Im sure this crap appealed to someone.

Might take another look at that because I never got past the not-enough-time feeling. Great tunes though.

Road Rash II is fantastic.

Been having a go at the original F-Zero, what with F-Zero 99 coming out. There’s one big interesting contrast, which is the original game punishes you for argy-bargy instead of celebrating it as in 99. I feel like Mario Kart handled the meta-game better - it’s kinda weird that there’s no final ranking for each cup or any acknowledgement in the menu that you’ve previously won a cup.

EvilRedEye wrote:

Googled ‘best SNES racers’, according to Retro Dodo, Power Rangers Zeo: Battle Rangers is the seventh best racing game for the SNES?! What?!

I loved Power Rangers as a kid so am very curious.

Had a quick go. The camera angle is different than Mario Kart and it makes it difficult to see what’s going on. I don’t think it’s very good.

I suddenly remembered Sonic Drift 1 and 2 exist and I’ve never given them a proper go, but my Analogue Pocket doesn’t seem to have a Game Gear core installed for some reason.

How the fuck did I think we were talking about Street Racer? Ignore me I overslept.

Sonic Drift 2 has tunnels!

Struggling with Outrun Europa (MS). No proper tunnels yet but a couple of bridges to go under. It's actually quite impressive for an 8-bit racer, it just tries to do too much and the ramming mechanics are borked (sometimes you lose part of your shield, sometimes you don't). Plus you have to press up to accelerate. Up to stage 4 of 7 and I probably will see it out.

OutRun Europa - Master System (50mins)

A game published by U.S. Gold and developed by Probe Software would've been firmly in 'all bets are off' territory, given that both of them adopted a blindfolded blunderbuss approach to quality control.  As expected this isn't a worthy successor to the original, but it's not awful either.  A lot more work went into this than the MD port of Turbo OutRun, I'd wager.  With a little more time in the oven (Probe were notorious for churning games out quickly in the early 90s) I think this could've been up there in the lower top tier of 8-bit racers, but as it stands it'll have to settle for a place somewhere in the top third.  Which sounds like I'm saying it's good - just to confirm, I'm not; I'm saying the majority of 8-bit racers were shite and this is better than most.

Visually it's actually very impressive, to the point where it'd be a shoo-in for inclusion in a BEST GRAPHICS list focusing on Master System racers.  It looks a bit cack now, but this isn't just tunnel vision talking: it's doing things most similar games most certainly were not.  The pseudo 3D effects are pretty well done and the trackside detail puts earlier 8-bit OutRun games to shame.  Even the way the approaching shore simulates sprite scaling by getting closer in increments on the speedboat stage is a nice touch. Unfortunately the gameplay doesn't quite back it up, and the tunes are trademark bleepy Probe offerings.  It took me a while to work out the you need to press up to accelerate as the two controller buttons are assigned to Fire and Turbo (both of which rely on depletable/restockable rescources), but it just about works.  You get a different vehicle for each stage, which is pretty neat, starting with a motorbike but progressing to a jetski followed by a car, then a speedboat, then a Ferrari red sports car.  The aim of the game is to catch up with the thieves that stole the same model of car you end up chasing them down in, before repeatedly ramming them to smithereens, Chase H.Q style.  Good job everyone.  Along the way police cars will attempt to nick you, presumably because you've nicked all the vehicles you've been hopping between in your blinkered quest for justice.  

Design choices such as Road Rash style punching on the bike, or howitzer style shots that require specific timing to hit things at certain heights in the jetski stage are admirable, but poorly executed.  Shooting in general feels tacked on, and the game would've benefited from doing away with it completely tbh (and remapping accelerate to button 2).  Ramming other cars should work, and almost does, but it's ruined by the fact that you'll often take damage for what feels like no good reason. The actual driving isn't great as it's more of an avoid 'em up than a racing game, and you'll spend most of your time attempting to maintain top speed regardless of bends in the road. There are various pickups scattered throughout the stages, and they would be quite useful so it's a shame you can't react in time to collect any on purpose as they whiz past - as with many games of the era it expects you to learn their placement through failure.  Levels drag on for a little too long and if you're busted, destroyed or run out of time you're treated to a Game Over message followed by the title screen.  More often than not this was the way of it back then, but it feels so harsh here.  All these little blemishes add up to the point where it feels like Father Ted's been at it with a hammer.  

All in all I found this an interesting one.  It falls well short of greatness but I can see what they were going for and it's really not a bad effort (especially considering the lack of effort Probe were capable of when they put their minds to it). 69%

I think it had parking challenges in it, if that helps.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Does anyone know which console had the best version of Power Drive?  And did we do that one in here years ago or was it a top down Top Gear SNES game (Google suggests there isn't one though, so not sure why that's ringing a bell).

Jaguar, and no we didn't.

retroking1981 wrote:

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Does anyone know which console had the best version of Power Drive?  And did we do that one in here years ago or was it a top down Top Gear SNES game (Google suggests there isn't one though, so not sure why that's ringing a bell).

Jaguar, and no we didn't.

Ta, not sure if I've got a Jaguar emulator though.  Any idea what game it was we played?

There was a Domark F1 game on MD that the mags always cooed over, that used a smattering of what looked like polygons iirc. Unparalleled sense of speed, apparently. I should take a look but I find F1 a bit dull.

Topical:

https://youtu.be/cte1xaGtaDU?si=zeJsQFlzEV7YAFJf

Good channel as well for those that haven't seen it before.

EvilRedEye wrote:

I’ll have to have a watch of that.

I’ve just seen John Linneman tweet about Taito’s Night Striker, a dystopian cross between OutRun and Space Harrier.

Hmm. There’s a Mega CD version but it’s shite apparently. Saturn is the only decent home console port apparently. Might see if I can emulate the original arcade version somehow.