ugvm

the site of uk.games.video.misc

Virtua Racing and Virtua Racing Deluxe: evolution of the Mega Drive

Posted on Written by

Virtua Racing in the arcade was a revelation. Until this point driving games were generally represented by a curving path drawn on a 2D plane, with you having to react left and right to keep in the middle of the road (the game was moving your sprite automatically in the opposite direction). As amazing a game Chase HQ on the CPC was, the driving model was basic at best. Even Road Rash had only a semblance of steering. There were some exceptions – Hard Drivin’, Stunt Car Racer, all the Mode 7 flat racers on the SNES – but it wasn’t until Virtua Racing appeared that you could really feel like you were driving a racing car.

It came with a price tag. While most games in the arcades were 50p a go (or even 10p for the older cabinets), the big noticeable Virtua Racing cabinet was £1. I hadn’t paid £1 for a go of an arcade game since the Virtuality cabinet on which I played VTOL. At least Virtua Racing didn’t make me feel ill, with a headset that didn’t fit properly and a framerate that was probably measured in seconds per frame, although going back to the arcade game now the refresh rate isn’t anything to write home about either.

So I didn’t play VR much in the arcade, but the few times I did it was a great experience. And then they announced it was going to be released for the Mega Drive. Oh my.

It cost £70, almost twice the price of a standard game, and it included an extra processor to allow for the polygonal graphics. The framerate wasn’t amazing (15 fps compared to that arcade’s 30), the graphics were very much cut back, but the feeling of racing was still there. I bought Virtua Racing and played it a lot.

I don’t think any other games ever used the same extra processor on the Mega Drive, but not long after Virtua Racing was released Sega announced new hardware for the home – not only a new console (which would be launched as the Saturn), but an add-on for the Mega Drive to increase its capabilities. The 32X did not sell well, which is why I was able to buy mine for £25 a couple of years later. It’s a fun machine to own because the games are actually pretty decent, even today.

Sega released Virtua Racing Deluxe for the 32X, and it’s a big step up from the Mega Drive version. It runs at 20 fps – which is still very low for today’s standards, but feels fine – and there’s a lot more detail on the screen. I played this version even more than the MD game, even though I did get it much later on.

Since Virtua Racing Deluxe was a launch game for the 32X, both these games came out in 1994 – March for the Mega Drive, and December for the 32X. Comparing the two games shows quite a lot of progress for nine months – and the huge upgrade the 32X was able to enable.

The resolution and clarity of the graphics is immediately apparent here – the 32X has more colours, relying less on dithering for shading, and everything is made up of more polygons. Even the HUD overlay is better constructed, with the map rotating with the car, and the information taking up a little less space.

I must apologise for the lack of consistency between these images – I wasn’t planning on comparing them when I took the screenshots. Nevertheless, you can see here the detail on the car is massively improved for the 32X game, even if you can’t see the struts holding on the wheels (due to them being the same colour grey as the road).

You can also see that I completed the course faster on the 32X.

The 32X has added particles, a clarity around the edge of the road, and for some reason the car’s at a slightly different angle.

Revisiting these games (admittedly via emulation) is instructive to see how far we’ve come, and yet also how much has remained the same. Virtua Racing came out on the Switch a few years ago, and it is (as you’d expect) even better than the arcade game – 60 fps, improved handling, expanded game modes – but the game plays the same as ever, and the Mega Drive versions are just as fun.

Rise of the Tomb Raider: killing the bear

Posted on Written by

Ten years ago in 2014 I played and completed the 2013 game called Tomb Raider, which is different from the 1996 game called Tomb Raider which I completed in 1998. I’ve done this joke before. I enjoyed the last game in the series, and picked up the sequel in a sale quite soon after its 2015 launch on Xbox 360. I didn’t play it. I then bought it for the PS4 in a sale a couple of years later, when they announced a free DLC which enabled a limited VR mode. I then also didn’t play that. In 2020 Sony gave the game away on PS Plus, which I claimed, and downloaded, and again didn’t play. I can’t recall if I have it on the Xbox One as well, but that wouldn’t surprise me.

I’ve played some of it now. It’s good.

The beginning of the game is a little clichéd, in that you start in the midst of an action-packed sequence, climbing up a mountain during a blizzard and storm, and then the game resets to a few weeks earlier to explain how you got into that situation. This start acts as an introduction to the movement controls, with ice picks making a welcome return from the first game (where they were introduced half way through to allow new areas to open up). It’s nice enough, but the setting doesn’t really show off the game’s main draws. Those don’t come until a little later, when you realise that – although there is a resemblance to the Uncharted games in terms of story progression, platform puzzles, and general story – this game is a lot less linear and allows for greater exploration.

For a while you are pushed through a linear path, exposing the story of Trinity and the prophet they were chasing. Lara’s dad had tracked this down to Syria, but when you get to the tomb it’s empty. Of course, bad guys arrive at the same time and blow everything up. While fleeing, you find a clue which leads you to Siberia – and back to the opening sequence.

After climbing the icy peak, leaving companions behind, you see hidden settlements in the distance but the weather is worsening, leaving you to find shelter and explore. It is here that the open world really shows itself; you must find supplies, set up a campfire, craft a bow and arrows, and hunt for food. I explored the entire area provided, finding a few soldiers who had been left to protect the area, and quickly dispatched them and the deer that they were sitting among. Got to get some meat.

I remember a complaint about the first game (that is, the first game of the modern set) was the number of people that Lara killed, which was quite at odds to the stories of the original Tomb Raider games. This seems to be a little more restrained so far, although that may be because I have only just reached significant numbers of people Up until now, the main violence has been against animals, and in particular, a bear who was guarding the exit to the area in which I’d been hunting and exploring.

Let’s just say I’m not yet fully used to the controls.

After escaping the bear once, I found some poisonous mushrooms, made up an incapacitating concoction to add to my arrows, and then went back to dispatch him. It still took a couple of attempts. I hope my general competence with the controls improves soon.

Pinball Dreams: frighteningly accurate

Posted on Written by

When I went to Arcade Club for the RLLMUK anniversary meet last year, I spent a little time on pinball machines, completely failing to get the ball anywhere I wanted – and when I did, I was never quite sure if I was meant to get there anyway. Pinball machines can be very confusing in terms of which routes you should be hitting and how to gain the jackpot. The overload of flashing lights and sounds doesn’t help.

Maybe that’s why I’ve generally preferred videogame pinball. It is often much easier to see where the targets are, the tables can often tell more of a story, and everything’s a little calmer. The extremes of this come to Sonic Spinball, which is hardly a traditional pinball game at all, and Super Mario Ball, where the game is almost adventure-like. A lot rests on the physics of the ball, and whether it’s realistic. Sonic Pinball Party was pretty good apart from the fact the ball felt too light and floaty. Pinball on the CD-i, which was probably the game I played most on that machine, was far too fast and skittery. Pokémon Pinball was a little slow. In recent years, I’ve played a bit of Zen Pinball, which is well known for its accurate ball physics but is a bit too faithful to real pinball tables for my tastes.

I remember sitting in Kevin’s house one afternoon, back in around 1993, and him showing us Pinball Dreams on the Amiga. We took turns in playing on the four different tables, and I remember being really impressed with how realistic it felt, while also being a bit frustrated with the fact that sometimes you couldn’t see far enough up the table to know where you should be aiming. Background graphics indicating the pathways were OK to a point, but I made some shots which narrowly missed the openings. Still, it was excellent and I came away very impressed. I played Pinball Dreams on WinUAE a few years ago and those memories came flooding back: this was probably the best videogame version of pinball, with clearly laid out tables, great ball physics, and a great competitive element to it. At the time I had a Mega Drive and a CPC on which to play games, and neither had a pinball game that could match it.

That’s quite a preamble but by now you may have joined the dots. Pinball Dreams, CPC, couldn’t I just have bought the port which you’ve no doubt seen in the cover image? Well, no. Pinball Dreams for the CPC is an official conversion which was released in 2019 – initially intended for a commercial release, but after that fell through it was freely distributed. With such a late release, the team behind the game has been able to make use of all manner of clever tricks to get the game running, and it’s an astounding success.

All four of the tables from the Amiga original are included, with the game requiring 128k and a disk drive to run. There are obvious graphical compromises – the CPC can manage at most 16 from a selection of 27 colours, and the tables are significantly more zoomed out (I understand to allow for a more limited scrolling requirement). Yet the physics and controls are spot on, feeling accurate and realistic throughout. There has been only one occasion where the physics model went a little wonky, with the ball balancing on top of one of the bumpers.

My favourite table is probably Beat Box, with Nightmare a close second. Both of these have some clever routing of ball paths around the table, and Beat Box in particular has a good variety of targets. There is actually a real benefit to the tables being zoomed out, as alluded to above – you can get a much better feeling for where to aim for.

I am still pretty hopeless at the game, mind. I managed to get fourth place on the high score table for Steel Wheel once. More practice is needed.

Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain (PS5): COMPLETED!

Posted on Written by

Although I’d had access to this via PS++++++++ for some time, I’d never downloaded it as I, erroneously, thought it was that vertically scrolling shooter EDF spin-off rather than a “normal” third-person co-op giant insect/robot apocalypse game. Then I noticed the screenshots and realised I was thinking of Earth Defense Force: Wing Diver The Shooter and Iron Rain is, in fact, more of the game I wanted.

It is, broadly, the same game that most of the other games have been. You’re one of a few remaining soldiers, defending the world from giant ants, spiders and wasps, various alien robots and attack ships, as well as NotGodzilla and a huge sea lizard thing. It differs from others in the series by being – mostly – more serious and realistic. At least, as realistic as such a plot can be, anyway.

There have been tweaks to how you get better weapons and armour, as you now collect credits and spend them rather than just pick up new guns and rocket launchers and so on, which I don’t like as much. Really, though, it doesn’t make enough of a difference to worry about.

Like recent EDFs, I played through in co-op with my daughter. It’s always way better playing EDF as a pair, and it is, perhaps bizarrely, one of her favourite game series. We found it quite a lot easier than earlier titles, although the final level was really difficult.

Angry Birds: completed!

Posted on Written by

I have a strange sense of déjà vu. Having completed Angry Birds back in 2010, Rovio continued to update the game with new secrets, levels, and abilities, bringing in new birds and themes from other Angry Bird titles. It has always been the case that a sequel would introduce new concepts, but now, with the ability to update old games, those new concepts can feed backwards as well.

Anyway, I digress. Angry Birds – known on the Apple game centre as AB Classic – is actually no longer available to buy or even redownload. I am fortunate that my installation has carried over a couple of phone migrations, and still works. I understand that others have not been so lucky. Rovio has stated that it would require a complete rebuild to bring their older games up to modern standards, and they are committed to doing this, but that was three years ago.

In any case, I’m not affected by that. I have, for the past few months, been playing through a level at a time, getting three stars on each before moving on. There are some levels where the three stars came due to a lucky physics event, or just grinding the same shot over and over until it hit. There are some where it took a single new attempt to upgrade from 1 or 2 stars to 3. There were even some (a very few) levels I hadn’t played before.

There are a load of add-on mechanics that they added to Angry Birds which interfered with the purity of the game – and I’ve not actually used these during my playthrough. I have various exploding birds, catapult accuracy upgrades, and other things across the top of my screen, but I haven’t looked into how I could use them. Instead, I’ve completed every level using the standard birds and no upgrades.

I’ve also found and completed every golden egg. Some of these required the use of a guide.

The biggest difficulty I faced, other than the odd level which required pinpoint accuracy, was that the game really isn’t designed for the aspect ratio of my current phone. On many occasions I simply couldn’t see high enough to accurately aim the birds, or the catapult itself was too close to the top of the screen (hidden among the powerup icons!) to enable exact positioning. This was the reason for the guide use for golden eggs as well; there were a couple which were off screen and no amount of zooming out would reveal them.

The last set of levels were a departure from the standard objective, with the pigs coming to grab an egg using a variety of machines. To get three stars on these levels, it wasn’t a question of beating a certain score; instead you had to protect the egg (one star), pop all the pigs (one star), and use fewer than the target number of birds (one star). Luckily the pigs seemed to favour building their machines around a TNT crate.

So, again, completed. Three stars on every level. All golden eggs found, and their levels completed. I think I’m done for now – the only things left to do are to buy the golden eagle upgrade to play for feathers (which isn’t actually much fun), and play daily in the mighty league. I think I’m Birdsed out.