Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Sega Racer Timeline First Draft AT LAST

I know in a few days, Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed will be among us and it'll surely consume much of our attention.  But before then, I want to get as many on the queue things out of the way.

This is the first draft of the timeline I made.  It's HUGE.  This image below is just a thumbnail.


Now, if you want to see the large timeline, CLICK HERE.  It's 2.9 mb and that's after converting to a .jpg with good (not maximum) quality so I don't want to dump this on you people.  Yet I had to make the image 3000x4000 because it's the only way to fit so many games without the images being too small to read.

The pic is uploaded to deviantART.  Click here and favorite the submission.  But since I already described the timeline in the deviantART submission, I'll just copy & paste it here:

------------


I spent about 30-40 hours on this over the course of a month.  It's a list of (most) every relevant racing game since the beginning of video games.  From 1976 to 2012.  The original timeline is 3000x4000 size so click to zoom in twice for the best view.

I should mention I'm a huge fan of Sega's racing games so the original purpose of the graph was to chart Sega racing games only.  Then I branched out and decided to include some other racing games for a point of reference.  Then I included video game consoles.  Then even more racing games.  Now there's a few hundred racing games on there because I'm obsessed like that.

As for how this chart works, I basically thought up as many racing games as I could.  The usual suspects like Daytona USA, OutRun, Sega Rally, Need for Speed, Gran Turismo, Mario Kart, etc.  Then I looked at some more racing game lists here and there for for more recommendations.  After going through that many racing games, I may have missed some.  If I forgot some famous racing game, please let me know and I'll get to it.  Sorry if I screwed up.

Also I should mention that I'm only looking for semi-relevant racing games.  Go to GameFAQs and type in "gp" or "f1" in the search bar and scroll through the list.  Should all of those be included here when you've only heard of maybe 5-10% of those?

I've also favored arcade racing games which is why there's a couple of obscure racing games on there.  Many of the Sega racing games are arcade titles so comparing them to other arcade titles makes sense.

Now for the dates and the pictures.  Basically, I have a game I want to add to the timeline.  I look for a box art/title screen pic, chop it, and put it in the chart according to the year I was provided with.  Some games I looked up the year on GameFAQs which proves to be inaccurate at times.  Other games I look up on Wikipedia which seems more accurate.  The point is if the date is wrong then please let me know and I can amend it.

Though some dates are major judgment calls--like Gran Turismo 4 was released in Japan on Dec. 28, 2004 and everywhere else months later.  So should I list GT4 under 2004 even though it really isn't?  Same thing with Mario Kart 64--Japanese release was Dec. 14, 1996, NA release was Feb. 10, 1997, EU release was June 24, 1997.  So there's some judgment calls that had to be made.  I still may be wrong with the dates but at least give me "proof" that I'm not.

One more thing--I included Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row in the list purely because driving is a huge part of the gameplay.  Those technically don't count as "racing games" but oh well.  If their presence is too bothersome, I can take them out.

I appreciate all comments.  If this is a big deal and I get a lot of suggestions, I'll make it look much more polished.  Until then, here's the first version.  Adios.

Oh and I hope this is acceptable for deviantART even though it really isn't "artwork."  Maybe I'll move it to scraps then.  Isn't all art subjective?

Copyright all these games not to me.  So many to list...

------------

Like most projects I engage in, this one took much too long so I hope it's worthwhile.  If only to highlight Fonz, heh...

1 comment:

  1. Wow. You'd think the cover art for a lot of the more recent games were done by the same designer. But I digress. A lot more racing games out there than I realized.

    I think if I had to critique though, there were quite a few things I didn't see. Cyber Speedway for the Sega Saturn (a game that I've owned for years and never played, strangely enough), Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense for Dreamcast, Vigilante 8 Arcade for XBLA, the PS1 Test Drive games and some earlier ones, that Spy Hunter game with Dwayne Johnson on the cover, Konami Krazy Racer for the GBA, and Chase: Hollywood Stunt Driver for the XBox. I thought a new Wipeout game came out for the Vita, too. I'm also thinking maybe Virtua Racing Deluxe earns a spot on there. Oh, and Motor Raid. Outrun 3D? And no Wii U? Because like Transformed and stuff. It's your call, but there's my two cents.

    Otherwise, dang. What a list. I'd forgotten how many of those non-Sega games I played, which itself is just a fraction of the list, but still. Driving stuff is fun. Let's hope Transformed satisfies our racing needs.

    ReplyDelete