Severe friction burns

Old news, but I've just found out today, thanks to Eurogamer, about the 'never-quite-made-it' new version of Road Rash.

As seen on this video, which looks fooking ace, an incomplete Road Rash was cancelled due to the company behind it being apparently dismantled. Massive shame, as the video clearly shows the project looked potentially great, and fairly advanced. Maybe we'll still see re-emerge it at some point in the future, fingers crossed.

It got me thinking about why the Road Rash concept never took off further, at least beyond the 3DO & N64 versions.

There was a game called Jacked released on the Xbox & PS2 which looks drivel and has the shitty reviews to back that up, but surely a developer would have made more of an attempt to tap into the genre made so popular by Road Rash back in the day?

I reckon anyone aged around 30+ who owned a Mega Drive will have some of their fondest memories playing Road Rash or its sequel. Who can forget the satisfying feeling of smashing the Rude Boy off his bike, leaving him flat on his back on the start line? Or the amazing music that gave each course its unique feeling, despite them looking very similar to each other? Or the feeling of pride you get after buying your first new bike? Or, best still, that mixed feeling of guilt, regret & fantastic evilness after getting the cold shoulder post-race from the lovely (but slightly ropey looking in retrospect) Natasha when you smacked her clean off her wheels and into an oncoming car.


Imagine a combat bike racer in the hands of Criterion - its guaranteed to be mint. The original Road Rash & the sequel are ripe for appearances on XBLA or Playstation Network. But no, we get a whole heap of shit instead. Never mind. There is always..... erm, Jacked.

HDTV killed the Lightgun star

In one of my sudden game cravings, I am currently hankering to play Virtua Cop at home on the Saturn.


I could re-purchase a Sega Saturn and Virtua Cop with a gun in my local retro games store, GameZone (Tunstall, Stoke on Trent - have a look in if you're passing!) for a few quid, but there is obviously one massive problem that I've completely forgotten about - lightguns simply do not work on HD televisions.

I'm struggling to think of any other entire genre of videogame that has become extinct in its known state since the introduction of technology. For me at least, the times of pointing a bright blue or pink gun at the screen while being guided around a port full of Reservoir Dogs wannabes are gone. I suppose I could drag out the old chunky CRT television, now relegated to upstairs, for a play but I really can't be arsed for one game. I might have liked to play Operation Wolf too...

While not everyone has a HDTV, its only a matter of time before people will find it impossible to play Virtua Cop on the Saturn. Sad days indeed. I'm aware that the Wii has a fair few gun games available for it, using the new technology, but we all know its not the same without the proper guns. Fuck!

So, goodbye Virtua Cop - you made my arms ache but were a hell of a lot of fun to play - maybe I'll see you again in some form on XBLA when developers making games for Kinect realise what is possible??

Viewed from above

For years now I've had a bit of a thing for top-down racers played out on one screen. There is something fascinating & incredibly satisfying about playing this dying breed of racing game where all the action is entirely visible.

Maybe it's the way you can see how close the race leader or the chasing pack are at all times that makes it so appealing. Maybe it's the entirely visible and often intricate tracks all crammed in the screen. Or maybe it's just the way you can play them without worrying about ruining an entire race by misjudging the fucking racing line on a corner.


Whatever gives these games their special appeal, I don't half wish there were more around nowadays. Although a lot of these games started off in the arcades with their cool-looking set of colour-coded steering wheels for multiplayer, my youth involvement with the games was spent playing Super Off Road on the Spectrum, then later on thre Mega Drive. Upgrading my vehicle inbetween races, taking multiple routes through some courses, coming back from the dead and pipping the competition on the line in a photo finish....it was great up to the point where it was impossible to keep up with the shitty little AI trucks even using nitros every other second.

As things evolved, games such as Micro Machines, Skidmarks & Rock 'n' Roll Racing took things further with scrolling tracks & isometric viewpoints. This was fine but with it the magic of things being on one screen was lost.

Even these are few and far between now, but it's good to see there are a few remaining shining lights out there on current generation consoles & handhelds in the form of Xbox Live Indie Community game Mini Racers, Wii-Ware's Driift & the i-Pad's Reckless Racing, which looks fucking ace. Makes me wonder whether the big widescreen TVs that are commonplace in the houses of gamers nowadays got more potential to revive the genre with brand extentions such as GRID, Need for Speed, Forza, Gran Turismo or (dare I say it) Daytona USA?

Time to go to bed

Ever since the days of being a child, the concept of staying up all night has always been a somewhat magical and slightly naughty sort of thing to do. I could count the times I've done it on one hand, including all the times I've been utterly drunk where it is usually sometime before 6am that I'll collapse. I suppose I should count the build up and birth of my two kids as well, but it might have been frowned upon if I just slept through it all.

One such time when I stayed up all night was playing Shenmue on the Dreamcast. Before the days of work & responsibilites, I was so engrossed in the game that I simply couldn't even contemplate sleep. Due to a slightly annoying (...but very sensible) in-game curfew the Ryo was forced to go home to bed at 11.30PM each night. However, you could delay this by playing an arcade or even search for a bar at one point in the game. These times were precious and brought a new magic to the game - Ryo Hazuki himself stayed up all night.

What made Shenmue was that the in-game clock was pretty slow. You had to literally wait real-time minutes for a bus that would arrive on time at a set time. You had to walk for ages to get anywhere - there were no cars to hop into or any kind of teleporting to get you from A-B. And you felt like you really were wasting hours playing Hang-On or the boxing game when you really should be being a bit more responsible and hunting the bloke who killed your father.

Shenmue is not the only game to have an in-game clock of course. Games like the GTA series and Oblivion have gradually changing day and night cycles where sunrises and sunsets can be watched with awe from the top of a mountain. But the one game that tops the lot is Super Hydlide on the Mega Drive.


It was difficult to love Super Hydlide. It looked horrible and was full of bugs and bad collision detection, but it did game time very well indeed. You could keep provisions on you - 2 at all time that if in possession you automatically ate at set times of the day. If you didn't have any provisions you could still go out adventuring but your health would quickly start to deplete in a representation of hunger. It brought about a genuinely shit-scary situation of where you realised you were miles away from the town, completely without provisions and you had to leg it back, avoiding the beasties, just to get some food before you died a horrible hungry death at tea time. Why don't more games not make you die from hunger?

On the Edge of Forgotten - 2 - Fighting Vipers

Not exactly an all time classic, but there was something rather special about Fighting Vipers on the Sega Saturn.

It was essentially a scaled down, more basic version of Virtua Fighter 2 with the differences that each character was armoured-up in some way and that the fighting arenas had walls. The characters themselves were fairly shit, but did include a rocker complete with guitar and a couple of pretty ladies... which is nice.

By smacking your opponent hard with a power move you would break off their layers of armour, making them more vunerable to damage. If that power move hits the opponent when their life is low and stood near a wall, the hit would smash the opponent through the wall in a blaze of destruction. It looked fucking ace, and was utterly humiliating for the loser.

The game was released in 1996, when I was aged 15. Needless to say, the prospect of beating up & smashing the armour off foxy character 'Candy' to leave her fighting in nothing more than her black pixelated underwear was too good to ignore. A bit pervy and wrong? Maybe, but at least it was more inventive than just flicking through the Kays catalogue in the search of material...

On the Edge of Forgotten - 1 - Dragon's Fury

On the Edge of Forgotton... every now and again something that my memory had seemingly kicked out for good will suddenly slam back into my mind and start off a whole flood of memories.

One such thing is an old Sega Mega Drive pinball game Dragon's Fury. I used to spend hours and hours playing this little gem despite having no interest whatsoever in traditional pinball tables.

Featuring a gothic theme with dragons, skulls, demons & loads of other funny looking things, this was like playing an adventure game with all sorts of bosses, secret bonuses & little mini games littered throughout to mess about with. The table design was outstanding, ball movement was very realistic, haunting rock music was superb & the high score chasing element made it utterly gripping. The more I think about it, the more I think it would make a great little addition to Xbox Live Arcade or PSN.

It makes me wonder why the pinball genre of videogames never really expanded more. Sonic Spinball was a bit duff but at least a decent concept, but I'm struggling to think of any other recent games that took the pinball table and expanded on it anywhere near to the degree of Dragon's Fury. Pretty much any licence could have extended into a pinball themed adventure game with bossess - from Star Wars to Halo, Transformers to Resident Evil.

Maybe things will come full circle and return. Or maybe there is a good reason why they dissapeared.