Today I threw on Gale Racer for the Saturn in the hope of re-living the days of spending endless amounts on Rad Mobile in the arcades when I was a child. While Gale Racer is a sort of ok conversion, it is as glitchy as hell. Rumours are that it was originally a Mega CD project but got cancelled at the last minute then ported to Saturn. People argue the fact that the FMV has a low colour level for as the proof that it was originally a Mega CD game but I personally don't see what they are on about there. Anyway, the game is extremely glitchy which shows me that it was indeed a rush job. Below you can see just some of the glitches in the game. These were all taken from real Saturn hardware running a real disc (both J-NTSC) First glitch happens right at the very beginning. The text seems to be trying to display a different name for the course then changes to the original name. Below you can see what happens as you pass some cars driving across the road in front of you. I didn't crash here at all, just driving normally. I'm just being picky with the next one. The original arcade used sprites for everything but the Saturn version uses polygons for the cars as you can see below from the missing polygon. Next is a series of nasty glitches that happen when you fall off the mountain road. First the background images distorts in to this nasty mess. next there's a series of very messed up cockpit views. Looks as if the Sega programmers mistook the word "crash" :lol: There are many more glitches than this but I'm sure you get the idea of how badly put together this game is. Yakumo
I love this game, even if it is a mindless racer. The arcade game's called Rad Mobile, by the way. I saw a minor glitch or two while playing this game, but never the major ones that you showed above. And I played it a lot when I first got it, enough to get around 450 driving points and see 3 or 4 different mascots swinging in my car. So, either it has to do with different revisions of Gale Racer, or the Saturn hardware it's running on. It's a fact that games like Space Harrier, Out Run, and After Burner don't run correctly on white Japanese Saturns, but they run fine on the first-generation Japanese ones. Gale Racer always ran fine on my early model Japanese Saturn. What model is yours?
The Saturn I ran that Gale Racer on was a 2nd gen grey Saturn. The first gen grey Saturn's have 2 LEDS together for the power and access while the 2nd gen ones only have 1 LED either side. My Hi-Saturn has the 2 LEDs each side though so maybe I'll try it on that. Saying that though it also did that on my white Saturn in the UK. Yakumo
Whoa, now thats fuck up... On another subject, have any of you played that game "Cyber Speedway"? is it good?
Hmmm...for some reason that looks like just my type of game. And man...I had no idea Race Drivin' was on Saturn. Both import only?
Intrested, any word or does anyone know if they made a second version of Gale Racer was put out to fix those errors?
Guys, don't forget that those glitches are found in only 1 or two frames. Found another yesterday where the timer started on 2 seconds then jumped to 50 odd ! Shadiwlayer, I'm pretty sure that Cyber Speedway is Gran Chaser in japan. I've been playing that quite a bit too these days. Going to do a VS feature on Retro Core between that and that Konami on on the PSX. Both are crap but which is the wosts? Yakumo
I remember that that and Tama were the first Saturn games released in Japan and EGM had nice long reviews of them both. I loved Rad Mobile, so I was pretty excited to see it getting ported to the Saturn, despite the fact that EGM didn't seem to think it was that great. I assumed they just weren't getting how fun the game could be. But it never got localized and I forgot all about it until I saw it for sale at Wolfgames with the description: "laughably bad port of Rad Mobile." Even that didn't dissuade me, though, and besides, sometimes bad games can be really fun in their own right. So I bought it. However, I found that it wasn't really even a laughably bad port, it was just a really bad port. In addition to the occassional bugs that Yakumo identified, there's the more important facts that the game has lost all the sense of speed that was so good in the original and the collision detection is really bad and often totally non-existent. No speed = no fun; no collisions = no difficulty; so there's really no point to the game. Not even worth the $12 I spent on it, I don't think. Anyone interested should just get Power Drift instead. ...word is bondage...
I always wondered about the Saturn port. Rad Mobile was a great arcade racer (reviewed in old issues of EGM as the world's first 32-bit arcade game) and I'll never forget my excitement of seeing and playing it in the arcade for the first time. For some reason, I never bought the Saturn version, but given how disappointed I was with Daytona and the pop-up crazy first gen US titles, perhaps it was good that I never shelled out the $$$ for the import back in the day. My fond memories of the arcade game would have been tarnished to some degree.
I was playing more Gale Racer today when I noticed some new glitches !! This game is a mess. First up is a screen full of crap. Second up is me driving off the road !! This shows how bad the colision detection can be at times. Finally a tunnel without any roof !! The 2nd picture below is what it should look like. Yakumo
Wow Yakumo, I was till intrested in picking the game up untill I saw your second set -_- . Real shame Sega rushed it, did looks fairly decent
At the time it was pretty common to see rushed games. I remember some dude at the video store who said those glitches were due to manufacturing issues.
That's how far you CAN drive in that section. I pass cars by going right or left on said soft shoulder.
Don't let the glitches put you off. It's still fun for a cheap game. I've been playing it loads tyo get up the different mascots. So far I've had Sonic, Tails, some thing from sonic 3 I guess and Dr. Robotnik/Eggman. Yakumo
