I've officially changed my mind entirely about Link's appearance in Wind Waker. I originally thought his short stubby legs on that long body looked really odd, but not only has the look grown on me over the years, I've had the opportunity to see alternate Link designs in the Hyrule Historia (intended more as a collection of artwork than anything else). Frankly, having seen what long legged toon Link looks like, I can totally understand why they opted for the short legs. Toon Link with long legs looks like an awkward lanky teenager, rather than the child they were going for. The body being as long as it is was the only way to make up for it without making Link look like Stewie Griffin from Family Guy.
Good game, great storytelling by way of gathering insight from the clues around you. One of the very few games to truly "get" Lovecraft and not just sorta kinda reference it without actually understanding the "meat" of the stories. They need more eyes. Eyes on the inside. Whatever happens, you may think it all a bad dream.
Here's a place we can admit we don't know something everyone else seems to have mastered as kids.
...
Every time I have the need to know where a letter falls alphabetically, I need to mentally run through the alphabet in my head (in song form) to remember it. Except for obvious ones, like "A" or "Z".
So, because it was the Olympics, I was watching that a lot... on my HDTV, at least. Often at the same time, I was also playing a lot of this game again for the first time in a while on my CRT. I have considered writing a review of Rush 2049 for a long time, but I've finally done it! This review took a while to finish, and with how long it is, it's easy to see why. Yes, this is the longest review of a single game I have ever written. This is an over 80KB text file! I'm sure there are things that could be cut, but whenever I got back I just end up adding more, so I should stop now and just post it... :p
Also, sorry for all the bad screenshots. Unfortunately I don't have a way to capture them from real hardware myself.
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This is the only screenshot almost certainly from an emulator that you will see here, which means the rest will look awful, but at least are real hardware. Check the video links out to get a better sense of the game!
Table of Contents
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Introduction
The Controls and Handling
Arcade San Francisco Rush 2049: Drive the Future!
Home Console Rush 2049 - Rush 2049 for the N64 and Dreamcast
Modes and Options
Car Customization
Cheats
Graphics and Sound
The Modes: Race Mode
The Race Tracks In Detail
Race Track 1 / Marina
Race Track 2 / Haight
Race Track 3 / Civic
Race Track 4 / Metro
Race Track 5 / Mission
Race Track 6 / Presidio
The Modes: Stunt Mode
The Stunt Arenas In Detail
Stunt 1 / The Rim
Stunt 2 / Disco
Stunt 3 / Oasis
Stunt 4 / Warehouse
The Modes: Battle Mode
The Battle Arenas
Battle 1 / Stadium
Battle 2 / Melee
Battle 3 / Tundra
Battle 4 / Atomic
Battle 5 / Downtown
Battle 6 / Plaza
Battle 7 / Roadkill
Battle 8 / Factory
The Modes: Obstacle Course and the Obstacle Course Track
Conclusion
Title: San Francisco Rush 2049
Developer: Atari Games, aka Midway Games West (for the Arcade, N64, and Dreamcast versions)
Arcade Version Release: October 1999
Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast Versions Release: September 2000
Midway Arcade Treasures 3 [Dreamcast port] Version Release for Gamecube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2: September 2005; Port Developed by Digital Eclipse.
San Francisco Rush 2049 is a futuristic racing game, and the second, third, or fourth game in its series, depending on how you count. It is the second full arcade game, third arcade release, and third console release, so I usually consider it to be the third game. This fast-paced and high-flying arcade racing game is a classic '90s arcade racer in its final form, with some of the best gameplay, graphics, and design ever seen in the field. Rush game tracks are intricate and full of alternate routes and shortcuts, and this game has more and better on both of those fronts than any Rush game before. In addition to exceptional level designs, the game also perfects the series' controls, and has one of the all-time great videogame soundtracks as well.
I have written about S.F. Rush 2049 several times before, including a Game Opinion Summary of the game from some years ago, and an article about the version differences between the Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast versions of the game. I have not, however, written a full review. I have usually avoided writing reviews of my favorite games, because praise is really hard to do well! Critisim is, sadly, easier, though the two are at least equally important, and praise may be more important. And I want to cover three different versions of the game all at once, so it's a complex review to put together. I tried to organize it reasonably, but I don't know if there is an ideal way to review this with so much to cover. But when you really, REALLY love a game, how do you write about it well? And that is the problem I have here; I don't just like this game, I adore it. Rush 2049 is one of the true greats, a game which has a permanent place near the top of my list of the best games ever made and, as I have said before, "the greatest game ever made in which you drive a vehicle". It is that good. This is the game I have owned the longest that I am absolutely certain I have played every single year since I bought it in early 2001, and playing it again now the game is still unmatched. This game is quite likely my most-played console game of all time. It surely does not come close to the amount of time I've put into my most-played PC games, most notably Starcraft (1), Warcraft III, and Guild Wars (1), but for console games it is on top of the list.
Indeed, not only does the game still hold up near-impeccably, it really does not have any competition; the more time passes, the greater Rush 2049 appears in hindsight. Nobody makes games like this anymore, and indeed they haven't since around the time of its release. Rush 2049 is a near-perfect masterpiece, the combination of a base of work from one of the best arcade developers ever, Atari Games, by that point also known as Midway Games West. The studio had been bought by Midway in 1996, and after a few years Midway renamed them, though the Atari Games name appears on the arcade machine. The arcade version of Rush 2049 ended up being Atari Games' final arcade game release, as Midway gave up on the dying arcade industry in 2001. Midway Games West would be shut down in 2003 after making their last game, the 3d platformer Dr. Muto. As for Rush 2049, the arcade game, it's fantastic! The game builds on my favorite arcade game ever, San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing, in some great ways. Midway Games West's console team made the home versions of Rush 2049 for the Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast, and both released in fall 2000. They make significant improvements across the board over the arcade original, and this is the version I love the most. This kind of game, with arcade sensibilities but the full feature set of a home console game, is something you got sometimes back in the '90s to early '00s, but you do not see anymore. That is really sad, because that combination resulted in some of the most fun racing games ever, with this one at the top of that list. Racing games of the past decade-plus do not even try to compete with this game, to their detriment.
But that's enough background, on to the review. This will be long. I will start by discussing how the game plays. After that I will cover the original arcade game a bit, before moving on to the home versions, including their systems, modes, graphics, music, and general gameplay. Rush 2049 is a futuristic racing game set in the year, well, 2049. The fairly silly backstory, which is only mentioned in the manual and never in the game itself as there is no in-game story, is that there has been a second gold rush, 200 years after the first one, and so San Francisco is a boom town yet again. Sure, that works. No story is needed in a game like this, but why not write something amusing for the manual? So, the game is set in a familiar and yet futuristic city, with the major landmarks present but also futuristic elements as well. It's a fantastic mix which works great, and the choice to return to San Francisco, after Rush 2 was set across the USA, is brilliant; the city is just plain more fun to drive in in videogames than any other I have seen due to all its layout and hills.
As an aside, there is also a Game Boy Color version of Rush 2049. It is an entirely different game, as you would expect, and plays in isometric 2d. Unfortunately, it is very average. If I review it, it will be covered separately; this is about the arcade and TV console game.
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Track 4/Metro, as you head up a hill.
The Controls and Handling
I decided to cover this first because the controls and engine are the core of every game, and Rush 2049's engine and San Francisco Rush 2049's controls are great and engine just as good. Rush games have a unique handling system which is divisive, but I love it. The game is based around a physics engine, and it sticks to the physics. This engine has its quirks, but the game won't actually cheat you, it follows its physics model. Indeed, Rush 2049 does not get the credit it deserves for its good car modeling; it's not realistic, but it's not supposed to be! What it is is well-modeled, consistent, and challenging. Cars in Rush games turn slowly and in predictable ways, and leave the air the moment they hit even the tiniest bump in the road. All vehicles in this game have several stats which rate their capabilities, including speed, acceleration, and weight. Each of the 13 starting and 6 unlockable vehicles has different starting stats, and they change on top of that depending on which parts you equip. This is no sim or tuner game with a huge garage of options available, but on consoles you do have some car parts to choose from for your frame, transmission, engine, and tire type. There are also visual customization options as well for your car colors and wheel rims. In the arcade version you have fewer choices as you would expect, but there are still some.
Before I continue though, while the Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast or Arcade versions of the game mostly handle identically, there is one difference between them, to the Dreamcast's advantage: on the DC the game has analog acceleration and braking on the DC controller's analog triggers, while on N64 you have only digital on-or-off acceleration and braking since N64 controllers only have an analog stick, not buttons or triggers. While you can play the game just fine by feathering the accelerator to replicate the same result as pushing that DC trigger down halfway, driving at less than full speed is easier to do on the DC, and this is to your advantage at times so the DC as a result does have slightly better control. Otherwise they really are the same, though, and I do like the feel of the N64 analog stick a bit more than the Dreamcast one.
There are also three handling options to choose from, Beginner, Normal, and Extreme. On consoles you can change this as a setting, while in arcades specific cars are tied to each type. I always play at the maximum Extreme handling setting, because it just isn't Rush with anything less than the most challenging handling! I, at least, like that the car fights you as you turn, as it tries to go straight most of the time. This is not a drift game at all, it's more traditional, series quirks aside. As you turn you skid a bit, but there are no massive powerslides here, and there is no drifting beyond the bit of tire-squealing skidding you do during longer turns. I love this, and once you learn the controls, you have good control over your car here. With practice you will know when when you can stay at full speed all the time, when you need to let go of the accelerator to make a turn, and when you need to brake or handbrake to not go off the road. If you don't get your speed right or turn too early or too late it is very easy to go off the road on these complex courses, so there is a high learning curve here. There are also several terrain types which you move over at different speeds, including pavement, dirt roads, and grass or dirt-covered off-road areas. You want to stay off of that last type when you can, but sometimes you can successfully make a shortcut over some grassy areas. Collisions are also done very well. Cars bump into eachother fairly realistically, far better than many games of the time, and whether you crash or not depends on how fast you were going and at what angle your car was at when you hit something. Brush against a wall and sparks will fly, or hit someone also moving and you will grind against their car. It's well done. The game also makes great use of rumble, and a rumble pak or such is highly recommended for any console version of the game! Most of the rumble elements are the usual, such as when you hit things, but the subtle rumble that starts when you begin a skid is useful during gameplay, it makes it easy to tell when you are fully in control and when you have started to lose it.
Aerial maneuvers also are fully controlled by the physics model. The low gravity, and resulting constant high-flying jumps whenever you hit any kind of bump, is perhaps the Rush series' hallmark feature and I love it. However, being in the air is tricky, because you need to land! As I said, the physics model controls you in the air as well, so like in real life, you cannot move around in the air like you could in, say, a 2d fighting game. Instead, the angle and direction you were going when you left the ground is the direction you will go in. You can adjust your speed a bit, and can twist the car around in the air with the cars' wings if you are in a version or mode of the game which has wings, but you can't redirect your line once you are already in the air. Landing is also difficult, as you need to land flat, and not too fast. If you're tossed too far into the air even landing flat won't help, you'll explode on landing because you were going too fast; you'll need to hope you land on a slope and land perfectly, to redirect your momentum that way. Acceleration and braking is also a vital part of landing, as if you accelerate while landing you are much more likely to spin out than if you brake. Whenever you don't land perfectly, your car will go rolling and flipping around on the ground, more or less so depending on your speed. Here again the brake button is essential, as you want to be stopping as you roll onto your wheels, not your roof; use the brakes, accelerator, and directions to nudge the car in the right direction. While you will land on your roof as often as you land on your tires, it is possible to save yourself from difficult situations with skill and luck. When you do land upside down, though, your car will explode. I've always found the idea that Rush cars all have dynamite strapped to their roofs or something amusing.
Earlier, I mentioned that the cars have wings in some versions and modes. In the first two Rush games, and in the arcade version of this one, there is no way to control your car in the air beyond the slight changes that changing your speed brings. You get used to it, but having no control over your car in the air makes the games very challenging at times; you either get the jump right from the ground, or you're doomed. It makes for some great and challenging gameplay, but it can be frustrating at times. Atari Games / Midway Games West realized this, and in a work of genius, the home versions of the game add wings to the cars that allow you to twist and rotate while in the air. This feature is one of the very best things about Rush 2049, and is the most important feature that turned a very good arcade game into the best racing game ever made. It does make landing easier, and I know some hardcore Rush 1 or 2 fans prefer that games' lack of air controls to the wings of home Rush 2049, but I have always considered this an amazing, inspiring idea! The possibilities it opens, for maneuvering your car through narrow spaces in the air, for flipping and spinning in the games' Stunt mode, and more, are incredible. I loved, and love, the "flying" winged cars of Rush 2049 so much that back in the early to mid '00s, this game got me hooked on flipping TV remotes in the air like the cars in Rush 2049. It took quite some time, and several broken remotes, before I finally broke that habit... but why not do that? It's such an amazing concept, executed incredibly well!
I very much doubt that the AI cars follow all of the physics rules, though, I must admit, as instead of having dynamic AIs, each computer follows one of the games' pre-designed possible computer car routes. Some of the resulting turns look maybe too tight without as much skidding as you might expect. The AI has been much improved over the original Rush, however; there AI cars just followed each other in a line through the level, in a very close pack, so one mistake doomed you. Here different AIs will do better or worse on each track, and they can mess up and crash as well, which is welcome. When facing off against the computer your AI opponents are challenging, but those good at memorization may get used to their routes through the tracks. I mostly don't mind this, but there is one thing I find disappointing here: AI cars cannot enter shortcuts; bump one onto one and they will reset onto the track, even in Deaths Mode (described later). While they are tough enough competition on the main roads that I'm fine with with them staying away from shortcuts as that would make the game even harder, it would be nice if they would stay on them if you bump them onto one, at least. I'm sure this could have been done better, it is distracting and weird at times. Ah well. Still, your computer opponents in Rush 2049 will put up a tough fight, and I do think that the AI is mostly fine at it is; it's plenty challenging, and each race will be different due to the random nature of what can happen during a race, both between AI cars and between you and them.
This article is mostly a review of the home console versions of Rush 2049, and the Nintendo 64 version in particular. The arcade version is an arcade exclusive and has never been released on any home platform, unless you emulate it and I haven't, so while I have played arcade Rush 2049, it was for a relatively small amount of time, particularly compared to the hundreds of hours I have played the console versions. But the arcade version is the core experience which the home version only builds on but does not significantly change beyond adding wings and modes, so I will start here. Rush 2049 is the third arcade Rush game release, following San Francisco Rush and its enhanced re-release San Francisco Rush The Rock: Alcatraz Edition. This game brings Rush into the future, and that was a great idea indeed! Most of my favorite racing games are futuristic ones, so I love the choice to go futuristic. The tracks are a mixture of Tron-inspired neon, modern cityscapes, and outdoor environments, and the three mix surprisingly well. Amusingly, the advertisement billboards that are present all over the game include some for real companies such as Dickies and Slim Jim. These are present in the home version as well. I wonder if they paid to be in the game, or if Midway had to pay... you never know. So, fitting the theme, the arcade version's ad tagline was "Drive the Future", and it's a good line for sure. The games' machine and poster art is also fantastic stuff! Oddly they don't seem to have used that subtitle with the home releases, though they do use the same cover art. Arcade Rush 2049 runs on a standard Midway arcade board, with fairly good but not mind-blowing graphics for a 2000 release.
The original arcade Rush 2049 game is a very good, but straightforward, racing game. Unlike the later console versions all you can do here is race in single races against AI or human opponents. This being an arcade game, it is a stripped-down experience, perfect for a quick game. I mentioned earlier the more limited car customization available in the arcade game, but the basics are still here, including different cars with different stats and handling types. The core gameplay is as described above. I have played the final revision of arcade Rush 2049 within the past few years, and it is a weird experience. on the one hand, Rush 2049 for arcades is Rush 2049, a version of my favorite racing game. The graphics look just like the home console game I will describe; the tracks are very similar to how I know them; the controls and handling are the same, absent wings aside; and the gameplay is fantastic and incredibly fun. But... without the added modes of the home game, without the wings, with its slightly different variation on the games' soundtrack, and more, I just do not unreservedly love the game like I do the home version. San Fransisco Rush 2049 for arcades is a really good game despite that, though, and due to its differences from the console game it is absolutely worth trying if you ever see any Rush 2049 machine variant somewhere.
There are five tracks in the original arcade game, four new courses and one rehash, a redone version of the Alcatraz track from San Francisco Rush the Rock: Alcatraz Edition and the first two Nintendo 64 Rush games. Tracks in Rush games are linear paths, but the many shortcuts, alternate routes, and wide trackside areas you can drive through give the game a very open feeling that most racing games of the time do not match, while still being focused on a single course. I really love this concept, as I prefer racing games to have closed courses over open city driving, but it is also fun to have some choices along the way. Rush 2049 is the perfect merger of those two track design philosophies. I will cover the home versions of the tracks in detail later, but track one is a short loop, while tracks two through four are medium length. All four are shorter than any track from Rush 1 or 2, though, and the choice to make tracks shorter was a good one. The tracks have more jumps, thrills, tricky segments, tough shortcuts, and the like than either previous Rush game, packed into a smaller space! This means that the long periods of normal-road driving from the previous Rush games is now mostly gone, if you wish. I don't miss them, and you can see some of that if you stick to the road, anyway. Rush 2049's tracks also don't have many of the cheap moments of the earlier games, so expect very few blind walls sitting right in the middle of the track, and there is only one or two times where the real path is a side-area and the "main road" is actually a dead end. There also are now switches on the tracks which modify things in interesting ways, to open shortcuts by moving walls, making ramps appear, or more. Some switches stay lit when activated, while others are time-limited, so learn them all. These are different between the home and arcade versions, though. These are huge improvements which make this game a lot more fun to drive in than the previous two games; you still need to do a lot of memorizing to succeed, but it feels less cheap with these better-designed, more fun, and less unfair tracks. The home versions alter the courses, as the locations of shortcuts are different between versions, but the main shape and layout of each track is very similar between home and consoles. Track five, Alcatraz, was cut from the console versions though, as it had already been in both other N64 Rush games. They added a huge amount of new content to those versions to replace the absence.
Rush 2049 was a success in arcades, so despite the industry's fading popularity Midway started working on an enhanced version. One of Atari Games' last arcade projects before Midway shut down arcade development was Rush 2049 Tournament Edition, or Rush 2049 T.E., an enhanced release of Rush 2049 with two more tracks, conversions of the two race-mode tracks added to the home versions, and online play between machines in arcades across the country. Unfortunately, it was cancelled after location testing, so few of these machines saw release. However, several years after the original release, another studio got the rights to arcade Rush 2049 and released the Rush 2049 Special Edition, or Rush 2049 SE. This is essentially Rush 2049 TE, but with the online functionality removed, and it is the final arcade version of Rush 2049. I have seen this machine around, so it is out there.
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The N64 cover. The DC cover is similar.
Home Console Rush 2049 - Rush 2049 for the N64 and Dreamcast
Released in September 2000, the N64 and Dreamcast versions of Rush 2049 both launched at about the same time. Both versions were developed internally by Midway Games West. The N64 version is exclusive to that platform, but the Dreamcast version later was somewhat badly ported to the PlayStation 2, Gamecube, Xbox, and PC in the Midway Arcade Treasures 3 collection. The two versions are very similar to each other, though there are naturally differences between the two platforms. I wrote an article last year about the version differences between the two editions of Rush 2049, so see that for a more focused comparison of the two versions, but I will cover many of those differences here as well. Though most of my time playing this game has been with the N64 release, I will try to cover everything noteworthy about both versions. First I will discuss the games' modes, options, and features; then the graphics and music; and then the Race mode, Stunt mode, Battle mode, and Obstacle Course in turn; and last, a conclusion.
First, though, I should mention one odd little difference between the two versions: on the N64 tracks are named with a number, while on the arcade and Dreamcast versions each track has a name instead. As I have mostly played this game on the N64, I will usually refer to tracks by their number, not their name. I often do refer to tracks just by their N64 names, but give both names when I discuss each track in turn below.
San Francisco Rush 2049 is a very full-featured game, impressively expanding greatly on the basic arcade title. When you start either console Rush 2049 game, the main menu allows you to start a one to four player game, enter the Options, Records, or Audio menus, or on Dreamcast also enter the Video and Internet menus. If starting a game, after choosing the number of players, each player can create or load a player save file. These can be saved and loaded from any memory card or controller pak on any controller attached to the Dreamcast or N64, and each player will need a separate file. Here you also can view and reconfigure the controls. After that, all game modes that that number of players can play will appear, including Battle, Stunt, Obstacle Course, and the various parts of Race mode, depending; some Race mode modes are single player only, and Battle mode is multiplayer only. You then select the race options for that mode, choose a track and car, and begin the race.
All four of those modes are the best or among the best ever in their fields. Race mode has four tournaments of eight to 24 races with a points-based championship system, single or multiplayer single races, and a time-trial mode for racing against yourself and the clock. It is the best racing game ever. Stunt mode has four stunt arenas to unlock in what I consider the best stunt game ever. This mode has no AI competition, unfortunately, but you can play alone for points. Battle mode is a two to four player local multiplayer-only car arena combat game, where you drive around and blow up other cars with various weapons scattered around the games' eight battle arenas. It's the most fun I have ever had in a car combat game. And last, the unlockable Obstacle Course track is a very challenging linear course where you must navigate past numerous hazards as quickly as you can. Comparing the arcade game, with just a single race mode with five tracks, only four of them new, and nothing else, to the plethora of modes and tracks in this game is impressive. The game does require you to unlock a lot of things in the game. I have no problem with this, but some might dislike it. All three main modes lock most of the tracks and you must unlock them, and there are unlockable cars and car parts as well. All in all, Rush 2049 sets a gold standard for arcade-to-home conversions that few get anywhere near matching.
As for the other main menu options below the main player select option, the Records menu allows you to view the many records the game keeps track of in each player file. The game keeps track of the five top times on every Race track, with separate listings for forward and reverse; each player's best lap and race time on each track;the number of minutes you have spent in each track, not counting races you restarted because you need to finish a race for the game to record miles-driven and time information; how many points you have gotten, your best points-per-minute total, your best stunt, and more, separately for each stunt arena, your total time and number of first, second, and third place finishes for each circuit, and more. The amount of records kept is pretty great, particularly for a game released in the year 2000.
The other main menu options are sometimes useful. Audio allows you to change both music and sound effects volume and listen to any music track. I prefer to set the sound effects lower than the music, so that the great music is easier to hear. Options lets you change game-wide interface displays. Here you can turn on and off every single element on the on-screen HUD, and also change the interface language in the Dreamcast version and enable Metric, that is kilometers instead of miles, if you want. I play with all interface options on except for the Metric option, which of course as an American I would never use. In Race mode, the HUD includes your speed, your place in the race when racing against opponents, a radar showing rival cars near you, a map of the track with each cars' location marked, your total miles driven in the race, a skull-and-crossbones symbol if you are in Deaths mode, and some more. Stunt mode only displays your speed, the time, and your point total on screen, which is all you need. Battle mode displays the score, your speed, and arrows that move around the screen, pointed towards each opponent. It's all well thought through. The unlockable car parts and unlockable cars add to the variety as well. As for those two Dreamcast-only options, Video and Internet, they aren't very useful. Video lets you align the screen and view a test pattern. Thrilling. Internet is a link to the Rush 2049 website, and also lets you check your mail. It's pretty useless today of course, unless you are one of the very few who still uses Dreamcasts online. I never have, but I doubt these links work anyway. Still, at the time it was a nice feature to include.
In the Midway Arcade Treasures 3 versions of the game, things are mostly similar, but downgraded: you cannot re-configure the games' controls in MAT3, and can only save and load to memory card slot 1, not any slot. Long load times have also been added between menus that do not exist on the N64 or Dreamcast. Stick to the real N64 and DC versions, both of which have full control configuration!
Car Customization
Rush 2049 for consoles has a total of 20 cars available, 13 by default and 7 unlockable. Each has a unique look, and most have their own designs though a few unlockable cars are reskins of starter ones. On the car select screen, you choose a car, set the visual look you want, and select which parts you want to use in the car. Four stats, Top Speed, Acceleration, Handling, and Strength, rate your current selection of parts. Though with the same parts equipped two cars will appear identical on the car selection screen, their different shapes and characteristics will make driving a little bit different with each. Four part categories affect your stats: car frames, transmission types, tires, and engines. You unlock these parts with miles driven in Race mode, and there are at least a half dozen items to unlock in each of those part categories. Each one will affect the displayed stats, so you can see how the car will handle when you change parts. Now, the better engines are just plain better unless you like going slow, but tires, transmissions, and frames each have positives and negatives depending on what kind of car you like to drive. I like the lightest frame and fastest engine, for the most height on your jump, but this does mean you will spin out more easily and may need to take some jumps a bit more slowly, to not hit dangerous ceilings that you wouldn't hit with a heavier frame for example. Still, I prefer it that way. It takes quite some time to unlock the best engine, as you need 2000 miles driven in Race mode to unlock it, so you'll be playing this game a while to get everything. This is true elsewhere as well; you will not get everything in this game quickly. I'm mostly fine with that, it adds to the replay value! I do wish that Battle Track 8 didn't require a full 1000 points in Battle mode to unlock, though; that's a very high number.
Visual car customization options are reasonable, and better on N64 than Dreamcast. To change each cars' look, you can change the paint colors and wheel rims. The N64 version has 21 rims available, or fewer without an Expansion Pak installed in your N64, while the Dreamcast has 24. For car colors the N64 has a huge advantage, however. Each car has three different paint colors that display in different parts of the car. You cannot reskin cars, add decals, or such, but you can change your cars' colors. On N64, you can directly choose the three colors you want from a selection of about 16 colors, to get just the car look you want. On Dreamcast however, all you can do is choose from eight preset groups of three colors that draw from that same palette. So, on DC, you cannot customize your cars' colors. I really find this quite disappointing, and it's a big negative with the Dreamcast release. Rush 2049 isn't as fun when my car looks wrong, and it looks wrong on the DC (and MAT3) because none of those eight presets are the car colors I use on the N64. The best I can do on DC is use a blue-and-green skin, not the bright green, dark green, and purple one I have on the N64.
Cheats
Like many '90s Midway games, Rush 2049 has a great selection of cheats available. This has both some pretty amusing or useful cheats, and also quick unlocks for the impatient, or those who do not want to wait for some of the maybe too high point totals required for some unlocks, such as needing 1000 battle points to unlock Battle Arena 8 or needing 1 million stunt points to unlock the Obstacle Course. Unfortunately neither the menu nor anything on it saves, so you'll need to input the pretty tricky codes every time you turn the system on, but they are fun stuff to mess around with; I really wish you could unlock the cheat menu options permanently, because those codes really are quite tough to get right, at least for me. I'm sure people much better at things like QTEs or long button combinations in fighting games would have no problem here, but I find them hard, particularly with the very tight timing requirements you have; what the cheat lists in the links below don't say is how fast you have to input them.
And that's disappointing, because again, a lot of these cheats are really interesting! You can unlock all cars, parts, and tracks, sure, but you also can change the fog color, turn on big-wheels mode, increase gravity so you don't jump as high (boring...), make all cones or all cars mines so if cars touch at all they explode, disable the brakes, stretch the screen horizontally with Frame Scale, an option that is great for making the game look better on modern widescreen displays without needing to play it with bars on the side to preserve the 4:3 aspect ratio; increase cars' maximum speeds with Super Speed; make the cars or track invisible; disable car collisions; enable a Battle mode paint shop; and some more. It's pretty cool stuff. GameFAQs has nice lists of all the cheats; the buttons differ by platform, but the cheats themselves are identical. N64 cheats: http://www.gamefaqs.com/n64/198529-san-f...049/cheats DC cheats: http://www.gamefaqs.com/dreamcast/198528...049/cheats
Visually, Rush 2049 for the Dreamcast is a near-perfect port of the arcade game. Everything from the arcade game is here, and it all runs in 640x480 progressive scan with a high frame rate, as well; the game sticks to 60fps most of the time. The polygon counts per frame are only average so the game probably is not really pushing the hardware, but the texture work is great and environments are large and detailed. Weather permitting you can see to the horizon at full detail, so if there is any distance texture reduction going on I can't tell. The game may not be the most visually advanced for the system, but it does look really nice and run great. As for those weather effects, it's really only darkness, in tracks four and six, or fog, in tracks 1-3 and 5, but as this game is set in San Francisco, fog is the right effect to use! There is a slider for fog distance, and at full fog you can barely see anything. Even with all the time I've put into this game, full fog is hard to survive in some tracks. But regardless, I love the look of Rush games' large, wide tracks, with their fantastic amounts of verticality, width, and secrets. And of Rush tracks, these are the best and best-looking tracks in the series! Every track has a unique look to it, but all have a great mixture of normal and futuristic buildings to look at, of trees and giant loops and jumps. It's really cool for the time how you can see big buildings, and then actually go over there and drive past them! It's a really cool looking game with a great visual aesthetic. So, DC Rush 2049 doesn't get anywhere near pushing the DC's polygon count limits, but with its great art design, high resolution for the time, and great solid 60-fps framerate, the Dreamcast version looks great. The DC version of this game still holds up very well visually and looks good today.
On the Nintendo 64, while the graphics are obviously downgraded versus the arcades or Dreamcast in many large and small ways, for the hardware the game is an absolutely incredible accomplishment! With some of the best graphics on the system, N64 Rush 2049 has always been near the top of my list of the most impressive-looking N64 games. Now, this game does require the Expansion Pak for many features, including access to track 6 and the Advanced and Extreme championships because Track 6 is too large to fit into RAM otherwise, in-race music (you want this!), some of the rims, and moving obstacles in tracks such as cable cars or fighter jets, so make sure to have one for this game; it's pretty much essential. The graphics themselves look pretty much the same with or without the Expansio Pak, though, and they are as close to the source material as you could get on this system. The N64 version runs at a lower resolution, 320x240 interlaced; the N64 version seems to use a few less colors on screen, though this is a very minor difference; textures are lower quality, though they look great for the system; texture detail reduces noticeably a distance into the screen, so lines on the road will pop into higher focus as you get closer to them for example; the game runs at a lower framerate than it does on DC, though the mostly 30fps framerate is good for the N64 and the game sticks to that framrate well everywhere except for maybe Track 6, where I do think it might be a bit lower sometimes; it is missing some special effects, such as real projecting headlights on the cars on the night tracks and some cones of light coming out of certain buildings or the vertical connecting cables on the Golden Gate Bridge at the start of track six that pop in very close on N64 instead of being visible to the horizon; there are a few rare occasions where if you are looking into the horizon in certain tracks, such as tracks 5 and 6, where you may notice buildings pop in in the distance; and three and four player races in race mode have been removed, though stunt and battle modes are still available for up to four players.
There are also a few other very minor changes, but otherwise N64 Rush 2049 is the exact same game as it is on Dreamcast. That may seem like a lot of changes, but considering that this is a previous-gen port of a game designed for more powerful hardware, it's really not. This isn't an N64 game up-ported to the Dreamcast, like Star Wars Episode I Racer, it's a DC/arcade game down-ported to the N64... and the N64 version is every bit as good, or better, than games made for the N64 first like Episode I Racer or Rayman 2! And if you compare this game to Atari Games/Midway Games West's previous N64 racing games San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing, Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA, and California Speed, the visual improvement going from those games to this one is stunning. Those games have pop-in covered by fog; this game has no fog except as a weather effect and you can see to the horizon in almost all situations. Those games have huge, blury textures; this one has some blur, but you can make out the textures much better. Those games' level geometries look somewhat simple when you look at it, while this games' tracks are impressively complex. Midway and Atari Games did a spectacular job with this port. The game is not at the top of the list of the N64's best-looking games, to be clear, it's no Battle for Naboo, but it's a great-looking game and one of the best showcases for the system's capabilities.
In multiplayer the graphics take a hit, of course, but the game still looks good. On both the N64 and DC the two player mode does play with a large sidebar with a Rush 2049 logo in it, so it is not in full screen, perhaps to maintain the aspect ratio, or keep the framerate up. Three player mode has each player in a quarter of the screen with a logo in the last quarter, so no player has a half-screen view and thus an advantage. The framerates hold up well in multiplayer on both the N64 and Dreamcast. That is not the case for that Midway Arcade Treasures 3 version for PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube, however; it is the has some serious framerate problems particularly in multiplayer, and even some in single player as well. And I mentioned the un-reconfigurable controls and long load times previously, for more problems with that release. MAT3 is ported badly on all platforms, so avoid it. This isn't a review of MAT3 though; look up my past writings on that disappointment for more.
Music
The game is as impressive aurally as it is visually. Rush 2049's soundtrack, in its somewhat altered N64 incarnation particularly, is one of my all-time videogame soundtracks, and indeed the N64 Rush 2049 soundtrack is one I listen to fairly often. The game has a pounding videogame techno soundtrack, and I love it. Every music track on this cartridge is incredible! It's a massive step up from the weird and sometimes mediocre stuff of most earlier Midway N64 racing games like Cruis'n USA or the first SF Rush. I like techno music a lot, and this is great. I also like how there is a song dedicated to each level. The game doesn't just randomly play music while you drive, each map has a song that always plays there; this is a style I much prefer over newer racing games which just have a random playlist of licensed songs. You can set the game to only play one specific song if you want, though, by selecting that song in the Audio menu. This also serves as a sound test, but remember to return the setting to Default after using the sound test if you want different songs to play during races. The music adds significantly to the presentation. Most songs throughout have a strong main core beat and are very catchy. Indeed, the music is a factor in how I got hooked on tossing remotes like the 'flying' cars in the game; the music, particularly the Stunt mode tracks, fits perfectly with the high-flying, flipping gameplay!
As for the original arcade and Dreamcast soundtrack, it is higher fidelity than on N64 and there are more music tracks available, but it has a sometimes different sound to it I like less. The N64 version has 12 music tracks, and it's sort of actually ten, because two, Battle 1 and Battle 2, are very short little clips that appear to be unused in the game unless you enable them in the Audio menu, which might not be great considering that they do not loop so you'd only have music for maybe the first 30 seconds. Meanwhile, the DC has 21 music tracks, with a separate one for every course in the game. The music was all put in a different order on the N64 too, so almost every course has different music on the Dreamcast than it does on N64. See the table below for all the changes; music tracks with the same name are different versions of the same music track, excepting only Internet (DC) which becomes Title on the N64. That's a big advantage there, but comparing song to song, I prefer the N64 soundtrack, myself. I'm sure nostalgia is a part of that, but also I think that the lower fidelity actually benefits the music here, and the sound is a little more unique on N64. The Dreamcast music also seems to have some more of that mid '90s Midway audio weirdness that the N64 version stays away from. The DC soundtrack is still fantastic though, and I love some of the tracks just as much as any from the N64 edition.
So, my overall favorite music track in this exceptional soundtrack is the N64 version of Stunted. The DC version is good too, but the N64 one sounds better overall. After that, Retro, one of the N64-exclusive tracks, is easily among the best here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX-V2DKG4Cs . I guess it's sort of like an 8-bit techno song gone 5th-gen? Great stuff. Title (N64) / Internet (DC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2xXXe8SqAE is also really good, I can listen to that loop almost endlessly without it getting old. Stunted and Flier's mix of 'flight' sounds and techno works really well and make Stunt mode better; I link those later, in the Stunt section. Trancey is great too, I really like how it has this long minute-long buildup towards the full pounding techno section of the song. And on the DC/arcade, I like how the first four tracks have music track names which match the settings of those courses, that's a great touch.
The Music Tracks: A Comparison
Dreamcast
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Race Track (N64 Name) - Music Track
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Menus - [Unnamed Menu Music] (not in N64 ver.)
Post-Race Time Tables - High Score [Music track not available in Audio menu music test]
Online Web Browser Mode - Internet
Marina (Race 1) - Morning (not in N64 ver.)
Haight (Race 2) - Noon (not in N64 ver.)
Civic (Race 3) - Sunset (not in N64 ver.)
Metro (Race 4) - Night
Mission (Race 5) - Garage
Presidio (Race 6) - The Rock (not in N64 ver.) [This was used in the The Rock track in arcades, repurposed to Track 6 on DC.]
The Rim (Stunt 1) - Stunted
Disco (Stunt 2) - Flier
Oasis (Stunt 3) - Wingey (not in N64 ver.)
Warehouse (Stunt 4) - Trancey
Stadium (Battle 1) - High (not in N64 ver.)
Melee (Battle 2) - Vice (not in N64 ver.)
Tundra (Battle 3) - Starsky (not in N64 ver.)
Atomic (Battle 4) - Robo (not in N64 ver.)
Downtown (Battle 5) - Bassy
Plaza (Battle 6) - Speed? (Not in N64 ver.)
Roadkill (Battle 7) - Warrior (not in N64 ver.)
Factory (Battle 8) - Speed? (Not in N64 ver)
Obstacle Course - Hidden (not in N64 ver.)
Track unused in game and not present on the disc or cart, but you can find it on Youtube: Morning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPZX7hkgopw
Nintendo 64
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Menus - Title [this is actually the track Internet from the Dreamcast soundtrack, NOT the DC or arcade menu music]
Post-Race Time Tables - Credits
Race 1 (Marina) & Battle 1 (Stadium) - Bassy
Race 2 (Haight) & Battle 2 (Melee) - Garage
Race 3 (Civic) & Battle 3 (Tundra) - Seventies (N64 exclusive music)
Race 4 (Metro) & Battle 4 (Atomic) - Night
Race 5 (Mission) & Battle 5 (Downtown) - Trancey
Race 6 (Presidio) & Battle 6 (Plaza) - Retro (N64 exclusive music)
Stunt 1 (The Rim), Stunt 2 (Oasis), & Obstacle Course - Stunted
Stunt 3 (Oasis) & Stunt 4 (Warehouse) - Flier
Tracks unused in game unless you enable them, but they are short and do not loop like normal tracks do: Battle 1, Battle 2
When you list it all out like that, isn't it interesting how different those soundtracks are, both in the songs themselves and in which songs are used where? There are more changes than you would usually see, but the results on the N64 work great, so I'm not complaining!
The Modes: Race Mode
Now, on to more detailed descriptions of the game modes, starting with Race mode. I covered the basics of Rush track design earlier, in the section on the arcade game, so I will not repeat that here, but instead discuss how this mode works here on consoles. Now, in Rush 2049, the first thing you do is select the number of players you are playing with. Next, you enter a menu where you select a mode. This list has all Race mode modes listed separately, along with other modes such as Stunt, Battle, and Obstacle Course, so unlike those others Race mode is not a specific mode, but instead a set of modes. The game manual and marketing focus on the three-modes concept, though, so I will consider all of these similar modes as being a part of Race mode. In single player, Race mode consists of Single Race, Practice, Ghost Race, and Circuit modes. In multiplayer, it consists of Single Race and Practice only; Circuit and Ghost Race modes are single player only.
Race mode is the traditional racing game part of the game, and it is where most people will put most of their time. It has six tracks, the four original tracks from the arcade game plus two new tracks designed for the home consoles first. You start out with only four tracks unlocked, but unlock the last two by beating the initial tournaments. Again, the first track is short; tracks 2-5 are medium length, the ideal length for a track in this game I would say; and track 6 is long, as long as any track from Rush 1 or 2. The first mode is Single Race mode, where you choose a track, car, and settings, including AI difficulty and fog amount, and go, racing against five computer racers. Next is Practice mode, where you can just drive around any course for as long as you want, perhaps hunting for the collectible coins hidden around each track. There is no lap counter, lap limit, or AI opposition in this mode, you have free run on the track. Practice mode is a great way to look for shortcuts as well as find coins, without the pressure of a race. There is also Ghost Race mode, where you race around each track alone, in single player mode only and without AI opposition. You are racing against the clock here. Once you finish a lap, you then will race against your previous laps. Unfortunately you cannot use wings on the cars here, unlike all other Race and Stunt modes; there must be a reason for this, but it has always led to me rarely touching Ghost mode, no wings is a huge negative here! Also you can only save ghosts on the Dreamcast. They take up a lot of VMU blocks, but it lets you do it. Unfortunately, on N64 you can't save ghosts at all, which is really too bad. Still, considering how big the DC ghosts are, that is only limited use too, and I don't think I have ever saved one. Without ghosts you are just racing against the clock and the ghosts of laps you just completed. It's still fun, but isn't quite the same. Still, since tehre are no wings in Ghost mode, honestly I don't care much; the absence of wings is the real problem. I should note that on the Nintendo 64, with an Expansion Pak you can race against more ghosts at once than you can without one. And last but not least, there is Circuit mode. It has four tournaments available to play, one after the other. It's a good selection of modes and covers everything I could have wanted, a few minor features like ghost saving aside.
Circuit mode is the main draw for sure, at least for me. As in single races, you are in a field of six cars, you included. This is reduced from the eight cars per race of Rush 1 or 2, or arcade Rush 2049, but it is enough. In Circuit mode you start with the Beginner circuit, a short 6-race tourney through the four new tracks of the arcade original, both forwards and reverse. The second circuit is 8 races, the third 12, and the last, the Extreme championship, the full 24. Each circuit is harder than the one before it, so while unlike Single Race mode you cannot set AI difficulty in Circuit mode, the AI is pretty tough on the Extreme circuit so you shouldn't need it to be even harder. You get points based on your finishing position in each race, and the racer with the most points at the end of the circuit wins. I love this setup, because it means that you don't need to win every race to progress, you just need to be the best overall. It's the ideal design for a racing game. All championships can be played either normally or in Deaths mode, a mode that the previous N64 Rush games also have which only gives you one chance per race -- blow up once and you lose. You can retry races in Deaths mode if you pause immediately after dying and choose the handy Restart Race option, but you only get one chance. After playing this game for a while, I decided to mostly play tournaments in Deaths mode because it makes things a lot more exciting when one mistake means failure. Fortunately you can take the AIs out too, though! It's tough, but so, so rewarding when things go well and you make it through that tough shortcut or win a race you were struggling in when some tough enemy crashes.
I get a great amount of satisfaction from playing races and circuits over and over, trying to get better times, win with fewer restarts in Tournament - Deaths mode, and more, but there also are collectibles here which also add to the replay value. Both previous Nintendo 64 Rush games had items to find in the tracks and this game is similar, but this time there are more of them to find, and more things to unlock by doing so. As I mentioned previously, on each track, there are eight gold and eight silver coins to try to find. You unlock a car for getting all eight silver coins on all six tracks, a second for getting 24 golds, or half of the total from all six tracks combined, and a third vehicle for getting all of the golds. There are three more unlockable cars as well, unlocked by meeting those same requirements in Stunt mode, except with 16 golds needed for the half number because there are only four stunt arenas. You can collect coins in single race, practice, or tournament modes, and the game immediately saves any coins the moment you collect them, so even if you restart a race, while your times, and miles, will not count, collected coins will, thankfully. Also collected coins vanish, so if you want to collect that coin again you'll need to make a new player file. The collectibles mechanic is a fantastic one because coins are mostly hidden in hard-to- reach places, only accessible by making challenging jumps from just the right point, executed perfectly. Silvers are easier to get than golds, generally, and some are found on the ground hidden away in corners of tracks, but some of them are a challenge to collect as well. The number of collectibles here is just about right; there are enough coins to add a lot of play-time to the game if you want to collect them, but not so many as to overwhelm. As much as I love the game I never have gotten all of the coins, because I'd rather just have fun, versus try the sometimes frustrating jumps required for certain coins over and over until I hit one perfectly. I have unlocked some of the vehicles, though, and one unlockable car, the GX-2, is my favorite in the game.
The almost entirely different music choices between the two versions are interesting, I wonder why the N64 changed things so much. Those changes were mostly for the better, but moving Bassy and Trancey into Race mode, adding the new tracks Seventies and Retro, and switching Garage from track 5 (where it is on DC) to track 2 are big changes.
The Race Tracks In Detail
Here, I'd like to say a bit about each of the six tracks. I won't cover the arcade-only Alcatraz track here, but for anyone who remembers it from the previous games, it plays just the same as it does there, just with a visual overhaul.
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Race Track 1 / Marina - The first track is a short figure-eight course near the Golden Gate area, but not on the bridge itself. This is by a wide margin the shortest track ever in a Rush game, and it's a fun little loop. That doesn't mean that it won't challenge you at all, though, because there are a few tricky points in each direction. When racing the forwards version, that last hill before the turn to the finish line is probably the hardest part; it's easy if you are lined up right, but get just a bit off line and you'll hit something along the sides of the track and explode. This track has some fun shortcuts in it too, including the easy-to-find subway system underground which has several exits depending on direction, and more. You'll see switches for the first time here, and they open up some of the shortcuts, for instance for a transparent tunnel only accessible by a switch. It can be tricky to stay upright in, though, so I usually don't use it. More interesting are the switches needed to access a giant loop in the middle of the course. It's easy to see, but tougher to get to! Another interesting thing about this track is that when driving the track in Reverse mode, you need to take a detour around the first large hill from Forwards, which makes things a little trickier that way. It's a good beginning track, and a welcome break in Extreme championships from the harder other courses. Aurally, on DC and the arcades the first four tracks have names themed to the times of day each track is set in, but on N64 that is gone. I actually prefer the N64 music choices though, so I don't mind this much.
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Race Track 2 / Haight - This track goes through a more downtown area, and optionally through a large building under construction. Though all tracks are urban, some have more wooded areas than others, and this one has some grass and trees in spots. This is a pretty fun track and it's not too hard. The one tricky bit at first is that when driving the track forwards this track has the one instance of somewhere wehre you need to make a turn in a place where it seems like you can go straight, but you can't; straight ahead is an eventual dead end, you'll need to turn around and go back. So, at that point be sure to turn. Optionally you also can take a ramp here for a shortcut, though it requires a perfectly-timed loop in an obstacle-laden tunnel to get through without crashing.
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Race Track 3 / Civic - Track 3 is an interesting track in an area with more trees and a lake, as well as a built-up section which goes down a steep hill. This track has a giant tunnel that shoots you out a volcano as well as many shortcuts which allow you to stay off of almost all of the main track, if you can handle the sometimes-tough jumps on that path. There are some cool sights here, such as the part where fighter jets buzz the course at one jump so low that you might hit them if you fly too high! Otherwise the track is just plain fun, apart from Deaths Mode where you need to avoid that tunnel to the volcano because it tosses you up too high to usually survive. This is a good track; it isn't the best one, but all tracks in this game are really good and this is no exception.
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Race Track 4 / Metro - The hardest track from the original arcade game, Track 4 is a night race through downtown future San Fran. This track has tight turns, big jumps, lots of buildings, interesting shortcuts, and moving obstacles such as cable cars and trains. And all of this in the dark! It's a fun track, once you can survive it, though. It's also fun when AI opponents do things like drive into cable cars. It's great that their AI is not perfect, it makes this game so much better than it otherwise would be! Even so Track 4 can be imposing at first, with its many 90-degree turns and steep hills, but with practice it gets easier and lots of fun.
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Race Track 5 / Mission - This track goes through a part of the city along an inlet. Unlike those lakes you can drive on earlier, though, this water is mostly just an obstacle, apart from one little park fountain you can drive through. This is an average course for this game, which means it's fantastic but not the best track here. I like the shortcuts here a lot, though; while all tracks in this game have a lot of shortcuts, some are easier to access than others. This track has some long ones that are both not too hard to get to and are fun to drive on, including loops, jumps, branching shortcuts, and more. It's great fun stuff. I particularly like the tunnel under one hill, as it's easy to get to, faster than the main track, and ends/begins, depending on direction, with you driving over a lake... something you can do full-speed here. Usually you slow down over water, but in certain shortcut areas you can go over water at full speed. Fun stuff. :)
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Race Track 6 / Presidio - This track goes over the Golden Gate Bridge, and then through the park and city streets nearby. Significantly longer than any other course, this track is every bit as long as any Rush 1 or 2 track, but as complex as any Rush 2049 one. And it's a night race as well, so it's a bit darker than most tracks. This all means that yes, it's hard! This track covers some very hilly ground, so it's loaded with huge jumps over twisting city streets, as well as curving banked turns in darkened areas of the wooded park. The track is visually impressive due to its scale and size, and there are some clever shortcuts. There are two challenging 90-degree turns right after jumps, but with practice you get used to them, and all turns are marked with nice big arrow signs so they are not a surprise, unless the fog is up in this track high of course. In high-fog races here it can be nearly impossible to actually finish, but still, it's a great track and I'm glad it exists.
Additionally, the new music track here on the N64, "Retro", is fantastic! Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX-V2DKG4Cs It is a fantastic track, easily one of the very best in the game. This is the best song of all Race mode track songs; my other favorite tracks in this game are the Stunt songs and the N64 main menu theme. On the Dreamcast, however, the music is "The Rock", a decent but not amazing song that doesn't stand out from the rest of the soundtrack. Replacing that with Retro was a fantastic move on the N64 port team's part! Huge upgrade there.
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The Modes: Stunt mode
Stunt mode in Rush 2049 is one of my favorite experiences in videogames. Yes, I have spent many times more time playing Race mode, but Stunt mode is a fantastic change of pace, ten minutes of pure fun as I drive around driving off of jumps and flipping around in the air. I have never played much of or enjoyed games like Tony Hawk, highly technical stunt games with tricky button combinations and aesthetics I dis...
I was confused at first when I saw comments about it, but then I saw the old commercial and it all came flooding back to me. Most people didn't like Crystal Pepsi (seeing it either as inferior to normal Pepsi or a cheap gimmick, and frankly I was in the latter category even as a kid), but apparently the minority that liked it (which I was a part of) was vocal enough to start an actual movement. Kids who clearly are too young to have ever had the stuff were demanding it's return, and I do feel sorry for whatever ridiculously high expectations of soda nirvana they were operating under. Anyway, I found some when I went shopping this week and had to try it. I then remembered that I pointed out that this was the drink that'd make me start drinking sodas again in that political thread only 3 of us post in, so here's my review of some fizzy sugar water.
My first impression was that I nearly choked on it due to the fizziness. Turns out that when you haven't had any soda in nearly 5 years, you forget how to handle carbonation. My second impression, once I recovered, was that it was as delicious as I remember. Some say it's basically just clear Pepsi, and others say it tastes like Pepsi but a bit blander. Both are right because it turns out some people are born with more varied tastebuds than others. I'm one of those so called "super tasters". Yeah, I'm the one, the one that can taste the vanilla in a nilla wafer and the honey in a graham cracker (I have a friend who swears both of those taste like flavorless cardboard, this friend also loves spicy foods).
For me, it comes down to one thing. I hate caramel, and Pepsi uses a bit of caramel to get that dark color. With that removed, a product I normally don't really like the taste of becomes delicious. To me, Crystal Pepsi is Pepsi done right. But, it can and will be very different to different people. I didn't know that as a kid mind you. All I knew was it tasted good but I still didn't like regular Pepsi. I also think I detect a hint of a citrus drink in there. There's apparently a bit of citric acid according to the ingredients, so that's probably what's making me think of something more sprite-like in it.
Near as I can tell, this is the same formula from back then. Sodas had already switched over from sugar to corn syrup by the time Crystal came along, so there's really nothing missing here. Now, I've yet to try Sprite Tropical, but this stuff is, as of right now, the best sodapop on the market. (I checked a map on what people in different regions of the US call fizzy lifting drinks. Tulsa is in the middle of "pop" country, just north of a massive region of the US that calls all such drinks "coke". There's a smattering of "soda" and "other" right in the middle of Tulsa, so that's probably where my own local group's portmanteau of "sodapop" came from (which would have fit comfortably in the "other" category on that map).
I need to quit while I'm ahead with this drink. It's a nice return, but I'm already addicted to this stuff. I should cut myself off cold turkey once I run out of the bunch I bought at the store. Maybe I'll cut myself off one earlier and leave it in the fridge for... ever.
A couple years back, the Nintendo Power Link to the Past comic got a rerelease, and I thought that was a good comic. In terms of quality though, I personally think Super Mario Adventures was the best thing Nintendo Power put together. I have the collected release, dog earned and worn, and I must say it's one of the best things I've ever read, and the best characterization of the Mario cast outside of Super Mario RPG. I like "sweet with a short fuse" Peach way more than "eternal sunshine and light" Peach as she's portrayed in the current stuff. She's just a lot more fun, and frankly she does more in this comic than the brothers do. It's also got solid comedy throughout. This comic still makes me laugh.
I expect this reprint will likely include the one "Mario Adventure" short that didn't make it to the original collected edition, the one with Mario and Wario fighting over who buys a Samus doll for Peach. Maybe it'll include more, but I can't overstate how much I recommend this thing. My all-time favorite comic (note that I'm not an avid comic reader, so I've got like maybe half a dozen I bought mainly due to very insistent recommendations) is All-Star Superman, but this comes in very close. That's right. My favorite comic is a Superman comic that embraces everything silly about Superman (like dino-people in the center of the Earth), does it straight, and somehow makes it work. My second favorite is a promotional tie-in comic printed in a magazine made to sell me toys. Watchmen's pretty good, but I guess I just like happier more positive stuff than the grim darkness so many stuff goes for these days.
Platform: PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16)
Year: Released 9/27/1991
Developer/Publisher: NCS Masaya
Title: Dragon Egg!
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Colors aside this is representative of the game.
Introduction
Dragon Egg! is a cartoony platformer NCS Masaya published in '91. This game is a tough one to review, because on the one hand it's a pretty good, fun game, but on the other hand it's also flawed, has an unbalanced difficulty level which is harder in the first half of this six-level game and easier in the second, is absurdly short, and feels unfinished. When this game released in Japan in fall '91 the PC Engine was still popular, but the smash-hit success of the Super Famicom (SNES) was taking over the market and NEC was moving towards a stronger focus on CD games over HuCard titles. NCS Masaya may have been a third party, but they noticed this, as Dragon Egg! was their last HuCard release. This all might be an explanation for why this game was rushed, but whatever the reason, it's unfortunate. Regardless, the game makes a great first impression with its good graphics and nice cartoony artwork, and it controls well as well, but the serious issues add up to some huge drawbacks. The story is that you play as a young girl, off to save the world from evil with a dragon's egg. The text is all in Japanese, but the basics of what's going on is clear enough: there is a demon troubling the land, and a young girl is the only hope to save the land from decay. An old man, maybe her grandfather or something, gives her some goggles which are apparently dragon-rider gear, and off you go to save the day! The intro cutscene is fairly long and looks great. Unfortunately, it's the only real cutscene in the game; the ending is extremely short. There is a nice credits sequence, but still, as with many things in this game, the ending feels unfinished.
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The intro looks great.
Graphics and Sound
Visually, the game is one of the better looking platformers on the system. The PC Engine or TurboGrafx, on both HuCard and CD, does not have the wealth of platformers that the Super Nintendo and Genesis do. Its platformer library is smaller, and many of the games are more NES-like in design than most of the games you see on those other two systems. The system had an earlier peak, and that shows. This game, though, is clearly 4th-gen in style. The background and character art is colorful and quite well-drawn. It shows off the consoles' ability to put lots of colors on screen nicely, and the art design would look good anywhere. Buildings do look a bit flat, I guess, but I don't mind. The sprite art is particularly nice, and well animated too. The heroine in her pink overalls puts those goggles on once you power up enough to ride on the dragon, for example, which is a nice touch once you notice it. Enemies raise their weapon as they approach you too, and do a 'swing' animation if you touch them. Nice stuff. There are not a huge number of different types of foes, but it's enough for a game as short as this. Those enemies are varied, and while the game has a cartoony anime look to it, there is some variety here, from the cute to the threatening. Your dragon is somewhat adorably cute, but monsters vary from the big-headed and not too scary skeletons to the creepier flying bug-men . Other enemies include giants, slimes, and later on several kinds of gun and laser turrets. Bosses similarly vary, from the barely threatening-looking first boss to the more serious later ones. They all look great. On an odd but then-common note though, the main character wears blue overalls and a yellow shirt in the manual art, but pink overalls with a white shirt in the game. It's odd how some older games have very different art between the manuals and games even in Japan... or sometimes, within the game itself; see Alisia Dragoon on the Genesis for an example of that.
I do need to say though, as in many anime fantasy settings, this world is historically incoherent. It appears medieval at first and enemies have armor, swords, and bows, but there is electricity in places, there are enemy laser turrets, and the heroine wears modern clothing. The setting makes little sense. Is this fantasy or modern? It's both, apparently. But beyond that all-too-common frustration, the game looks great. The visuals here have a more polished look to them than most platformers on the system do. Hudson's platformers often match or beat this, visually, but I do think the game is in the upper tier visually, at least for this system. The developers even pull off a limited parallax effect. The whole background does not have multiple layers in it, but there are clouds which quickly move across the sky in many stages, to give some of that feeling of parallax movement. It's a great effect and definitely helps. The music, however, is unfortunately strictly average stuff. It's mostly okay, but isn't exciting or too memorable. Some songs are too short, too, such as the five-second-loop that plays during the first half of the last boss fight. Still, the audio is alright, and after playing it for a while I guess a few tracks are somewhat catchy.
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The first level. Health and lives are in the upper right, dragon egg counter in the upper left.
Controls and Game Design
One thing making Dragon Egg! game good are the great controls. The controls are precise and accurate. You do move a little fast, so you do need to look out or you'll bump into enemies, but it controls very well. This is a simple game, and all you'll is move around, jump, and attack. You start with two hearts for health, though each health heart can take two hits, and you can upgrade this to a maximum of four hearts during the game. Though you can't save your progress you do have infinite continues, but your goal should be to beat the game without dying, or without getting hit much at all if you're in Hard mode, so the continues aren't always needed. Levels are all straightforward as well. There is some depth in the upgrade system, however, though it's badly unbalanced, particularly in Normal difficulty. Whenever you kill an enemy they drop one of two different types of powerups: dragon eggs to upgrade your dragon's form, or coins you use to buy other powerups. Which one an enemy drops is entirely random, it is important to note; I kind of wish the powerups were predetermined, but which you get is purely a matter of chance.
Of the two upgrade systems, I will first cover the dragon mentioned in the title. Collecting dragon eggs upgrade your dragon between four forms. You start out carrying an egg in a backpack, and can attack only at melee range. You want to get out of this mode as soon as possible, because this attack is too close-range to avoid taking damage sometimes. All four forms do exactly the same amount of damage per hit, varying on whether you have weapon powerups of course, I should say; it is the range that varies, but those range expansions are vital! It is funny how hitting a badguy with an egg does the same amount of damage as shooting them with a fireball, though. Heh. :) So, the first upgrade requires two dragon eggs. Here, the dragon has poked its head out of the egg and breathes fire ahead of you. This short-range fire attack is pretty good and actually will collect items, something the later upgrades' attacks will not do. The third level takes three more eggs. Now you ride on the hatched dragon's back, and attack with fireballs that go across the screen. The last powerup takes four eggs, and makes the dragon larger and better. Now it's got a higher jump that has some float to it for slower descents, and it upgrades your weapon potential as well -- while the basic un-upgraded attack is the same as the level 3 dragon, with upgrades you will see the difference. The top-level dragon is pretty awesome, and overpowered, so long as you have it. It is a big target, though only your character is actually vulnerable and not the dragon. This is important to know for getting through the laser gates without taking a hit.
The money system similarly rewards staying alive, and is one more element making the first half of the game harder than the second -- if you can get fully powered up and avoid losing those powerups, you'll be nearly unstoppable. You use collected money to buy powerups from shops scattered around the game. There are six different items you can buy. For 3 coins, you can buy cure items which you can use in the select menu. These heal half a heart each, and you can carry up to four. There are three items that cost 10 coins. First there is a firepower upgrade which doubles the damage you do per hit. You can buy this again, for the same cost, to almost double damage again -- this reduces an 8-hit giant down to 3 hits, for example. Next, there is a range / multi-hit upgrade. This gives the level 1 or 2 dragon a slightly longer range attack, the level 3 dragon two fireballs for an attack, or the level 4 dragon three fireballs. You can also can purchase this a second time as well, to add homing to your level 3 or 4 dragon's shots or a little more range to a level 1 or 2 dragon. And last at 10 coins, you can buy additional health hearts, which, yes, you can buy up to two of, though you don't need to as unlike the attack upgrades you can also get these other ways. And last, two items are available for for 30 coins each: a barrier which gives you an extra hit which you don't lose anything for losing if you are hit, or a skull which is a bomb you can use by double-tapping attack, or something like that. You can only have one skull at a time in your inventory. It is important to note that five of these six powerups can be lost, but you won't lose the healthbar-expanding hearts. I wonder why they decided that health upgrades are permanent, while attack upgrades can be lost. It's kind of odd. As for the other upgrades, in Easy or Normal you won't lose any dragon or store-bought powerups unless you die, but if you do die you reset to the level-one egg-swing attack, and you lose all money and purchased items except for health expansions as well. It's painful stuff, if you were upgraded; the easiest way to beat the game is to not die. In Hard mode the game is significantly more punishing: you lose store-bought attack powerups, then dragon eggs, each time you are hit. More on this later.
There is no scoring system in this game, so the only pickups in levels are those items enemies drop, and a few scattered health bar-expansion heart, cure, and skull items. There is also a roulette after each level which spins between a health expansion heart, a cure, a skull, or a 1-up. Try to time your jump for the one you want the most. Oddly, while they look identical, the cure items you get from the end-level roulette or that are placed in levels are entirely different from the ones you can buy in the stores, as quite unlike the ones you buy, the cure pickups are instant-use only and cannot be stored, and heal a full heart instead of only a half like the ones you buy do. The two types probably should have used different graphics to signify that they are not the same. Still, I like that the full-heart heals exist, they are quite useful because there is no health recovery between levels; you'll start the next stage with the exact amount of health you finished the last one with. When you add those hearts to your health they start out empty, too, so even if you don't take damage you will need health at least to fill those. It all works fairly well.
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The shop and items.
Level Design and Layouts
The level designs are the core of any platformer, and thankfully stages in Dragon Egg! are nicely varied. There are horizontal, vertical, and maze-like levels, and you need to approach each enemy type differently. Enemy AI is extremely basic, as enemies mostly just move or shoot straight at you once they're on screen, but it works as other things differentiate them, such as size, whether they fly or not, and whether they can shoot at you. The six bosses are each entirely unique as well, so no two of those fights will be the same. All six boss fights have the exact same stage background as well, with the same platform layout on it. I don't mind this, but it does lack variety. More importantly, one of the major issues with Dragon Egg! is that the game is badly unbalanced and sort of backwards -- the second half of the game is significantly shorter and easier than the first half is. The first two levels each are broken up into three stages and then a boss. The difficulty ramps up just right here, as the game starts out quite easy but slowly gets trickier. Level three only has two stages before the boss, but the second is the games' one and only maze stage, so it may take a little while to get through. Level 3 feels as long as either before it, and it might be the hardest level in the game. But then you get to level four, and it all falls apart; while levels four through six are quite fun, they all have only ONE stage per level each! One linear stage and a boss each, that's it. There are also level design elements that only appear once, which can be fine for some original challenge, but why does is stage 1-2 the only one in the whole game with instant-death pits in it, for example? It's bizarre. The only explanation I can think of is that the game must have been badly rushed, shipped before it was really done because NCS needed it out NOW or something. These and other cutbacks are quite unfortunate, because a more complete and polished version of this game could have been great.
Now, I'd like to go into a little more detail about each of the stages. Skip this paragraph if you want to avoid any spoilers about the game. Level one has you traveling across some mountains. As mentioned previously, stage 1-2 is the only one in the game with bottomless pits. It's hard to avoid that enemy on the last jump, but you CAN do it without taking a hit if you jump at the last second. I mentioned the first boss earlier. Level two is harder, as you travel through giant-infested caverns. It's a fun level, though it can be tricky at points in Hard mode. The boss is a spawning creature which can be a pain to not take any damage against. Level three is the maze in an electric castle. It's a good, well-designed level, though it is quite challenging to get through in Hard mode without taking hits thanks to the flying bug enemies, the laser gates, and maybe worst of all the invincible gun turrets shooting at you. The boss is this cubic thing with tendrils you need to destroy before you take out the core; it's easy powered up, but a bit trickier if not. Level four is a river-rafting trip over water. You have to stay on the raft in the middle of the screen and enemies are only a minor threat, so the level is very easy. The graphics here are great though, as the level has some really nice-looking rippling water effects. The stage ending is a setup for another stage that doesn't exist though; again, this game must have been rushed. The boss is interesting, but again is easy at full power once you learn its pattern. The fifth level goes through an Egyptian desert. It's a fun level, though again it's too short and badly needs multiple areas. The level 5 boss is one of the easier ones regardless of your power level. And last, you go through the bosses' fortress. The level is only moderately challenging, though the boss is really hard if you aren't powered up. This boss has two forms, and without powerups it takes a lot of hits to kill and attacks with curving fireballs that are hard to avoid. It's hard to do even a few hits in a row against the guy without taking damage, so you want to be powerful enough to take him out as quickly as possible.
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With the level two dragon, shooting a fireball.
Hard Mode
There is a big elephant in the room that I have been sort of dodging around up to this point, however: the difference between the difficulty levels. Dragon Egg! has the usual three settings, Easy, Normal, and Hard. On Easy, the game is a complete and total cakewalk. Don't bother with it. On Normal, the game is still really easy. I beat the game on normal, without dying even one single time, the day after I got this game. So it may have been easy, but it was a lot of fun while it lasted. But to get a bit more out of this not-cheap game, I decided to try Hard mode... and it's a huge difference from the lower ones! Hard makes two major changes to the game: first, all enemies and bosses take twice as many hits to kill as they do on the lower difficulties. This makes everything a lot longer and slows down the game. And second, and even more importantly, you now are punished not only for dying, but for getting hit at all. If you have bought powerups from the store, you lose one level from BOTH of those powerups each time you take a hit. You also take damage, of course. And if you don't have powerups, each hit takes away one dragon egg. If there are no eggs in the meter at the moment you'll be downgraded to the next level down, down to the minimum of just having the egg with its way-too-close melee attack. And you REALLY need powerups, because the final boss is brutally, near-impossibly difficult without a significantly powered up dragon; I tried to beat him in Hard with no powerups once, but eventually had to give up, it's just crazy-hard.
Overall, Hard mode's changes make the game a LOT harder and much, much more frustrating. The main reason why this review isn't happening until now, instead of a week and a half ago when I first meant to write one, is because I just can't stop trying and failing to beat this game on Hard! I know I need to no-hit-clear it to win, and I keep messing up and dying somewhere in level three. It's really the "taking away powerups when you get hit" thing that makes it so hard; if you've gotten to the point where you're losing eggs, it's already over. You cannot grind to get more money in this game, there is a preset number of enemies and each one only drops one coin or egg. So if you take a hit and it steals 10 or 20 coins worth of powerups from you, that's a hard to impossible thing to recover from. It's frustrating, because if I could get past the first half of the game with full power I think I could beat the second half with a lot less difficulty, but that's easier said than done... argh. So yeah, I keep trying, and putting off this review that I was initially going to "write quickly because the game is easy and fun." Heh. But hey, as frustrating as that is, it also shows how addictive the game is; I'm still playing it, after all. Had the game only had the Normal difficulty setting and no others it'd have been another one of those fun but very short game, but thanks to Hard mode the game has some lasting play value.
Quote:
Archers shoot fire-arrows.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Dragon Egg! is a good game I definitely like playing, but it is also a flawed title that could have been a lot better. This game has great graphics that are among the best on the platform in this genre, variety to the gameplay due to the different enemies and obstacles you run across, and something for everyone difficulty-wise as the normal mode is short and fun, if somewhat insubstantial because of how quickly you should beat it, while the hard mode is a serious challenge. On the other hand though, the game is far too short and was obviously shipped in a partially-finished state, as the mostly missing second half of the game and very short ending show. The unbalanced difficulty and too-easy gameplay if you get fully powered up are also issues; though Hard mode does alleviate that second one somewhat, it is still easier powered up. The decision to have you lose a full level of BOTH attack-enhancer powerups every time you get hit one single time in Hard mode is also perhaps inordinately cruel for a game like this; it'd have been better if you lost only one attack powerup each time, if that mechanic had to exist. These issues are significant, but still I do like Dragon Egg! overall. I give this game a B- score. This is the kind of game this system needed more of and I recommend it to platformer fans, it's good despite its issues.
http://www.videogameden.com/hucard/reviews/deg.htm - VGDen also has a review, and a translation of the backstory -- the girl's name is Eran, and she is the descendant of the legendary Dragon Warriors and is the only one who can defeat the demon who has taken over the land. Also, more nice screenshots.
That title is a lie. It's just all the dinosaur movies I've seen that are connected. Feel free to mention all the ones I didn't mention, because this theory is important to the world and must be flawless. I really mean that, get mad.
So in the beginning, a meteor hit the earth, OR DID IT? The meteor hitting the earth split the world into two, one where it actually hit and the dinosaurs went extinct and one were it missed and the dinosaurs maintained their rule. This happened in both the Super Mario Bros. movie and The Good Dinosaur, creating a timeline split (I'm sure you're so excited at the possibilities...)
In the "human" world, the world was slowly dying, with tremors (earth shakes) caused by the devastating hit from the meteor. A few lone survivors managed to make their way to the only place where green things still grew, the Great Valley. Thus, Land Before Time takes place in that timeline. This great valley, over millions of years, may have been cut off from the rest of the land, leading to a single island where dinosaurs still lived. The few mammals that managed to find their way to this island would have been pressured to get bigger or get eaten. Any humans that found themselves there would have needed to find a small niche to hide in so they weren't devoured as well. Eventually, a small film crew would find their way to the island and, bizarrely, decide to ignore all the dinosaurs in favor of taking one of the giant mammal specimens back, giving us King Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World.
Kong would be public knowledge, but the island would be forgotten again, until the late 20th century, when a scientist, struggling to make his vision come to reality, and sparing no expense, would uncover the truth about Kong's origins and travel back to that island. That's right, John Hammond from Jurassic park never actually cloned anything. Mr. DNA? Those labs? His amber mosquito? All smoke and mirrors, to fool investors, and remember the whole reason he invited those scientists was to further convince his investors to keep the money coming in. Note that he got paleontologists, but NOT biologists or anyone who specializes in DNA, because his lies would be seen through too quickly unless he carefully picked scientists without the proper background in genetics (such as, um, er, a, ah, mathematician). In reality, he took all those dinosaurs from Skull Island. (Keep in mind that while the Great Valley started as a haven for herbavores, at least one "sharp tooth" became a regular resident there, so it stands to reason others would eventually come to the valley). Why did they find eggs in Jurassic Park? They thought it was "frog DNA", but in reality it's because Hammond accidentally took a few males by mistake (or a few that had eggs ready to lay). Hammond claims at the start of Lost World that the second island was his original test site, but this is again a coverup. In reality, that was Skull Island. Lost World and JP3 both take place on Skull Island (The Great Valley), or at least small parts of it. It appears to be a rather immense island (and it would need to be, in order to sustain such massive fauna), so it would make sense for different landing parties to see completely different areas of the island. Even in JP2 and JP3, people keep crashing on the island, so it's still as hard to reach as it's ever been. The natives are gone, but after what happened with Kong breaking their defenses, it's not surprising they were all wiped out by whatever came through after Kong.
Meanwhile, in the dino-verse, dinosaurs eventually develop a more modern society resembling the old west. This would be the tale of the Good Dinosaur. One dinosaur comes across a "proto human" and keeps it as a pet. It's assumed that this is mammals evolving into humans even with the pressure of dinosaurs still existing, but the truth is, this "human" is actually evolved from a branch of dinosaurs. It's possible some had become trapped on a smaller island and, as mentioned before, had to evolve to get smaller in order to keep from starving to death (while also going upright and learning to use tools better). Most dino society, still being in an "old west" mentality, simply never knew this species existed. This would be the start of a social divide. At this time, a scientist in the human world would open a bridge and abduct some dinosaurs from the dino world (assuming he'd merely pulled them from the past, but in reality not his past). This would lead to the events of "We're Back", and the start of numerous crossovers between the two parallel worlds. Once that scientist had opened the gate, rifts would start opening in various locations in both worlds. In one such location, a family found one by accident after falling over a waterfall, meeting another group of dino-evolved humanoids along the way as they visited this Land of the Lost. In another, one of the dino world's more massive specimens' eggs would cross over at a nuclear test site and rampage around New York, mistakingly identified as Godzilla. With "Zilla's" ability to reproduce so fast, it would need to have come from another world to have not been found until then. Further, perhaps even the original Godzilla, theorized to have been woken up by nuclear testing near Japan, came through yet another rift. The nuclear bombs then would be a reliable way to open rifts between the two worlds. Back to the meeting of dinosaurs and humanoid dinos, eventually something tragic must have occurred that led to the humanoids taking over the world and pushing the dinosaurs to the fringes of society. This would lead to social injustice, with a police station eventually having to induct a member of the dino underclass as a bid to ease tension between the two groups. This cop, Theodore Rex, would end up doing far more harm than good for the cause, as while it was a good move to ease tensions, Theodore proved to be an incompetent officer. Rather than heal the rift between the two groups, it pushed it even further. The true dinosaurs ended up being pushed to outright extinction, and the world in general went downhill with pollution. The few towns that remained were led by President Koopa, who was desperate to find a better world. He'd heard the rumors of these crossover events with another world and sought to find the link himself, eventually stumbling upon one of those tears, with an area with the very meteor that hit the human earth, somehow accessible to the dino side as well, but with a shard missing. This would lead to the events of the Super Mario Bros movie. At the end of this movie, both worlds now very publicly know about each other.
In Jurassic World, we are introduced to an experimental genetic abomination with super intelligence. It was assumed that super intelligence was just a result of their tinkering, but the more horrifying possibility is that the scientists were actually implementing genes from the more intelligent dinosaur humanoids after getting a few samples from across the rift. This might be the real purpose of the park. If Jurassic World's people knew about the other dimension with talking dinosaur people, it would also explain why so many park patrons are so bored just looking at regular dinosaurs.
Firstly, it's been an unexpected worldwide phenomenon. Out of nowhere, in about two weeks, everyone is talking about it. I don't just mean "everyone on gaming sites", I mean politicians and late night talk shows.
Secondly, HOW DID EVERYONE FIND OUT ABOUT IT?! I didn't see a single commercial for it, online or otherwise, and the only reason I knew it was coming was due to Nintendo's own announcement at gaming-centric events. I have no idea how everyone online found out about this game at once. It's beyond my ability to comprehend.
Thirdly, finally a reason to actually get outside and see the world. I mean, people have been cooped up indoors for what seems like over a decade now, thanks to the internet, and the internet finally solves that problem for us by telling us "hey, look at this little-known memorial deep in the woods, and oh by the way there's an imaginary monster there too".
I for one hope this takes off to the point where people actually take cross-country trips around it, but I'm not the one to do it. Too many real life obligations, you see. I would like to challenge any Go-er who looks me in the eyes though... if it's safe. That brings me up to the elephant in the room, criminals using the "spot" system to know in advance where to find victims. The solution here is to travel in large groups, I suppose, but it's worth noting the usual danger concerns when outside in that "real world" place.
It's amazing really. Just a few years ago, people were forecasting the death of PC gaming, and these days it's taken off to such a degree that the forecasting now calls for the death of consoles. Between changes to how OSes are handled, more robust APIs, and groups like GOG working hard to make all the games of the past work on modern systems, PC gaming is also more reliable than it has ever been. I build my own systems, but for those who either don't know how or would rather not bother with the hassle, the variety of prebuilt options actually made for gaming AND built to last has grown a lot too. Beyond Alienware, there's the current crop of "Steamboxes", MS's own Surface Pro series, and with the upcoming changes, the XBox One itself may just gain the ability to play PC games (internally, it runs on x86 architecture and Windows 10, so nothing really prevents it except MS's own lockdown on "side loading" unapproved applications).
Beyond that, I see so many people turned off by the current generation of consoles who are sick of the console wars and would rather just dump some money into a good PC rig and leave Sony and MS to do their own thing. (Note I didn't mention Nintendo. They do their own thing and at this point everyone gets a Nintendo system purely as a system to play Nintendo's own games. I know that's why I do it.)
I've just recently upgraded my PC. It's been long overdue, and when it comes to PC hardware there's generally no point waiting for that new hardware just around the corner because there is ALWAYS new hardware just around the corner, so I took the plunge with the new GPX 1070s having just come out. I'm loving it so far. It took some work getting my Windows 10 install to boot correctly after the switch from BIOS to UEFI (I pronounce that with a hard "I" sound, because it sounds more computery that way), but I've got it running correctly now. I have to say in the process I learned a LOT about the GPT partitioning system (compared to the old MBR), as well as what makes UEFI so different (the key is in how tightly integrated it is with the OS now, it can even replace Windows 10's boot logo, though I turned that off). Modern hardware all seems specially designed for overclocking, to the point where I wonder just how honest those "default settings" really are now. I had to replace my case, because enough has changed over the years that this old case I bought in 2003 or so just wouldn't fit the hardware I wanted any more. Cases by and large look ridiculous (when it comes to aesthetics, I got the distinct impression that a lot of custom PC builders never got out of the 90's, it's all "extreme" with cyber dragons other such nonsense all over the place.
Let me get into that, because it's pretty tasteless. I've seen firsthand what a lot of PC builders think looks good, and as a general rule, I hate pretty much all of it. I didn't pick my hardware based on aesthetics, but to see the descriptions on some of it, I have to wonder just how often hardware sacrifices performance in the name of looking cool these days. Firstly, far too many cases have these stupid curves all over the place that, aside from looking like some early 2000's era PC, also makes the things harder to clean and harder to fit exactly where you want them to go. I went for one of the few companies that believes that form should follow function and picked up a big white box shaped case. http://www.fractal-design.com/home/produ...e-r5-white As you can see, it's simple and clean, just like I like it, but more than that it doesn't have any shapes that get in the way of opening the case up and tinkering with it. A big deal for a lot of these builders seems to be having side windows. I opted out of that. I actually saved money getting one without a window. That's crazy to me, because I got this case in particular due to it's silent design, and the window panel means no silencing foam where the window is, so I got one that's quieter AND cheaper thanks to the crazy style that's "in" right now. So, builders like to show off the hardware inside with that window. To that end, EVERYTHING LIGHTS UP NOW! That was one of the things I hated finding out the most. I keep my PC in my room, and I tend to sleep in there too. Good thing is, I could shut those blasted lights off in the firmware. Bad news is the LED on the case itself is surprisingly bright. I slip a pokemon pamphlet over the light just so I can sleep at night. Lastly, there is exactly ONE acceptable color scheme that "looks good" in the eyes of builders right now. Black with red highlights. There is no possibility of an alternative viewpoint here. I had to sift through countless reviews of hardware on newegg that all would say things like "great hardware, disappointed it wasn't black and red to match my hardware" and "good and it's black and red so it looks great". Basically, things sorta drifted to that black and red outnumbering other colors, and out of fear of a color clash, now EVERYONE demands absolutely everything use that color scheme. The good news is, I really don't care. Since I'm not using a case window, nobody's going to see that hardware unless I open my PC up anyway.
Well, back on track, the good trends include power cabling being detachable from the power supply and much better modular case design with a whole section "behind" the motherboard dedicated to cable management to keep stuff out of the way. It's clear they've been focusing on making cases more builder-friendly, and I like that. I also like how modern cooling fans focus on both solid build quality and silence. (I've not yet had good reason to take the plunge and go with liquid cooling.)
My specs are good enough to hold me for the next five years now I think, with a little room to grow on with the motherboard in particular so my next upgrade will likely be cheaper anyway. At this point, my next upgrades will be a new monitor and eventually replacing my hard drive flat-out with a SSD (flash capacity is increasing steadily enough that I expect that within the next five years).
On the topic of software modifications, then came the process of making sure all of my PC games still worked. I managed to find a lot of fixes to get pretty much everything working just fine, fully featured even. MS themselves make a special "application compatibility" tool which includes all manner of rules to change Windows' behavior when launching programs. For example, I used one ruleset to fix issues launching Morrowind. Unfortunately, one critical issue with Windows 10 proves elusive to find a convenient fix for, and that's the frame buffer. For now, the only way I can play Curse of Monkey Island is through ScummVM, but at least I can play it.
On the original topic, GOG is really starting to become a big threat to Steam's dominance. As far as features go, all they're lacking is a good multiplayer and chat backend and they'll have all the major features Steam have.
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