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One of the first games I played after getting my Dreamcast back in the day, I seem to recall--but my old notes say I never owned it, so...maybe it was on a demo disc or something? Anyway this is where I learned that a game saying "Powered by Microsoft Windows CE" on it was NOT a good thing: it ran REALLY sluggishly.
Running it now in Flycast, it feels more responsive than my extremely vague memory recalls; Flycast DOES run with measurably less input delay than the actual DC, but the difference seems bigger than that--but that could be my memory playing tricks. Anyway, there are definitely points of slowdown, particularly on certain tracks such as Riviera.
But...it almost didn't matter to me here as the handling--gas, brake, handbrake, and gas doesn't interfere with the braking, so it works well when gas is held down for me by JoyToKey ^_ ^--is just deliciously smooth; not sharp, perhaps, like the arcade port of the first game on PS2, but NICE. Eventually figured out I did better when I didn't try using handbrake like ALL the time. ; )
And the music is way too good.
I pretty much never touch the volume balance on a game because I want to experience it as it was designed to be heard, but I HAD to lower the FX and voices & crank deez traXX. Like, just blissing out to this kind of pumping music while going around and around in Time Attack is a whole reason to HAVE Time Attack in the first place.
Each of the six tracks has three route variations so you've kind of got 18 tracks; the route variations don't seem to show up in Arcade mode so hopefully they'll come along in the later "years" in the "10Year Championship" campaign mode--basically ten varying Arcade modes strung together, I think? Although I did see the one Riviera route I got, I think, in at least two weather conditions--clear night, and rainy afternoon (the onlooker sprites put on raincoats!)--so that was neat. The tracks are nice; seeing the wide desert sections of one of the route variants of the desert stage was kind of mind-blowing.
It's even got unlockable cars! Well, at least one, 'cause I unlocked it when I beat Arcade on Easy. (Careful though: no autosave!) The car variation is fun, with some distinctive looks and different handling. Both times I beat EASY was with lighter cars, hm.
So yeah, it doesn't run great. But dang.
Oh oh and the posh car announcer voiceover giving you the selling points of each car as they pose car-illy in the "CAR PROFILES" mode is something to hear. ^ D^ You just gotta hear how he says "Peugeot."
GAME OVER YEAhhhhhh |
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