ArcadeRacingCENTRAL

@KitsuneNight I mean, they could yank games off if they're connected to the internet, right?

But from a preservation point, yeah, I definitely see your point - respect.

I just think of the housing as really nice looking e-waste these days, with the multitudes of ways to play. So personally, I'll stick with Emulation.

Even when that rumoured subscription service rears it's ugly head

@Elitepatriot Yep!

Just release the damned games on the bazillion options we've already got to play them on, no separate hardware is needed any more

@KitsuneNight "VF has always been a bit bare bones in both story and its characters."

That's what makes it awesome for me, though. It's pure gameplay. The characters have a lot of personality without a lot of really generic and average exposition.

I still can't play story-heavy fighting games to this day. They feel slow and super-pretentious to me.

I mean, it's a fighting game, how much preamble do we really need???

Yeah, it's super fun!

I just wish it was more than an endless racer. There's a lot of potential for expanding the game out to a full game - the tech is solid as hell

Hayama's OST is amazing.

Also, although clearly unfinished, Cyber Speedway is legitimately one of my favourite games of all-time, no joke.

@Blast16 Indeed, haha!

@Chadbury The actual wildest thing is actually watching a comment section balloon to 48 comments because people are still arguing whether the Genesis or Mega Drive is a better name in 2024.

@TJSpyke If gaming was all done by-the-book, this site wouldn't exist today, and most retro games would have been lost to time. Video game preservation hasn't happened by sticking to the rules, it's happened by breaking them.

Insta-purchased, thanks for the heads-up! It'll fit nicely into my Ballistic NG custom playlist!

@KitsuneNight Thanks for that! Yeah, I've looked into getting an old laptop for these older games! I unfortunately missed the boat on them when they were dirt cheap, haha!

One day, most definitely!

@KitsuneNight I second this. It's a lot tighter and more forgiving in Over Drivin', and a really great way to re-experience NFS if you're looking for a quirkier way to celebrate the anniversary.

Road & Track Presents The Need For Speed: Special Edition on PC was one of the first PC games I ever purchased myself. I had a Pentium 133mhz it ran awesome! I could even go the SVGA route!

Unfortunately, it's not too easy to play that version these days unless you have a PC from the time, which I don't. I will have to dedicate some time to getting it up and running again, because although I owned both the PAL NFS:SE and Nissan Presents: Over Drivin' GT-R on the Saturn, my favourite version is still that PC Special Edition.

I'm not even all that into shmups, but I'm hanging for this!

This looks super cute. The art-style is fantastic, and looks pretty great, despite the fact that there's technically nothing crazy going on. Just well-executed design all-round, it seems.

I'll definitely grab the digital ROM releases when they're up... dev on itch.io says the middle of next month

@Jawessome I'm in Australia too. I remember getting the OG Wipeout: The Music album at HMV when I was in High School, and I still have it today!

I'd kill to go to this, soooo baaad.

Yeah, that was one of the most beautiful covers on a game EVER.

It's a real shame that port was so mangled, but we'll always have the OST and the art! <3

@WileyDragonfly Nobody is stopping you from doing that.

It's all about the form-factor with this one. That OLED 8:7 screen is mighty impressive. SNES and PCE stuff would look AMAZING on that

Well it definitely worked some! The skittish timing of the floating platforms still drag it down, but at least you've got half a chance of landing on one now!

Pretty great work all round, I'd say! I never thought I'd ever be driven to touch Fantasia again

@DeciderVT Haha, indeed! The good thing is, my comments sections will be a bit quieter after this; I plan on sifting through it and hitting 'ignore' on the pushy drama llama's

I'd kinda love to have one, but 6 hours of battery life is pretty short... definitely not enough to avoid the 'battery anxiety' which the kids talk about these days.

@Zenszulu A shrewd business person it seems; knowing people will rush to buy it before it gets delisted/taken down. Dev seems to know what they are doing

This looks soooooooooo good. Those screens have me ridiculously excited. It's an actual scalar - love it!

Agree with above - WipEout was already the grown-up kart game of the time - it was directly inspired by playing Mario Kart after a night of clubbing. Although I really dug the opportunity to turn off weapons, since the racing was always what I loved about it.

@gingerbeardman Yeah, great game!!! Try them in an emulator with faster clocks, it's pretty transformative!

VROOM (F1) on Jaguar would be AMAZING! Still one of the best playing racers from that era. It's so great on Amiga, ST AND Meg Drive!!!

@Deuteros That's amazing to hear! I'm glad that R U Overdrive helped you out in that way! I know it's been adopted into some EVO circles and I've even seen it modded into Dreamcast SF II and a version of Smash Bros too at certain points in time!

And to answer your question, I think I'm a worse musician these days, but a better producer, haha! I've just been getting back into music the last couple of years, but I'm not entirely set up for it yet, so it'll be a while before I can jump back in and do anything too substantial.

But I will definitely let you know when I'm set up again for music production

@GlamorousAlpaca Yeah, the visual style of Speedball is a significant part of the appeal.

Though if you dig the Fortnite look, then all the power to you...

@Deuteros I created the Eurobeat version of the Ryu theme for that album waaaaaay back in 2005 with Braincells on guitar, haha! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw9FUN-D9so

Crazy to see this come up in conversation, haha! I wish my track could have ended up in the game, but there were stipulations at the time from Capcom on creating different versions of the track with different BPMS at the time (along with some general changes to the BPM) and with a Eurobeat track, it wasn't so flexible!

Also, my mixdown at the time was terrible, I was learning on the fly, and was never entirely with the final outcome.

@jeanshortswag Yeah, that version is not a patch on this current one; I always found the Bloodlines version disappointing. The take on the Password theme and Forest of Monsters is amazing too.

Although the myth was already broken by Savaged Regime, who proved it 10 years ago with THIS amazing rendition of Simon's Theme - it's even better! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm7sT87AXFA

I've started a YouTube playlist for all the MEga Drive versions of other CastleVania tracks - there's a killer Dawn of Sorrow Wizardry Lab cover out there - love it!

At least we'll be getting a game that you can put into your NES and play.

I'm just grateful that such a competent, unique NES title will be released. There's nothing like it, and that's awesome. Regardless of how it's achieved, it's still a video game.

The art is awesome. The music is great. The controls are actually pretty damned good too, as far as the updated demo is concerned.

I'm not even the biggest NES fan. I generally find the library quite brown and uninteresting, and find most of it's lauded titles personally overrated (I was a SEGA kid, after all) but there's something different happening here, so I couldn't let this one pass by.

Orange Island is another I'm really looking forward too - some awesome use of colour there!

@slider1983 I actually meant to reply to the message above, but nothing wrong with that. I do too

@Bod2019 Indeed!

#beg4snes

I backed this, and I find the prices fair on the digital front. I mean, you get two copies of the game for the first Digital tier; A PC version via Steam and the NES ROM. I think that's a good deal?

The demo is very impressive, and the music is insane.

@KingMike Taken from the dev's reply a few comments above:

"The truth is, our mapper could have existed around 1990 because it is not doing anything fundamentally different than what conventional mappers did by 1989. It's not very far off from combining MMC5 and Namco 163 into a single chip and then giving that chip a few more address lines to access more memory."

@oceanvoyager You're a better human than I, because I feel like anybody that ponies up for this deserves to lose it if that comes to pass. They'll learn a lesson from it, that's for sure.

He's incredibly obnoxious and completely off-putting to watch. First comment hit the nail on the head - it all feels like a segment from the V/H/S horror films.

Not to mention that he seems to be a living breathing ad for bad eating habits.

Even if this is all legit, no way in hell could I ever see where giving this guy anything resembling money is a good idea.

Backed this just now. I had to because the Basic Digital comes with a Steam Key AND the NES Rom file; perfect for my Ally X and my Powkiddy devices.

Also, I know the bosses are turn-based, but I am really happy that general combat is in real-time. There's not enough real-time ARPG's for these older consoles, it's always good to see more!

@Digglerdig Yeah, he's kinda punk - I like how he triggers people. It's been a comment section certainty for years, haha.

I really dig his stuff, for some bizarre reason. Loved the first RE movie, killer soundtrack too. Definitely not high art, though, but I like the weird take on the games.

Monster Hunter was a snooze, though.

@slider1983 Yeah, it's got a bit of a hipster vibe, which entirely put me off from the start, but I do love that monochromatic screen; it's pretty spunky

Super Castlevania IV is one of my faves of ALL time, the soundtrack, visuals AND the game, and it's nuts that the music in this fan-port is nigh-on identical. I love it!

Until all the special effects and rest of the animations are in, the visuals still look relatively incomplete. And the speed seems (intentionally?) a bit off to me, but it's really getting there on that front

The game is coming along very, VERY nicely. Can't wait to dig in when it's available!

@jmbenetti I didn't even get that far, to be brutally honest! I discovered that page, got super inspired, tried to teach myself to program and promptly gave up, haha.

So I am yet to learn to code. It's on my bucket list of things to do, but with a couple of other creative hobbies that take up my time, I very much doubt I'll ever get around to it, unfortunately.

@jmbenetti 100%, and boy, that page takes me back! I was trying to get into doing it myself way back when.

@Soupbones You can change it back, there's a 'loggle' mode. It is an .ini tweak, however. Found that info in the Discord

Yeah, this is very cute - interested to see how this one shapes up! With all the GB and GBC games coming out lately, it's nice to see a raster racer in the mix!

I ended up backing this. I was a maaaaasssiive Hyper reader back in the day, being Aussie and all, and an occasional Mean Machines, Gamepro and EGM one.

I never read CVG back in the day, I'm not sure we got it at all here. I could be wrong, but I am sure I would have picked up at least an issue had it been available

The graphical style is completely off-base and definitely off-brand, but the controls look niiiiiiiiiiice!

Not too sure about the 'Murica' stuff though, but I get that it's tongue-in-cheek enough to mock the OG series.

I'd give it a crack, for sure!

@Azuris Yeah, Cruis'n Blast is great! It's definitely one of my go-to's on the Switch

@NinChocolate They are challenges spread throughout the Championship Mode. There's around two per Championship

@Pigeon This is the perspective that is missing these days.

I don't understand why Arcade Racers can't exist just for the joy of it without all the extras? I mean, they have stopped selling all that much anyways after becoming kart racers or huge open world things anyways, apart from a couple of mass-appeal juggernauts.

Arcade Racers would be much easier to make these days than back then, and don't need to last forever in a Campaign sense. Victory Heat Rally does it right, and I hope to see a million others following their lead, because personally, I feel like my gaming tastes are being properly catered to for the first time in a long time

@NinChocolate There's things called Joker challenges that do amp up the crazy! It's things like avoiding vehicles, collecting balloons, drift challenges all that kind of stuff. They're very much in the vein of some of the stuff from OutRun 2's Heart Attack mode. I specifically love the Moonshine Mile Joker challenge toward the end of the game. I don't want to spoil it though!

"Unlike Mario Kart, there are no weapons to use, which reduces the scope of its appeal..."

I am SO glad there are no contrived weapons that turn this into YET ANOTHER Kart Racer. Arcade Racing can exist outside of a weapons set

I don't find it shallow at all either, it's all about the controls. The drift system is deep and flexible. I find half the fun is figuring out how to best bank and maximize boost use, and which combinations of vehicles and parts to use on any given course. The depth is there if you look for it, but different strokes, I guess.

I've personally found that it's a Time Trial players dream. There's 46 tracks in the game, and they're all super high-quality, and I find that quite insane to have at launch these days. If you like competing against yourself - or against friends - with legitimate racing, then there are multiple reasons to come back. I've clocked the Championship mode, done some Time Trials and I'm sitting at about 9 hours so far. I haven't really stepped into the GP or Multiplayer Modes yet either.

If you miss legit Arcade Racers, not just from the arcades, but 32-bit style racers too, then I reckon Victory Heat Rally will be right up your alley. It's a true-blue Arcade Racer, and the best Arcade Racer in an age, in my books.