the advent of the true 3D polygonal racer spelled the death of the traditional, “vanishing point” racer.

After all, why would you ever want to play a technologically limited game where you simply slide from side to side on a track without actually turning when you can spin your car around, go the wrong way and attempt to cause as many head-on collisions as possible? Or race in “true 3D” too, I suppose.

Well… you know… because it’s fun. And thankfully a number of developers in recent years have remembered that. And so we’ve ended up with loving homages to the past such as the Kickstarter-funded Slipstream, and the subject of today’s article: Horizon Chase Turbo. Let’s take a look.

Continue reading Horizon Chase Turbo: Top Gear Returns →

Videos

Atari A to Z: Rally Speedway

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Today’s game is a well-regarded top-down racer from back in the day: it’s John Anderson’s Rally Speedway.

Rally Speedway became well-known for its high-speed, smooth scrolling gameplay — and perhaps more significantly, for its strong amount of customisation. Not only could you tweak the game’s performance and difficulty to your liking, you could even make your own tracks for you and your friends to take on.

How well does it hold up next to more modern attempts to do something similar, though? Let’s find out!

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

MoeGamer Awards 2019

The MoeGamer 2019 Awards: The Vanishing Point Award

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The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards I’ve devised in collaboration with the community to celebrate the sorts of things that never get celebrated in end-of-year roundups! Find out more here — and feel free to leave a suggestion on that post if you have any good ideas!

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I love a good “vanishing point” racer, as is doubtless evidenced by our podcast episode on this very subject. But have any in particular caught my attention this year?

For the uninitiated, a vanishing point racer is an arcade-style driving game that, rather than unfolding in true 3D, makes use of graphical trickery involving converging lines to simulate driving “into” the screen. As a result, in a vanishing point racer, you tend to move from side to side rather than actually turning, and the emphasis is on skilfully avoiding obstacles rather than handling your car in a realistic manner.

For this award, I’m deliberately celebrating a less obvious choice, despite having covered the excellent Switch version of OutRun earlier this year. Not that OutRun doesn’t deserve love, mind you — but because everyone already knows OutRun is good. With that in mind…

And the winner is…

Continue reading The MoeGamer 2019 Awards: The Vanishing Point Award →