Racing Days

.: iPAQ version :: Casio version :.

iPAQ version:

.: By: Shaun Beane :: Device used: iPAQ H3650 :: June 26, 2001 :.

I’m a big fan of racing games, dating back to the early days of Test Drive I – running on my 286! Since then I’ve kept up with the Test Drive titles and more recently the Need 4 Speed series. I’ve been waiting for a decent racing title on the Pocket PC, especially since V-Rally turned out to be kind of a disappointment. So, with the recent announcements of Racing Days and Need For Speed, I think racing has finally arrived on the Pocket PC platform.

I would assume that a decent racing game, with sharp graphics, reasonable refresh rates and enjoyable game play will push the limits of the processing power available on Pocket PCs. Backing up that thought is Kitt Peak's press release that they just aren’t able to achieve acceptable performance of the “full” game on the MIPS processor. Bummer. They are, however, going to release a more limited version for the MIPS.

In my opinion a racing game is measured by the true to life performance and control of the vehicle. The stylus control for steering that Kitt Peak chose was definitely questionable – at first. But, having an iPAQ, well, I guess there wasn’t a whole lot of choice! Kitt Peak's website and the readme file included with the installation files, has some very brief but helpful hints on steering. Use very, very small movements of the stylus to steer, otherwise you’ll find yourself spinning out of control.

Installation was a bit of a problem. I first tried installing Racing Days to my CompactFlash card, but kept getting errors ("Objects.dat not copied correctly"). After uninstalling, I reinstalled in RAM and it worked fine. I hope this isn’t a limitation, but could not find any documentation to tell me that it couldn’t be done.

The menus also leave a little bit to be desired. The first is just a scrolling intro, with all Japanese writing. Next you’ll see the title 
screen, click start and you’ll be shown the game options. These buttons are very clear. Your choices are OPT., SPEC, REPLAY, QUIT and an arrow pointing to the right. You also have to drop down lists at the top of the screen where you get to choose the car – only one to choose from at the point – then you get to choose the color of the car. You’ll definitely want to go into the options screen (OPT.) and turn on the steering assist bar.

The only other choice you have for options is "Lefty" – if you are left-handed. Press the right arrow and you get to choose between two tracks with three different levels for each track. Then you can race in three different modes: sprint, time attack and simulation. Sprint is you versus seven other cars. Simulation mode lets you set specific conditions like power, gravity and grip. I didn’t really find much use for this mode.

On to the game! You will definitely be spending a fair amount of time getting used to the stylus. I came very close to giving up before I finally started to get the hang of it. I’m not very patient, and that’s what you’ll need with Racing Days. However, once I got the control down, I started posting some pretty decent times. The tracks you have (all two of them at first) are very well laid out and give you a choice of a straight track and a track with a few turns in it. You’ll need to place first in the sprint mode to 
“unlock” the other levels for each track. Until then, you are stuck with level 1.

Don’t worry about crashing; you just bounce off everything. Not very realistic, but I guess we have to start somewhere.

The graphics are on pretty good. They definitely add to the game, but objects get a little grainy up close – like the bushes along side of the road – especially when you run into them! Good background scenery with mountains and trees and the sky has your basic clouds floating around.

The game was very smooth to play. I very rarely experienced any “skips” or slow downs that inhibited game play. Again, I am impressed with the iPAQ's power.

Starved for a racing title, I would have to say that, overall, I liked Racing Days. I do think that there is room for improvements. For one thing, the English translations really stink, something that seems to plague all Japanese titles. It does get pretty annoying, though. Also, I hope Kitt Peak releases more tracks and cars soon. One last thing is to have at least a dented hood or something if you crash. In Need For Speed your car gets drastically worse the more you crash, something that would make Racing Days more challenging.

I’ll give Kitt Peak a thumbs up because they have released a pretty decent racing title – thank you! Racing fans will definitely enjoy this, but don’t expect desktop features!
 

Pole position:

• Graphics

• Overall performance

• Racing on my iPAQ!

• Stylus control seems to be a good choice

The pits:

• English translations (or lack of!)

• Confusing menus

• No vehicle damage

Shaun's score: 8/10

Casio version:

.: By: Jason Surguine :: Device used: E-125 :: August 21, 2001 :.

Racing games. No other genre of game can give you the same feeling of adrenaline as a racing game when you’re going 200 some odd mph and tailing or leading 1st place, and 5 seconds from the finish line. This rush has been heightened even more in recent years by the addition of 3D racing games.

The Pocket PC hasn’t really had its slew of racing games, but it has had a few, all of which were in 2D (well as far as we know. Unfortunately, we haven't yet been able to obtain a copy of MachineWorks' ProCar Racing for review, and there's no demo for some reason). Nonetheless, at least one decent title was churned out. Despite it’s flat 2D sprites comparable to a Game Boy Color game, V-Rally had decent play control and enough tracks to keep one busy for a while.

Racing Days, on the other hand, is in 3D. As far as I can tell, aside form a few ports, the first 3D polygonal PPC game. And let me say that they did an excellent job on the 3D engine, models, maps, and textures.

However, it seems that they were so proud of themselves that they did a good 3D engine on the PPC that they were blind to the fact that they didn’t bother finishing the game.

Let’s start with the main title screen, which, up until very recently, boasted only one car, the NSX. This is where you make your grand selection of two cars and pick a neat little racing bitmap to adorn your car. In fact, if you go to the Racing Days website, you can learn how to make your own custom bitmap. I think that’s actually really cool. That’s a nice afterthought you can add to your game (like how the recent Saturn ads boast about their cars having dent resistant doors), once it’s done. I’d be happy with one bitmap and a kick ass game.

From this main screen you have an options menu, which allows you to make the mistake of playing in landscape. And if you do you can select a left-handed version of playing, and hide the steering assist bar. Next, there is a spec menu, which is the most vital menu in the game, to make your car somewhat controllable; allowing you to change from AT to MT and adjust the amount of gears, how fast the gears will switch in AT, adjust your brake timing, the soft/hardness of your tyres (tires), and adjust the wings, suspension and steering. Luckily, it’s confusing as hell, and most people wouldn’t have a clue how to adjust it and be completely confused. It would be nice if they just had a couple of dummy options like, ‘good control’, ‘bad control’, and ‘horrid control’. Instead, Kitt Peak optioned to go with just leaving the specs default to ‘horrid’. Good thinking, that’ll attract many gamers, newbie and advanced alike.

I’d explain how to set it up for the older version of Racing Days, but I don’t want to type a longer review than I already do. I mentioned how to in this Brighthand thread, in which I also mentioned how to really play the game, and a good strategy on turning and attacking corners.

Recently, it seems that Kitt Peak actually updated and decided to change the bad physics in the game, to make the game a bit more playable, especially with the newer car model, the Integra. I’m not sure if they actually improved the engine or this new car model actually makes a difference (or maybe I’m just used to the game and really, really good at it) but it seems much more playable now. But I still suggest playing with the spec options until you find a good control for you.

There is also a replay option, which you can save your favorite race, and replay it for your friends to show that you actually did complete level one. You can actually save an infinite amount of replay files, if you change the save file. It’s a nice little bonus to the game. 

There is also a quit option, which I am sure many, many people have used multiple times. And of course the little right arrow button, which brings you to the stage select screen.

The stage selection menu gives you a whopping number of two courses to start from, each with an equally bad translation of what was, I assume, meant to be a course description. If you are really good and you actually beat the levels, you can get up to a whopping six courses to choose from. And that’s only if you beat each level in turn getting first place. That’s right, 1st. Not 1st through 3d, not even 1st or 2nd, but first. I guess this was their idea of rationalizing having only 6 levels: no one will ever get that far. This is really weak. For the price they are charging, there should be at least a solid ten courses; especially since they are just recycling old courses like Ridge Racer does (meaning the courses are all based off of the same first course, with different twists to them).

You also are given the choice to do an actual rally-race mode, ‘sprint’; a time-attack mode, ‘time attack’; or a simulation-player-by-themselves-no-point-but-best-physics-options-mode, ‘simulation’. Pretty self-explanatory, but what’s sad is that only the registered version allows to play in simulation mode, which gives the extra options of weight, power, gravity, and grip. Then, you can customize until your car is controlling exactly how you want it. It’s too bad you can’t use these options in the actual rally racing mode.

Once you actually start the race, if you’ve never played the game before, you’re in for a visual treat (and if you have, do it again, because you forgot how cool it was). The 3D graphics are simply stunning on the small screen, especially on the crisp Casio screen. All of the textures, models and maps are just done incredibly well; very, very top-notch stuff. They even added small amounts of detail, like the brake lights on every car light up whenever brakes are applied.

And the speed? Well, on a Casio E-125/EM-500 @ 150Mhz, it will stutter for the first few seconds of the race, but once the cars thin out and you only have 1-3 cars, it runs at a decent sped which is easily playable. I’d go as far to say you get a good 10-12fps sometimes, but I know that people would complain and say I’m wrong, so I won’t. At 180Mhz, same thing - for the first few seconds there is a bit of a slow framerate, but much less than 150Mhz, and then the game becomes just as playable as 200Mhz, at which speed there are no bad framerates at all - there is always a constant (approximate) 15-20fps.

So while the framerates don’t really affect the gameplay too much, the physics engine does. The game plays like many arcade racers, where you have to drive the course to perfection and if you hit one wall, you’re screwed (your mph/kph drops about half). On top of that, if a computer car bumps into you, he gets bumped ahead while you’re car slows down and does a 180 degree spin, and you bounce off a couple walls, losing about 10 seconds. It’s not the computer's fault though, for it has no AI, and it’s just a mindless drone on tracks. Which is okay I guess - that just makes them predictable and very frustrating when they don’t know how to go around you, but through you.

The worst part about this game has to be the steering. The number one complaint I read from everyone is that the steering sucks, and, quite frankly, it does. It takes a long time to get used to. What bugged me even more was the braking was horrible: if you tapped on the break once, the next time you steer, you’re doing a 270 one way and then over steering 270 the other (when you try to steer out of it). Most people (well, I did anyway) had to learn how to drive without using the brakes at all [Editor's note: Remind me never to accept a lift from Jason!], and just timing the releasing of the gas pedal. However, it has been much improved since its last release, and the over steering problem seems to have been fixed (unbeknownst to everyone). Once one learns how to master the control in this game, however, it does start to become a lot of fun.

Let’s go to the actual main game screen in portrait. I’ll say portrait because, while the game actually suffers no framerate losses in landscape, trying to control the car in landscape is a joke; see the iPAQ review above to imagine how bad it is. In portrait you have your main game engine with speedometer, odometer, and gear display all on the bottom right; pretty standard. On the top left and right you have respectively your time elapsed counter and your race placement. And then on the top and bottom 1/6 of your screen (collectively making 1/3) you have a nice big barren black strip of nothing. Why? Couldn’t they at least put a decent little fake console or fill it in with something useful, like a map or a rear view mirror? That’s correct, no rear view mirror, or even a message to warn you about an oncoming car behind you; you just have to guess. And no map, you have no idea if this is that big turn coming up, where you have to let go of the gas for 2 seconds before hand... unless you just memorize the course. It is a complete, useless waste of screen and it’s plain ugly. Aside from that, the main game screen isn’t too bad.

Why the heck is there a view button in the game? To mess you up when you accidentally hit the button instead of the brake? Many 3D racers (even some 2D) have a view change option, in which you can be inside the car, behind the car, or further behind your car. Depending on the player, one will choose one of these three options to fit their gaming style. This game decided to break the mould and have an inside car view (which is normal and good), a side car view (?), and an in-front-of-the-car view (?)?! What the heck were they thinking? You can only imagine how much this can screw you up if you’re about to take a turn and you hit this button instead of the brake (especially since they decided to have the transition be a really slow camera panning motion). In short, you lose the race. I even tried playing through half a lap using the view in front of the car, and it was so ridiculous, I couldn’t stop laughing. 

My last gripe is with the sound in the game. While the game actually has music (I’m stunned), it’s short, repetitive and doesn’t even loop correctly. While the actual driving music isn’t too bad (it’s kinda rockin’, catchy driving music) the short, incorrect loop ruins it. And the main menu screen (music?) is just plain weird. What really, really ticks me off though is the fact that there are no sound effects. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again (until someone fixes it or gets it right), you cannot have a racing game without sound effects. How am I supposed to drive (especially switching gears in MT) without hearing my cool engine sounds? How am I supposed to time my turns without hearing my tires squeal? Is that another engine sound coming up behind me (yet, another way to overcome the absence of the rear view mirror)? I want to hear that fake crowd cheering noise when I’m rushing towards the finish line. Enough said.

In all honesty, I had a blast playing through this game. That is, once I got used to the horrid controls and missing key elements to a racer. It was just too cool to play a first-generation-looking PlayStation title on my Pocket PC whenever I wanted to. I’m just wondering why they decided to release it before finishing it. So close, yet so far.

In the fast lane:

• Amazing 3D graphics engine

• Fun to play, once you get used to it

• Cool to show off to your friends with a Game Boy Advance

In the slow lane:

• Bad physics and poor steering

• A burden to play, until you get used to it

• Not just unpolished, but unfinished

• Short, repetitive music, and no sound effects

Jason's score: 7/10

.: Game category: Sports Games :: Reviews Index :.

Editor's Note:

The two scores have been averaged out to give an overall score of 8/10.