Racing's Ur Game.
Entry posted by Guest
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Wipeout was the first home video game racing simulation. I'm pretty certain of this.
Player Spot One, the Driver, races around while the other player spot sits perched on that left icon which looks like a clock. While The Driver follows the convoluted path of the Überlay track, Player Two, The Timer, is hitting the reset button on the Driver's controller to send the Ball Spot from the right side to the left side to bounce off the Player Spot on the clock icon. This oscillating Ball Spot acts as a "timer" for Player One's race around the track. For every oscillation, Player Two subtracts a "lap" from Player One's lap count, which starts at 30. The idea is to get around the track before the lap total evaporates entirely.
Another way you to "lose laps" is for your DRIVER Player Spot to collide with the Ball Spot (Timer) while you're racing around the track. If the TIMER wishes, he/she can choose to become, in essence, the SHOOTER, instead of the TIMER, and try to hit the DRIVER with the timer spot. It wasn't easy to do, but its definitely an alternative strategy.
So the question to ask is what is the lap count for? Is it just a score?
Well, there's also an off-screen gameboard that goes with this game! (I'll post a scan when I finish compositing it.) The gameboard supports four lanes (for up to four players) and contains passing, no passing and pit stop zones. When the player finishes his race on the screen, he uses the number of laps left from that race to move his little car token forward that many spaces on the board.
EDIT:
Here's the board. Christ on a choir boy! It was a pain to scan and stich together! The Red Spots are Pit Stops. Could've used more of those, I think. The White Spots are No Passing zones.
The Pit Stops on the board let the player draw a card from the Pit Stop deck which gives directions like "Good Cornering! gain 2 spaces." or "Tire Change! lose 4 spaces." or even-meta directives like "Lady Luck! use to cancel any pit stop card you pick."
To win the game you have to move your token to the end of the gameboard track first, by using the lap counts you earn from racing around the screen track and by maneuvering your car into the no passing zones to prevent your opponents from passing you.
Complicated? Not really. Fun? Well, surprisingly, yeah. During our playthrough of the game, I noticed my 7 year old son exhibiting signs of genuine enjoyment. He got very excited and jumped up and down at certain points. He was not just tolerating his old man's weird obsession with old games so he could move on ASAP to the GameCube.
One of the problems we did have was that we really weren't hitting the Pit Stop spots as often as we'd have liked, so that "random" element ("Bad Skid! Lose 2 spaces") that adds the racing flavor to the game was kind of lost. That's just the luck of the draw I guess. Maybe we couldd learn to time our lap counts so that we'd hit those Pit Stops more often.
The things I really enjoyed about the design: I liked that Player Two and Player One had to use player one's controller simultaneously. Not a convention that took hold, fortunately, but an interesting idea regardless. I also liked the use of the Ball Spot as a timer and as a collision device.
So, compare it to the state of the genre 30-odd years later. Racing? Yes. Timer? Check. Collisions? Yup. Hell, you could even consider the gameboard part as a kind of Campaign tracker. This is the Ur game of videogame racing! As a plus, we had fun with it so it gets the point.
The Score:
Ultraman: 8, Odyssey: 12
Not sure what I'm doing next. For 1972 we only have Handball and Volleyball left. Poor planning on my part to leave two with such similar names for last.
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