Right now, I'm playing through one of my old favorite games - Diddy Kong Racing, on the Nintendo 64. It got me thinking a bit about racing games. Now, I'm not a big fan of the "normal" racing games, things like Gran Turismo or Need for Speed bore me to death... But whacky, cartoon racing games - I just can't get enough of them :-)
I'll probably be writing more about these at a later date, but I thought I'd share with you my three favorite racing games of all time:
This one here is Diddy Kong Racing, on the Nintendo 64. For starters, I think it is just an amazingly pretty game. They didn't have any fancy shader effects, and they had very few polys to work with, and they still managed to get it look very very nice. This is a particularly great single-player racing game, as it's got a nice system for unlocking new tracks, and it's really good at giving you that "just one more try and I'm sure I'll make it"-feeling.
Next up - Pen Pen TriIcelon, on the Dreamcast. Basically, you're controlling a weird animal of your choice, for example a penguin, and you race around the tracks using three different methods: sliding on your belly, running or swimming. There's no powerups in this game, but it's got well balanced checkpoints, and some obstacles which makes things difficult at times. A great racer, for both single and multiplayer.
And then, of course, Mario Karts, again on the Nintendo 64. I think that when it comes to multiplayer racing, there's nothing better than good old Mario Karts. It's always possible to catch up, almost no matter how far behind you get, and it's got awesome powerups and weapons you can use to even out the odds. There's plenty of versions of this game, and I'm sure most of them are good, but the Nintendo 64 version is the one I've played the most.
When I play these types of games, I really get in the mood for making one of them myself. It's about the only type of game where I feel that 3D actually has an advantage to offer over 2D. Who know, maybe I'll add a little 3D to my Pixie engine and make something of it... Time will tell :-)
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