Supercross 3D

[tripled79]

After all this time in wait lists, I finally got my Jaguar GD recently. This allowed me to try some games that I've never been able to get my hands on for one reason or another. The good and the bad alike.

Supercross 3D has a notorious reputation for being a bad racing game. I spent some time with it. And I don't think it's that bad. It's a hell of a lot better than Checkered Flag in my option.

I think I'd even rather play this than Atari Karts for that matter. At least in Supercross 3D I don't get bumped a mile back from running into objects or opponents. Or even worse, in Atari Karts, I tend to get completely stuck behind objects which completely ruins your race. Doesn't seem to happen at all in Supercross 3D.

Atari Karts might have better frame rate, but frame rate isn't everything.

But that's just my opinion.

[phoenixdownita]

2 hours ago, tripled79 said:

....

But that's just my opinion.

Everyone can have an opinion, I too had the chance to endure play Supercross 3D thanks to GameDrive and concluded it was the exact stinking pile of garbage I thought it would.

 

Checkered Flags has tons of issues for sure (even with the steering patch), while Atari Karts I think it's merely boring but so I think of the original Super Mario Kart (caveat I never played it bitd, just in the last 2 or 3 years, I never enjoyed kart-style games, MarioKart64 was my first exposure to the genre but at the time I liked way way more arcade racers a la Ridge Racer).

[agradeneu]

6 hours ago, tripled79 said:

After all this time in wait lists, I finally got my Jaguar GD recently. This allowed me to try some games that I've never been able to get my hands on for one reason or another. The good and the bad alike.

Supercross 3D has a notorious reputation for being a bad racing game. I spent some time with it. And I don't think it's that bad. It's a hell of a lot better than Checkered Flag in my option.

I think I'd even rather play this than Atari Karts for that matter. At least in Supercross 3D I don't get bumped a mile back from running into objects or opponents. Or even worse, in Atari Karts, I tend to get completely stuck behind objects which completely ruins your race. Doesn't seem to happen at all in Supercross 3D.

Atari Karts might have better frame rate, but frame rate isn't everything.

But that's just my opinion.

Just don't run into opponents and objects

[Zogging Hell]

I did have some fun with Supercross, more so than Chequered Flag, but I'm pretty frame rate ambivalent (I don't seem to have massive problems with single digit frame rates or slowdown as long as the game itself is ok), so the low frame rate doesn't bother me that much. It does have some other problems though, it is ugly as sin for a start, and the annoying fall off your bike if you put a pixel outside the track is also pretty bad. I certainly wouldn't rate it better than Atari Karts though, and it is not a good game by any sense

[agradeneu]

Atari Karts has a pretty good 2 player split screen.

[tripled79]

2 hours ago, Zogging Hell said:

I did have some fun with Supercross, more so than Chequered Flag, but I'm pretty frame rate ambivalent (I don't seem to have massive problems with single digit frame rates or slowdown as long as the game itself is ok), so the low frame rate doesn't bother me that much. It does have some other problems though, it is ugly as sin for a start, and the annoying fall off your bike if you put a pixel outside the track is also pretty bad. I certainly wouldn't rate it better than Atari Karts though, and it is not a good game by any sense

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure I understand the critique for wiping out when going off course. In my short time playing this, I am sure that I went off a few times, and my biker got "bumped" back on track.

Yes, this game has flaws and should have spent more time in the oven, but if I had to rate the racing games for Jaguar, I would go with:

 

1) Super Burnout

2) Power Drive Rally

3) World Tour Racing

4) Supercross 3D

5) Atari Karts

6) Checkered Flag

 

I've never played Club Drive, but from what I've heard, it's not really a "racing game" but more of something else.

 

Anyway, I've only played a few minutes of this game and maybe my opinion will change with more time in.

[agradeneu]

2 hours ago, tripled79 said:

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure I understand the critique for wiping out when going off course. In my short time playing this, I am sure that I went off a few times, and my biker got "bumped" back on track.

Yes, this game has flaws and should have spent more time in the oven, but if I had to rate the racing games for Jaguar, I would go with:

 

1) Super Burnout

2) Power Drive Rally

3) World Tour Racing

4) Supercross 3D

5) Atari Karts

6) Checkered Flag

 

I've never played Club Drive, but from what I've heard, it's not really a "racing game" but more of something else.

 

Anyway, I've only played a few minutes of this game and maybe my opinion will change with more time in.

Yeah, in Supercross you crash at invisible walls when leaving the textured road by a few pixels. The game is rubbish, the engine is barely functional. Looks like they totally abused the 68K.

Frame rate is not everything, but should be at least playable. 5-7 FPS is unplayable for me, sorry.

[newtmonkey]

I'd probably put Atari Karts over Supercross 3D, but I'd rank the racing game the same (tho haven't played WTR).  Supercross 3D is bad, but you can get used to how it controls and ultimately feel like you are in control of the game.  Checkered Flag, on the other hand...

[Bill Loguidice]

11 hours ago, tripled79 said:

Doesn't seem to happen at all in Supercross 3D.

Atari Karts might have better frame rate, but frame rate isn't everything.

But that's just my opinion.

One can argue that in most racing games, frame rate is just about everything. With that said, I think we can all tolerate SOME choppiness, hiccups, etc., with all other things being well-implemented and/or enjoyable, but I frankly think that when you have single digit frame rates like we have in Supercross 3D, you cross a line you can't come back from. 

It's not really a fair comparison, but let's do it anyway. Take how the same concept is implemented in Excitebike 64:

 

 

By no means the best game, but you can see how vastly far ahead it is from what we got with Supercross 3D in just about all ways, and that's ignoring all of the other track types and options missing from the Jaguar game:
 

 

At the same time, I get why so many people try to justify various sub-standard Jaguar games. It has an extremely small library for a major console release and there are some genres that are mostly misses on the system despite taking up a relatively high percentage of releases (like racing games and fighting games).

And of course I'm in no way trying to take away your opinion. You can obviously like whatever you want to like for whatever reason you choose. I just found the "frame rate isn't everything" comment one of the more fascinating ones for a game that even back in the day had an unacceptable and unbelievably low frame rate for a major commercial release and especially for a racing game. 

 

 

[youxia]

Well, I did tolerate the about 1fps in Hard Drivin' on ZX Spectrum. But I most certainly did not perceive it as a "racing game" (more of an early 3D curio, and the gameplay was sort of turn-based)

[+madman]

I never thought I'd see the day someone defends Supercross 3D. I still confuse that and the 32x Motocross game...which thankfully I paid less than $10 for on TRU closeout back in the 90's. IMO there's more fun to be had in Club Drive and I think part of it is because it's just so bad and the graphics are just dreadful. But, to each their own. I certainly won't go so far as to say Club Drive is a recommended game though.

[Bill Loguidice]

12 minutes ago, madman said:

I never thought I'd see the day someone defends Supercross 3D. I still confuse that and the 32x Motocross game...which thankfully I paid less than $10 for on TRU closeout back in the 90's. IMO there's more fun to be had in Club Drive and I think part of it is because it's just so bad and the graphics are just dreadful. But, to each their own. I certainly won't go so far as to say Club Drive is a recommended game though.

Man, Motocross Championship is just the worst on the 32X, but it does at least have a somewhat playable framerate. With that said, it's amazing that those two contemporary platforms got similarly bad motocross releases. 

[+madman]

15 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Man, Motocross Championship is just the worst on the 32X, but it does at least have a somewhat playable framerate. With that said, it's amazing that those two contemporary platforms got similarly bad motocross releases. 

Even BC Racers is more enjoyable than Motocross.

[Editorb]

Stuporcross 3D is playable after a fashion. Control input feels very laggy, but I think that's result of crappy frame rate. The game is actually fairly fast, so you have to concentrate on where your bike should/will be and respond accordingly before it magically judders its way down track in stop-motion style. It is frustrating that the different shade of dirt on eyes of track acts like a brick wall for your dirt bike, which is apparently uniquely tuned to respond to only one shade of dirt. I just watched a bit of Motocross Championship on 32X; at least those bikes are able to drive off track. Were that allowed in Stuporcross, it might have resembled a kind of stupid fun.

[Bill Loguidice]

26 minutes ago, madman said:

Even BC Racers is more enjoyable than Motocross.

Another crushing disappointment for both the 32X and 3DO, especially. There were certainly a lot of misses racing game-wise with the systems in-between 16-bit and the Saturn/PS1. 

[UHATEIT]

1 hour ago, madman said:

Even BC Racers is more enjoyable than Motocross.

I have always found BC racers to be enjoyable regardless of which platform. The Road Rage style punch is pretty awesome!

 

On the topic of Supercross 3D I think the colors are actually quite nice, they are bright and vibrant. The crashing while off the track is definitely an annoyance but not nearly as much as Atari Karts where you touch the wall and just stop outright and have to keep turning like hell to eventually break loose. 

[phoenixdownita]

7 minutes ago, UHATEIT said:

I have always found BC racers to be enjoyable regardless of which platform. The Road Rage style punch is pretty awesome!

 

On the topic of Supercross 3D I think the colors are actually quite nice, they are bright and vibrant. The crashing while off the track is definitely an annoyance but not nearly as much as Atari Karts where you touch the wall and just stop outright and have to keep turning like hell to eventually break loose. 

2 wrongs don't make 1 right .... again my opinion is that Supercorss3D is the less defensible of the two but that's not saying much, and of course had the Jag had much more games to begin with we would not be even considering some of the lower ranking titles at all (I don't play Superman64 because there are so much more and more enjoyable titles on that platform that are worthy of my time, on the Jag given the high share of "and-we-have-this-too" on a rather small library one can dig some of those bad boys ... but think about paying full price for any of them).

[UHATEIT]

2 minutes ago, phoenixdownita said:

2 wrongs don't make 1 right .... again my opinion is that Supercorss3D is the less defensible of the two but that's not saying much, and of course had the Jag had much more games to begin with we would not be even considering some of the lower ranking titles at all (I don't play Superman64 because there are so much more and more enjoyable titles on that platform that are worthy of my time, on the Jag given the high share of "and-we-have-this-too" on a rather small library one can dig some of those bad boys ... but think about paying full price for any of them).

Oh for sure, if I had paid full price for a game like Supercross 3D (whatever that would have been at the time I don;t know as I got it for $20 sealed in 2017) I would have been pissed for sure!

 

In the 90s as a kid times were different but even then $50-60 for a NEW game was a ton of money as a kid that did chores for little amounts. I remember LOVING the movie Terminator 2 and still do to this day, but spent like a month's worth of chore money on it for the NES which was like $50 at the time and it was one of the worst purchases I've ever made on a video game. So I totally understand where you're coming from about paying full price. 

 

I guess to pick and choose and the Jag library is limited as far as the quantity of titles, I can find just about anything to love about any game for my favorite system even if others dislike it. I'm down with Supercross 3D and Atari Karts and can find something to enjoy about each. 

[agradeneu]

36 minutes ago, UHATEIT said:

I have always found BC racers to be enjoyable regardless of which platform. The Road Rage style punch is pretty awesome!

 

On the topic of Supercross 3D I think the colors are actually quite nice, they are bright and vibrant. The crashing while off the track is definitely an annoyance but not nearly as much as Atari Karts where you touch the wall and just stop outright and have to keep turning like hell to eventually break loose. 

You can drive backwards  Otherwise driving into walls and others cars is just poor driving...hehe

[+Sauron]

This thread just goes to show that people can extract some kind of enjoyment out a stinking turd pile if they're desperate enough.

 

 

[Bill Loguidice]

3 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

2 wrongs don't make 1 right .... again my opinion is that Supercorss3D is the less defensible of the two but that's not saying much, and of course had the Jag had much more games to begin with we would not be even considering some of the lower ranking titles at all (I don't play Superman64 because there are so much more and more enjoyable titles on that platform that are worthy of my time, on the Jag given the high share of "and-we-have-this-too" on a rather small library one can dig some of those bad boys ... but think about paying full price for any of them).

I love the Superman 64 comment as it ties back perfectly to my earlier comment about everything - both good and bad - being amplified on the Jaguar because of the anemic game library. While the Jaguar likely does have a higher relative percentage of bad to good titles in its library for well-known reasons (low budgets, newer dev teams, rushed production, etc.), I bet it's not that much higher overall than many other better regarded platforms that just happen to have a far greater selection of overall games to choose from. In other words, even if a system's library is 40% crap by volume, having 60% of average-to-great titles makes a heck of a lot more noise when we're talking hundreds or thousands of candidates versus a couple dozen or fewer.

 

Of course, some titles just lend themselves to neo-contrarianism, like, for example, with the relatively recent renaissance of ET on the Atari 2600 being "not that bad," and, in some cases "very good if you know how to play," as a rebound against the notion that it's one of the worst games of all time (which of course is false the other way, but it still doesn't necessarily mean it has to be a good game on the whole). The Jaguar, for a variety of reasons, is the platform epitome of neo-contrarianism that is typically reserved for games rather than systems. That's arguably why we get the "hidden power," "terrible game x is really not terrible," "they're my favorite controllers of all time," etc. While some such things can in fact be true, I suspect a lot of it has to do with wanting to hard rebound against some of the "abuse" since the platform's birth. It's easy to love - or want to love - an underdog.

[+madman]

24 minutes ago, Sauron said:

This thread just goes to show that people can extract some kind of enjoyment out a stinking turd pile if they're desperate enough.

I think there is a tendency w/the Jag to want to find joy in some of these steamy piles as Bill said in a more polite manner. It reminds me of being a kid and getting a crappy NES game, trying to convince myself that it doesn't suck because I have no money and no other new games. I think my most delusional moment was thinking that Carnival on the Intellivision was fun. I think I could go use the bathroom and make it back to the TV before the bullet had crossed the entire playfield. By the time I had wasted $10 on Motocross 32X I was in college and knew I got got. I had learned to accept my foolish waste of money. There was no way to convince myself otherwise. 

 

But, games are subjective. I remember hearing so many great things about Ruiner Pinball and then I made a thread about it years ago as a result of my confusion that I was playing what was at best a mediocre pinball game. Some agreed w/me, some disagreed, others were somewhere in the middle. What I do know is both are better than Supercross and Motocross.

[+Stephen]

I paid full price for this piece of shit and was not happy about it.  I always called it Supercross 3FPS.  People that did not get the Jag in 94 have no idea what it was like to be an Atari fan back then!No games for months, then when we did get one, it was one of these!

[+Sauron]

9 minutes ago, madman said:

I think there is a tendency w/the Jag to want to find joy in some of these steamy piles as Bill said in a more polite manner. It reminds me of being a kid and getting a crappy NES game, trying to convince myself that it doesn't suck because I have no money and no other new games. I think my most delusional moment was thinking that Carnival on the Intellivision was fun. I think I could go use the bathroom and make it back to the TV before the bullet had crossed the entire playfield. By the time I had wasted $10 on Motocross 32X I was in college and knew I got got. I had learned to accept my foolish waste of money. There was no way to convince myself otherwise. 

 

But, games are subjective. I remember hearing so many great things about Ruiner Pinball and then I made a thread about it years ago as a result of my confusion that I was playing what was at best a mediocre pinball game. Some agreed w/me, some disagreed, others were somewhere in the middle. What I do know is both are better than Supercross and Motocross.

Let's face it, most people who got Supercross 3D paid $5 for it on clearance from KB Toys, most likely along with a pile of other great Jag games like Double Dragon V, Fight for Life, and Club Drive. Anyone paying the absurd costs of a used Jag cart nowadays have no one but themselves to blame for their poor decisions.

 

Having said that, the OP played a ROM on his Jag GD. It's a bit of a stretch to put their own findings in your same perspective.

 

 

 

[+madman]

8 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Let's face it, most people who got Supercross 3D paid $5 for it on clearance from KB Toys, most likely along with a pile of other great Jag games like Double Dragon V, Fight for Life, and Club Drive. Anyone paying the absurd costs of a used Jag cart nowadays have no one but themselves to blame for their poor decisions.

 

Having said that, the OP played a ROM on his Jag GD. It's a bit of a stretch to put their own findings in your same perspective.

Yeah, that's fair to say. I have noticed I'm less likely to put more than 15 mins into a game if I'm playing it for the first time via a flash cart. "Well this is a waste of my time", reboot it and load something else.