Viewing entries tagged
arcade
As usual with any kind of racing or fighting game, I have to preface this post with a disclaimer. My enjoyment and enthusiasm for racing games is only equalled by my complete lack of skill. The same goes for fighting games, as these are two genres that I always love to play, but am forever woefully awful in every way.
Does every game need to be pushing the limits of the medium and creating original and innovative experiences? Clearly the answer is: no. In a world where the big budget games show up every year with the latest and greatest in technical fidelity, and countless little indie projects are released every single day with weird and wonderful takes on what a video game can actually become. I now attempt to answer the question, whether or not there's still room for a game that doesn't do a whole lot of anything at all.
Whenever a particular series of games has a monopoly on a genre, I'm always eager to check out any competition that crops up. This is often the case with sports games as real life teams and branding get licensed to a single developer and nobody really wants to play as fictional teams instead of the ones they actually support IRL. Thankfully though, there's a bit more variety to be found in the racing genre.
At some point when arcade games were losing their audience to home consoles and computers, we lost a whole lot of fun genres. Of course, we can't all have a light-gun setup at home, or a full sized motorbike to sit on and race, because it's just not practical. Even with the return of peripherals like plastic guitars and skate boards, we still couldn't replicate the arcade experience all that well.
There are some genres that I never expect to surprise me, but that's okay. When it comes to sports and racing games, there isn't a lot of room to move, as we all have some kind of understanding about what we're going to get. So when a little racing game comes along and finds a unique identity between arcade and simulation, it deserves to be noticed.
There once was a time between when I got my first job, and when I actually had to start paying bills. This was a time of spending money on anything at all, without responsibilities or obligation to tie you down. It was the perfect time for feeding coins into arcade cabinets, long after the arcades had gone out of fashion and jacked up the prices.
In the last few years I've been increasingly turned on to the whole re-imagined 1980s style that's brought on some interesting interpretations of alt-retro-isms. I don't know if it's been around the whole time, but all the amazing synthwave music and neon-fueled art has become some of my favourite retro-media these days.
