Danica's New Wheels (GODADDY, GO GO GO GO)

Ooooooo, now we know what Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed spokeswoman Danica Patrick's in-game car looks like in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed and it is this:

To be honest, I think she looks fine.  They even got her breast size right!  Ok, I don't want to sound like a creep here.  But really, I think the realistic style is best and that's how I thought she would be.  Cartoony would've sucked.  Again, her appearance reminds me of Brooke Burke from Pocketbike Racer but so what...this is DANICA we're talking about here.  Danica doing Nationwide commercials with Junior...I mean, two of my MOST FAVORITE DRIVERS of all time in one commercial, doesn't get any better than that.

Now for the car.  Well, for some dumb reason, I thought she would be driving the blue Sonic All-Stars Racing car from the E3 presentation which ruined my life.  I didn't think she would be driving the Hornet either--I mean, it wouldn't logically make sense, like if Danica, Jacky Bryant, or Segata Sanshiro were driving the car, it would merge two characters in one.  Yes, I consider the Hornet to be its own standalone character so it doesn't need a special driver.  Remember Fighters Megamix?  Leave the Hornet on its own.

But we have an Indy Car here.  With SIX WHEELS.  And I think it looks cool even if the Go Daddy and Hot Wheels ads are just there for some goofy ass reason but so what cause I like Hot Wheels and Go Daddy commercials make me laugh (shame on me).  But it's strange because Danica basically quit Indy Car to drive full-time in NASCAR.  So why would Danica reassociate herself with Indy Car?

EDIT: It just dawned on me--there were five Sega Hot Wheels a while back (2003)--regular cars with paint jobs from Jet Set Radio, Space Channel 5, Super Monkey Ball, House of the Dead, and Shinobi.  No Hornet unfortunately, WHAT A DISGRACEFUL MOVE BY HOT WHEELS.  MICRO MACHINES WERE BETTER ANYWAY.  See them here.

I just thought of a conspiracy.  Danica isn't driving a stock car because there's already one in the game...HORNET CONFIRMED FOR SEGA ALL-STARS RACING 2.  Or it could be because Indy Cars are more appealing to the general worldwide audience.  EDIT: I guess this also deconfirms the Virtua Racing car, but that was a long shot anyway.  Danica is gonna be one of my go-to characters (assuming the Hornet is not in cause I would pick it 100% of the time).  Show those pathetic Sega message boarders who piss and moan about Danica who's boss (DEBRIS ON THE TRACK!!!).  I guarantee that even though Danica can't win in real life, she'll win in the game!!!

Anyway, just some fun news for you about Go Daddy.  About a month ago, millions of GoDaddy websites and domains went down.  A hacker from Anonymous took claim for it.  Basically, some man-child in his mother's basement took down a good chunk of the Internet.  I should know because my game studio's website was down for a moment.

Spoiler alert--I registered the domain "phantomfullforce.com" a few months ago.  And now you know about this startling revelation even though it's been right up there in your URL bar for months.  Just $10 bucks a year.  What good it does for me, I don't know, I just don't like the "blogspot" part of the domain I suppose.  But what it has to do with Go Daddy?  When I clicked to register the domain, it said "You'll register this domain with Go Daddy.  Is this okay?"  And I chickened out at the last minute since I'm not 100% on board with Go Daddy (the whole SOPA debacle didn't help their cause any).  Pressed cancel, clicked again, it offered me some other host and there I go.  Turns out had I stuck with Go Daddy, my site would've been down.  And that would've been a horrible day in all of our lives.

But in a twist, GoDaddy said it wasn't hacked and that it had experienced internal network issues instead (the Anonymous guy lied).  We don't know if Go Daddy is BSing us, but if they were, we know the reason why the servers went down.  Clearly when Danica posted her new spread, the massive amount of traffic that ensued caused the servers to implode.  Yes, that's most certainly what happened.

Every time we talk about Danica, we need at least one Go Daddy commercial so here goes:

Danica's pet beaver.

Anyway, one more joke for the road.  Also a month ago at the Atlanta Nationwide race, there was controversy as Brad Keslowski threw a plastic water bottle out the window of his car which presumably led to a yellow flag due to "debris."  It's debatable that Brad threw the bottle after the yellow flag was out and his littering was irrelevant.  Kevin Harvick got mad at Brad because the yellow flag cost both of them the race (Kevin had a big lead but the caution forced Kevin to pit for gas or something and gave Ricky Stenhouse Jr. the win).  And I'm on RaceBuddy, NASCAR.com's free service that allows you to preview a couple of live car cams as the race happens, and people will post SFW things that are still idiotic "GO 88888888888888" OR "DENNY BLOW UP ALREADY."  Everyone still gives Danica a hard time and someone blurts out something along the lines of, "Danica should throw her bra out on the track."  I lost it then.  A juvenile story but I had to pad the length of this post with SOMETHING so there you go.  Adios.

EDIT: Just ordered Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing: Transformed BONUS EDITION off Amazon today.  $40 for just the game plus shipping (Amazon has free 5-10 day shipping if you like), it costs the same as the regular SaSASR:T version but with Metal Sonic and the OutRun course so buy the bonus version NOW or else.  I even went the distance and paid an extra $10 for one-day shipping so I can play it by Nov. 21.  Pshyeah, I'm a hardcore gamer.  *wegotabadass.jpg*

Burnout 2, WTF Man...

As I said earlier, I'm working on this massive racing game timeline and that means looking up tons of pictures on racing games I seldom remember.  Like Burnout 2.  Oh hey, that was Burnout before the series sucked ass and...wait, what's that I see--

OMFG THE NUMBER 2

PANIC AND ZOOM IN BOTH NUMBERS NEXT TO EACH OTHER

We should consider ourselves fortunate they are NOT exactly the same but for a good minute or so, I thought they were.  Clearly Criterion stole the scratchy number 2 idea from Sega seeing as Daytona 2 preceded Burnout 2 by a few years.  JERKFACES.

Oh, and another funtastic thing I found...who died and made Raw Thrills the "#1 Game Studio"?

SNK Made Racing Games Too

As you know, I'm working on this stupid "Racing Game Timeline" thing which means I have to dig up images and release dates of a hundred different racing games.  Doesn't sound too bad except because of my obsession with details, a hundred games quickly became a thousand.  In other words, I have to look up 1000 racing games, get a title/box art icon of each, and put them into a chart according to their year of release using Photoshop.  Sounds like fun!

Burning through the racing games, it's not bad at first.  Just hit the big names first.  We know about all the Sega racers like Daytona and OutRun.  Then there's Need for Speed, Gran Turismo, Forza, Burnout, Mario Kart, DiRT, etc.  Then it gets really tedious as hell as you're listing every Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune and Ridge Racer iteration (damn you Namco) as you're also digging through the back of your mind thinking of semi-relevant racing games Midtown Madness and Screamer.  Then you go to websites besides GameFAQs or Wikipedia for help, like The System 16 Arcade Museum.  Damn, all these Alpine Skiers and miscellaneous Sega clones from Namco, yeah I hate you too.  But I'm learning new things about the racing genre!  If you can believe it.  How about this:

I get to SNK arcade section of System 16 and the last thing I expected was to find a racing game.  When I think of SNK, I think Metal Slug, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, basically weird arcade games that don't even fit the norm of more mainstream devs like Sega, Namco, or Capcom.  But RACING GAMES???  No...there is one (technically two but they're so similar) and here it is:

It's Road's Edge (or Round Trip RV), a 1997 SNK arcade racer.  Pick one of several trucks and go rally racing on dirt and pavement.  Like Sega Rally, Road's Edge will move you to the next track after you've completed one lap.  The goal is to complete three tracks within the time limit and come in first.  Nothing spectacular.

The most interesting aspect of the game is the track design.  Rather than create one-way traditional race circuits (various shaped ovals and stuff), most of the track funnels drivers down the same road going both ways.  It's a sprint from point A to B and back to A and there's trucks racing in the opposite direction of where you're going and head-on collisions are possible.  No barriers or anything going down the road to keep drivers from colliding.  They don't happen as often as it seems but it's a unique twist I don't think I've seen in racing games until now.

EDIT: When you catch air, your guy says "Yahoo" and for some reason, it reminds me of Banjo-Kazooie.  Rofl.

I mentioned two games which both follow this same formula. The second is Xtreme Rally (or Off Beat Racer) released in 1998. It has different cars, tracks and HUD elements but other than that, there's not much of a difference.

It's obvious that back in the arcade heyday when racing games were actually SUCCESSFUL that a lot of these arcade distributors like Sega, Namco, Capcom, Atari, Midway, Taito just went to town making as many racing games as they could with the arcade hardware they designed.  Pick from a handful of cars, three or four tracks, automatic or 4-gear manual, and go race.  See Virtua Racing, Daytona 1 & 2, Indy 500, and Scud Race.  I wouldn't say Road's Edge/Xtreme Rally is perfect--the graphics are underwhelming for a 97'/'98 game and the sound & music could be improved.  Daytona USA, Scud Race, and Daytona USA 2 set the benchmark in terms of arcade graphics and sound in '94, '96', and '98 respectively.  With a great soundtrack too.  Props to AM2; that's why Sega racers frequently come up in arcade conversations and why I named this site "Sega Racing Fan" instead of "SNK Racing Fan."  Ha ha ha, the more you know.

Someone Stole My Blog Posts

I was doing a Google Image Search for Sega Race TV.  What I ended up finding was a website that copied my Sega Race TV review post for verbatim:

My Original Sega Race TV Post

Other Guy's Sega Race TV Post

It's another Blogspot called "daytona 500 news."  Now he's actually copied a bunch of posts from my blog and presumably from others (up until Feb. 2012 which was the last post).  A lot of the posts there have to do with NASCAR (understandably so) with mine about video games sprinkled into the mix.

In case the page/blog is removed, here's a comparison:

YO DAWG, we herd you like blog posts...

^ The black boxes are other posts that I have made.  Like Forza, Hurricane Katrina, California Speed, Gabe Newell memes, game design school, things that have nothing to do with NASCAR.

I'm not entirely sure if this is an actual physical human being copying my posts or if it's some robot, I don't know.  If bots are able to copy blog posts now then that sucks.  HA, imagine if some stupid bot copied this post, I dare him...

It's not that I'm mad about this--I consider it flattering that others would use my blog posts for something but at least give me credit here.  If you're going to aggregate all this material you like, at least give me a sign first like "check this Eric guy out, he's pretty cool."  I mean you can talk about how it's "wrong" to use images from other people (when I do, I try to give credit where I can) but copying everything like that is stupid.  Although I doubt a plain white blog with no comments is going to be a threat to me, anyway.

Sega Racers Timeline (COMING SOON)

To commemorate the first ever "Talk About Sega Racers Day" (Sept 29th), I WAS going to do a timeline graph covering the history of Sega Racers and compare 'em with other racing games.  Just some informative stuff.  Too bad Saturdays are incredibly lazy for me (I oversleep to counteract the lack of sleep I get during the week) so I'm behind the curve.

Nevertheless, I declare that this holiday is not just a day but a week.  "Talk About Sega Racers Weekend" goes into Sunday, September 30th.  Or if I need too, I'll make a "Talk About Sega Racers Week" or "Sega Racing Month."  Black history, breast cancer awareness, now Sega racers.  I'm reaching for straws.  But keep talkin about Sega racers.

Until then, there have been reports that the Wii U port of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed is a laggy, rushed port.  And for the love of God people, just believe Steve AKA DarthS0L since the man has been running around to every Internet forum (next stop: NeoGAF) trying to save face and shut us fans up.  As a game designer too, it's understandable that some builds of the game are laggy as s***.  I'm still a tad bit worried that visuals may have eclipsed game performance but this is Sumo we're talking about--not some mercenary studio no one's heard of.  So Steve & Sumo Digital will live up to their reputation.  Until then, Sega fans:

In the meantime, watch this:

Also, the PC version is the only one able to run at 60 FPS.  So if you're so concerned about FPS, buy the PC Master Race version.  I will probably buy Xbox 360 and PC versions and let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed spokeswoman Danica Patrick finished 16th in today's Nationwide race at Dover.  Which means at this rate, she'll win in the Sega All-Stars: Transformed car at the Nov. 3 race at Texas.  And from what I heard, she didn't run over anything during the race so that's good progress.

MORE SEGA RACING CONTENT SOON - EDIT: Worked quite a few hours on it, not done yet, hopefully will be done tomorrow.