Let’s Race!

Stone here and I fear that one of my favorite types of games is going the way of the dinosaur. I love arcade racers. They are fun little racing games that don’t require a lot on your part. You play the game and race around. Yeah, you need to know how to take corners and those fun shortcuts, but they were just plain fun. Now all the racing games go all realistic. The levels are all reality based. What happened? It used to be the racer was about going through a course that was designed to be fun. Like the one that was underwater in the Cruis’n series. Or you’d see all sorts of fun stuff going on around you like in the RUSH series. You didn’t have to be a genius to play the game. It was made to be crazy. They had lots of fun games like that back then, like Crazy Taxi and more. Nowadays all we really got to compare it to is Mario Kart.



All we get today are games with reality physics and deep customization. Yeah, it may be more involving but its not nearly as much fun as driving through a flaming pyramid in Egypt from a mummy. I want to go back to games where you just hit the gas and race. To have crazy Hot Wheels inspired tracks instead of once again being stuck in a downtown street race. I don’t care about what tires I have or the engine upgrades. There will always be someone better than me in the game with that. What I want is a return to the imaginative worlds of Out Run and Cruis’n and their kind.



I did however play a Fast and the furious arcade racer this month that seemed to mix the two types together quite well. I went driving through a crazy Indiana Jones like rail system in a volcano. It was freaking sweet! So I did my research and saw that a lot of the Fast and Furious arcade games are the same way! Yet they are not released for a console yet? Craziness. Maybe there is hope for the arcade racer after all.





Show some more love for the Arcade!