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"Hydro Thunder's foreground water flicker, and low contrast, zapped my eyeballs 8 o"
Driving games. Hydro Thunder's low contrast / flicker ended up zapping my eyeballs. : P |
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Super Off Road Track Pa, trailer for the Ed, Edd n Eddy PS2 game. : P
Super Off Road is in both this collection and the PS3 collection, but the Track Pack version is only here, so I gave that a shot. Seems to replace all the stages, and the new stages are actually pretty neat, if maybe a bit bumpier than the regular ones. I still run into the problem though where the AI cars just seem plain faster than my car. Oh and I was racing the new Dune Buggy, I dunno if it actually handles any different than the regular truck though.
Works fine with my silly gas-trigger toggle set-up run as a non-Steam game through Steam Input so I don't have to keep the (non-remappable ; P) gas button held down. ^ _^
I had recorded some Hydro Thunder but I ended up cutting it out--the flickering of the water in the foreground and the low contrast, particularly in Medium stages, ended up zapping my eyeballs and giving me a headache. : P
(Also, before my eyes got zapped I found that once I reached the Medium tracks and boats in Hydro Thunder, to get 2nd place in all 3--which you'd need to unlock the Hard tracks/boats--you have to find the hidden shortcut paths, which is where the big 9 second boost powerups are, and that seems kind of silly.)
I'd never watched or played Ed, Edd n Eddy, except for the trailer here!
I think maybe some of the 3D games didn't need it--Hydro Thunder did slightly--but I've now gone through the games in the collection and set them all to full screen height. You still have to do that even in the PS3 collection! |
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Through Steam Input so I can just hit the Gas button once as a toggle, instead of having to hold it down, I try Rush 2049, which doesn't work well that way, and quickly move on to Offroad Thunder!
Offroad Thunder is in the "Thunder" series that included Hydro Thunder; HT came out in Feb '99, and OT was in Sep '99, and does feel like it's getting a better handle on things: the driving feels more responsive--although maybe part of that is being on road rather than in water--and the colors probably aren't quite as sometimes dark and kinda hard on my dumb eyeballs, at least so far. ; D
The driving is loosey and goosey but uh well it feels kinda fun and sloshy in letting you like drive way up steep walls and skid around corners and stuff. Most courses give you lots and lots of nitro boosts to keep yourself cannoning along, which is fun of course. Unlike in HT, you don't have to clear the lower difficulty tracks to try the harder ones, you can just race on whichever track you want--except for the very last one, dunno yet how that unlocks. I've mostly just stuck to the Easy tracks so far and I still haven't quite achieved a first-place finish on one! So it's open ended but there's still you know the matter of beating the tracks by way of challenging yourself at least.
Gonna give Rush 2049 a try without the gas peddle toggle thing next time, I think, even though I don't want to play that way long term 'cause my joints'll get grouchy. : P |
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(San Francisco) Rush 2049 w/o Steam Input
Jeepers, I can't hardly steer in this thing, and the CPU cars each travel at a more or less fixed slightly different speed, so they immediately fan out in line along the track and lose sight of each other and the front several are just kinda faster than me especially if I have to steer and it's really boring.
Oh heck I did own the DC version back in the day. This is supposedly based on that, rather than on the arcade version, which definitely has an alternate look about it. I don't remember much of the DC version; I think I played it a bit once and it seemed all-right-ish? But that was decades ago. Probably also played the arcade version in an arcade cab at some point; well, I know I saw it around, anyway.
Oh I got it confused with this--next isn't Stun Runner, it's Rush the Rock. Not to be confused with San Francisco Rush 2049? RtR arcade was 1997; SFR49 (Dreamcast, which is what this PS2 version is based on, apparently--and definitely looks way more like it than like the arcade version) was 2000. |
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San Francisco Rush the Rock: Alcatraz Edition, S.T.U.N. Runner, Badlands, and Race Drivin'...and I didn't much like any of 'em so I just went back and played some more Offroad Thunder--and got the locked final stage unlocked and raced on that one! And got a first place on one of the other hard stages! = o
To unlock the one locked track in Offroad Thunder, Cliffhanger, at the track selection screen, press Right on the d-pad, then Right, Up, Left (thank GameFAQs ^ _^). You can unlock some cars too, that replace the default cars...but I dunno if they drive any different so I'm not sure if there's any point to that really.
This RtR is probably as bad as Rush 2049 in its own ways. : P
I played S.T.U.N. Runner now and then in the arcade back in the day, it was pretty fun. This port is TERRIBLE. The framerate and control is just pots.
Badlands isn't nearly as fun as the other tiny overhead racer in this collection, Super Offroad. Some of the Mad Max-style pixel art is pretty neat.
Race Drivin' is about as rough as Hard Drivin'. Did Hard have cows? This has cows.
According to MobyGames, the "Game Star" in the logos at Treasures 3's boot up is Gamestar (China) Ltd, a Shanghai and Wuhan-based developer who started in 2002. After working with Digital Eclipse on SOME aspect of this game, in 2008 they were bought by Disney, and worked on Disney stuff until their last credited game in 2014, Disney Fairies: Tinker Bell's Adventure (Windows). This third outing of the Arcade Treasures series seems quite a bit messier than the previous two; Digital Eclipse usually did solid work, and didn't usually split development duties in collections, I don't think, so I wonder why that happened here?
OH well maybe Midway Games just took the work Digital Eclipse had done for Super Offroad, which was also in Treasures 2, and then took that and the other games to Gamestar and said hey make us a racing collection, you can use this for a starter.
Hm although really it's just S.T.U.N. Runner, Rush the Rock, and Rush 2049 that feel really bad, I suppose. Although I kinda felt like Race Drivin' felt worse here than Hard Drivin' in 2 felt--but maybe my patience had just run out by then.
Anyway, thank goodness for Offroad Thunder! ^ _^ |
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