Gran Turismo 2
When it comes to racing simulators Gran Turismo was in a class all its own, until Forza came along but we’ll discuss that later. Racing games were fine before Gran Turismo came along, but they were lacking a depth that only Gran Turismo could show us we were missing out on. Formula One: Built to Win for the NES comes to my mind when I think of a game that tried its hardest to give the player a racing simulator experience, but was severely limited by the hardware. Gran Turismo seemed to come out at the perfect time when technology was expanding in both hardware capability and allowance of game size. With Gran Turismo being such a hit, there was no other option than to create a sequel.
I have to admit that I was so hooked on Gran Turismo that I didn’t acquire a copy of Gran Turismo 2 until it was in clearance bins to make room for PS2 games. GT2 was so action packed that this time it actually warranted the use of a bigger case, as simulation and arcade were each on a disc of their own. While Gran Turismo boasted 140 authentic sports cars, GT2 boasted over 500 cars from world-class manufacturers. More cars had to mean this game was better, right? Let’s see what GT2 had to offer and find out.
What would any entry in the Gran Turismo series be without cars? With the aforementioned boast of over 500 cars Gran Turismo 2’s roster of vehicles ranges from cars some people can only dream about driving outside of GT2, all the way down to cars in some people’s nightmares because they are so boring. But let’s not forget the insane vehicles such as two drag cars, two Pike’s Peak edition cars and an unsuspecting Dodge Intrepid ES, that can be turned into a full-on dragster once fully upgraded. I believe GT2 originally was slated to offer drag racing, but somewhere along the way that was scrapped, however the cars remain. None of these insane cars are really all that useful in a race that includes a lot of twists and turns, but get these cars out on the test oval and you’ll be flying.
Even though drag racing was scrapped rally racing made it all the way into the finished product, and although I would have loved to see them both, I feel rally racing is a better feature. Rally driving requires a different set of tires, and license, to participate, but there are a lot of cars that can pull double duty and race on the dirt courses as well as tarmac. Along with the new tires and license requirements rally racing brought in a whole new set of really fun tracks. For me there is something truly satisfying about sliding around on dirt tracks.
Outside of the rally tracks GT2 added some more tracks for general races as well. They kept some of the original tracks for familiarity but also added a few new tracks to the mix. Most of the tracks are really nice, and quite fun, however I found Laguna Seca to be a bit of a pain. This being Gran Turismo 2 I’m not unfamiliar with windy, twisty, turny courses, but it’s the way Laguna Seca is setup that threw me off, and I’ve hated it in every video game I’ve encountered it in ever since. The only redeeming part about Laguna Seca in GT2 is the fact you can glitch through the wall at a certain point and escape into the wide open world.
What GT2 did right, by which I mean the addition of rally racing and more cars, still couldn’t tame the frustration of those stupid license tests. My main issue with the license tests is there is absolutely no margin of error. Under normal racing conditions a player can sometimes find themselves slight off the racing circuit, which is usually a disadvantage, but if you get even a fraction of a millimeter off the track during a license test it’s all over. I understand completely cutting corners to get gold should be penalized, but to have a run disqualified because the grass 2 inches away waved in the breeze of your passing tires is just ludicrous. Not to mention the addition of rally races only increases the amount of licenses you now have to earn.
Gran Turismo 2 is pretty much the same experience you’ll find in Gran Turismo 1, with the exception of the aforementioned additions, slightly better graphics and the ability to change wheels. Earn licenses, earn money, upgrade cars, buy better cars and upgrade them and claw your way to the top. Or you can just play around in arcade mode and have fun racing all the cars around the various tracks at a slightly more leisurely pace. With as simple as the premise can sound this game is still incredibly fun, and that’s why Gran Turismo has become a long-standing series and a staple on the Playstation consoles for many generations.
MTV Sports: Snowboarding
In the mid to late 90s sports video games were an open market. It was a time when seemingly any company could publish whatever sports title they wanted, which kept EAvil companies from monopolizing every sport known to humanity. This was good for the consumer as it meant developers actually had to try harder with each installment, instead of merely updating rosters for each subsequent year. However, this left developers fighting for an ever-dwindling slice of the same pie, causing developers to turn to up and coming sports such as snowboarding, giving birth to titles such as MTV Sports: Snowboarding.
Developed by Radical Entertainment, a company whose name fit perfectly in the 90s, and published by THQ, MTV Sports Snowboarding hit store shelves in late 1999. Radical Entertainment would go on to develop quite a few really good titles, as THQ would also go on to publish many good titles, but MTV Sports Snowboarding however will most likely not be remembered as one of them. The biggest marketing draw to the game was the fact that MTV put together the soundtrack. As a matter of fact, if you didn’t even want to play the game you can simply go to the options and listen to the soundtrack on your own terms.
From what I can recall of playing this game as a kid it wasn’t very fun, and playing through it for this review just proved those memories to be accurate. By the time this game was released Cool Boarders was already four games strong, as a matter of fact Cool Boarders 4 had just released a little over a month prior to MTV Sports Snowboarding. So I took it upon myself to compare them back to back. The good things I can say about MTV Sports Snowboarding is, it is snowboarding and it looks fairly decent. The controls are pretty good, with the exception of being locked in once you hold the button to get ready for a jump, but pulling off tricks isn’t hampered by the controls.
When you start the game you’ve got pretty much everything unlocked from the start. I searched through my memories cards to find my old saves for this game but couldn’t, and I think the reason why is because I deleted it to make room for a better game. I really don’t know what else to say other than it’s snowboarding. You choose the boarder, the board, which downhill track you want and you try your best to perform tricks. Remember when I said tricks weren’t hampered by the controls, well they aren’t, they’re hampered by the environment. Even if I lined up a jump well and managed to land it, there was always something right there to prevent me from carrying on and setting up for another jump. Since Cool Boarders came out just over a month before MTV Sports Snowboarding I spent some time with it too, and while many things need to be unlocked I can say without a shadow of a doubt MTV Sports Snowboarding pales greatly in comparison to Cool Boarders 4 in every single way.
Now you have to remember this is a game I grew up with, this is a game I played and played often because I couldn’t go out and buy a new one. As a matter of fact I didn’t even pay for my copy of this game. As a teenager I listened to a local rock station that was having a competition and caller number ten would win a prize pack. This night in particular, when I heard the prize pack included a video game, I set my sights on winning, and somehow I did. Thanks X-103! Or maybe, no thanks X-103. Even though I listened to alternative rock, at that time, I still found the soundtrack to be a bit lacking and I usually just turned it off in the options to focus on snowboarding. I fully intended on this being a review of me saying my memories failed me and this game was a gem in the rough, or that I was wrong as a kid, but if anything I feel even stronger about how much I don’t like this game. It’s not complete garbage, but MTV Sports Snowboarding was just a day late and many, many dollars short.
Peripheral Vision: Interact Barracuda
If you’ve read a portion of my other Peripheral Vision posts you’ll know I have quite a few strange video game controllers. One of the strangest among the collection is my Interact Barracuda. Compared to all the other oddities I own this is an absolute unit. I’m a grown man with grown man hands I have to admit, even I find this thing to be a behemoth of a controller.
Apart from its size the Interact Barracuda is, to me, a bit of a mystery, in terms of how it works. You see, every button can be programmed however the user likes and the programming stays even after the controller is turned off. Well lucky for me to have bought one secondhand and not have the user manual to understand the darn thing. (Seriously, if anyone could scan the user manual for this thing or knows where a PDF could be found, please comment below. Thanks!) So imagine my surprise when I plug the controller in to test it for this article and find the game I was using going completely haywire every time I pressed a button. After I goofed into deprogramming a few buttons it worked pretty much as I feel a Playstation controller should, but still for the most part this controller just confuses me.
If the back of the box is to be believed this thing is supposed to mimic Sony’s Dual Analog controller. With the switch at the very top middle you have three mode settings. From what I’ve gathered Mode 1 seems to be Digital, but also allows the user to use the analog sticks. Mode 3 turns on a vibration feature and the only reason I know this is because one of the games I tested would display a vibration option in the start menu only when the switch was in Mode 3 position, so that must be DualShock mode. Finally, Mode 2 doesn’t do jack and the games always display an error message telling me the controller currently plugged in isn’t compatible — just like the Sony Dual Analog did.
The controller also offers a few features that I feel are completely useless, and those are the slow motion and turbo features. Slow motion in the PS1 era is more frustrating than it ever is useful and sadly the Barracuda’s turbo button is rapid fire for all or nothing. This means if you need to hold X as a throttle, and circle to fire you’ll have rapid fire on circle but stuttering acceleration on X, rendering is useless. Speaking of useless, the L and R buttons are on the bottom of this massive thing and aren’t very easy to press in whatsoever! Again, I don’t have tiny hands, but even I have a problem pressing in the L and R buttons comfortably. There is also a switch between the handles of the controller that are suppose to swap the functions of the analog sticks, I see no difference. Useless switch.
My conclusion about the Interact Barracuda is that I feel Interact let their heads wonder too high above reality. If they could have made some of these features more useful, and in some cases work at all, and cram them into a slightly more normal sized controller for the time it probably would have been useful. It’s size isn’t off putting, but it’s just not as comfortable as other Playstation controllers, and that puts it well behind many, many other controllers in terms of desire of use. The Analog sticks are concave like the Sony Dual Analog and that’s ok, but what isn’t ok is the fact the caps spin on the metal shafts and retaining grip isn’t always easy. Personally, I’m just not a fan of the Barracuda. I see where Interact was heading with it, but I think their desire to make an outlandish controller overshadowed the controller’s true potential. Plus I’m scared to admit this controller outsmarted me because I don’t have the manual to fully understand it. There, I said it.
Peripheral Vision: Sony’s Dual Analog
Before the success of Sony’s DualShock series, there was another controller that looked slightly similar by the name of the Dual Analog. The Dual Analog was released in Japan in 1997, alongside a pair of compatible games, Bushido Blade and Tobal 2. The controller was advertised as giving more precise controls, with a rumble feature for a more realistic experience. When considering its release outside of Japan, Sony decided that the rumble function would be removed from both the European and American versions of the controller.
Hands on with the Dual Analog will yield immediate differences between it and it’s brother, the DualShock. The first thing I noticed was the handles are significantly longer as well as one of the screw holes on each side sits right where my fingers need to grip. The controller is also significantly lighter than the DualShock, since there are no rumble feature motors inside. The analog stick caps are hard plastic that are concave, where as the DualShock analog sticks have convex rubber tops and the L2 and R2 buttons have an odd rim.
The Dual Analog has three modes including digital, analog as well as a flight mode. Digital mode is just like the original Playstation controller and disables the analog sticks entirely. During digital mode the LED will remain unlit. Pressing the analog button will turn the LED red and engage Analog mode, which functions exactly like the DualShock. Pressing the analog button again will change the LED to green, which is flight mode. Flight mode is said to emulate Sony’s bigger and more expensive Playstation Analog Joystick set, but I couldn’t get any of the games I have that are compatible with the Analog Joystick to work. When engaging Flight Mode I always received an error message telling me the controller currently plugged in was incompatible, even though on the back of the case is shows a joystick and says Analog Joystick Compatible.
To compare the Dual analog and the DualShock, there really isn’t much difference other than cosmetics and the added feature of the Flight Mode. The Dual Analog is comfortable to hold, despite the aforementioned screw holes being right where my fingers need to go, and since none of my games seem compatible with the Flight Mode, it’s basically the same thing to me. The Dual Analog is an interesting piece of video gaming history as I feel its creation gave birth to the DualShock, which has become a staple for the Playstation consoles to this day. The Dual Analog wasn’t around very long so they are a little harder to find than the digital or DualShock controllers. If you already own an Analog Joystick and DualShock, I would say the Dual Analog might not be worth hunting down unless you just absolutely have to have one. If you don’t own, or don’t have room for the Analog Joystick and can find a Dual Analog fairly cheap and easily then maybe it’s a good alternative. That is if Flight mode is actually emulating the Analog Joystick controller.
Auto Destruct
As a teenager the Sony Playstation was my favorite console and I simply couldn’t get enough of what it had to offer. While perusing a rental store I found a game that caught my eye by the name of Auto Destruct. On the back of the box I read: “Your family was murdered by a nihilistic cult. Driven by revenge, you join a mysterious underground order to even the score. Your mission: fire up your killer ride, load up on devastating weapons and drive the cultists out of town.” If that’s not a teenager’s video game paradise I don’t know what would be.
Auto Destruct was developed by a company called Neurostone and published by Electronic Arts in January 1998. At that time Auto Destruct was among the first games with a 3D environment that you could freely roam, and the very first one I had ever tried. The player takes the roll of a former professional driver named Booth who, as previously mentioned, is taking revenge against a cult who killed his wife and daughter in a terrorist attack. The group you are now working with to seek that revenge will setup tasks for you and your car to carry out. Missions will include tasks such as seek and destroy, pickup and deliver, follow and collect, against the clock, and escort. Whats more is that each mission may have multiple tasks to fulfill within the same mission. While you may start out following a van dropping jewelry, you might end the mission by collecting the town’s mayor, after having to protect him from suicidal cult members, and drive him to safety.
Before each missions the player is given a short briefing on what their mission is. With both visual instructions as well as real voice acting, the player is then allowed to carry out said mission, while vocal instructions will continue to aid the player periodically. When you get behind the wheel you’ll notice on the left of the HUD there is a map for the player to locate where their objective is, and on the right is a confusing cluster of circles that show the player their car’s health, their opponent’s health, their fuel level and current speed. Nothing is marked, so the game’s manual is pretty vital in understanding this cluster at first.
The player can obtain many different weapons as well as a few different power ups to help them with missions. The car’s health and fuel can be replenished by pulling into gas stations, while weapons can be refilled or gained by driving over them after finding them inside warehouses found around the city. To collect anything, simply run it over and voila, it’s now in your possession, this includes cash drops from a police helicopter that helps the player throughout the game.
Strangely enough Auto Destruct offers both a password system and allows the player to save to memory cards. With my given disgust with most password systems, even when that was the only method to save your progress, I actually think this isn’t such a bad idea. Maybe someone didn’t have a memory card, like I didn’t when I first bought my PS1, well a password system allows the player to enjoy the game and still be able to save their progress. It feels a bit odd, but I truly think that’s a good idea.
I remember Auto Destruct being quite a fun experience all those years ago, and replaying through it now it’s simply ok. Some missions can be frustrating because of slightly wonky handling of the car, but I find that’s to be expected with a lot of PS1 games. The environments looks pretty good for PS1 era but there is some popup, if that type of thing bothers you. The city’s terrain is mostly flat with a few small hills, hilly grass areas and the occasional river. Your cars traction on the roads seem fine, if not a tad be slippery but if you take the time to play the game for a bit you’ll get used to it. However driving on grassy areas is really slippery, so avoid doing so unless instructed to do so on a mission, which does happen. And what would a 3D environment be without traffic and pedestrians? It would be exactly like Auto Destruct, as traffic and pedestrians are almost non-existent. There will be rare occasions where a car or a person will get in your way, but by and large the city seems abandoned.
Auto Destruct isn’t a well regarded game by any means, but I still enjoyed it. It’s a bit cheesy, it a bit hokey but it still supplied me with a good time. Reviews for the game usually pan the game as being less than they expected it to be, or not very good at all, but Auto Destruct is what it is. As was often the case, back in the PS1 era, when trying something that is fairly new you may not get it right the first time, and those who copy your work will surely surpass you, but you have to give it a try. Neurostone sure did gave Auto Destruct a try, and I for one am glad they did, masterpiece or not.
The Curious Case of Tiger Woods 99 PGA Tour Golf
I was an exceedingly curious child, always getting myself into trouble while trying to figure out how and why things worked. One of my experiments was putting a Playstation disc onto my PC just to see if it would play the game. Back then I didn’t understand the concept of operating systems, BIOS, or why some games would only run on whatever system. The only thing that happened was a window popped up displaying the contents of the disc, much the same as it would for any data disc. Clearly I wasn’t the only curious person out there as it came to light that certain copies of Tiger Woods 99 PGA Tour Golf held a secret easter egg on the disc that could only be accessed by putting it into a PC.
How exactly this easter egg ended up on the final release version of the game disc is still a bit of a mystery, but with EA ever being the party pooper, once they found out about the stowaway data, they quickly recalled the game and released a patched version. Tiger Woods 99 PGA Tour Golf is, undeniably, a sports title, so while many video game collector’s may not own a copy at all, those who do may have the original version with the secret on the disc. Which version is more rare isn’t very well documented but I would guess that the version harboring the hidden secret may be a little easier to find than the patched version.
If you’ve just returned from checking through your Playstation collection to see whether or not you have the disc, there are a few simple ways to tell. The first thing to keep in mind is that the SLUS (00785) will never change, at least not between the two versions that I have. What does change is the ISBN and the UPC codes. If you already own a copy, or run across one in the wild, you’ll want to look for the ISBN:0-7845-1503-4 and UPC: 14633-07911. Another issue may be that the game may find its way into the wrong case, or it may have no case at all, so always be sure to check the disc as well. Just below the Tiger Woods 99 logo on the disc you will find copyright information followed by the code 791107, which slightly resembles the UPC code.
If you’ve found one in your collection, or happen to find one in the wild that matches the numbers above, you can now pop it into a PC and look for the hidden file yourself. The hidden secret is a file named ZZDUMMY.DAT. Even though the file is a .dat it can be viewed on many media players, such as VLC. Once the file is opened in a media player, the user will be greeted with the 1995 short film Jesus vs. Santa by the creators of South Park. This short was supposedly requested by FOX executives to pass around as a video Christmas card. Again, how and why this file ended up on the game disc are still a bit of a mystery.
Some might say I spent too much for both copies at a total of $4, and to be honest I kind of agree with you. It’s probably not a rare game, it’s probably not even a good game, but the video game oddity collector within myself wanted to own both the original and the patched version. This is nothing more than just one of those extremely weird oddities in the video game industry that made me want to own a game for no other reason than it’s silly little hidden secret.
Peripheral Vision: Intec PS6010A w/ Turbo
Back in the day Intec were heavy hitters when it came to gaming peripherals. I don’t necessarily mean they were good, but they sure released a lot of them. Today I’ll be putting their PS6010A (is that the best they could come up with?) through its paces and see whether this controller was worth however much it retailed for.
Although I never personally seen one of these in a store brand new, I can imagine a young me being drawn to this controller back in the day. When almost every Playstation controller was drab grey this one is completely clear, allowing the internals and how this controller functions be seen. The main features of this controller, since it lacks any analog features, are a programmable turbo and a slow motion function.
The slow motion feature is fairly useless, at least in all the games I tested it with, because most games will either take you to a completely new screen once the Start button is pressed, or a large menu will obscure the entire screen. Factoring in the fact that most PS1 era games took a few seconds to load a pause screen and then a few more seconds to continue after the pause screen was disabled, the slow motion just feels like a relic left over from the cartridge era that really doesn’t translate well in the new CD based era.
Where the PS6010A really shines is the programmable turbo feature. Any of the action buttons can be programmed individually by holding the turbo button and simply pressing the button(s) you wish to program. Once programmed, pressing the buttons will illuminate an LED which will tell you that button has successfully been programmed. To disable turbo on any given button you simply press and hold the Clear button and then press the button you wish to deprogram. The LED will no longer flash once this button is pressed, telling you it is no longer turbo programmed.
The plus sides of the PS6010A are that it feels like an original digital Sony controller, it’s transparent and has a very useful programmable turbo function. The only real downside is the slow motion function. “Then don’t use the slow motion function.”, you might be saying. The problem there is the slow motion button has been placed right where the Select button usually is on a Sony controller, and the Select button has been moved to the right, just between Slow Motion and Start, leading to some accidental usage of the slow motion feature.
Overall I feel the PS6010A is a good alternative to the digital controller, not a replacement but indeed an alternative. It does feel a bit cheaper, but it doesn’t feel like it’s made out of extremely brittle plastic like some other controllers I’ve used. The turbo feature is something I can not praise enough about this controller. Simple to program, simple to deprogram and it actually made the games I tried it with more fun. The only true downside that I can see is the placement of the slow motion feature and that the slow motion feature really isn’t that useful.