It seems funny to me but, now that I have a massively more powerful computer than what I had when I was younger, I don’t play games on it any more. Back about 20 years ago, when the Pentium was just making its first appearance, I had tons of games on my computer. And, as new games came out, you’d need to upgrade your video card to support the better graphics of the new games. Who remembers the Tseng Labs ET4000 video card, it was the duck’s guts back then? Games were just progressing from platform to first person perspective and racing games were all the go.
I used to love playing the Microprose Formula One Grand Prix games and they got got more sophisticated and more realistic with each new version, Grand Prix, GP2, GP3 and GP4 were great games and had the advantage of being eminently tuneable. Hackers worked out all sorts of performance and realism add-ons to the game so that you could race as the current F1 drivers rather than the ones that came with the game (not all drivers agreed to be featured in the game so, along with the well-known names, there were lots of made-up ones, drivers who, curiously enough, had names that resembled closely the driver who they were really supposed to be!
Of course the era was also replete with many arcade-style racing games which were huge fun as well. My personal favourite was “Megarace.” Introduced in 1993, the game was set in a futuristic world where you had to race a series of bad guys and beat them on a selection of futuristic tracks. Set as a TV show, it featured the ultra-tacky MC, Lance Boyle whose commentary was so UN politically correct that a later version of the game came out with a drastically toned-down script.
However, finding a realistic simulator for motorcycle racing was another thing altogether. Algorithms that were known could duplicate car racing scenarios but the added complication of a bike having to lean as well as go around corners seemed to always defeat the developers. So us motorcycle people were forced to play arcade motorcycle games instead of simulations. And my all-time favourite was “Road Rash”. A series of motorcycle races through urban, city and country courses was enlivened by the ability to win prize money, buy a better bike and become a champion. Get caught by the police, however, and you had to go back to the beginning and start again. And it wasn’t just racing, you could use weapons of all varieties including clubs and bike chains to take out your opponents and they, of course, could do the same to you. I can’t even begin to say how many hours I wasted playing this addictive and fun game.
A while ago I thought it would be fun to play it again so I looked on the net and found that it was available as a download. I was stoked until I had completed the download only to find that, as well as downloading the game, I had downloaded a whole hatful of “nasties” which proved to be immovable by any means that I knew. In the end I resorted to reformatting and re-installing Windows 7 to get ride of any trace of it and have had no problems since.
I’d love to play it again, but, until I am sure that the version that I can get is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I think I will just have to be content with looking back on my pleasant memories of playing this terrific game.