Moto Racer

I may have to buy this game just so I can look at the manual. I was working at EA in Foster City (before they moved to Redwood City) and got to play test this game for 3-4 evenings. It was my first test gig. Actually I think it was just final (pre-shipping) testing just to find any last minute bugs. The one thing I will NEVER forget about this game is how HARD it is on the toughest difficulty level. I think the final track and the hardest level the only way you could WIN was to run a perfect race, never hit any obsticles and you had to use a manual bike, the auto-shifter just wasn't fast enough. Hard game, but immensely satisfying. Look for Andy O'Brien in the QA/Testing credits. I think I'm in there.

Seeing this game released gave me that good old fuzzy feeling you get when you see again a game you played so much as a child. It's a fun, simply put. It's not particularly advanced or bloated, nor does it need to. It's pure, entertaining racing fun through some great courses you'll play over and over - and love it.

This game was such a surprise to me. I had/have no real interest in the racing genre, let alone the bike racing sub-genre, but my father got this game for free along with the first real videocard he ever bought in the 90's, the Viper. I remember seeing this game and I tried it out after my father went X-mas shopping with my mother one saturday and I didn't stop playing for 4 hours. I loved this game so much. The mechanics were top-notch but not over-the-top or only for the hardcore like most sims out there. The music in the first level was one of those guilty pleasure tracks in a videogame I could listen to forever, along with most of the rest of the music. The levels were varied and difficult and there was plenty to unlock. I've had the cd-rom for this game in my vintage game cabinet for a while but it's one of those that was very tempermental depending on the OS. Gog, thank you so much for bringing back a classic!!!

To me, this game is reminiscent of some arcade moto racer I'd play as a kid. The race design is great and most maps are pretty original. Unfortunately, the best maps of the game must be unlocked so you'll have to be somewhat patient there. Your patience will be further tested by the fact that the second race of the championship is one of the hardest so it will make a break a lot of players. Those who get past the second level of the championship will muster the dedication to go through the rest of the game. Once you complete all the tracks in the championship, you'll get to do them again in the opposite direction (and then there is the pocket mode after that, but I couldn't... it looked too silly... you'll see if you get there) which will add some replay value to the game. For the most parts, the physics of the game have a good arcade feel to them and the game plays the physics a great deal with the various turns, the altitude variations and the various bikes you can select pre-race. However, most of the bikes in the selection are just bad (you don't want a bike without a good grip or a good top speed and the breaking is mostly useless so you'll end up ignoring that attribute) so from an initial selection of maybe 10 bikes, you'll be left with roughly 3 viable alternatives that you'll want to experiment with. It's still a choice. While the bike handling and jumping is just awesome, the collision handling mechanism is not. The accidents are kinda wimpish. Most of the time, hitting an obstacle means a complete stop and little else. When your guy does fall off his bike, he'll only fall a short distance away despite hitting obstacles at great speed. And not the least: the last level of the game is the great wall of China (cool hun?), yet you cannot fall off the wall even when the physics of the game dictate that you should have flown over. The other part of the collision handling mechanism that is not satisfying is the mechanism that dictates whether your guy falls off his bike or not in a collision. Sometimes, you'll hit am obstacle at nearly full and speed and you'll think there is not way your guy won't fall off his bike on this one and yet he won't. At other times, you'll see an unavoidable collision coming (maybe you didn't posture yourself properly for a sharp turn for example) and decelerate a fair deal before hitting the obstacle, but your guys will still fall off his bike and you'll be thinking "WTF!" at the top of your head. Also, for good or for bad, your opponents will feel like moving obstacles. There is no satisfying way to tackle them short of passing them without touching them. If you do hit them, you'll usually lose speed or get bumped in a direction you do not want to and given that there are other racers around trying to get ahead, it's not in a pair's interest to get caught in a bumping match. In a way, it's somewhat closer to a realistic racing scenario (in a real race, you want to avoid collisions), but people that are used to more aggressive driving games (Road Rush anyone?) will have to adjust their mindset appropriately. Those who are looking for a more underground kind of racing might be in for a disappointment. There are not cops and no incoming traffic in this game. And there is not "prize" money either. This game really puts the focus on formal, arcade racing with crazy tracks. As long as you finish a track in the top 3, you move on to the next track and that's it (won't matter much whether you were first or third). And you can lose in a track as many times as it takes for you to get it right so there is little incentive to play the single tracks before tackling the tournament (to unlock the coolest tracks) unless you are looking to get the best possible finish time on a particular track. So in short, this is a great racing game that really puts the emphasis on arcade racing without getting physical or managerial (some decision about the bikes between tracks, that's it). Most of the physics are great (in an arcade kind of way), but the collision handling isn't. If you enjoy racing games, you should like this one.