R4 isn't the first racing game to break the mould of generica, in the earlier generations of gaming creating a realistic recreation of real racing was impossible. Developers instead had to focus on how to translate the familiar in the sport while still making a fun game.
I remember the Super Off-Road cabinet well. The arcade called "Fun N Games" which was about 6 blocks from my house as a kid always had one. Sitting on the backside of one of the center columns of games, out of view from the big, popular "attraction" titles put front and center in the arcade. It had 3 steering wheels, a pedal(Who needs brakes?) and 2 buttons both used to boost during a race. Being 10 years old and knowing nothing technical about racing or driving except the vague notion that cars have a gas pedal and can go fast.. And a horrible nightmarish recurring dream I had back then where I dreamt that I was in a car alone at the wheel, speeding on the highway and had no way to slow down or stop the vehicle and I didn't know how to drive it either(No wonder I didn't get my license until I was nearly 20 years old). But knowing nothing about those things I still felt drawn to the Off-Road cabinet. It had a lot of colors, pixelated bikini models and "Ironman" Ivan Steward seemed pretty cool despite having never heard of him before. Between rounds of Ninja Gaiden, Street Fighter 2 and Magic Sword I found some time to pump some quarters into Super Off-Road. It conveyed a very immediate concept to the player, race around a track and hit boost constantly, ease off the gas only when necessary. Despite using a steering wheel to control a vehicle from a static isometric perspective it was very smooth, after a short time of playing you were already spinning the wheel and applying pressure with your hand to smoothly guide it around the corners at insane speeds. The first few races allowed you to build up your boosts and car parts before the difficulty really kicked in. Even as a kid I never really liked putting more than a few quarters into a single machine in a play session, I knew starting from the beginning always yielded a better value so I didn't get to see the later stages of Super Off-Road unless I watched someone older pump 20 bucks into the machine.
To this day I see Super Off-Road cabs in various pizza parlors and other locales that you might find an arcade cabinet or two in. More rarely i've seen Super Sprint, Outrun and Pole Position. All similarly "gamey" racers. The first Ridge Racer probably represents the height of popularity for the genre, I rented it with a Playstation when the system came out and I played all weekend to unlock most of the cars. I had no idea about the powersliding in the game but they didn't make it an incredibly hard experience for the gas/brakers out there, it was a fun and simple game. Ultimately though it was all about running time trials, doing something over and over to perfect. And it looked nice. A tech demo system launch if there ever was one. But from that point the arcade racer slowly became more faceless and niche in the mid 90's. Not many games conveyed a strong concept of racing anymore. To the point that my non-driving self had little interest in them through my teens. Racing games left me feeling blase, at the time I would rather have been reorganizing my Wolf/Dragon T-Shirts and coming up with new army combinations for Warhammer: 40k.
When I was about 16 or 17 I subscribed to Playstation Underground and never payed for the subscription, I still received about 6 "issues" before they realized this lil dude just wasn't gonna pay up. Looking back on those discs one of the things I liked most were the racing games, which in demo form are usually a perfect summation of the entire retail copy of the game. Giving you 1-2 tracks and a small selection of racing vessels you are free to time trial to your hearts content on the content they give you. I played extensively some ESPN Xtreme sports game, Cool Boarders 2, some Rally game by Codemasters.. But the racing game I played the most on those discs was Ridge Racer Type 4. I don't know what was particularly gripping about the experience, I'm confident it was just one car and one nighttime track. But I played it endlessly.
To this day I find myself fascinated by it's night driving aesthetic. Cool music, warm night air rushing past you. My mind is fixated on the notion, really. But it was a year or more later before I played the real copy of the game, it was quite a different experience. The industry at the time(At least in relation to racing games) was gripped with Gran Turismo fever, I believe the 2nd GT game was near release.. The initial focus of R4 is a mix of 4 "dynamic" storylines in campaign mode and running races against the series-recognized "challenge" cars(A super fast car and you have a 1 on 1 duel, if you beat the car it is unlocked for you to drive). I didn't play enough to really see everything in the game as I only rented it, but based on its pedigree(via my love for the R4 demo and the original Ridge Racer) and looks I had always recalled it fondly.
Over the last week I've been playing R4 again. When I started out I had to unlock some of the faster cars by playing the story mode, I was whelmed with the thought of getting back to the state of consciousness I had while playing the demo so many years ago. I just wanted to race on cool looking tracks, over and over. Maybe I would hit random for my musical accompaniment or repeatedly select my favorite song of all time "Move Me." I wasn't sure but I was ready to get to that point. Near the conclusion of my first play of the story mode I had taken a poor, losing team to the final race and won. Restoring my team coaches faith in life and causing him to quit the team and begin to fix the rift that had grown in his family, or something like that. The somber, quieting visuals that accompany the "talk" sections before a race are masterful, the stories simple and just a little bit real emotionally. The player is the person who gets the thanks in the end, through your beautiful racing you save lives of broken individuals.
I kept trying to get to the time trials, the endless racing. To connect with my desire to have one more win, one improved time. But as of yet I haven't gotten there. I spent some time unlocking the super cars but found myself drawn back to the story mode. Now as I have completed 3 of them and am near the end of the 4th I find myself not all that interested with just racing in the game. It's mechanics are simple, the races are almost beside the point. The real draw is what this racing game did completely different from everything else at the time(And maybe since, even in its own series), by providing a well implemented mode that doesn't even rely on racing for its entertainment.
It also looks better than any other PS1 racer. It's weird to me that the subsequent iterations of the franchise never went back to the story mode feature and also fail to match R4 in style or music content. Maybe the series development just got between trying to appeal to the people who went to it for racing, and the folks who just wanted a good time. Or maybe the producers got too caught up in trying to compete with the other racing franchises.
1 comment:
Good words.
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