Tag: Car Racing

Review: Initial D Volume 1

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Initial D Volume 1

Note: The specific thing I reviewed was Initial D omnibus Volume 1 which is actually the first two manga volumes in one book. But whatever.

Reading the legendary racing series in original manga form made me think that… the anime kind of superannuated it. Ok, I already knew what happened from seeing the anime (spoiler alert: Takumi wins), and while the manga has some distinct diffferences (like the order of races), it’s not all that different. Certainly not different enough to be easily better or worse. This isn’t a “behind every good 1970s movie is a bad 1970s book” type of deal.

But it’s pretty self-explanatory how much better in motion picture form a car racing series works. Having one large panel (even if well-drawn) of two cars at a turn with a huge comic “VROOOM!” sound effect just isn’t the same as watching two cars (even if they’re from PS1/N64-era CGI) zip around the same turn. I don’t blame Shigeno for anything. It’s just the format is a lot inherently less capable.

A Thousand Words: Heading Out

On By coilerxiiIn A Thousand Words, Review1 Comment

Heading Out

I saw “road trip” themed games and got Heading Out on a lark. I want to say that it was a worthwhile playthrough simply because of the feelings it generated and how at the very least it was interesting. But to be honest, this is a game where the messaging actually felt insulting to me.

So the gameplay itself is moderate roguelike resource management between driving set-pieces that control like a second-rate arcade racer from the mid 90s. I think it says something about its interest that I turned the difficulty down at the first chance. Beyond that, the best strategy is to frequently cut off road, which doesn’t feel right. Which unfortunately meant I had to experience the plot. Oh boy, the plot.

You’re a faceless figure on a trip of reckless driving in the 1970s USA. Through a series of not-exactly difficult deductions, it’s revealed the player is stuck in a Groundhog Day loop after being tricked into a deal with the devil. Is it real or metaphorical? I know it’s pretentious. As they go west to face the “world’s greatest driver” (an instant obvious hallucination), they develop a reputation as the “Interstate Jackalope” and various people comment on them (and other things) over the radio. This is the worst part of the game. The music itself ranges from serviceable to very good, with a lot of guitars and early 1970s electronics (think electric organs).

The “talk radio” is not. It is what happened if someone took the anti-American axe-grindiness of Grand Theft Auto at its worst but with none of the goofiness, and (even?) worse quality all around. It’s honestly one of the most mean-spirited pieces of fiction I’ve seen. Like the overwhelming theme is of some bitter underemployed elitist screeching at everything and everyone. You have the screaming right-wing host who is designed both to be completely wrong about everything while also being sanded down to the point where he can’t be as vile as a real George Wallace-era figure of that time and place would be. There’s a ripoff of the movie Network desperate host broadcasting and two liberal women who are supposed to be better than Mr. Right Wrong but who you’re also supposed to sneer at (see what I meant?), and the literal (drug?) devil who’s providing social commentary that is still supposed to be profound but ends up being the ramblings of someone who just read A Peoples History of the United States while listening to turn of the millennium whine-rock.

Also the story scenes/adventure book style choices you encounter are variations of: “I don’t really care because this is all a time loop/crazy drug-induced hallucination anyway” – “the same bitter nihilistic things you had to listen to now you have to read and watch” and, in my least favorite scene, treating immigrants who are sincerely in awe of America’s wealth with barely concealed subtext of them being naive fools and not, you know, people who actually have firsthand knowledge of what real poverty and oppression is like.

Anyway, I spited the game by ramming into as many things on the road as I could while giving my character the least sympathetic backstory in the choices allowed. (He was an adulterer who was driven to despair and rampages out of boredom).

…Whoa, never thought the plot of a rougelike would invoke this much reaction in me.

A Thousand Words: OutRun

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OutRun

Sega’s legendary car driving game OutRun was an arcade time attack game where you control a couple in a Ferrari trying to make it to the end of a series of branching paths before the clock runs out. That is the least impressive thing about it. The most impressive thing is that a game in 1986, even an arcade game, manages to still look fresh and well animated to this day, and have things like a changeable radio and diverging paths. Remember, the console stuff at this time was the likes of Mach Rider.

It took over a decade to finally be able to make an arcade-quality home port of it. Which speaks to how limit-pushing it was/is. While today its most direct legacy of giant arcade machine driving games with steering wheels and frequently even pedals is viewed as outdated kitsch, every game with vehicles owes a lot to this.

A Thousand Words: Initial D

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Initial D

One of the most famous car racing works of fiction and the biggest reason why people know the ‘eurobeat’ subgenre of electronic music, Initial D is the reason why there are so many memes of cars and “RUNNING IN THE NINETIES” and “GAS GAS GAS”. It’s the story of ‘touge’ racing through winding mountain roads, tofu deliveryman/prodigy driver Takumi Fujiwara, and the Toyota Corolla AE86, which thanks to it has gained popularity well beyond what a mid-80s Corolla would get.

Seriously, it’s like how in Red Storm Rising the Iceland invasion was a crazy jury-rigged gamble but so much else treats it like normal and standard. The whole point is that it’s an underestimated clunker. It’s like a tank novel with an M48 or T-54 or something with an ace crew and everyone thinks it’s the tank. But I digress.

This is basically an action show/manga with cars instead of glowing superheroes. The most famous “First Stage” initial (no pun intended) anime adaptation holds this to the core: With early CG and blaring music, characters dramatically take actions graaaaaduallly and somehow have the ability to hold huge monologues and conversations while roaring through perilous streets. It honestly sounds better than it actually is, with the pattern of ‘how is this ’86 winning’ being worn down even then.

But still, that music…

Rally Racing

On By coilerxiiIn EssayLeave a comment

Rally Racing is a distinctive form of car racing. Cars go down specially cordoned off sections of roads called ‘stages’, which can be all shapes, sizes, and surfaces. They do not directly race against each other but instead compete for the fastest time. Cars have a crew of two with a navigator/co-driver giving rapid directions to ensue the driver has greater reaction time.

Rallying is one of those sports that’s not very big in the US compared to its massive European popularity and it’s easy to see why. Rallying came from small, closed, twisting European roads. Big open American ones were/are more favorable to things like straight-line racing (less popular on the other side of the ocean).

I find it an interesting distance sport, and I don’t mean the length the cars travel. Rather it’s incredibly fascinating at a distance. A rally driving crew and their car has to be a generalist unlike the specialists of other racing disciplines. One has to be a speedster AND a cornerer AND an offroader and so on. Yet it’s also not very photogenic, whether in person or on television. It’s because the cars aren’t directly racing each other. So you see a car go by, then another car go by, and so on.

Still, I like looking at sports from a distance, which is why rallying is my newest fascination. That it’s extremely easy to simulate in BeamNG.Drive doesn’t hurt either.