Stumbled into somthing cool over the weekend!
Finished work early Friday, was waiting for a mate to finish so we could go get a munch so to kill some time, I thought I'd go to the Birmingham Five Ways Bowlplex...they have 2spicy!
Got there and noticed they had this absolute HUGE 60 inch screen with some racing game on it. Didn't think too much of it, got some token walked past it on the way to play 2spicy and I did a double take...it looked like Sega Rally Revo. Hang on...IT IS!
Track deformations, same tracks, menu music, same graphical style...it was Sega Rally Revo in everything but name, it was called "Super Challenge".
Sat down on the machine, thought I'd give it a quick spin as I love this game on the 360, see how I would fare on a wheel.
Started it up and I could only choose from 2 cars...and then only from 2 tracks. Thought it was strange that it was a bit limited in car and tracks to choose but carried on anyway.
The 2 tracks were more or less the same as those found in the home version, Alpine had a new section where you would tumble down an extra route where you get to see a Steam Engine and various points in it's journey chugging away along a massive bridge and then at different points in the background on consecutive laps. It's Alpine 1 on the 360, the one with the 3 hair pin bends.
First thing that hit me when the game started was the force feedback on the entire machine. Seat jolted, the wheel vibrated, it caught me a bit of gaurd as I didn't expect it. >_<; It was strong, very strong. I was being rocked about inside the seat quite wildly at times on the 2nd and 3rd laps!
Just remember back to how good the feedback was on the pad, then imagine if they built that kind of feedback into a seat and a wheel, it was nuts. Everytime I would gear down you could feel the seat slightly move forward and when you punched up a gear it would slightly move back.
Best thing about the rig was when you were power sliding around corners, I can't describe it but the seat would tilt at a high and low angle from the front and back as well as the normal feedback you would expect. It felt great and I was trying to slide around as many corners as possible just to test how mad the seat would move, especially when you span the wheel back the other way to straighten the car up.
I've played a number of racers with arcade rigs, I've never played one with as mad feedback as this. I kept thinking that "Shit...i better not **** up my back on this thing!" but I was fine. xD
Anyway, must have put about 8 credits into this thing and when I was playing there were these 3 dudes constantly watching, but they never got on the machine. When I went to get more tokens one of the dudes runs behind the machine with a
keyboard from his bag, did somthing and then went back and tried to mingle in with the crowd.
Carried on playing, saw on the reflection of the screen they were still watching, I had a glance over my shoulder and they started to look away or made on the spot conversation with eachother!
Smooth. Although, they could have just been admiring my awesome beard...it happens.
*strokes*
Judging by the lack of tracks and cars, this must have been a location test or somthing and those guys were from SRS. Cool!
Pretty cool that SRS are dipping their toes into making racers for the arcade.
The machine itself even though it was probably one of the biggest things there, looked extremely low key. Very little art on the machine, and some boring looking logos. I didn't even see a Sega logo on the screen or on the machine itself either. Early days though!
One thing I had trouble with was the gears. You tapped it down to go up a gear, and up to go down. Took a few goes to get this working but boy it felt great smacking the car into 2nd and then powering back up to 6th after a hair pin. The brake hardly had any give to it too, but I didn't use it as I could do just fine letting off the gas or gearing down.
Didn't use the handbrake, but shit, this was ace. It would be well mad if they had 4 of these cabs hooked uptogeather like the older arcade racers. Everyone rocking about at the same time. xD
Game translates extremely well onto the rig and wheel though, gonna go back over my lunch hour this week and give it another few goes.
Linear Mode
