Retro Racing Review

Editor’s note: I originally authored and published the below post on a now defunct site called “The Cool Ship,” where it ran on January 15, 2012. Enjoy this reprised content!

I wanted to review a retro car racing game, but in the course of playing a few I ended up rediscovering so many racing games I’ll just have to combine them into a two part review. I’ll call it, the retro racing review! Load up on Red Bulls and stash a few Zelda cookies for the duration.

Quarantine - PC

Cool factor: bloody

What do you get when you have a quarantined zombie city where the few uninfected need to travel in armored, weaponized taxis? A bloody Doom clone, that’s what. Quarantine did not disappoint me when I replayed it, having hoped to find decent driving mechanics, an upgradeable taxi, and one of the less explored branches of apocalyptic game lore. Just ask yourself, have I ever survived a human mutation experiment by picking up fares and installing a front mounted flamethrower on my taxi?

Different doesn’t describe this game, it offends it. If you’re trying to find anything negative from reading this review, all I can say is the bumping into stuff can get annoying. It takes getting used to but since the game is now abandonware, you can’t complain about the price. The only difficulty I faced was my tendency to run over my fares before I could pick them up. Oops.

Monster Truck Madness - PC

Cool factor: horsepower

Jump (really high) into one of your favorite monster trucks and stomp on the accelerator. You’ll be rewarded with the fearsome sound of hundreds of horsepowers and the gift of flight, sort of. The actual racing in this game is spot on for the genre, but I wouldn’t call it realistic. I found that there is a lot of attention to detail behind MTM, like having a daisy horn, tweakable drivetrain options and multiple driving perspectives.

All the cool trucks are included, and I was shocked to find they are all available right away. There’s nothing to unlock. No new tracks, no new trucks, nothing. If you want to play this game, go ahead, but you’ll have to find the motivation deep within your self. I just reminded myself I’ll never get to drive a real monster truck, and that was enough.

Midtown Madness - PC

Cool factor: funky

This game is so backwards. A VW Beetle is agile and fast, and a Cadillac Eldorado has the rear end traction of a Ford GT90. You can drive a city bus in a race. If you have fond remembrances of this game, or you want to see what PC graphics were like in 1999 right before the Y2k scare, I dare you to download the demo or dig out your old copy and try to get it working on your gazillion core gaming rig.

There are a few funny voice overs and impossible driving moments to be had, but the actual racing could use a lot of work. If you can avoid spending any money that would be most advisable. I only recommend playing it again to those who have precious memories or an old copy of it collecting dust in a dark corner.

Stunt Driver - PC

Cool factor: customizable

Forget about your normal mapped textures and anti-aliasing, this PC racer has the visual beauty of a raging hippopotamus. But ask any true gear-head, is the driving experience about how good the car looks, or do we care more about how it drives? Ok yeah we do care about how it looks, a lot. Still, maybe some of us don’t have the money for the pretty stuff.

Stunt Driver just has a few tracks and one car to drive, plus the controls don’t really lend themselves to tight steering or realistic racing physics. I still like the game though, for the wisecracking dialogue and the custom track builder. In its time this game stood out to me for those reasons, but playing it again didn’t really bring a flood of memories, so maybe this is one you can skip. Just play Minecraft or Little Big Planet 2 instead.

3D Ultra RC Racers - PC

Cool factor: obscure

Critics weren’t too kind to this game on release, and it falls into such a niche market that I’m doubtful anyone currently on board The Cool Ship has played it. If you have, you know that a predisposition to playing with RC cars is the requirement for enjoying the game. I imagine it would have been a perfect 10-15 minute distraction during battery charges when I was avidly racing my real RC car around the basement or yard.

I genuinely liked playing this game again, and it reminded me of all the fun I had with it the first time around. Upgrading the cars works like Super Off Road, and the racing is basically the same too. The wide array of car selections and various weapons and traps, plus lots of track variations distinguish it from Super Off Road enough to demand that you at least give this game a try. I’ll feign not to sound disappointed if you hate it.

Revolt - PC

Cool factor: incomparable

Remember your first fully directional remote controlled car? Mine was the Ricochet, a Tyco designed car that could flip upside down and still drive. I used to drive it off 10-foot drops just to see if I could break the thing. Then there was my XRC ATRC by Hasbro, I drove it underwater on purpose and couldn’t kill that one either. I had fun with RC cars as a kid, I don’t know if you could tell. Revolt was a big part of that fun.

After I beat the game years ago, I used to spend time in some sort of custom car editor. I don’t know where I found it but I could make different bodies for the cars in Revolt and adjust the physics and properties. Then I would also race online against a friend of mine or just random people.

I know I haven’t actually said what kind of game Revolt is, and I don’t know if I can. It has the best of everything, good racing, fun tracks, lots of cars, a difficult progression curve, a custom track builder and apparently even a custom car builder (I don’t remember where or how). Even coming back to play this again, I still enjoyed it and had to stop myself from getting sucked back in all over again. This could happen to you too.

That’s the end of the first half of the retro racing review, but stay tuned for part two where I delve more into console and arcade racing games.