Spirit of Speed 1937

“People Only Love the Underdogs That Win.”

“At least you can start from pole!”
North American Dreamcast release, front cover.

Extry, extry, read all about it: The automobiles are off to the races! Why, it feels just like yesterday when I would have to hoof it on just my two hocks to get across the apple. And by the time I finally wound up at the hop, I reckon I’d be too joed to cut a rug — let alone put the moves on any of the sweetie patooties. Talk about gumming the works for this old pip! That’s why I tell you, these new-fangled “tin cans?” Well, they’re just the bee’s knees, I tells ya’: They get me from the cave to the clip joint while keeping my uprights feeling like eggs in coffee, you dig? And believe me when I tell you that the dolls out there blow their wigs when I show ‘em my motor vehicle, boy howdy! Now I’ve got the flames on me all hours of the day, and I couldn’t be more jazzed!

… You know, I originally had the idea that I would try to write this whole article in mock 1930s American vernacular, but I’m honestly exhausted after just one paragraph of it. Goofy bits aside, there are folk out there who genuinely romanticize the so-called “good ol’ days,” and who wouldn’t mind seeing the clock set back something like nine decades. Oh, what a time it must have been back then: You had flapper gals, classic cinema, the advent of jazz music… white people quickly co-opting jazz music, institutionalized racism, crippling economic depression — nothin’ but good times all around, yessiree. But perhaps no aspect of that bygone era is more romanticized than its vintage cars, from back in the day before motor vehicles were held to any of those pesky “safety standards” manufacturers abide by nowadays. Boy howdy, am I sure glad that the latest and greatest in vehicular tech is so much more safe and reliable!

Of course, classic cars nowadays make for particularly expensive investments, reserved mostly for the inexplicably rich and famous. We don’t exactly get to see them out on the racetracks anymore, either — being made to square off against (and undoubtedly getting smoked by) the latest in automotive engineering. Hell, these hoopties of days long gone rarely even get to feature virtually in video games, because who would wanna drive around in some janky old jalopy when you can hit the nitrous at 300 miles per hour in some fancy Italian supercar? As such, classic car enthusiasts looking to so much as simulate the experience of driving their beloved Jenkins Model K or whatever have never really had much in the way of options… Save for one. With their dying breath, the infamous LJN emerged from the depths to spit out one final title in the year 2000: Spirit of Speed 1937 on the Sega Dreamcast. So, let’s give it the ol’ looksie-doo, and see for ourselves whether it’s the bee’s knees or a load of bushwa!

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article represents an effort years in the making. By which I mean, it has taken over four years for me to actually get around to tidying up a draft which I began writing way back in February 2018 (which I left at a point of roughly 40% estimated completion) and bring it to fruition in the form of this finished article. As an unexpected perk of this perpetual delaying, an opportunity emerged around the time I picked writing it back up: The chance to gain previously unavailable insight into Spirit of Speed’s development courtesy of one James Harvey (@AgileHarvey), who had conducted an interview with the game’s lead designer (one John Jones-Steele) as part of the upcoming book Dreamcast: Year Two. James was kind enough to provide us an advance preview of this interview, which proved essential in our own detailing the history of the troubled racing simulator. I’ll also take this opportunity to thank The Dreamcast Junkyard, who are responsible for arranging this collaboration and for their own exhaustive documentations of Dreamcast history.

This isn’t a joke. I legitimately considered writing this entire article while trying to keep up that obnoxious gimmick. As my editor / roommate was quick to inform me when I first pitched the idea to her: “That would get old after one paragraph.” She wasn’t wrong back in 2018, and she’s not wrong now in 2022.

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Indiepocalypse #29: I Treat you Special, ’cause You Rally Special

Cover art by ar_Tekko.

Our monthly feature highlighting oddball and obscure  games for @PIZZAPRANKS‘ Indiepocalypse rides again! This month sees 1988’s Paris-Dakar Rally Special! for Nintendo’s Famicom speeding onto the scene; and presenting us a gauntlet of grueling driving, maze-solving,  on-foot platforming, and even encounters against armed combatants — all in the name of “simulating” a real-life rally circuit, which only really deals in one of those four aspects! It’s a true oddity in the driving game genre, made all the stranger by its bearing the branding for an actual race event. Ridiculously difficult and barely coherent as it may be, it’s still a real charmer of a cart in my books, and I happily filled out our allotted space this month covering the details of what makes it so unique:

Sure, maybe aspiring to no less than four different gameplay modes within your car game is a bit of a tall order. But all it should really take is one novel change-up that you can occasionally toss a player’s way: Something that requires changing the speed on a dime, or fundamentally altering the ways in which a player is made to control their vehicle. Make them have to endure some sort of vehicle-based stealth section or something! Force them to step out of the vehicle in order to scavenge for replacement parts whenever they bust a component! Make it so that if you hit a ramp, your car is suddenly able to fly, and players are suddenly immersed within some sort of impromptu flight simulator! The world is your oyster, indie developers, and racing games can be re-imagined to provide a rich new range of features and functions that the games mainstream will otherwise shy away from in their dogged pursuit of “realism.” Until the day that the real-life Dakar Rally starts incorporating firefights and game show-esque obstacle courses, don’t expect the AAA industry to deviate from their comfy little formula.

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Video Game History Hour: The Zeebo

Well, here’s something cool I somehow managed to sneak my way into: On the back of my latest work with Stop Skeletons From Fighting to help produce their video on the Zeebo games console, Derek and I were invited to talk about it on the Video Game History Hour podcast, hosted by the Video Game History Foundation’s Frank Cifaldi and Kelsey Lewin!

We discuss the ill-fated Brazilian console in some amount of depth, and get to cover some ground / field some questions we didn’t have the chance to address in the video itself. Needless to say, I’m pretty stoked to have been given the chance to appear on here and talk amongst bona fide legends of games preservation, in my role as a goofball with a hyperfixation on failed bits of gaming history. I’d love for y’all to give it a listen, and to reassure me that I didn’t embarrass myself too badly! Not like the first time I met Frank and asked if he would model my cowboy hat for a photo

Listen to the episode here!

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Resident Evil Survivor

“I Was Only Listening to It Because I’m So Bored!”

“I know you think that I’m a murderer.
But you’re wrong!”

North American PS1 release front cover.

I’ve got a confession to make: I love the Resident Evil franchise. I adore pretty much everything about it, as well as most every piece of media and ephemera that’s been borne of it. The core entries in the game series? Pretty much all masterpieces in my mind — even the so-called “worst” one. The Milla Jovivich run of live-action movies? Love each and every last schlock installment to death. The closed-down theme restaurant in Japan’s Shibuya district? I hear the “S.T.A.R.S. Original Noodles à la Barry” were to die for. Funnily enough, the one aspect I could honestly take or leave are the prevalent members of the cannibalistic undead militia themselves: I’ve never much been one for zombie media, truth be told — especially over the course of the past decade, where they’ve been run back into the ground they once rose from. And yet, Resident Evil manages to overcome this personal hurdle for me, by the sheer force of its earnest charms and compelling gameplay. Perhaps this predilection of mine makes me an outlier in the larger fandom? Or maybe it’s come to be a common sentiment at this point — a shared zombie fatigue that we collectively manage to look past.

Now, if there’s one “hot take” on the Resident Evil franchise that likely sets me furthest apart from the rest of the Resi community – an aspect of it which seems to be its most contentious, but which I’ve always gone to bat for nonetheless – it’d be this: The light gun titles deserve more love. There’s no accounting for taste, I know; but if video games ended around the time of Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles’ release, I’d at least be content knowing that the industry ended on a high note. Of course, the pair of excellent rail shooters originally released for Nintendo’s Wii were actually not the first in Capcom’s first-person zombie-shooting endeavors. To chronicle the origins of the Chronicles games, we need to travel back seven years in time — back to the fifth-generation console that first birthed the survival horror series. It’s there where you’ll find Resident Evil Survivor (known as ‘Biohazard Gun Survivor’ in Japan), serving as the franchise’s very first spin-off title. And for whatever reason, the fandom has taken to dismissing it as apocrypha in the two decades since — writing it off as some sort of major misstep or low point in the larger series’ history. And while there have certainly been worse Resident Evil games in the twenty years since (Yeah, I’ll admit it: There are, in fact, a couple stinkers), Survivor still seems to serve as the sort of go-to punching bag, for some reason? Which I reckon means it’s my contractual duty to stick up for it, then!

In this spooktacular side story on the Bad Game Hall of Fame (I originally wrote the word “spooktacular” here with intent to publish this article back in October 2021 – Cass), I’ll be doing just that: Providing some reconnaissance on how this spin-off came to be, undertaking the dangerous mission within, and escaping with a report on the details of its legacy and impact on the franchise. We’ll also provide a brief bio on the game’s infamous ghost developer, Tose; who we’ve already covered a few games by in previous articles here on the Bad Game Hall of Fame, but never really given a proper rundown / company profile on. Along the way, I’ll be doing my damndest to curb my biases — for both the Resident Evil IP and the broader light gun genre I hold so dear to my heart. But also, come on: It’s not every day that I get an excuse to talk about either on this site, so you’re gonna have to cut me at least a small bit of enthusiastic slack here. Now, with all that out of the way, let us “enter the world of survival horror”… or first-person shooting, as the case may be.

Yeah, we’ll still get to Resident Evil 6 on here some day, don’t you worry. Just know that I’m probably not gonna be particularly mean to it. Sorry in advance to disappoint y’all? Now, when it comes to the subject of something like an Umbrella Corps, on the other hand…

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Indiepocalypse #27: Resident Evils, Dressed in Black

Cover art by @nwyattal.

Our monthly feature highlighting the merits of forgotten and misbegotten  games for @PIZZAPRANKS‘ Indiepocalypse returns! This month brings us… Resident Evil 2?! Is this another April Fool’s gag? Nah: We’re just talking about its Tiger Game.com conversion. Doing so gives us the opportunity to talk about modern-day demakes and retro throwback games, and the excuse to make our plea to indie developers to keep bringing us back to a pixelated past:

I guess the message I’m really trying to get across to indie developers here is as follows: Please demake more games in the style and constraints of obsolete and obscure systems. Someone try to find a way to reconceptualize Katamari Damacy for the ColecoVision, or convert S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl to the Watara Supervision. Bring Elden Ring to the Fairchild Channel F where it truly belongs, and give us the portable version of Assassin’s Creed XIVV (or whatever the hell installment that fuckin’ series is up to now) for the TI-83 calculator that high school kids have been demanding. I don’t even know if that last joke plays any more or if that franchise is still going, but I honestly can’t be bothered to check. In all seriousness though: Demakes probably make for some valuable development practice and design insight, and I reckon we could always stand to see more of them make their way onto the web. They’re also pretty trendy too, if the idea of getting featured on Kotaku for a day before promptly receiving a takedown notice on the next appeals to you. And at that point, you can just rework the title slightly and change all the characters’ names in a pinch, and still have yourself a hot little “retro throwback” game on your portfolio. You can’t lose!

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