Drift Stage: Another SEGA Fan Game!!! My Opinions

There's a new indie game that popped onto the scene last week!  It's got a name and it's called "Drift Stage."  The name is pretty meh to me but check out the gameplay!  This is just a beta stage so never mind the blue/orange abyss.

Unlike The 90's Arcade Racer, which targets Daytona, Scud Race, and Indy 500, this Drift Stage game gives me and OutRun vibe.  The physics don't look that complicated--you can twitch in and out of drifts.  Very snappy, predictable handling which is good since responsive racing games tend to be the most fun of all.  It also reminds me of Ridge Racer (lol) and Screamer (old PC game).

This isn't on any sort of Kickstarter just yet.  It has a Tumblr site (www.driftstagegame.com redirects to it) as well as the aforementioned gameplay clip but not much else.  Oh!  There's also Chase Pettit's Twitter (the game's lone programmer) and judging from this video, you can tell he's pretty diehard about his racing games!!

SPOILER ALERT: The car is a looping image.

ALSO, stumbling through this guy's Twitter, I found another little indie gem.  Thunder Desert GP for the Ouya (which is basically a dead console now but hey, points for effort), a 3D version of Super Hang-On.  Not sure how you can access such a game...I don't have an Ouya so I'm SOL from the start.

So...back to Drift Stage.  What do I really think?  It's a breath of fresh air.  I mean we're actually looking at gameplay footage, something that The 90's Arcade Racer hasn't delivered on for over a year.  Drifting looks like a lot of fun, however I'm a bit concerned that without manual transmission or unique track layouts (preferably with varying road widths) that the game will get too predicable or easy.  

The colors are nice and bright.  However, I think the game will be a little TOO saturated.  The demo video is entirely blue and orange which can be interpreted as "retro" but the original 1986 OutRun and even 1981 Turbo utilized the entire hue wheel.  Drift Stage's cars, a Ferrari 288 GTO/512 BB, a Lotus Esprit, and Toyota AE86, look quaint and pixelated (no "realistic car models" BS, thank God)  but again, the two-tone colors...make me consider the alternative--that fully-colored cars would fare better (or at least black tires).  It's an acquired taste, thus the more I observe this game, the more I'll loosen up to it.

NO ONE SLEEP IN TOKYO

The sense of speed and environments have great potential.  Barring the color palettes, the environments could use a wider variety of "stuff."  I only see two types of fences, buildings, trees, and other doodads.  One of the things that made OutRun so great is because you would whizz by so many things and give you that riveting sense of speed (I wrote a whole article about sense of speed).  if Drift Stage can capitalize on this, this game will be AWESOME.

Finally, the soundtrack.  I didn't like the music in that first gameplay video.  I can see they're trying to recreate OutRun's poppy jazz-fusion stuff so odds are I probably won't warm up to it for a while due to unfamiliarity.  But anyway, soundtrack (as well as audio) is KEY to these sort of games so hit it hard!  Get some real car engines and pay Richard Jacques to get his ass down here in the studio.

Yeah my review is a bit negative but consider it constructive criticism.  I want this game and The 90's Arcade Racer to succeed!!!

Also I'm honestly surprised that a lot of the Sega sites (SegaBITS, TSSZ News) didn't report shit on this game.  Why not?  Because it doesn't have the SEGA logo on it despite being heavily influenced by said arcade games?  Even lousy Kotaku beat those sites to the punch.  Labels aren't important anymore.  I love FAST-PACED, COLORFUL racing games.  Sega used to deliver on these but nowadays, not so much.  So while you guys give your write-ups on the next dreadful Sonic, Aliens, and Hatsune-Miku games, I'm going to focus on Sega's legacy.  So yeah, keep an eye out for Drift Stage!  GET READY!!  VROOM, VROOM!!....

When you post GIFs like this to promote your game, you're automatically a winner.

Cleaning Up The Site

If there's one thing to take away from my blogging hiatus.  I regret not trimming the fat on my site any sooner.  The central focus of the blog should be personal opinions of video games, cars, auto racing, and, to a certain extent, my personal life.  Topics like sports and TV have their respective places but not here.  Nobody clicks on a link titled "Musings of a Sega Racing Fan" to read about football, primetime television, pop culture, Internet memes, and so forth.  Also, less news aggregation and more opinions.  Cool, want to learn more about Sega, read SEGAbits or TSSZ News.  I can't "out-news" them if I tried (nor do I care to) so I should definitely focus on more essays and treatises.  I've definitely improved on that since four years ago but still, several posts with little-to-no context remain.

I've zapped a lot of said pointless posts recently.  This includes the three-year old Drew Brees/GameFAQs post that drew the ire of a couple of salty NFL Board posters.  The context of my post was, being the young "BS detector" I was, large swaths of the media was dogging on the Saints for stat-padding and because my animosity for GameFAQs was running high back then.  Oh, and a few NFL-related anecdotes of my own.  Boom, easy blog material for myself in a time where I posted at least one entry a day.  Fast forward three years I quickly stopped caring about what dreck was being said about the topic.  It was a "useless" post that I had no intention of revisiting again.  But alas, a shit storm came out of it.  The storm has been quelled (for now) and I don't want to revisit that either and give GameFAQs and the cretins that post there any more attention.  However, this was the impetus I needed to actually refurbish the site again.  Pick better topics to talk about, update the layout and the personal info, and other stuff that comes to mind in the future.  Oh, and finish the Super Sprint game I talked about.

Also one more thing.  On the blog posts in the future and the past, it's suffice to say that over four years, my interests, opinions, and worldviews have changed.  When I was young and brash, I was an Internet hipster that blasted everything and had quixotic views about the future.  Then you get older and the real world materializes itself before you.  Getting a job in the game industry is hard.  There are some battles you shouldn't fight.  You can't always get what you want.  And sometimes, the things you want weren't all that great to begin with.  As a result, a lot of old posts now look "stupid" in my eyes but hey, that's part of growing up.  The word "musings" is in the damn title which basically means nothing here is set in stone.  I can still work hard to achieve my original goals but now I'm a little wiser about it.  Now that I'm feeling rejuvenated, time to get back to work whenever my procrastination period ends.  Later...

Inquiring About The Public's Opinion Of SEGA (Part 2 With Sonic) ...

CLICK HERE TO READ PART ONE.

This is a part two of a rant about irrelevant and stupid Sega is.  I left off talking about how Sega and Sonic are one of the same.  If you're in doubt, the best example of Sonic's dominion over Sega is the Sumo Digital line of games.  First was "Sega Superstars Tennis," a game that, despite the nostalgia, was okay at best and didn't sell well.  Then comes "Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing," a better game with more Sega nostalgia, but they put Sonic's name in the title for good measure because "Sega" is a dirty word that doesn't get the fans buzzing.  Finally, they release "Sonic All-Stars Racing: Transformed," the best of the three games but they completely removed Sega from the title altogether.

This is as embarrassing as having a Christmas display without the word "Christmas."  Casual fans mocked the game as being "another shitty sonic game" while Sonic fans (yes, the dreadful always-whining fanbase you love to hate) tried to assert dominion over it, even going as far as to complain "why is sanic driving a car???"  They all completely missed the point and that is this was a SEGA game, not a SONIC game, but people can't shut the fuck up about Sonic when it comes to Sega, can they?  Sonic already has three series of racing games dedicated to him (Sonic R, Sonic Drift, Sonic Riders) so why can't they go muck those up and leave All-Stars Racing to the Sega fans as a whole???  (yes, I did go on this spiel multiple times already, but it's one that needs to be drilled into your friggin heads).

SONIC FAN: SUMO PLEASE GIVE US MORE SONIC CHARA--

DARTHS0L: NO DAMMIT!!!

Now look.  I do like Sonic the Hedgehog though I wouldn't call myself a diehard fan of the franchise.  If Sonic keeled over and died, I'd fear more for Sega's well-being more than anything.  To me, Sonic 3 and Sonic Adventure 2 will be the pinnacles of Sonic games in terms of fun and storytelling and they haven't been surpassed yet.  To me, those games were "cool."  The new Sonic games aren't and I'd probably feel embarrassed to tell my friends if I did play them.  Hell, the Internet loves to make a mockery of Sonic and I can't blame them.  Here's two reasons I came up with for Sonic's ineptitude.  They're rather common sense, but I'll explain it the best way I can.

1. There's no consistency left with these games.  Every single new title tries to reinvent the wheel.  Of the post-SA2 era, Sonic Generations seems to be the one people like the "most" but still, you get complainers anyway.  Case is, there will never be a "good" Sonic game for a long, long time.  And even if you get that "good" game of yours, Sega will mix things up again the next time!  It's like that Twitch Plays Pokemon experiment in which 60,000+ users are constantly kicking a ball around in the general vicinity of where it should go but in a manner that pisses everyone off.  The fans want way too much input and usually get it, even if it reveals new flaws in the process.  More 2D!  More 3D!  More speed sections!  More puzzles!  Only Sonic and Eggman!  More new characters!  More old characters!  Less melee sections!  Easier!  Harder!  Hand the game over to Nintendo!  Let Dimps do it!  Get Yuji Naka back!  It's like before every Sonic game, you must be given an index card with all the game's problems and nuances.  They don't call the Sonic fanbase the worst fanbase on the Internet for no good reason.  Then again, when your fanbase was exposed to the radioactive waste that was Sonic 06 and Shadow the Hedgehog, of course that's going to leave a permanent mark.

Also, who the hell is buying Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games?  The first one was intriguing--mini games featuring Mario and Sonic characters!  Cool, it's worth a shot!  Now we are on the FOURTH title???  Is this some psychological experiment to see how far Sonic fans will go to support the series???

2. I really don't know how to say this without ruffling a few feathers so here goes.  Post-SA2, the Sonic cast of characters has become entirely unlikable.  If SA2 was a movie, I could potentially sit down and watch it all the way through.  Sonic 06 and Shadow, as inept as they were, had okay stories that kept me interested enough to beat the game.  After that, sayonara Sonic, because your storytelling has degraded to shit.  The characters have become predictable: Sonic is a smartass who is never threatened by anything and always wins by himself, Tails is a useless nerd, Knuckles is braindead, Amy is a psychopath, and Robotnik is an idiot who's just a speedbump to Sonic's awesomeness.  It's so cheesy and incoherent it reaches to Zelda CD-i levels of bad.  I don't care if it's Sega of Japan or the tag-team duo of Warren Graff and Ken Pontac (of f**king Happy Tree Friends, for God's sake) writing the plots, they can't do this shit anymore.  I did watch part of that "Sonic Dissected" series again, especially the part on humor and Sonic Colors, and it's really eye opening how much potential they missed out on these games.

Of course, in the context of the "cool" theme I was going with before, these Sonic game cutscenes CAN be enjoyable...but from a storytelling perspective, does it even compare with the dialogue from more respected game franchises like Halo, Mass Effect, Fallout, etc.?  No.  If I told people I played Fallout recently, I'd get pats on the back.  On the other hand, if I told people I played Sonic Colors recently, I'd get my ass kicked.

Also I'll go ahead and say this.  Fuck Jason Griffith's voice.  I can't stand him as Sonic.  His voice is so damn boisterous it just accentuates all the things I dislike about this new Sonic.  There, I said it and I mean it.  I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in thinking this.

Two more links to click on that I read.  Here and here.  Now that Sonic is officially part of the Nintendo family, you get Sonic: Lost World which is basically Sonic with Nintendo's greasy fingers all over it.  The gameplay is "meh" all over again and it doesn't strike me as memorable or good like previous entries.  All I see is the Yoshi's Island DLC and that anti-climatic ending (compliments of geniuses Graff & Pontac), both of which make me want to punch a baby.  I think the less said about this game, the better.  Why Sega is still riding the sinking Nintendo fail-boat, I dunno.

So what's next for the blue blur?  Sonic Boom.

Oy vey, this is tricky.  Especially Knuckles, MAH GAWD, KNUCKLES, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU???  Sega is on record saying the game is not canon, which is codeword for, "if this game sucks, we'll pretend it never existed."  While I do commend Sega for allowing Big Red Button Entertainment (a Western studio formed from some Naughty Dog guys) to come up with their own interpretation on the franchise, I'm afraid if this game/cartoon/toy combo (yes, Sega is going all in with this new style) is a success then hey, guess what--maybe Sonic Boom will be a permanent rebranding on the Sonic franchise for the new generation of gamers!  That...really doesn't make me happy considering how much squandered potential they had over the last 10 years of Sonic that they're sealing with concrete.  I mean I kinda liked Sonic with the Soap shoes and without the duct tape.  But hell, like I said, I don't give a damn what they do with Sonic, just as long as Sega gets money, right??? :D :D :D

UPDATE: So yeah, Sega released a behind-the-scenes for the game and TV show.  It looks nice (albeit somewhat generic) but the characters and plot sound cheesy...like a Westernized Sonic Heroes (bad) with juvenile Sonic Colors humor (terri-bad).  Sonic dresses like Nathan Drake because Naughty Dog devs think this is Sonic's ultimate "adventure," okay, because the last decade of games weren't adventures at all.  The VA's and jokes still piss me off.  I'm not too optimistic but it sounds like the game devs had a lick of sense to what they were saying and doing so I'm not going to denounce it just yet...



You know, back to what my original point about Sega being cool, here's what I'd do about it.  And frankly, it's not going to work without talented, dedicated individuals, but here goes!  My bullet points:

> DO SOME HOUSE CLEANING!!!  I have a hunch Sega is swimming with inept employees.  Get 'em out of here.  I want to see skilled employees at Sega who are emotionally invested in the company and actually like the games they make.  Employees who are willing to take a bullet for Sega.  Okay, maybe not that far but you get the message.

> START ADVERTISING BLUE-SKY GAMES AS COOL AGAIN!  Grow some balls.  As a gamer, I'm sick and tired of being trampled by the grey-sky, realistic, doom & gloom games.  Start making colors fashionable again.  Come out and say, "so-and-so game is cool" and actually mean it.  Aim for that 18-35 year demographic.  Steal the cool baton back!

> STOP DROPPING THE SONIC FRANCHISE ON ITS HEAD!  Again, Sega lives or dies by the Sonic franchise.  What can be done about it?  Well, find that niche again between speed and platforming.  Cut down on the bland storytelling and bad jokes.  Bring in other characters that actually serve roles rather than stand there and act stupid/clueless.  And most importantly, give Sonic WEAKNESSES because an invincible protagonist is BORING.  Again, read the thousands of other Sonic articles out there for hints on how to improve Sonic! :)

> STOP PUBLISHING BAD GAMES!  Stick with Football Manager and Total War.  Kill the Aliens franchise, I don't want Gearbox taking any more of your money.  Speaking of which, stop using publishing as a crutch.  You should do this...

> START PROTOTYPING GAMES AGAIN!  What's beautiful about a lot of Sega arcade games is that they're small yet concentrated experiences.  Daytona USA only had two cars and three tracks but it's one of the most memorable racing games ever.  Sega needs to start churning out small in-house games, maybe posting them as online arcade or mobile titles, see what works, and then expand upon them if they are successful.  This allows you to get publicity, revive old IPs, and experiment with things that work.  Genius, right?

> RELEASE SHENMUE 3!  Oh, what's that?  You might've lost the Shenmue trademark because of inactivity?  Well get it back and make it anyway!  Help old man Yu Suzuki out!!!  He's the man that made Sega the ex-superpower that it was, you should return the favor to him and the stalwart Sega fans! Cheers!

Come on Sega, I know you can do it.

Inquiring About The Public's Opinion Of SEGA...

As I sit here mulling over the bowl of cereal I don't have because my family forgot to buy some, I got to thinking about our dear friend SEGA once again.  You see, brand recognition and popularity is what helps keep companies in business.  So this leads me to ask this vital question...

Do you think Sega is "cool" anymore?

Where does Sega go on the Cool Wall?

Top Gear, telling you how it is since 2002.

Now.  Some of you will say, "Well of course Sega is cool!  They made some kickass games!  Who cares what people think of Sega?"  You're sorta right.  Us Sega hipsters got this little circlejerk going on and screw what anyone else thinks!  But it is IMPORTANT what other people think of Sega.  Sega cannot survive alone cause of a couple of fanboys on the Internet, they need a portion of the Average Joe gamer demographic to run out and invest in their stuff too.

See, that's what I mean about being "cool."  The term "cool" as in "genuinely interested in their products."  Being cool is important--it's how crap pop music, TV, movies, and video games manage to be relevant despite lacking any original content or substance at all.  Being "cool" is neither a good or bad thing--it's like handing off the baton or being "King of the Hill."  You gotta reach out and grab it somehow.  Sega was cool back in the 90's!  Sonic the Hedgehog!  Game consoles!  Arcades!  Kickass!  People loved that stuff.  But nowadays, everyone has written off Sega as a decayed corpse as they flock around the Western developers--FPS, RTS, adventure, MMO's with "realistic/grungy/shockingly depressing" hi-res graphics.  In other words, the complete antithesis of Sega! :(

This whole "cool" topic came about reading this compelling article about Nintendo and violent games' places in the marketplace.  Basically how the concept of "family entertainment" that Nintendo has relied on for so long has eroded over the last decade.  Think about it....what are the most popular games these days?  Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Gears of War.  Games with copious profanity, violence, and (some) sexual content.  They sell Halo and GoW toys in kids/family stores though MS/Epic shrug at the thought of directly advertising violence to kids.  Case in point, these games have claimed the "cool" mantle.  Realistic, gritty games are in vogue, clean happy games are out.

How did this happen?  You can name many reasons.  Kids look up to teens/young adults for what is cool--adults play violent games, so do kids.  The concept of a "family" has diminished--we spend less time face-to-face and have high numbers of single parent households therefore.  We've conditioned ourselves to violence and the "Jackass generation" that we hardly flinch at the idea at our of kids disrespecting each other.  I'm not a sociologist so I won't pursue the issue longer but look at this point mentioned in the article--55-60% of parents do not check nor do they even care about ESRB/PEGI ratings.  This is ridiculous.

But don't get me wrong...I'm not blaming violent games for society's problems, nor am I saying you can't enjoy these games yourself.  But these kind of games are adverse to Sega's M.O., plus don't you get tired of people realistically shooting, stabbing, blowing each other up?  Why is it that whenever anyone unveils a non-violent, colorful game, it's a cringe-inducing kids title, a shameful freemium game, or both?  Also would you let this kid play Call of Duty?  There's thousands of kids like this every day.  Boy, violence is good for them!

EDIT: This YouTube video makes another good point about game popularity--YouTube Let's Plays.  Nintendo has been vigilant in the past about taking down any YouTube gameplay videos.  Other companies, notsomuch.  I'm not a Let's Play watcher but I can see what they're getting at here--YouTube clips are basically free advertising and Nintendo better accept that soon.

And what does Nintendo, Sega's last ally in the war against gray skies, do about it?  SUCK AT EVERYTHING!  The Wii was a success cause they advertised it to that core young-adult demographic and did a great job with the motion control stuff.  Now the Wii U gives us some awkward gaming pad and is advertising itself to...little kids?  I swear, I saw a Toys R Us commercial last Christmas with little kids harping on a Wii U sales deal.  Is THIS the game console that the mainstream demographic (18-35 year olds) going to buy?  Especially with its outdated graphics and same old games from last generation?  I'm not a graphics junkie but at least Sega's new releases were top-notch technology (i.e. Scud Race/Daytona 2 being years ahead of the N64/Playstation).  Seriously, the 3DS is the only thing keeping Nintendo alive.  I still don't know how Pokemon remains relevant as ever these days, especially since all I hear from Pokemon nostalgists is bitching about how perfect Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow was (news flash--there were "bad" Pokemon in that game too) but shit, if it makes Nintendo money, then great.

Nintendo is a company I want...no, NEED to succeed in order to establish "balance" against Sony and Microsoft.  Now they are throwing their arms up and open for acquisitions or mergers?  RED FLAG!!  The fact Sega has hooked its anchor to Nintendo's sinking ship (in the form of Sonic games exclusive for the Wii U) is suicidal.

You want a kids console?  Buy a V-Tech.

Now, time for a pop quiz!  Get out a sheet of paper and writing utensil.  Write down up to five things that you think Sega has done that was "cool" at any time in its history.  You have thirty seconds, now....GO!

...

Time's up!  Compare your list to mine.  If you're like me, you've probably written down a list of things like this:

1. Sonic the Hedgehog!
2. Expertise in home consoles!
3. Expertise in arcades!
4. A backlog of vibrant blue-sky games that made fun the primary focus!
5. A brash, edgy marketing campaign!

Now, let's run through this list and compare them to the Sega of today.  Home consoles?  Sorry, Sega put the kaibosh on that in 2001 so let's cross that out.  Arcades?  Those are dead in the West and the only stuff we see are mediocre and never live up to the 90's so cross that out too.  Blue-sky games?  HA, please spare me, Sega does the bare minimum to keep their legacy from eating dust by releasing sparse, straight ports of their games to cash in on nostalgia from the fanboys so let's cross that one out.  Brash?  Edgy?  Name for me ONE bold thing that Sega has said or done.  No "Sega does what Nintendon't" or Sega screams.  Almost all of Sega's official advertising is done through their online blog site as they cut and run like a scared puppy.  So cross that one out as well.  So what does our list look like now?

1. Sonic the Hedgehog!
2. Expertise in home consoles!
3. Expertise in arcades!
4. A backlog of vibrant blue-sky games that made fun the primary focus!
5. A brash, edgy marketing campaign!

Yes, it's true, love it or hate it, Sonic IS Sega.  Sonic is the only thing that Sega has going for it...the only thing Sega hasn't given up on in the last 22 years, even dragging the franchise through the horse shit that was the post-SA2 era.  Seriously, just listen to the first forty seconds of this Giant Bomb video and you'll see what I mean.  "Sonic" = "Sega"  I'll probably talk about this in a Part 2 next time cause I'm tired and have gone on for too long, good night all.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW PART TWO.

Ryo Hazuki In Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed: It's Not Pretty...

Alright, it's been a while since I talked about Sega racers so let's do this.

So we all know that Ryo Hazuki is in Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed.  Sumo inserted pics of Ryo in the Yogscast DLC trailers like a parent that says, "Don't open your eyes, I got a present for you!" and you open your eyes anyway.  Here, he's driving OutRun, Hang-On, and Space Harrier cabinets which is really damn clever and also a great ode to the classics.  It's a million times better then that Yogscast Charity DLC dreck.  Who knows about Yogscast?  I don't but then again, I'm not from the UK.

Your stats suck.

Yep, this is the guy who got his own character in Sonic All-Stars Racing.  Good work, Sega.

So what's my initial response to seeing the Ryo character?  This:

Now, it's not that I dislike Ryo but come on guys, Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed is OVER A YEAR OLD.  It's a great game, yeah, but the hype for this game has gone down drastically.  I let my Xbox Gold expire last month (and had to enter a chat room with a MS representative to disable it because MS is too lazy to put the button on their site, thankfully the rep was very polite to me) so I won't be playing online for a while now (assuming I do play again).  Had Ryo been introduced back in the game's heyday (while the fans were doing those stupid online petitions) then yeah, we'd be partying til the break of dawn.  But now it's sorta like, "Okay...thanks Sumo!  Glad someone there actually cares about the hardcorez fans and shiz."

Then things went from "meh" to "Oh Please God No" in a heartbeat:

In this situation, Ryo is vindictive of why we can't have nice things.  Simply cause Ryo is an iPhone-exclusive character.  You cannot play him on Xbox 360 and PS3.  You CAN play him on PC but not for a while now.  All I know is that Sumo/Sega saved Ryo for a year later just so they can convince us to buy the iPhone version.  In the ideal world, Sumo would put all the characters into one superior version (PC version) but now they're playing patty-cake with gamers to make another buck off the same damn game.

Sooooo...why complain?  The iPhone version can't be that bad!  Well, it's a mixed bag for a multitude of reasons.  They can be narrowed down to two:

1. Game's stripped of a load of content.  There's only 13 characters in this version and they are Sonic, Tails, Amy, Gum, Ulala, Amigo, BD Joe, Joe Musashi, Eggman, AGES (Thank You Lord Jesus!!), Ryo, Ralph, Metal Sonic, Knuckles, and Shadow.  That's right, they nixed Beat but kept Gum in.  Plus they didn't cut any of the Sonic characters at all, proving that Sumo is catering to the major Sonic fanbase out there and screwing the rest of us fans.  Gee whiz, I know this is an 1.0 GB iPhone game but it's really a downer.

As for tracks, well I don't have a clue.  There's no outright "pick a track and race," the game's sort of an amalgamation of Grand Prix and World Tour modes--not much flexibility in terms of single-player.  I'm guessing Ocean Hill (a track I'm really getting sick of), Skies of Arcadia, and Afterburner will get a shiatload of facetime so get ready for those.

2. Microtransactions.  Let me explain how this works.  You pay $5 for the game.  No big deal, sounds good.  But all of the characters (sans your one choice of Tails, Amy, Gum, Ulala, Amigo, BD Joe, or regular Joe) are locked from the start.  That's right, Sonic is locked from the very beginning of the game.  You unlock rings through races which allow you to unlock most things, just like any good iPhone game.  But with any race mode outside the Easy difficulty level (there's 4 levels), you have to pay rings to enter and restart the level.  That's also right, you can't just pick a Medium/Hard/Super Hard race and replay it over and over until you win.  If you run out of rings, you have to restock by doing the Easy races all over again.

So what does Sumo do?  Include a $10 DLC that removes this restart cost, allowing you replay the races without any entry fee.  It's pretty damn dirty to include extra costs on top of a game that's already not free to play.  I mean if you go into the game thinking $15 is a decent price for the game, sure that's not too bad.  But they just had to sneak that extra $10 in there.

The recoil from this decision was so immense that Steve Lycett AKA DarthS0L had to play Sumo PR Agent and take to the message boards explaining his decision.  Yeah, he's been scooting around the official Sega forums, Sonic Stadium, and NeoGAF which is kind of ridiculous cause if you need someone to actually explain a controversial decision to your face, odds are you f**ked up somehow.  He says it's entirely possible to unlock everything in the game without paying any more than the initial $5.  Which is reasonable because I've played a couple of the Nimblebit iPhone games and haven't spent a dime on 'em--Tiny Tower, Tiny Death Star, Pocket Planes, Pocket Trains.  Grinding works on these games.

But as we all know, these microtransactions are a HUGE shortcut.  For instance, I could unlock AGES by playing the game for 10-15 hours and saving up my in-game currency.  OR I can just pay $5 and unlock him right now.  $5 to skip 10-15 hours of grinding.  I honestly don't know how long it takes to unlock AGES but the point is by making Ryo an iPhone exclusive, it boosts the number of sales this game gets and Sumo can make an average of $15 for each person that invests in this game.  That can be huge considering how this game is a straight port with little gameplay changes.

Aside from these two things, the game looks okay.  You level up your characters' stats rather than unlock these stupid Speed/Accel/Boost/Console mods like in previous versions which is a nice touch.  It runs at a constant 30 FPS and the iPhone controls, while they look manageable, still look difficult and imprecise like playing Mario Kart Wii with the Wiimote.  Online play only includes 4 players max.   I just can't imagine playing any action-heavy game on an iPhone--I'd rather save that for consoles/PC, and even throwing Ryo into the mix doesn't change my mind much.

Also to unlock Ryo, you have to beat a bunch of Weekly Challenges.  He's this game's AGES--just a pain in the ass to unlock.  And I also know that Ryo has the words "Shen 3" written on his license plate.  Everyone knows that.  But think of the possibilities--perhaps Sumo/Sega introduced Ryo as a character to gauge the interest in a Shenmue HD port.  The likelihood of getting a Shenmue 3 from the iOS Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed is nil and odds are the Internet-savvy DarthS0L threw that on the license plate just to tease the Shenmue petitioners out there.  But Sega is just weird like that so I don't discount the possibility of a Shenmue 3 someday.  After all, if Yu Suzuki wanted to conclude the storyline, he could release a manga, satiate the fans, and call it a day.  But he hasn't spoiled it yet which leads me to believe he's still trying to persuade Sega to make that Shenmue 3 game.  I just hope he doesn't take it to the grave with him.

UPDATE: Ryo Hazuki has since then been added as DLC for the PC Steam version of Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed.  It costs $1.59.  This was a couple of days after this entry was posted.  While this is certainly good news, it leaves the console versions hanging (Xbox 360/PS3 are the plague and not worth touching), plus Sega/Sumo did play some of us into buying the iPhone version.  Take this news what you will.

I don't plan on buying Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed on the iPhone.  Does that make me a bad Sega fan?  Well, that's your opinion.  I just don't think it's worth the money.  I'll play the crap out of the the console & PC versions but the iPhone version needs to be better for me to consider it.  BTW, putting characters aside, it sure would be hella nice to get some track DLC too.  But no, we're stuck playing Ocean Hill, After Burner, and Hagia Sophia--I mean Panzer Dragoon for eternity.

One more interesting thing.  I do check the Sumo website occasionally for job openings.  Nothing that I can get, sadly.  But here's something interesting--"Vehicle Handling and Performance Specialist."  Yep, they're looking for people who know how to make race cars in video games!

We require a gas-guzzling, do-nutting Petrol-head for an exciting design opportunity!

Are you a car freak? Do you have at least three years of design experience on high profile console driving games?

Sumo is looking for someone with great experience and a passion for tweaking the physics and performance characteristics of a wide range of vehicles in a successful driving franchise to join our team of Stig Fantasists in Sheffield. A background of successful game design experience is important, as is an understanding of (and passion for) car handling, set-up and the console racing genre.

If you’re auto-obsessed and want to contribute to one of the most successful driving franchises of all time, get in touch ASAP – we want to talk to you.

Do I have a chance?  An infinitesimal one.  Here's why.  One, I'm a programmer and not a producer.  Two, I don't have three years of experience in ANY professional studio, much less racing game studios.  Sure, the yearly requirements can be stretched a little (i.e. you have two years instead of three and they accept you anyway) but three years is out of my reach.  Three, what am I going to cite--this blog???  Hell, if Sumo read this blog, they might recoil in disgust and not hire me.  Yeah, I'm a big fan of theirs but I'm too much of a hipster and am critical of everything and that might not bode well with 90% of the game industry.

It sucks but look at it this way--Sumo is still making racing games.  That's awesome and that includes the potential for a new Daytona game.  I just hope I can get on-board soon enough...

Not Buying The Hype On Next-Gen Gaming

Happy New Year.  As you may have guessed, video games in 2014 are off to a great start.  Here's what I have to say about all the new titles.

It's time for the anti-video game circlejerk!  Now I'm pretty sure everyone's seen this PS4 commercial before but here it is anyway:

This commercial is beyond cheesy and pisses me off.  Two dudebros playing their mainstream games together.  But after a while, I noticed there is more to this commercial than meets the eye.  Two things:

1. These are the same kind of games we've seen a thousand times.  Hack-and-slash medieval/fantasy game.  Racing sim.  Gritty futuristic FPS.  Originality at its finest.
2. They all involve killing people and/or destroying things.  Think about that for a sec.  Two games involve outright killing people.  The third isn't really about violence but you're encouraged to smash things to bits.  Hence for no reason at all, one dudebro rams the other into the wall, sending him into a slow-mo Burnout/Split-Second wreck.  Games thrive off of destruction/death way too much these days.

Neither of these consoles impress me.  Sure, the Xbone was one massive skidmark that MS went back and corrected but I still have disdain for because MS tried to take us for fools and I don't forget that easily.  There's also the PS4, but I'm only marginally interested it compared to the Xbone.  Sony is still trying to smuggle DRM policies into their console like Microsoft did, just a lot more covert.  Both of these consoles are vanity goods that you really don't need.  Need top-end graphics?  Get a gaming PC.  Need a wealth of new titles?  Errrm, we already had seven years of Xbox 360/PS3 games.  If you've played all of those, then you need to go outside.  Need a console that changes the channel when you tell it to?  Well, that's not a need, that's just stupid.  Come back in 2030 when everything is made out of chrome and holograms.  You know what I'm getting at here cause I already talked about it before.  I think a year or two down the road, when they fix all the bricked consoles, the price goes down, and the library grows (including a new Sega racer, fat chance...) I might invest in one but until then, screw you both.

Anyhoo, you may be surprised to find out that my family is in possession of TWO Xbox Ones.  Yes, one Xbone, two Xbones.  They were Christmas presents for two of my brothers.  It's a load of crap, I know.  We own one game at the moment--Dead Rising 3.  I watched my brother play it for about an hour.  All I have to say is I just don't really care.   The game takes place in a fictional Los Angeles, a zombie outbreak happens, and you play as some mechanic dude who turns into a macho badass.  I didn't need a plot or anything, just as long as I get to kill zombies and rescue survivors.  Off the bat, I recognize the improvement in graphics.  Great, but it wasn't as shocking of a transition as, say, Super Nintendo to Nintendo 64.  It's just the same games as before but with a slight layer of polish.

Maps of Dead Rising 1 (upper-left), Dead Rising 2 (lower-left), and Dead Rising 3 (right)

The map is bigger this time around with huge streets for driving cars.  But the problem is the environment looks so piss bland I find nothing recognizable about it whatsoever.  Sure, they put a huge emphasis on cars now but it's hard to drive anywhere without plowing over zombies and getting stuck on debris.  If I wanted to free drive around, I'd probably play Grand Theft Auto.  If I wanted to kill zombies in cool locations, I'd probably play Dead Rising 1 or 2.  Just my two cents, you enjoy the game, great for you.  If you were a Dead Rising/zombie aficionado then yeah, you'll like this just cause it gives you more stuff to kill.  Otherwise, it's really a placebo game designed to sell the Xbone, as you can tell cause the game is exlusive to that console.  It's crap cause Dead Rising 2 was available for PS3 but whatever man...Capcom and Microsoft can fudge up the game however they like so I'm not losing sleep over it.  

My brother was playing Spiderman 2 on the Gamecube, got DR3 on Christmas, beat the game in a week, and went back to Spiderman 2.  Don't think he's touched his Xbone yet since.  True story bro.

Another thing I should mention, going back to the paragraph before the previous one, is that these games don't really do anything "new" for me.  Sure, the graphics are better, there's more zombies, and they ditched the load times (sorta, you still get them when fighting psychopaths), but other than that, the gameplay STILL feels the same as games from 5-10 years ago.  Your special weapon attacks still kill zombies in that canned animation sequence.  Quick-time events.  Predictable trigger-based   Psychopaths run back and forth trading blows with you until you smack them enough times and they die.  Friendly AI is not very smart.  The thing that surprised me the most was seeing your character climb out the windshield of the wrecked car.  With new consoles bragging about "new ways to play the game," it certainly doesn't feel like it.  But as long as they keep the games running at constant 60 FPS, then I'll give them a modicum of credit for that.

As for other launch titles, all fifteen of them, you got Zoo Tycoon.  Yes, Zoo Tycoon is a launch title.  Killer Instinct is lacking in the content department.  Ryse looks pretty but it's a redundant hack & slash that'll go the way of King Kong and Eragon--such pretty launch titles but with bland gameplay.  Call of Duty, Madden, FIFA are what you expect--same game but prettier.  NBA Live 14, which was EA's response to the shit-canned NBA Elite, is a total embarassment.  Forza is a mess because the game is loaded with microtransactions like a Facebook game.  And Need for Speed's frivolous online gameplay has up to six players (that's right...SIX PLAYERS MAX, an abysmal number for an online racing game) zipping across the map far away from each other as everyone does their own thing to progress their respective campaign/story modes.  In other words, crap, crap, mega crap.

Give the consoles a few years to gel and the games should get better.  After all, the first Xbox 360 games looked like Xbox titles.  That's all well and good BUT...how much bigger can these games get before they collapse under the weight of their own production costs?  Models and worlds get more detailed, stories expand, gameplay branches rapidly, advertising money and review payola, etc.  Sure, we have tools to accelerate these things but the point is we're spending more and more money to make these games.  Remember that GTA5 required over a thousand people to make it.  Tools can't speed up the creative process much--you still need producers to sit down and think these things up.  We're outsourcing our art overseas now which I guess helps with the overhead but sucks for my art friends out there.  So expect less risk taking more and more DLC/microtransactions to milk the consumer's wallet for what it's worth.  The corporations need their money!

EDIT: A little aside, basically Kotaku posts an article about the worthless piece of crap that is the Kinect and how they are "a little it worried about it," citing how much it sucks that you're forced to buy a lackluster piece of hardware with your Xbone.  Nope, no one saw that coming, complaints about the Kinect 2.0, why who would say such a thing???  Also, I saw Madden 25 up-close and aside from the beatdown my friend put on my brother, I wasn't impressed by what I saw.

As for PS4 games, there's Gran Turismo 6.  Which is basically GT so nothing surprising like that.  Except for one feature--you can drive on the moon.  At 19 miles per hour.  I honestly don't know whether to think this is the most awesome or most useless thing in racing game history.

Compare to this gem of a racing game:

I think gaming isn't going to crash because it's so insanely popular, like today's terrible pop music.  But I've never been this jaded before about gaming in my life that I think SOMETHING has to blow up before I can get excited about these games again.  I'm done here, enjoy the hot air I'm emitted into the atmosphere.

P.S. There's no Ridge Racer launch title.  Whoops, someone tell Namco they planned their release one year late.  AWWWWWW.....

Vehicular Robbery Five Thoughts (GTA 5 For The Idiots)

Alright man, this is a post about Grand Theft Auto 5.  I'm pretty sure a few of you have played this obscure gem of a game.  I mean it only made $800 million on first day sales (beating out Modern Warfare 3's meager $500 mil) and had more than a thousand people work on it.  But I might as well talk about it, especially since driving is a crucial part of the game which means millions of people are gonna go cruising the streets of San Andreas.  So let's get this rant out of the way now--what I liked and disliked about the game.  Please note I haven't played GTA Online yet.

DRIVING

* It's fun, I really enjoyed it.  They loosened up the handling from GTA4 so you have more control at high speeds.  It reminds me of San Francisco Rush but with normal gravity and you're less likely to spin out.  The cars is very springy and the camera shakes at high speeds which conveys a nice sense of speed.

* The car damage is well done too.  Unlike previous GTAs, simply running into stuff at normal speeds won't cause the car to ignite into a fireball.  Instead, the wheels will get jammed or pop which has a slight impact on handling, plus engine power can drop off rapidly which basically renders the vehicle useless on its own.  The cars seem tougher this time around too.  The visual damage is toned down a bit too so you car doesn't look like a total piece of crap after a wreck or two.  The only thing that irks me is that the car lights go out from even the slightest wreck which means at night, you're driving around in the dark too often.

* Love the car selection in the game--you can see pictures of each here.  Watching my brother play the first time, I watched him jack a Porsche and before the text popped up, I said "that's a Comet" and surely it was.  Jacks a Viper, "that's a Banshee."  Jacks a Lamborghini, "that's an Infernus."  I like how they gave fake names to the car manufacturers--Vapid = Ford, Bravado = Dodge, Declasse = GM, Canis = Jeep, Benefactor = Mercedes, Obey = Audi, Ubermacht = BMW, Pegassi = Lamborghini.  I kinda wish there were more definitive vintage muscle cars in the game (they're all kinda bland IMO) as well as a stock car (the Hotring Racer from previous GTAs) but you can always get a Buffalo (Dodge Charger) and put a stock car spoiler on it.  Which leads to...

* Car tuning!  You can take any standard car to Los Santos Customs and soup it up some.  Change the paint job and rims, add a few body mods, even install some performance parts.  The customization is really shallow though.  Paint jobs are still limited to basic two-tone paint jobs (no generic flames/stripe mods) and with the exception of turbo, lower ride height, and bulletproof tires, there's not much improvement you can make to the cars.  Handling and acceleration receive a boost but if you were expecting Forza or even NFS customization, you will be highly disappointed.  Which leads to another...

* One thing that really irks me about a lot of racers is the lack of a speedometer.  I mean why not?  You're cruising along and you have the GPS, ammo count, and maybe the phone, so this whole "minimal HUD = good" crap is nonsense.  So why not add a MPH/KPH counter somewhere?  It'd make cruising down the highway that much more intimidating.

* And now to the subject of actual racing (or driving really fast).  I harped on this before a while ago--how GTA city racing isn't all that great.  The "racing" is kind of tedious for one reason--it's WAY too easy to hit something and come to a dead stop.  In traditional arcade racing, if you smack into something, at least you'll still have some forward momentum.  But here, obstacles littered near the street like trees, power poles, even seemingly innocent things like metal or wooden signs cause you to immediately die and come to a dead stop.  Literally, I saw my brother drive a big Ford (errr, Vapid) truck through a volleyball net, the truck stopped, and the net was still intact.  What's the deal?  Also, are there any other street races in the game besides this one near Franklin's house?

* The camera angle while driving.  I do like how the camera pitch is close to the ground--gives it a great sense of speed and all that.  But sometimes I wish I was driving with a camera that was higher above the ground so you can see over the traffic and get a better sense of the traffic and racing line.  The primary use for this would be when the car pitch changes (you go up/down a hill).  Sure you can use the joystick to move the camera up but that can get tedious.  I can't tell you how many times I would go over the hills near Michael's house only to hit a SUV that decided to stall in the middle of the road and once I saw it, it was too late.

* Added the ability to rotate the car while airborne.  This can be insanely helpful and it's not overly sensitive like the wings from Rush 2049.  But what annoys me the most is that it only affects the pitch and roll, not the pitch and yaw (pitch = up and downhill, yaw = steer left and right, roll = flip over sideways).  It's a real mindf**k because I keep thinking I can change the yaw while airborne, plus I tend to prematurely hold the steering wheel in the direction I want to turn when I hit the ground to steer away from rolling over.  But rolling in midair just makes things more perplexing for me.

* Why isn't there an instant replay feature in this game?  When you perform a nice stunt or narrow escape--wouldn't it be nice to see it again?  Can't tell you how many times me or my brother did something YouTube-worthy only to say "crap, we'll never ever see that happen again."  Here's an example--thank God this guy was recording at the time!!

* Also seems really easy to die when riding a bike or four-wheeler.  It's hella fun to go cruising off-road on one of these but if you hit a rock or tree and stumble a moderate distance, you can die pretty quickly.  Boo!

* One last thing, it's about saving cars in the garage.  Each character has a default vehicle that even if they lose, it still appears in their driveway (Franklin = Buffalo, Michael = Tailgater, Trevor = Bodhi).  That's great and all, you can mod those vehicles and they keep 'em forever, but if I use another vehicle, sometimes it appears in your driveway or impound lot, sometimes it doesn't.  As Michael, I stole a Tornado (Chevy Belair), modded it, took it to a mission, had to leave the car behind and hop in a stupid van or something.  I return back to where I left the Tornado and it was gone.  Thankfully, I return home and the Tornado is parked in my driveway!  I then take the Tornado to another mission, leave it behind, and return home thinking the Tornado will still be there.  WRONG!  Instead, the Tornado is replaced by the daughter's Weeny Issi (Mini Cooper) convertible and the Tornado was never found again.  I really wish you could designate one or two vehicles as "yours" to permanently respawn at your house but I'm not sure you can do that.  Bummer...

* Radio stations!  Guess this belongs in the driving section.  Here's a list of all the songs in the game with YouTube links.  I wasn't too crazy about these this time around.  I'm still convinced Vice City followed by San Andreas had the best radio stations (70's/80's music FTW).  For me, there were a few gems in GTA5 that I had to add to my music collection, primarily The Trammps's Rubber Band and Foreigner's Dirty White Boy.  But a lot of it was "ehh, whatever."  It's like a bag of trail mix--some good songs I really wanted to listen to, others I had to change the channel.  The one classic rock station had some great stuff--Dirty White Boy, Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting, Photograph, Hollywood Nights, Radio Ga Ga, the rest was soft rock I couldn't bear.  Needs more awesome driving music!  Why no metal stations like V-Rock from Vice City?  Probably my most listened-to stations in terms of "switch to it and not change it every minute" would be Radio Los Santos (rap) and Channel-X (punk), also Vinewood Boulevard Radio (dudebro rock) though that last one gets on my nerves quickly.  FWIW, when I heard Adolescents' Amoeba on the punk station for the very first time, instant Tony Hawk 3 nostalgia came to mind and I pissed myself.

* Overall, GTA 5 is a fun driving game.  But a fun racing game?  No, not really.  Aside from one NFS/Midnite Club-style event and missions that involve keeping up with a fleeing target, there's no real "racing" in this game whatsoever.

* CHECK OUT THIS GIF I SAW ON REDDIT:

EVERYTHING ELSE

* Really nice draw distance.  Unlike previous games that would utilize fog to hide the pop-up, here you can see nearly forever.  Stand on Mount Chiliad's summit and see what I mean.  Great work for aging hardware in the twilight stage of its life.

* Shooting!  Okay, the auto-aiming is really nice since you can pop targets one at a time--it's really cheap at times, I admit.  But the problem happens when you fall out of auto-aim, you have to put the gun down, look at the guy, then put it up again just to lock on to the person.  This is tedious as hell when trying to kill people at close-quarters since you have to pivot the camera directly at him--try rotating 90-degrees only to die.  Manual aim is a bit difficult to get used to.  Games like Call of Duty have looking down sights and aim assist to lower sensitivity when aiming at people, though GTA doesn't seem to have that so it's hard to get a precise shot on anything.  Overall, if I wanted to shoot people, I'd rather play Call of Duty because in GTA, shooting people is either too easy or too hard.

* Characters!  The three characters are pretty cool.  Franklin has no backstory other than "he's a hustla trying to make it big" but I'm cool with that.  He seems really "nice" for a GTA protagonist and has the hood lingo to boot and that's fine with me ("shit I always tryin to make some paper doo").  Michael is basically Tommy Vercetti as a family man, again kind of a cool guy with a nice pair of man boobs, plus he has a deep backstory that propels the game forward.  As for Trevor...wow, he seems like the quintessential GTA protagonist.  The dude is hilarious.  He does say and do some things you'll find detestable but this is the kind of guy I can see winning a GameFAQs character contest round.  So props to Trevor and his big balls.

* Cops are too aggressive with the stars.  If you steal a car or blow something up, sometimes you'll get one star and get away easily because cops will take a while to get over to your location.  Otherwise, they just have a vendetta against you, being the protagonist of one of the most vile, disgusting games in recent history.  Shoot a pedestrian or gangster dead, get one star.  Bump into a police car, get two stars.  Gimme a break.

* Why is GTA 5's rendition of San Andreas on a big island out in the middle of the ocean?  This was also in GTA way back to 3, possibly earlier than that.  Saints Row could get away with their city being on a continent--here, being stranded on a large island just seems kinda pathetic, really.

* I beat the whole game and the missions were fair with a nice variety.  I don't feel like replaying them, particularly because of the funny shooting segments, but if you're a sucker for movie-based games that hold your hand with liberal use of checkpoints, well here you go, enjoy it.  MILD SPOILERS: The three multiple endings kinda sucked though, only one is the true rewarding ending with some badass missions to finish it off.  The other two are tacked on and don't really tie up anything other than to satisfy some vendetta against one of the other playable characters.  So you know which ending to pick, the one where everyone is happy and all the punk-ass bitches that harassed you the whole game die. :)

* I finally reached 70,000 Gamerscore cause of this game.  And yet I don't plan on getting the Xbox One so I guess my score ends there.  Playing through all these outdated sports games for the cheap achievements will definitely be worth it when I'm 90 years old.

* On the mission where Trevor works on the dock, you can crush this guy here with a crate and the mission still continues just fine.  I've done it on every playthrough, it's great.  I cried laughing over it, man I'm pathetic. :D

* This is the best cutscene glitch video I've seen and I happened to record it.  I only regret that I recorded the very end of it (couldn't find my phone soon enough).  If you get cops tailing you when you begin a cutscene, they will invade the scene and shoot you while it's playing.

Oh my gosh...I've said way too much about this game.  There's a few more things but I want to call it quits now.  Overall, great game despite my nitpicks but I didn't get the "wow, this game is awesome" vibe like I did playing Vice City or San Andreas (the PS2 one) for the first time.  Must be due to my age--I'm too cynical to enjoy games fully anymore--old games are always better than new ones.  Okay, good night everyone.

REVIEW SCORE: A crappy not-well-thought-out 8 out of 10

Things Are Looking Up For 90's Arcade Racer/Arcade Games

A recent update from the guys over at The 90's Arcade Racer.

At this point some of you may feel like we’ve been working on ‘90s Arcade Racer since the ‘90s. That’s not entirely true, while Antonis and I were indeed playing Scud Race (Super GT in the US) and Daytona USA some 20 years--that was just preparation for the game we’re developing now.

Here’s what’s been happening the last couple of months with ‘90s Arcade Racer.

Physics, physics and more physics!

In the 100+ hours I’ve spent on racetracks combined with the thousands of hours logged playing racing video games, there’s something that feels quite counterintuitive to the genre. You would think super realistic racing games would have super accurate and lifelike physics -- but that doesn't necessarily always make a better product. To really give the sensation of speed, gravity, lateral gravity, as a designer you end up removing many functions that make a vehicle simulation “real”, in the theoretical sense. A driving simulator, more often than not feels like a floaty, unresponsive boat. Part of that is because you can’t feel yourself slinking around a bucket seat, you don’t have the sensation of a vehicle’s weight shift between the four corners; there’s an entirely missing dimension in racing games.

Antonis and I are going for a fun and arcade racing feel, we’ve said that from the start. Those two descriptors are equally important to the project. Getting to the balance of an arcade feel while offering a challenging experience and still giving the car some complex real-world behaviors is where our own challenge begins.

Once you start playing a racing game, especially an arcade-style one, terminology like camber, caster, differentials, toe, torque and drivetrain are quickly forgotten. Initially I spent a lot of time trying to get an arcade feel out of a real vehicle simulation. After extensive experimentation what Antonis and I found was that it just wasn’t working.

In this case it’s much easier to build something from zero and create an experience that perfectly recreates the perception and expectation we all have of a typical arcade racer. Version 2.0 of ‘90s Arcade Racer physics is built within the expressed intention of creating a real arcade racing game. What that means is that the game is really feeling like should. The car reacts in a way that is indicative of an arcade racer, it moves and accelerates properly and now we have a really fun grip and drift mechanic within the game. Although it’s been challenging having to build physics from nothing, this has allowed us to really build the vehicles exactly how we want and how they should feel.

I’m pretty confident that we’re very much in the right direction with the physics and you’ll probably agree once you have an opportunity to play it. Antonis, has been doing great work on creating the world of ‘90s Arcade Racer. But I’ll let him do that update.

Recently, I was concerned about the progress that was made towards the car handling in the game.  I even sent them a note beforehand asking "are you going to post a new video of the car handling?  what's it going to be like?" to which they replied "we're working on it."  I get a good vibe from this recent post--that their heart's in the right place and they aren't going to half-ass the most important part of a racing game.  Visuals are great and all but if I putter around in a car that feels like something spawned from a Unity tutorial, then the whole thing is for naught!

I bolded part of the post above because it's really damn important.  I talked about it before--sense of speed in racing games.  Sense of speed is almost incompatible with realism.  As long as you're in your living room sitting on a couch, you're not going to get a sense of speed by looking at realistic car physics on screen--the "floaty, unresponsive boat" feeling--unless you're willing to break some rules and go unrealistic in some aspects (i.e. excessive vibration of the suspension at high speeds).  I'm glad they recognize this golden rule!

You know, I've programmed vehicle handling over different mediums--Unity, Unreal, and stupid OpenGL car sprites.  With Unity and Unreal, you make these "wheel colliders" that you attach to the vehicle and do all the nitty gritty physics work for you--you set the torque, braking, suspension, skidpad, etc. and let the "realistic" car handling take over.  Yet I don't think it's possible to recreate a Daytona, Scud Race, or OutRun using built-in tire physics--the power comes from the entire car itself, not the four wheels.  Since these are 15-20 year old games, I doubt they were so advanced as to use realistic tire physics anyway.

If you're confused, imagine the car is pushed forward by one big invisible wheel instead of four tiny visible wheels.  By not using wheel physics, you're simplifying the vehicle handling but it allows you to precisely program the car handling the way you want, hence giving the car some predictable effects--like being able to slide at a fixed angle or accelerate/steer normally with your tires shredded up from a wreck.   In other words, you look at the handling of a 2D game like Super Sprint that technically doesn't "recognize" wheel torque and whatnot--it's just a block sliding on the screen--nowhere in the code does it mention "suspension" or other real-life handling terms.  The tire effects are dictated by the car, not the other way around, so when the tires kick up smoke and whatnot, the tires aren't really doing "anything," it's just for show.

I really want to see how they pull it off code-wise because I'm a nerd like that, heh.  If Super Sprint has taught me anything, it's that car handling takes a LOT of iteration to get it right--you can't just skimp on it.  Sadly, me passing on realistic car handling is why I'm often confused by real-life tuning like in GT and Forza.  Oh well, it's a fair trade--would rather make fun racing games than realistic ones! :)

There's still more to do.  They really need to implement manual transmission into the game (which I don't doubt they will), plus get some great audio too.  I want to hear roaring engines and a kickass soundtrack.  Good luck trying to do so without Takenobu Mitsuyoshi or Dennis St. James.  If in doubt, then just emulate AC/DC since that's not bad at all. :)

Just an aside while we're on the topic of realistic vs. non-realstic games.  I stumbled upon a very interesting Grand Theft Auto 5 GameFAQs topic and read a very intriguing post.  Yes, something good that came out of GameFAQs, it's a miracle.  But here's a post from NeonYoshi11:

Just played san andreas 3 months ago.

It looks like crap.

any game going for "realism" will eventually looks like crap.

This is why Art Style matters more than realism.

This is why Wind Waker still looks better than most games today, even the GC version.

IF you look closely, to disguise the old tech in the PS3/Xbox360 they use art that resembles realistm mixed with cel shading.

So it's got a bit of Street Fighter 4 in it, but in a realistic way, this allows them to improve "graphics" while not taking away performance of the game.

That's dead on.  Realism is basically an always-moving bullseye.  Even if you hit it, the bullseye keeps moving without you.  It's why a lot of games which sell off realistic graphics (Forza, Madden, etc.) often go through numerous iterations and why games like Daytona USA and OutRun 2, while super-old, still stand out and look fun to play.  Sadly, I wonder if the gaming gods get the memo since they're fine and dandy with destroying console backwards compatibility and DRMs that shred old games.  Just make sure to give your game differentiators so that your game won't become GameStop used game filler ten years down the road.  Antonis and The 90's Arcade Racer have a firm understanding of this!  Okay, you get the idea, I'm done for now.

New Updates To Sonic All-Stars Racing, 90's Arcade Racer, And My Optimism

Okay guys, we're back online and I'm sorry about the huge ass delay.  I'm alive and kicking, just barely though...

This news is OLD'd but I don't care, I thought you'd want to hear my take on it.  So, the new DLC character for Sega All-Stars Racing is the Russian commander from Company of Heroes 2.  This is DLC that came out on July 4th which makes no sense since it's an AMERICAN holiday, not a Red Commie one (BOOOOO) but that's besides the point because the character choice is certainly a strange one.  It's a WWII tank/submarine/fighter combo and that alone deserves praise because the idea of driving a TANK sounds like real neat idea.  Otherwise, my response might as well be summarized by this...

This character, along with the other PC exclusives like the Tactician and the Shogun really show how much Sega has fallen off the map.  Perhaps I'm a bit bitter that I wish more relatable Sega characters like Ryo Hazuki, Segata Sanshiro, Jacky Bryant, Ristar, Vectorman, Bonanza Bros. Toejam & Earl, ChuChu's, or even freakin Bayonetta made it into a game that was meant to promote Sega's Golden Age.  Or also bitter that DarthS0L, Sumo, or Sega basically played us for fools, proposing "Internet petishuns" to help get our favorite characters in the game that were all for naught really.

But the main cause for bitterness is seeing characters from games that I could barely consider Sega in nature (Football Manager, Total War, Company of Heroes) are getting precedence over the other characters for political posturing--people who liked Sega All-Stars Racing are more likely to get into Football Manager, Total War, etc. and vice versa.  It's free promotional material for games that are just painfully non-Sega in nature.  I mean Western-developed games about gritty war heroes and football simulators isn't what Sega should be known for.  It shows that they've completely failed to develop good games in recent time and are willing to stamp their name on any decent games they can get their hands on to seem relevant once again.  I'm not saying games like Football Manager or Total War suck, but whenever I read stories about them on the Sega blogs, my thoughts basically devolve to "meh" since I didn't get involved in Sega years ago just to read about them.  Really, to this day I'm still utterly baffled that Sega would get involved in the Aliens franchise, only to watch garbage Gearbox and Randy Pitchfork piss all over it.

Anyway, cause the Reddit-spooge-inducing Steam Summer Sale is on, I picked up Sonic All-Stars Racing: Transformed up for PC for $8.  Not bad and I hope you did too.  I haven't played it yet but I'll have it for 60 FPS goodness on a rainy day.  One problem I finally realized after all these months is that the game isn't going to work with this fancy GT steering wheel I got a while back.  Why??  Because you can't fly planes with a steering wheel.  Now that's just lame...  Think I said this before but if given the choice for cars only at 60 FPS or cars/boats/planes for 30 FPS, I'd take the cars at 60 FPS.  And the steering wheel compatibility is another reason...

Sonic All-Stars Racing: Transformed is basically in its waning phase and if Sumo were to add anything else to the game at this point, I'd probably shit bricks.  Doubt it'd happen though.

We do have another update from another game and it's from The 90's Arcade Racer crew via Kickstarter email.  This was some time in June.  Basically, they're going all-out with this game now, as they have introduced what appears to be an airport terminal level (Scud Race, duh) as well as the "Omnomnomnom" car which is clearly meant to be the Phantom Full Force car.  In other words, I think feature creep is kicking in as the crew has said f*** it to normal arcade conventions, let's crank the number of cars and tracks in this game up to 11.  Here's two hi-res screenshots.

Now, I might as well tell you what happened recently too and this was after I got fired.  Basically, I sent Pelikan another email about my recent woes and said I can help with the game if necessary (also gave him the link to my personal portfolio site).  He sympathized with me but has since then never replied back with an "offer" (even a free one would do, that's how much I want to help with the game).  And I can understand the lack of offer since I am a programming noob who lives on a completely different continent than he does.

So the game is coming along nicely and let's face it--I've kinda run out of things to do for racing games.  The 90's Arcade Racer is basically out there honing in on the Sega Racing Utopia Project we've all desired while Sega and Sumo Digital are jerking off and every other racing dev is obsessed with making their racing games as photorealistic as possible, gameplay or fun be damned.  I did throw out the idea about a year ago that I should create my own 3D arcade racing game like Daytona or OutRun on my own but let's face it--it'd never work.  I'm not an artist and I no longer have access to the same tools/software that I did during my days at grad school.  It would be like constructing a car out of popsicle sticks but no glue.  The 90's Arcade Racer is doing better than I ever could in a freelance project so I'm basically left in the dust to play the role of an inept cheerleader.  You have no idea how much this depresses me.

As an aside, and I hate getting all emo once again, but my motives have most certainly changed over the last couple of years.  At first it was all "hoorah, we're gonna work for Sega and make Daytona USA 3," then it's "well, Sega seems out of reach but it might happen and I might get to work on some racing games," to "I don't give a shit anymore, I'll work for anyone who pays for me."  My optimism certainly got shot down, curb stomped, and roasted as firewood really quickly.  I'd consider it fortunate if I ever get to "contribute" to a racing game ever again outside of Super Sprint.  Argh, everything just got all fucked up since I was fired and I'll be lucky if I ever get a job working at a video game studio again.  Sorry to be Debbie Downer.  I'll be back with more updates someday so later guys.

A Nightmarish Week Of Losing My Car And Job

GUYS I'M DOING ALRIGHT NOW.  Sorry about the radio silence.  This has been a really shitty week--let me just describe it as best as I know how.

PRE-MEMORIAL DAY 5/24:
Things are going swimmingly.  The project we're working on received a six-month extension and the company is upsizing!  Everyone is let off work a few hours early but I stay to add an alternate control scheme for the vehicles as presented by another one of the programmers (accel, brake, and steer are mapped to the left joystick).  Got that in, impressed the "boss," and got a three-day weekend (Monday was Memorial Day).

WEDNESDAY 5/29:
After an average Tuesday workday, I drive in to work on a damp Wednesday morning.  As I enter the parking lot in my blue 2-door bullet-shaped sedan, I traverse some slippery black pavement with one more left-hand turn to go before I reach my parking space.  Hit the brakes but OOPS, the car won't slow down or turn as I careen into a fenced region with a dumpster inside at about 20 mph.  Airbags go off, windshield cracks, and an undetermined amount of damage is concurred to the front right of the vehicle as two of my coworkers run over to aid me...and end up slipping on the black pavement as well.  Shows you how ridiculously bad this pavement is in the rain...a sign or a speed bump would've helped you sons of bitches.  It was the most BS way to crash, really.

I am not physically hurt but have to hold back man-tears because of fear my vehicular companion of 7 years may have taken its last ride.  After making a round of calls to the cops, insurance, rental car, AAA guys, one placed to my family, my dad's response was basically "HOLD ON SON JUST LEAVE THE CAR THERE!!" as he hopped in my mom's black 4-door Mercedes and drove 9 hours from Louisiana (my original home) to Florida (my workplace) just to help fix the car.  I called off the tow truck and the rental car as he showed up after work to bang the car together a bit.  Turns out all the damage was cosmetic and all it needed was a new windshield, airbags, and front right light and bumper/panels.  My dad was able to drive it back to the garage to get the windshield replaced which was a miracle in and of itself.

That combined with the ticket would probably set me back at least a week's salary which isn't TOO bad and is certainly a relief because I thought I would be reamed with much more than that.  I didn't think things could get much worse than this but guess what--it did! :D

FRIDAY 5/31:
So anyway, after spending some impromptu quality time with my dad on Thursday, he jets back to Louisiana Friday morning in my blue car for repairs while I drive the Benz to work for the second day in a row.  All is good as me and everyone else appear to be loafing around the office before the weekend arrives.

At 6 pm, one of the HR ladies comes to my office saying she needs to speak with me.  I say okay, and we make this rather awkward walk down the hall to the conference room.  I've seen that expression on her face before, the one that's like "you're fucked so I won't say anything to you" as I'm forced to sit in the room alone for a few minutes waiting for people to show up for the eventual sacrificial lamb ceremony.  Two more HR people arrive and, to summarize, say "We're letting you go at the end of your probation period because the engineers say you have had performance issues, goodbye."  (FYI, engineer = programmer)

At this point, I turn pale as my worst nightmare turns true--I had failed to hold down my second job for ridiculous reasons and all I could think of was the metaphorical vacuum cleaner that had sucked me right out of the womb and tossed me into the dumpster--the very one I had run into two days ago.  I beg them to tell me what I had done wrong or how I could have improved but they basically deflected it, saying that they're not engineers so they have no idea.  Hey, this is wonderful.  I'm being let go from my job without a single clue on how to improve myself going into my next job.  It's as if the cowardly engineers who called for my abortion decided not to stare me in the face one last time and try to help me out as a human being in need of improvement just so that they could bolt home from work and get the weekend started a few minutes later.  You've gotta be kidding me.

After getting shit-canned for the second time for no good reason, watching both my car and my job get destroyed in seconds, I panic and start calling friends and family, including my parents, to tell them about how molested I had just felt.  What happens next? Dad calls and says "HOLD ON SON I'LL BE THERE TO BRING YOU HOME!!"  That's right, my dad who had just arrived back in Louisiana after driving 18 hours in the last two days insisted on driving straight back to Florida AGAIN (in a different car besides the blue bullet) with my brother and his GF in tow just to help me pack up my stuff and return home with my family.  Apparently I couldn't have made the 9-hour drive alone by myself (I was too emotionally wrecked) and my mom wanted me home for her birthday (June 2nd, 2 days from now) so yep, there goes my dad again.

SATURDAY 6/1:
At this point in time, all I could think about is why exactly was I fired and how utterly distraught I was.  Was it because I was a terrible employee?  Was it because I wasn't smart or good enough at this job career?  Or was it because I rubbed my boss the wrong way?  These are thing that had me in a cold sweat as my dad showed up at 5 am to pick me up and drive me home that day, making him drive a grand total of 36 hours in the last three days.  Thanks game studio for sucking ass and not firing me on a Thursday.  Would've saved us a lot of stress and gas money.

I get home and spend time with my family at last.  Too bad as soon as I get home, the house basically collapses in on itself as I have to contend with other issues--Brother #1's girlfriend who is always getting in fights and stirring up trouble, Brother #2's loudmouth friends and irrational obsession with whoever uses his toothbrush, Brother #3 and his friend always playing video games and bothering me at every waking moment.  It's like not only did getting fired fuck up my life, it also fucked up my family's cause now I'm another obstacle that's trying to inhibit progress or some bullshit like that.

MONDAY 6/3:
After a weekend's worth of radio silence, I finally get in touch with one of my friends at the company.  He says that I was the only one fired and that there were meetings going on discussing why exactly I was fired.  In other words, every single person, including the engineers who called for my head, was discussing my termination with everyone else EXCEPT FOR THE PERSON WHO ACTUALLY GOT FIRED which is me.  There was nothing I could do but picture my sacrificial lamb corpse being flogged and molested some more as every single lie about me propagated through that building and all my credibility was shot to hell.

I immediately fell sick once again as my mother decided to take actions into her own hands and send a "to whom it may concern" email to the company in a last-ditch attempt to find out what was being said about me.  Was this a good idea?  I DON'T KNOW, I'm in panic mode as it is so it's not like things could get that much worse.  Who replied?  The head of the company, not one of the engineers, who rather than try to find out some legitimate information replied with a jerk-ass email about how he's sorry and how it's a big company and you suck so STFU and never bother us again.  My mother was aghast and so was I.

TUESDAY 6/4:
Another miserable day and, after rocking the boat for so long, I finally get some sort of e-mail response from an anonymous engineer (though I can tell who it is) with a list of wrongdoings and things I could do to improve myself.  The list was mostly bullshit--basically a couple of one-time errors that I had made in the last two weeks that I had since then apologized and corrected.  What's one for instance?  "Including vestigal code that could possibly break the game's logic or the build in the future."  It was one instance of me setting a UDK actor as the parent of another actor and that was over a month ago.  Boss man asked me what I had meant by that code and I walked in, succinctly explained what it had meant by these few lines of code from a long time ago, and they were removed and no harm was done.  But somehow, because of this one incident, I was essentially leaving landmines throughout the entire database.  Okay.

Another thing--"Doesn't know how to follow design documents or take instruction."  This one I love so much.  Basically, the last thing I was working on with the game was UDK vehicles--a tank and two 4-wheel-vehicles to be specific.  And after receiving a bunch of good feedback on how the vehicles have handled, I received an outdated design document for the vehicle as well as feedback from various designers, some of whom spent time in countless meanings or weren't at work at all.  So I was sorta left with a bunch of incomplete, conflicting design ideas for the vehicles, some of which I had to bang together and hand off to whomever was reviewing them at the moment.  I always carried and pen & paper with me to write down any suggested changes which I implemented one-by-one.  Yet somehow, it's all my fault for being a lousy employee.

Yet another thing--"Don't submit huge chunks of code at once and review over it 100 times."  Basically, just be all tippy-toed when editing code which IMO sorta conflicts with my programming methodology.  I just took very small steps trying to edit large systems of the game and whenever I'd try to hurry things up, I'd get a stern lecture.  It was really nonsensical and is another thing that just clashed with my boss.

And lastly, the most fun of all--"Repeatedly late" and "Always playing games in his spare time."  The time frame to arrive in the morning is from 8 to 10 am.  You must stay for 9 hours each day.  Me, I opted to arrive at 10 am and leave at 7.  It was a good deal and my bosses rarely spoke up against it.  But somehow, in that last week, wrecking my car and limping to work late didn't help my cause any.  It's like the flair from Office Space--you want me to show up at 9 am?  Then make it a rule to show up at 9 AM!!!  As for the games--we always have a one-hour lunch break to hang out and play games if we like.  I was playing games during that time but because of how low-pressure the time was that last week of employment, I would occasionally open up my iPhone to click on my Tiny Tower buildings.  Not like I replaced work with games...I just started running out of work that last week because everyone was either in a meeting or simply loafed around as well.

In short, my worst nightmares had come true--my boss only took the worst aspects of my tenure (from his point of view), blew them up really large, and used them to incriminate me as a terrible employee.  To make it worse, my boss had opted not to be transparent with my wrongdoing this whole entire time, essentially feigning friendship with me until the last moment when I was taken out via a firing squad he wasn't even present in.  I still have yet to reply to that e-mail.  Technically, they have my balls in a vice so I can't reply even with the slightest disagreement since they'll think I've learned nothing and won't give me a positive reference in my future employment.  Just the quality of everything has went to shit since I got fired.  Did I learn something from all this?  Sure!  Be more transparent with your boss.  Be more conscientious with your image.  Also try showing up to work a little earlier and put down the iPhone.  But there are ALWAYS things you can do better to improve your image so that's beside the point.

TLDR: The whole thing boils down to this--I had a picky boss whom had duped me into thinking I was doing a good job up until the very last moment when I was fired and accused of being a terrible employee.  He had taken forever to get back to me with a crummy email listing a bunch of wrongdoings I don't necessary agree with.  I am currently unemployed and living with my parents but I'll find another game programming job somewhere (I SURE HOPE SO) and hopefully rebound from this mess.  Thanks for reading.  I want to get back on-topic with some Sega stuff, some Indy 500 or NASCAR talk, it's just that I feel like I've been dunked repeated in a tub of dog piss over the last couple of days so it's gonna take some serious time to recover.  Thanks for your understanding.