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What three words spring to mind when the word "racing" is mentioned? They should be, in order of importance, speed, fast/stylish cars and competition. These are the most important and relative factors of racing both in real life and in games.
Looking back over ten years, it is visible how much the racing genre has changed for the better. Racing games were very simplistic in their early stages. All you had in your power were dull cars, tracks, music and a dull control system (two buttons mainly). These attributes of the genre remained dominant for a long period of time, mainly on handhelds, until it finally reached it's turning point, in the arcades!
Arcades were the main turning point for the racing genre with the Namco development team sitting comfortbaly in the driving seat. They looked unbeatable as kings of the genre once they started to create several motorbike games and F1 games, but their reign was soon over with an ever surprising game for the Playstation being made that displayed the true difference in realism between arcade and console racing games. This game was Gran Turismo. What made it far more superior than Namco's Ridge Racer titles and even Sega Saturn's Sega Rally was the huge attention to detail and realism. And what's more, it had authentic well-known and loved cars. Speeding down roads, hills and mountains always feels better with a car you're familiar with in the market, rather than thought-up ones. This aspect to Gran Turismo as well as the improved music and courses made it a true classic and one to beat. It remained dominant for a long time and proved unbeatable, except by it's own sequel GT2, which arguably still isn't as good as its predecessor.
Once Gran Turismo hit the industry, most fans of the genre instantly took a more serious side focusing on the realism more than the gameplay. They no longer hailed arcade racers the best, but realistic racers like GT. Popular car manufacturers like Porsche, Ferrari, Aston Martin and Lamborghini were all benifiting from this change in the industry, gaining more and more money for the inclusion of their cars in racing games. In order to sell, developers had to start including real counterpart motors in their games, this is what GT did and it sold shedloads!
After this, developers like Infogrammes focused more on making rally games and I think this is because GT had set a standard too hard to match. This was visibly a smarter approach and rally games soon became the alternative to the original, realistic racer. First came V-Rally, then loads of secondary developers followed this approach and made less-noticed rally titles like Total Driving, Driven and so on. But the best of the rally racing genre started a great reputation for themselves, which would soon help with their sales in the future. I'm talking about titles like V-Rally and Colin McRae rally.
Already, V-Rally 3 has sold on a huge scale in the PS2 market, and Colin McRae 3 is already being anticipated because it's done so well in the past on both the PC and Playstation. Other developers have made their own mark mainly on the PS2 for rally games. World Rally Championship is a new rally sim based on the real World Championships. Fans of the genre took a shine to this game mainly because of it remains truthful to the genre and shows the main aspects of rallying. However, the team at Polyphony realised soon enough that they had only been focusing on one part of racing, so with the PS2 opening up a lot of opportunity they decided to take advantage and make GT3. Not only would this game have the best graphics to be displayed for a racing game, or the most amount of realism and authentic cars, it would also have a rally feature allowing players to hit the dusty tracks as well as the 'tarry' road.
One would think that this part of the game would be the most rushed, but instead GT3 displayed the most realistic rallying exposition ever to be seen! And one could blame this for the game not having any damage system. The only downfall to the amazing graphics and realistic play to the rally feature was that the car views were limited, meaning you couldn't see the inside of cars like any normal rally game or more importantly, your driver! However, GT3 appeared to be the most dominant racing title on the market as it contained loads of cars (including Touring Cars) and it also gave the player the great feeling of achievement being able to buy and sell cars.
When the PS2 first launched, Ridge Racer Evo was at the top spot, but it didn't stay there for very long because it was simply too.... simple! GT3 came in and instantly set another standard. Now, many have doubts of whether it is such a good game after all with the GameCube and X-box having their own impressive attempts at beating GT3. With all this competition going on it is very hard to say that the racing genre is very stable at all. At certain times different forms of the genre like rally reign dominant and at other times the original "realistic" form reigns supreme.
From this, it is questionable which one is the best? Well, it would ruin the driving scene if racing games were made with both aspects of the genre - rally and original. It seems to have worked so far, the whole split scene with rally games coming in at one time and original racers at other times, so why change it now? What makes rally games stand out from the norm however is that they focus a lot more on realism of control and damage. PGR for the X-box was a basic make-over from GT3, but even though it has an alright damage system it doesn't show as much attention to car detail, meaning, car physics. Still, it's a good racer that will always show that GT3 graphics aren't the best!
It's refreshing when you see how far racing games have come over the years and it's even better to see the wider variety of the genre as well. There is the fun mulitplayer type from Mario Kart racing, the fast and bizarre type from Burnout and even the wacky type from the Wacky Races series. But still the more authentic titles like Moto Gp, Formula One, Gran Turismo, Colin McRae and V-Rally seem to receive more respect than the imaginative racing games. This shows that the racing genre has a more serious effect on gamers, but never-the-less, this seems to be a good effect. However, the problem comes when there's no stability to the genre. Look at other genres like RTSs, FPSs and RPGs and you'll see that they all follow a certain route to each of the games developed.
The racing scene in the industry right now seems to be filled with more rally titles than just the original Street Racers we used to see before. The genre needs a balance of both rally games and street racers, and obviously they all need to be good because we've seen totally dim ones like Tokyo Street Racing and New York Racer.
The racing genre is a land of opportunity for developers, and with revolutionary consoles at the ready they should take advantage now before it's too late. And by this, I don't just mean that they should produce loads of rushed racing games, but instead those that continue the standard set by games like Colin McRae rally and Gran Turismo.
Thanks for Reading
PS: Can't wait for Stuntman and The Getaway
:D
Looking back over ten years, it is visible how much the racing genre has changed for the better. Racing games were very simplistic in their early stages. All you had in your power were dull cars, tracks, music and a dull control system (two buttons mainly). These attributes of the genre remained dominant for a long period of time, mainly on handhelds, until it finally reached it's turning point, in the arcades!
Arcades were the main turning point for the racing genre with the Namco development team sitting comfortbaly in the driving seat. They looked unbeatable as kings of the genre once they started to create several motorbike games and F1 games, but their reign was soon over with an ever surprising game for the Playstation being made that displayed the true difference in realism between arcade and console racing games. This game was Gran Turismo. What made it far more superior than Namco's Ridge Racer titles and even Sega Saturn's Sega Rally was the huge attention to detail and realism. And what's more, it had authentic well-known and loved cars. Speeding down roads, hills and mountains always feels better with a car you're familiar with in the market, rather than thought-up ones. This aspect to Gran Turismo as well as the improved music and courses made it a true classic and one to beat. It remained dominant for a long time and proved unbeatable, except by it's own sequel GT2, which arguably still isn't as good as its predecessor.
Once Gran Turismo hit the industry, most fans of the genre instantly took a more serious side focusing on the realism more than the gameplay. They no longer hailed arcade racers the best, but realistic racers like GT. Popular car manufacturers like Porsche, Ferrari, Aston Martin and Lamborghini were all benifiting from this change in the industry, gaining more and more money for the inclusion of their cars in racing games. In order to sell, developers had to start including real counterpart motors in their games, this is what GT did and it sold shedloads!
After this, developers like Infogrammes focused more on making rally games and I think this is because GT had set a standard too hard to match. This was visibly a smarter approach and rally games soon became the alternative to the original, realistic racer. First came V-Rally, then loads of secondary developers followed this approach and made less-noticed rally titles like Total Driving, Driven and so on. But the best of the rally racing genre started a great reputation for themselves, which would soon help with their sales in the future. I'm talking about titles like V-Rally and Colin McRae rally.
Already, V-Rally 3 has sold on a huge scale in the PS2 market, and Colin McRae 3 is already being anticipated because it's done so well in the past on both the PC and Playstation. Other developers have made their own mark mainly on the PS2 for rally games. World Rally Championship is a new rally sim based on the real World Championships. Fans of the genre took a shine to this game mainly because of it remains truthful to the genre and shows the main aspects of rallying. However, the team at Polyphony realised soon enough that they had only been focusing on one part of racing, so with the PS2 opening up a lot of opportunity they decided to take advantage and make GT3. Not only would this game have the best graphics to be displayed for a racing game, or the most amount of realism and authentic cars, it would also have a rally feature allowing players to hit the dusty tracks as well as the 'tarry' road.
One would think that this part of the game would be the most rushed, but instead GT3 displayed the most realistic rallying exposition ever to be seen! And one could blame this for the game not having any damage system. The only downfall to the amazing graphics and realistic play to the rally feature was that the car views were limited, meaning you couldn't see the inside of cars like any normal rally game or more importantly, your driver! However, GT3 appeared to be the most dominant racing title on the market as it contained loads of cars (including Touring Cars) and it also gave the player the great feeling of achievement being able to buy and sell cars.
When the PS2 first launched, Ridge Racer Evo was at the top spot, but it didn't stay there for very long because it was simply too.... simple! GT3 came in and instantly set another standard. Now, many have doubts of whether it is such a good game after all with the GameCube and X-box having their own impressive attempts at beating GT3. With all this competition going on it is very hard to say that the racing genre is very stable at all. At certain times different forms of the genre like rally reign dominant and at other times the original "realistic" form reigns supreme.
From this, it is questionable which one is the best? Well, it would ruin the driving scene if racing games were made with both aspects of the genre - rally and original. It seems to have worked so far, the whole split scene with rally games coming in at one time and original racers at other times, so why change it now? What makes rally games stand out from the norm however is that they focus a lot more on realism of control and damage. PGR for the X-box was a basic make-over from GT3, but even though it has an alright damage system it doesn't show as much attention to car detail, meaning, car physics. Still, it's a good racer that will always show that GT3 graphics aren't the best!
It's refreshing when you see how far racing games have come over the years and it's even better to see the wider variety of the genre as well. There is the fun mulitplayer type from Mario Kart racing, the fast and bizarre type from Burnout and even the wacky type from the Wacky Races series. But still the more authentic titles like Moto Gp, Formula One, Gran Turismo, Colin McRae and V-Rally seem to receive more respect than the imaginative racing games. This shows that the racing genre has a more serious effect on gamers, but never-the-less, this seems to be a good effect. However, the problem comes when there's no stability to the genre. Look at other genres like RTSs, FPSs and RPGs and you'll see that they all follow a certain route to each of the games developed.
The racing scene in the industry right now seems to be filled with more rally titles than just the original Street Racers we used to see before. The genre needs a balance of both rally games and street racers, and obviously they all need to be good because we've seen totally dim ones like Tokyo Street Racing and New York Racer.
The racing genre is a land of opportunity for developers, and with revolutionary consoles at the ready they should take advantage now before it's too late. And by this, I don't just mean that they should produce loads of rushed racing games, but instead those that continue the standard set by games like Colin McRae rally and Gran Turismo.
Thanks for Reading
PS: Can't wait for Stuntman and The Getaway
:D
Good point Sonic, but don't you think that there's an unbalance with the production of racing games?
One minute the market floods in with rally games, then this stops and it floods in with original racing games. Shouldn't there be a balance somewhere?
Especially with the GameCube and Xbox, you would expect them to try and compete with the PS2's racing line-up, but they haven't done that all. All GameCube have done is release sequels to old-time classics, but X-box have had a shot, still miserably failing with PGR.
Racing games are at a down-low at the moment, and I think we need some more. Look at all the other genres and you'll see that they're producing over and over, but it seems that once one great racing game is made we have to wait about another 5 months for another one.
One minute the market floods in with rally games, then this stops and it floods in with original racing games. Shouldn't there be a balance somewhere?
Especially with the GameCube and Xbox, you would expect them to try and compete with the PS2's racing line-up, but they haven't done that all. All GameCube have done is release sequels to old-time classics, but X-box have had a shot, still miserably failing with PGR.
Racing games are at a down-low at the moment, and I think we need some more. Look at all the other genres and you'll see that they're producing over and over, but it seems that once one great racing game is made we have to wait about another 5 months for another one.
The evolution of genres is always an interesting thing...
I wouldn't say Namco reigned supreme in racing games before GT came along. After all, it was Sega who invented polygon racers with Daytona- 16 player daytona (original) is still a must have in any Japanese arcade I'm told. Meanwhile Yu Suzuki has been working on everything from Sega Rally to F355- now that's a real arcade racer! (3 screens, surround sound).
However, like you said, GT revolutionised the genre. The whole point or simulation racers is to fulfil your dreams of wanting to drive fast sports cars. This is exactly what GT did by using so many real licenced cars.
Sonic
I wouldn't say Namco reigned supreme in racing games before GT came along. After all, it was Sega who invented polygon racers with Daytona- 16 player daytona (original) is still a must have in any Japanese arcade I'm told. Meanwhile Yu Suzuki has been working on everything from Sega Rally to F355- now that's a real arcade racer! (3 screens, surround sound).
However, like you said, GT revolutionised the genre. The whole point or simulation racers is to fulfil your dreams of wanting to drive fast sports cars. This is exactly what GT did by using so many real licenced cars.
Sonic
What three words spring to mind when the word "racing" is mentioned? They should be, in order of importance, speed, fast/stylish cars and competition. These are the most important and relative factors of racing both in real life and in games.
Looking back over ten years, it is visible how much the racing genre has changed for the better. Racing games were very simplistic in their early stages. All you had in your power were dull cars, tracks, music and a dull control system (two buttons mainly). These attributes of the genre remained dominant for a long period of time, mainly on handhelds, until it finally reached it's turning point, in the arcades!
Arcades were the main turning point for the racing genre with the Namco development team sitting comfortbaly in the driving seat. They looked unbeatable as kings of the genre once they started to create several motorbike games and F1 games, but their reign was soon over with an ever surprising game for the Playstation being made that displayed the true difference in realism between arcade and console racing games. This game was Gran Turismo. What made it far more superior than Namco's Ridge Racer titles and even Sega Saturn's Sega Rally was the huge attention to detail and realism. And what's more, it had authentic well-known and loved cars. Speeding down roads, hills and mountains always feels better with a car you're familiar with in the market, rather than thought-up ones. This aspect to Gran Turismo as well as the improved music and courses made it a true classic and one to beat. It remained dominant for a long time and proved unbeatable, except by it's own sequel GT2, which arguably still isn't as good as its predecessor.
Once Gran Turismo hit the industry, most fans of the genre instantly took a more serious side focusing on the realism more than the gameplay. They no longer hailed arcade racers the best, but realistic racers like GT. Popular car manufacturers like Porsche, Ferrari, Aston Martin and Lamborghini were all benifiting from this change in the industry, gaining more and more money for the inclusion of their cars in racing games. In order to sell, developers had to start including real counterpart motors in their games, this is what GT did and it sold shedloads!
After this, developers like Infogrammes focused more on making rally games and I think this is because GT had set a standard too hard to match. This was visibly a smarter approach and rally games soon became the alternative to the original, realistic racer. First came V-Rally, then loads of secondary developers followed this approach and made less-noticed rally titles like Total Driving, Driven and so on. But the best of the rally racing genre started a great reputation for themselves, which would soon help with their sales in the future. I'm talking about titles like V-Rally and Colin McRae rally.
Already, V-Rally 3 has sold on a huge scale in the PS2 market, and Colin McRae 3 is already being anticipated because it's done so well in the past on both the PC and Playstation. Other developers have made their own mark mainly on the PS2 for rally games. World Rally Championship is a new rally sim based on the real World Championships. Fans of the genre took a shine to this game mainly because of it remains truthful to the genre and shows the main aspects of rallying. However, the team at Polyphony realised soon enough that they had only been focusing on one part of racing, so with the PS2 opening up a lot of opportunity they decided to take advantage and make GT3. Not only would this game have the best graphics to be displayed for a racing game, or the most amount of realism and authentic cars, it would also have a rally feature allowing players to hit the dusty tracks as well as the 'tarry' road.
One would think that this part of the game would be the most rushed, but instead GT3 displayed the most realistic rallying exposition ever to be seen! And one could blame this for the game not having any damage system. The only downfall to the amazing graphics and realistic play to the rally feature was that the car views were limited, meaning you couldn't see the inside of cars like any normal rally game or more importantly, your driver! However, GT3 appeared to be the most dominant racing title on the market as it contained loads of cars (including Touring Cars) and it also gave the player the great feeling of achievement being able to buy and sell cars.
When the PS2 first launched, Ridge Racer Evo was at the top spot, but it didn't stay there for very long because it was simply too.... simple! GT3 came in and instantly set another standard. Now, many have doubts of whether it is such a good game after all with the GameCube and X-box having their own impressive attempts at beating GT3. With all this competition going on it is very hard to say that the racing genre is very stable at all. At certain times different forms of the genre like rally reign dominant and at other times the original "realistic" form reigns supreme.
From this, it is questionable which one is the best? Well, it would ruin the driving scene if racing games were made with both aspects of the genre - rally and original. It seems to have worked so far, the whole split scene with rally games coming in at one time and original racers at other times, so why change it now? What makes rally games stand out from the norm however is that they focus a lot more on realism of control and damage. PGR for the X-box was a basic make-over from GT3, but even though it has an alright damage system it doesn't show as much attention to car detail, meaning, car physics. Still, it's a good racer that will always show that GT3 graphics aren't the best!
It's refreshing when you see how far racing games have come over the years and it's even better to see the wider variety of the genre as well. There is the fun mulitplayer type from Mario Kart racing, the fast and bizarre type from Burnout and even the wacky type from the Wacky Races series. But still the more authentic titles like Moto Gp, Formula One, Gran Turismo, Colin McRae and V-Rally seem to receive more respect than the imaginative racing games. This shows that the racing genre has a more serious effect on gamers, but never-the-less, this seems to be a good effect. However, the problem comes when there's no stability to the genre. Look at other genres like RTSs, FPSs and RPGs and you'll see that they all follow a certain route to each of the games developed.
The racing scene in the industry right now seems to be filled with more rally titles than just the original Street Racers we used to see before. The genre needs a balance of both rally games and street racers, and obviously they all need to be good because we've seen totally dim ones like Tokyo Street Racing and New York Racer.
The racing genre is a land of opportunity for developers, and with revolutionary consoles at the ready they should take advantage now before it's too late. And by this, I don't just mean that they should produce loads of rushed racing games, but instead those that continue the standard set by games like Colin McRae rally and Gran Turismo.
Thanks for Reading
PS: Can't wait for Stuntman and The Getaway
:D
Looking back over ten years, it is visible how much the racing genre has changed for the better. Racing games were very simplistic in their early stages. All you had in your power were dull cars, tracks, music and a dull control system (two buttons mainly). These attributes of the genre remained dominant for a long period of time, mainly on handhelds, until it finally reached it's turning point, in the arcades!
Arcades were the main turning point for the racing genre with the Namco development team sitting comfortbaly in the driving seat. They looked unbeatable as kings of the genre once they started to create several motorbike games and F1 games, but their reign was soon over with an ever surprising game for the Playstation being made that displayed the true difference in realism between arcade and console racing games. This game was Gran Turismo. What made it far more superior than Namco's Ridge Racer titles and even Sega Saturn's Sega Rally was the huge attention to detail and realism. And what's more, it had authentic well-known and loved cars. Speeding down roads, hills and mountains always feels better with a car you're familiar with in the market, rather than thought-up ones. This aspect to Gran Turismo as well as the improved music and courses made it a true classic and one to beat. It remained dominant for a long time and proved unbeatable, except by it's own sequel GT2, which arguably still isn't as good as its predecessor.
Once Gran Turismo hit the industry, most fans of the genre instantly took a more serious side focusing on the realism more than the gameplay. They no longer hailed arcade racers the best, but realistic racers like GT. Popular car manufacturers like Porsche, Ferrari, Aston Martin and Lamborghini were all benifiting from this change in the industry, gaining more and more money for the inclusion of their cars in racing games. In order to sell, developers had to start including real counterpart motors in their games, this is what GT did and it sold shedloads!
After this, developers like Infogrammes focused more on making rally games and I think this is because GT had set a standard too hard to match. This was visibly a smarter approach and rally games soon became the alternative to the original, realistic racer. First came V-Rally, then loads of secondary developers followed this approach and made less-noticed rally titles like Total Driving, Driven and so on. But the best of the rally racing genre started a great reputation for themselves, which would soon help with their sales in the future. I'm talking about titles like V-Rally and Colin McRae rally.
Already, V-Rally 3 has sold on a huge scale in the PS2 market, and Colin McRae 3 is already being anticipated because it's done so well in the past on both the PC and Playstation. Other developers have made their own mark mainly on the PS2 for rally games. World Rally Championship is a new rally sim based on the real World Championships. Fans of the genre took a shine to this game mainly because of it remains truthful to the genre and shows the main aspects of rallying. However, the team at Polyphony realised soon enough that they had only been focusing on one part of racing, so with the PS2 opening up a lot of opportunity they decided to take advantage and make GT3. Not only would this game have the best graphics to be displayed for a racing game, or the most amount of realism and authentic cars, it would also have a rally feature allowing players to hit the dusty tracks as well as the 'tarry' road.
One would think that this part of the game would be the most rushed, but instead GT3 displayed the most realistic rallying exposition ever to be seen! And one could blame this for the game not having any damage system. The only downfall to the amazing graphics and realistic play to the rally feature was that the car views were limited, meaning you couldn't see the inside of cars like any normal rally game or more importantly, your driver! However, GT3 appeared to be the most dominant racing title on the market as it contained loads of cars (including Touring Cars) and it also gave the player the great feeling of achievement being able to buy and sell cars.
When the PS2 first launched, Ridge Racer Evo was at the top spot, but it didn't stay there for very long because it was simply too.... simple! GT3 came in and instantly set another standard. Now, many have doubts of whether it is such a good game after all with the GameCube and X-box having their own impressive attempts at beating GT3. With all this competition going on it is very hard to say that the racing genre is very stable at all. At certain times different forms of the genre like rally reign dominant and at other times the original "realistic" form reigns supreme.
From this, it is questionable which one is the best? Well, it would ruin the driving scene if racing games were made with both aspects of the genre - rally and original. It seems to have worked so far, the whole split scene with rally games coming in at one time and original racers at other times, so why change it now? What makes rally games stand out from the norm however is that they focus a lot more on realism of control and damage. PGR for the X-box was a basic make-over from GT3, but even though it has an alright damage system it doesn't show as much attention to car detail, meaning, car physics. Still, it's a good racer that will always show that GT3 graphics aren't the best!
It's refreshing when you see how far racing games have come over the years and it's even better to see the wider variety of the genre as well. There is the fun mulitplayer type from Mario Kart racing, the fast and bizarre type from Burnout and even the wacky type from the Wacky Races series. But still the more authentic titles like Moto Gp, Formula One, Gran Turismo, Colin McRae and V-Rally seem to receive more respect than the imaginative racing games. This shows that the racing genre has a more serious effect on gamers, but never-the-less, this seems to be a good effect. However, the problem comes when there's no stability to the genre. Look at other genres like RTSs, FPSs and RPGs and you'll see that they all follow a certain route to each of the games developed.
The racing scene in the industry right now seems to be filled with more rally titles than just the original Street Racers we used to see before. The genre needs a balance of both rally games and street racers, and obviously they all need to be good because we've seen totally dim ones like Tokyo Street Racing and New York Racer.
The racing genre is a land of opportunity for developers, and with revolutionary consoles at the ready they should take advantage now before it's too late. And by this, I don't just mean that they should produce loads of rushed racing games, but instead those that continue the standard set by games like Colin McRae rally and Gran Turismo.
Thanks for Reading
PS: Can't wait for Stuntman and The Getaway
:D