Danica In The #7 Sonic Car Whole Race Recap

All times in Eastern Time Zone.
Anything I type in is subject to change cause I might misread something.
NOTE I AM ONLY LOOKING AT NATIONWIDE EVENTS.  SPRINT CUP DOES NOT COUNT (she is not driving the Sega car there).

NOTE: The race is over.  Hit the jump if you want to read the entire weekend as it unfolded.

Danica's Race Is Upon Us...Let's Go SEGA

Hello boys and girls, hope you had a fun Halloween with House of the Dead and lots of candy.  I hope and pray everyone is okay with Hurricane Sandy.

Anyway, check this out.  Today's GameFAQs poll: Which scheduled November release are you most looking forward to?

Halo 4 -- 23.36% 

Paper Mario: Sticker Star -- 12.58% 

Call of Duty: Black Ops II -- 12.17% 

Persona 4: Golden -- 11.52% 

Hitman: Absolution -- 10.71% 

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale -- 8.49% 

New Super Mario Bros. U -- 6.93% 

LEGO The Lord of the Rings -- 5.34% 

ZombiU -- 4.04%

Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two -- 1.98% 

PlanetSide 2 -- 1.83%

LittleBigPlanet Karting -- 1.04% 


For me, it's Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed.  But wait....it's not on there.  But LittleBigPlanet Karting is.  What gives?  Anyone here enthusiastically waiting for Little Big Planet Karting?  Really???

But this isn't to knock LittleBigPlanet since I don't have a bone to pick with that.  It's a racing game that's not Need for Speed/Burnout/wreck 'em clone so that's a huge plus.  But Sega All-Stars Racing's absence falls in line with this Sega anti-bias that I've mentioned before.  That any game Sega puts out is somehow a joke or not to be taken seriously.  Like this Sega All-Stars Racing game is "another terrible Sonic sellout game, just a Mario Kart clone, Danica Patrick sucks, herp derp, why bother listing it in the poll."  Okay, I am probably making much to do out of nothing (maybe the poll guy just "forgot" about Sega All-Stars Racing) but look--if you're going to stiff Sega in some way, I'm going to call you out on it.  Cause if I don't, who will????

And yeah, if Sega All-Stars Racing was in the poll, it would barely scratch 1-2%, I know.  But just having the game's name on the poll would make me happy enough.

While we're on GameFAQs polls, I went back one month and looked at the poll for October: Which scheduled October release are you most looking forward to?


Assassin's Creed III -- 27.89% 

Resident Evil 6 -- 21.32% 

Pokemon Black/White Version 2 -- 21.01% 

Dishonored -- 11.21% 

XCOM: Enemy Unknown -- 5.9% 

WWE '13 -- 2.97% 

Ragnarok Odyssey -- 2.8% 

Forza Horizon -- 1.71% 

007 Legends -- 1.59%

Fable: The Journey -- 1.56%

Medal of Honor: Warfighter -- 1.31%

Skylanders Giants -- 0.72% 


I notice there is an absence of Need for Speed: Most Wanted - A Criterion Game (no seriously, look at the GameFAQs page, Criterion changed the f***in title at the last minute).  Can't say I'm shed any tears over it but it makes Sega All-Stars Racing's absence from the November poll a little more tolerable.  Anytime someone "takes down" the competition, I am happy. :D

I see that Forza Horizon and Need for Speed: Most Wanted - A Criterion Game have the same Metacritic average--an 85 out of 100 which is great but not outstanding.  In the Fantasy Zone, Sega: All-Stars Racing: Transformed could possibly rank higher than these two ( >= 86 ) but do I think that'll happen?  No.  They'll probably dump all over the game for the reasons stated earlier.  And in theme with the upcoming elections, that is why we need to turn out MORE THAN EVER in defense of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed on November 20th.  It is THAT IMPORTANT.  I mean, I've denounced "professional" reviews many, many times before, but as long as these dolts continue to piss all over our games for reasons I disagree with, my knee-jerk reaction is to hit them for it.

Stolen from this epic bread

Which leads to Danica Patrick driving the Sega Sonic the Hedgehog car at Saturday's Nationwide Race at Texas at 7 pm ET.  She finished 10th at Saturday's Nationwide race at Kansas (and dropped 14 f-bombs on RaceBuddy) and got in a tiff with Landon Cassill and spun out on Sunday's race and looked like friggin idiot on TV.  Well I am SCARED now for Danica and Sega.  Because if Danica f***s this up, then it WILL NOT help our cause any.  I'll be tracking Danica this Friday & Saturday in anxious anticipation on how she treats the Sonic car.  I mean, I know Danica doesn't give two s***s about Sega, she's overrated, she's in lousy GoDaddy ads, and she had a bad temper, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DANICA, YOU HAVE TO WIN THIS FOR US!!!!  YOU ARE SEGA'S LAST HOPE!!!!

From a Something Awful post THAT I CAN'T READ

Seriously, if Danica somehow wins (or at least passes Joey Logano in the stupid ass Forza Horizon/Need for Speed: Most Wanted - A Criterion Game car) then I will flip my s***, throw a damn party, buy a copy of of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed for every platform as well as this $320 1/24 scale diecast car.  Though I am only buying the stuff if Danica actually wins, she's gotta be So Good It Takes AGES for me to actually spend money:

Danica...IT CAN BE DONE!!!

EDIT, check this out:

Here's another new trailer.  Also, I would like to say this.  For the last time, people, if I have to hear one more complaint about this game over Sonic the Hedgehog, I'm going to puke.  This isn't a Sonic game, this is a SEGA RACING GAME and that's why I'm 100% behind it.  So enough of this "sonic this, sonic that," play the game to GO RACING, BOOGITY BOOGITY BOOGITY!!!

Always Name Your Race Cars After Insects

I "watch" Speed Channel (as in leave it on in the background) and the show Hot Rod TV was on.  Hey, they are talking about old race cars.  This is the Marmon Wasp, the winner of the first ever Indianapolis 500 in 1911.

If it was the number 41 and had a red & blue paint job, I would've pinched myself.  Cause one of the most famous race cars in history is almost named after the same insect as the Hornet from Daytona USA.  Hornets are a subset of wasps so they're relatively the same.  Is that a coincidence or was Nagoshi-San onto something???

About the first Indianapolis 500, it is a funny story...  It was basically a soap box derby but more people got hurt.  Race cars back then drove an average of 75 mph (120 kph).  Bear in mind the race was always 500 miles so it took 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 8 seconds for Ray Harroun, driver of the #32 Marmon Wasp, to finish.  The track was laden with white sand to absorb the oil.  A car's tire came off.  One guy died and six others were injured.  There were pace cars, pit stops, and 80,000 fans in attendance so this was a "legit" event.

Nowadays, Indy Motor Speedway can seat 400,000 fans (largest sporting venue in the world) and the 500 is aired on ABC every year as everyone makes a big deal out of it despite the fact no one cares about Indy Car anymore, or something.  I care about Indy Car...if only someone on Speed Channel told me when the races come on cause they always happen when I'm NOT watching the TV...

Black & white footage doesn't help me see the sponsors...

What is that, Go Daddy and Red Bull sponsoring cars in 1911???  NOPE!!
Lovin' the shoutout to the "King of Speed" from Daytona...

And if this old timey news footage wasn't hectic enough, guess what--this is 1911 we're talking about. Do you think a bunch of judges could keep track of the positions of 40 cars over that time span? After 10 minutes, everyone lost track of the positions. Then about 200 miles in, a spin out near the judges' stand caused them to flee, throwing any record-keeping out the window.  So Ray Harroun "won" because he was such a swell guy who drove a car made in Indianapolis and was good friends with the president of the track. Hey, read this.

I like this picture from Ron Hoskins at Getty Images (from the previous link) cause we love cars and we need more old-school cars in our vidya games.  Oh wait...

We already do, thanks Amusement Vision, no thanks to you AM2!!!

EDIT: Oh yeah, you can't forget about the 1951 Hudson Hornet, made famous by Doc Hudson from the Cars movie.

Just so you know, Cars is THE BEST PIXAR MOVIE!  *readers rage*

Forza Horizon: YOLO!!!

Forza Horizon is out.  And as you'd expect, the gaming media has already proclaimed it the greatest racing game ever made.  Well, there's a few defectors who gave it less than the fabled 9/10, but a lot of people did including our beloved Giant Bomb.  Seriously, with this and the Lazily Named NFS: Most Wanted, that's it--we racing aficionados are set for life.  Sega might as well pack it in now cause they will never topple Forza Horizon and Need for Speed: Most Wanted.  Cause those are the greatest racing games ever made.  It's like the American Idol Effect...how Randy and the stupid judges always proclaim "yo dawg, you're the best singer we've ever had" to every singer and "talent-wise, this is the best season ever" every season despite the fact that ratings have been going down and the AI contestants have sold fewer albums each passing year.  That makes sense.

So what do I care what these people think.  When I think of gaming media, I think of honest intellectuals like Geoff Keighley who were not paid off or bribed in any way:

EDIT: Before I go on, check out my buddy RStyle's Forza Horizon demo opinions too.  They are much kinder than mine, lol.

So anyway, I downloaded the bigass 1.5 GB Forza Horizon demo. Let's give this a spin. After watching the wonderful cutscene full of women, energy drinks, and bad hiphop/dubstep, I enter the free-roam world of a faceless white guy driving a yellow Dodge Viper. Drive down the road to the first race and pick the Mitsubishi Lancer and go dirt racing. Wow, I've never played a racing game on dirt, groundbreaking stuff there, Forza. Then I came in first, won some credits, and drove the Viper in free-roam some more. Plowed into a PT Cruiser, both cars came to a dead stop, and eventually the Viper started nudging the PT Cruiser in reverse. It was then that I realized this game is a f***ing waste of my brain cells.

Ok, that was harsh, I admit, this is actually a good game that has some limited value.  But I'll be damned if this isn't another Need for Speed clone, minus the obligatory cop chases. You know the phrase "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, it must be a duck?" Well, this is a Need for Speed game for that same reason. The car handling is old-fashioned unresponsive NFS-style as my car sort of just "floats" forward as I try to follow that stupid green line. I don't care if this is "realistic" or not--it drives me nuts that this is how every mainstream racing game handles these days.

I need a citation for this, but I believe it was Shigeru Miyamoto who said about the original Super Mario Bros., "When you press A, we wanted Mario to jump. Not 'sort-of jump'. Not 'starting to jump'. But JUMP instantly." Which probably explains why SMB is lauded as revolutionizing the platform genre. And when I press left or right on the joystick, I want the car to turn left or right, not drift in that direction with the incentive of a Lazy College Senior.

I don't think this game has manual transmission either. Maybe if I sifted through the Dirt Showdown style menus with the stupid cyan-magenta-orange burnt-in hues, then maybe I can find it but I didn't have the incentive to look. Really, right after the demo, I fired up Forza 4 and I thought the handling was more responsive in F4 (with normal cars, not fancy R1 cars). Hey, at least Forza 4 runs at friggin 60 fps while Forza Horizon settled for 30.  Yes, I know Sega All-Stars Racing runs at 30 fps too--I dealt with that enough in the past.  So I just cannot call Forza Horizon a Forza game, I'm sorry (then again, I'm not really crying over one less Forza game either...don't we have enough racing "sims" as it is).

I was thinking about the game in a nutshell. Here you are, a bunch of underground free riders breaking all sorts of laws at some "speed festival" with fridge buzz over the radio as you go free-roaming through the forest/desert dodging traffic in the same typical lineup of sports cars doing drifts for "epic points."  Why there are no cops ANYWHERE in the vicinity is beyond me.  And then it hit me--this game is a fad.  Might as well market it in Hot Topic since that's all it is.  Today's "flavor" of racing game is the Need for Speed model with meaningless stunts and bad music.  The whole game is derivative.  Seriously, what does Forza Horizon do that is revolutionary?  You race at night?  Wow, brilliant, I've never played a night racing game before.  Oh, but you can also race against the plane!  Surprise, this is a driving game, I couldn't give a crap about the plane.  By the way, both those things you could do in OutRun 2, a game that came out eight years ago.

Look at it this way.  Take Daytona USA (again).  I assume most everyone reading this blog likes this game.  Well, take note of when it came out.  1994 ('93 if you want to get picky but that was a limited Japanese release).  Daytona USA is 18 years old and we are still talking about it.  We like the handling, the music, the multiplayer.  We clamored about it enough to get emulators and official ports of it many years later!  Same thing with Crazy Taxi, OutRun 2, Sega Rally, Scud Race, Daytona 2--ports are coming and more people are getting the chance to find out about these "gems" (DAE PLAY DIS GAEM???) and they like them.  And it was because the content of these games are original.  Sure, arcade racers with drift mechanics were popular in the 90's, but I can tell you when Nagoshi-San and the AM2 sat down at the roundtable to discuss Daytona USA and others, it's apparent their first thought was "let's make a good racing game" as opposed to "let's make a marketable racing game."

Now how about Forza Horizon.  This game was released in 2012.  Let's assume that society is still intact in 2030, 18 years from now.  Do you think we're gonna give a damn about Forza Horizon then?  Or will it be another one of those derivative racing games that we got hyped up about but stopped caring a year later?  I'm willing to bet the latter.  And the same thing will happen to Need for Speed: Most Wanted too.  Hence the term "YOLO!!!"  Cause you're dead in a few years, Forza & Need for Speed.

That's why I'm hoping and praying for Sonic & Sega All-Stars: Transformed.  Cause at least it's not a total clone of its main influence (Mario Kart).  And it's why I'm sick and tired of racing games these days.  I'm done.

You're...Fill In The Blank

Edited Once

Well I got some pretty lame news.  Remember the internship that I got three months ago?  Well today, I was politely informed that my brief tenure with the company has come to a sudden conclusion.  Basically it means I was fired.

FIRED!!!

Let me explain.  The exchange today went well.  I left on a good note.  But, from the questions I asked, it wasn't because I did a poor job or I was a slacker.  It was because they basically ran out of stuff for me to do.  At least I think so--if I sucked then I wouldn't know since they didn't tell me.  I don't think I said or did anything offensive as well (at least to my knowledge).  I'm awfully disappointed, yes, but I really can't hold it against those guys since they're struggling now.  At least I learned a lot of new things, like how to use a Mac computer.  Yes sir.  It was really a good experience.

About this place that I worked at.  Well, I kept my place of employment a secret at first.  I won't tell you them now but I'll go ahead and say that it had nothing to do with racing games.  It was a startup Facebook/IOS studio with a few EA veterans in it.  That's all I can say since I don't want to inadvertently slander these guys in any way.

This studio had one semi-popular Facebook game up for at least a year before I got there.  What game it is--I'm not telling.  As soon as I showed up, my main job was to bug fix the hell out of that thing.  This meant digging into an existing ActionScript and PHP code base.  That's not bad cause at least I'm working on games and it's still interesting to me (at first).  Me and one other senior guy worked on stuff--he was the pilot and I was the co-pilot.  We were doing lots of bug tracking and QA stuff.

Well, a month later, my "pilot" was fired for seemingly no reason.  That's great--my pilot goes AWOL and now I have to fly the plane on my own.  So I had to take initiative and find bugs on my own.  I was more proficient at the Mac Terminal, Source Tree, Flash Builder (yes, we used Macs, deal with it), then it became readily apparent that the company wanted to "sunset" this game (a fancy term which means disconnect the game in 3-12 months) because the game wasn't making any more money.  Basically Zynga would stop advertising the game and hope that any existing players would lose interest so when the servers are shut down, no one would care.  And I got distraught because this game was my "baby" and I spent so much time fixing it up and now all is for naught.  I actually sort of "liked" the game too--it wasn't something I detest like Farmville, World of Warcraft, or Burnout.

Eventually for the last three weeks, I was absorbed into the "analytics" team which is basically 5-6 guys working on business software.  They took me aside and say "hey, you're a smart kid, sit in our long-ass meetings and help us out."  This included lots of PHP and Objective-C.  I didn't really have much choice since it was the only place a programmer like me could find something to do.  Eventually my task was to be a pioneer and make some unit tests or port Actionscript code to Objective-C and I basically did that...right up until now when I was fired.

Also on that same day, and apparently I must've missed the memo, one of the analytics team guys quit as well so the company was kind of f***ed at that moment.  But really, up until that moment, the whole thing was a drag on myself and the company.  I wasn't making games.  I didn't have a whole lot to do.  30 hours a week was a stretch for me and I didn't want to hang out in the office playing Facebook games as a lame excuse to say "look at these hours, I worked so hard."  And even I thought my hourly wage wasn't worth the work I was doing so whatever...away I went.

I felt so bad over the last two or three weeks.  Like my morale threw out the window.  My dream is to make racing games.  And I'm just sitting here making business software.  As for the other guys in the company, they're prototyping board games, hoping to get that blockbuster hit like Words with Friends.  I can't blame 'em but that wasn't for me and I'm sort of glad I was laid off.  Just really sucked since I was friends with a few people from my school from previous cohorts (they went there a year before me) and today, we walked downtown to Five Guys.  Ate a burger.  Talked about Reddit.  I didn't expect to be fired that day but whatever.  Bad things just happen.  Watch the news.  Enjoy every moment of every opportunity you have.

Money-wise I am fine so don't worry about it.  I'll return back to gaming school, look for more opportunities, and so forth.  Instructors there are very helpful and will do anything to help with the job search.  Right now, my main goal is Sumo Digital in the UK (of course).  Second would be Firebrand Games in Florida (no brainer).  After that, I really don't know where I want to go.  I could've stayed there in 2013 if I had nowhere else to go but I think leaving was inevitable.  Just really sucks cause some people right out of game school went straight to "great" studios like Bungie and DICE and where am I?  Back to working on Super Sprint and updating my resume...

I think I got lucky I got the job there.  After reading 30+ resumes and interviewing 10+ people, I was the only one hired and that was about a month after my interview.  I think they were reluctant to hire anybody so they just got one person--me.  And since I was on borrowed time from the get-go, I'm not surprised about what went down today.

Hey, there's one good thing about being fired like that.  As long as I didn't "suck," it's a good alibi on my resume.  Employers tend to frown on short jobs (6 months or less) because you aren't "loyal" to the company but at least I can say "I worked hard but they were downsizing and it was inevitable so you can't hold my loyalty into question."  A win for our side!

Now to eat an entire gallon of Blue Bell Cookies and Ice Cream, play Civ 5 for 12 hours, and cry myself to sleep!

Okay, a day later and I still cannot get over being fired.  Like Ricky Bobby, I saw the fear...I know I can get s***canned from my job at any moment.  Yet I can't stop joking about it.  It's like getting hit by a car--it sucks but everyone thinks you're a total BA cause you survived.  Or something...

MACFRY!!!  I WAS JUST READING THAT BLOG POST YOU MADE.  YOU ARE TERMINATED!!!

I don't even really work here (I'm an intern being payed close to minimum wage).  That's what makes this so difficult.

I like Valve, I can work for Valve.  I can make Half-Life 3.  GABEN GABEN GABEN, APERTURE SCIENCE, WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS MAKE LIFE TAKE THE LEMONS BACK, HAY GAIS DAE REMEMBER DIS GEM???  Also ponies, Rainbow Dash is my favorite.  Well that's really not fair.