Cruis'n Blast - back by popular demand

[esar]

 

[HarMGM]

Good to see Digital Foundry highlight this. And as mentioned in the video, it's shocking to see how small the development team behind this was.

[moosegrinder]

It reminds me of Speed Devils on the Dreamcast. That wasn't a Cruis'n game under another name was it?

[milko]

15 hours ago, matt! said:

I found it a crushing disappointment. No feel of driving at all. You're just controlling the speed of an animation timeline.

 

I was hoping for something like Excite Truck, but this is more akin to a rails shmup. My expectations were misguided. 

 

 

This is what I'm worried about agreeing with and is stopping me going in at full price. The footage looks incredible but the car itself doesn't look like its actually on the road, just a separate thing you slew left and right while the road goes past. Like those old Tomy steering wheel game things from the 80s. 

Maybe I'm wrong but it's quite an expensive gamble and I should probably rather get RISE at last or something. 

[moosegrinder]

RISE is a pain in the cock to configure. Each car has two settings to tweak and I couldn't get it to feel right. It's a shame because there's a good game in there somewhere.

[LaveDisco]

This is fantastic fun. Absolutely love it. You can make the same on rails complaint about outrun 2. Frankly Arcade racer fans should support the best arcade racer in years. It’s been a desert but we’re back baby. 

[matt!]

10 minutes ago, LaveDisco said:

You can make the same on rails complaint about outrun 2.

That's a good comparison. 

[Quest]

This feels similar to a lot of the weird racing games you find in Chinese arcades with titles like FIGHTING LAP MAX DRIFT or something. Cars doing backflips and chucking out neon trails and that.

 

I wish more of those got console ports. Fun nonsense.

[Kevvy Metal]

4 hours ago, esar said:

 

fucking hell at the video though, it’s a miraculous 60 fps, but there’s a slight dip when you hit the boost/nitro… and they’re suggesting it should of been changed? What are they, game designers now? 

[b00dles]

HAVE

HAVE

FUCKING HAVE

[Sumire]

1 hour ago, Kevvy Metal said:

fucking hell at the video though, it’s a miraculous 60 fps, but there’s a slight dip when you hit the boost/nitro… and they’re suggesting it should of been changed? What are they, game designers now? 

 

Well, they do have a point. One of the key effects of the game seems to be the only thing that tanks the framerate every time you use it. I thought the game designers might have noticed that and come up with a alternative really. It looks an awesome game, I might pick it up.

[Let us measure]

I'm loving this timeline where some godforsaken how the Cruis'n series has beaten all-comers to rise to the champion of arcade racers in the space year 2021. 

 

If you had told little 13 year old me who just spent £50 on Cruis'n USA on the N64 that this would happen he would have given up gaming there and then. 

 

But FWIW I have fond memories of the series. Cruis'n World split screen multiplayer was great fun, with the roulette wheel adding a MK-style degree of good luck. The series always did feel like Outrun's brasher, cruder American cousin. 

[Keyboard Koala]

23 minutes ago, Let us measure said:

I'm loving this timeline where some godforsaken how the Cruis'n series has beaten all-comers to rise to the champion of arcade racers in the space year 2021. 

 

Now there. Now there. Now there. Now there. 

 

Good as Blast may be, it's not dethroned OutRun 2006 at all. Even after 15 years, that still remains the ultimate arcade racer, and by the looks of it probably will be for years to come.

[LaveDisco]

It’s not dethroned outrun 2, Christ no. 
 

But I bet good money it’s better than Forza Horizon 5. 

[CheekyLee]

While it definitely isn't better than Outrun 2, the drifting is joyously similar. It puts a huge grin on my face.

[JPL]

9 hours ago, LaveDisco said:

It’s not dethroned outrun 2, Christ no. 
 

But I bet good money it’s better than Forza Horizon 5. 

Are they even comparable though?

 

One’s a track based arcade racer that’s heavy on set pieces, while the other is an open world graphics showcase, that has more realistic physics. They’re completely different beasts and there’s room for both.

 

Saying that, I did post in the Arcade Racer thread hoping that they’d do some DLC in a similar vein. I’d love to see that kind of craziness with the handing and graphical fidelity of Horizon.

[MDY]

21 hours ago, moosegrinder said:

It reminds me of Speed Devils on the Dreamcast. That wasn't a Cruis'n game under another name was it?

 

Speed Devils was a port of an original PC game: Speed Busters (which just added online play and a few extras..) 

Both were by Ubisoft Montreal, with Speed Busters being one of the first titles that studio developed..  

 

This really does look like a sequel to that in many ways... varied courses with various themed hazards.. you had animatronic dinosaurs on a movie set and alien saucers in Nevada IIRC.. plus some of the car skins were highly shiny, chrome-looking just like this!

 

[mushashi]

17 hours ago, Let us measure said:

I'm loving this timeline where some godforsaken how the Cruis'n series has beaten all-comers to rise to the champion of arcade racers in the space year 2021. 

 

If you had told little 13 year old me who just spent £50 on Cruis'n USA on the N64 that this would happen he would have given up gaming there and then. 

 

But FWIW I have fond memories of the series. Cruis'n World split screen multiplayer was great fun, with the roulette wheel adding a MK-style degree of good luck. The series always did feel like Outrun's brasher, cruder American cousin. 

 

It kind of wins by default when all the other Premier League Arcade Racing teams decided to retire or were forced into retirement by market forces. It's like Accrington Stanley FC winning the FA Cup because nobody else decided to compete. 😜

 

The only game in this series I recall is the original Ultra 64 game, which was fairly unremarkable, even at the time.

[b00dles]

Why would you call it the ultra 64 when it isn't known as that anywhere?

 

Why not project reality if you're trying to be oblique/ show off your 1337 games knowledge?

 

I mean, I'm sure we all know what you're talking about but come on.

 

Edit: I'm assuming you mean the arcade version but it came out on the n64 as it is, in case that's the response I'm going to get.

[deerokus]

The aesthetic is really fun, not exactly pretty, no subtlety at all, just awesome arcadey nonsense

[Let us measure]

19 hours ago, Keyboard Koala said:

 

Now there. Now there. Now there. Now there. 

 

Good as Blast may be, it's not dethroned OutRun 2006 at all. Even after 15 years, that still remains the ultimate arcade racer, and by the looks of it probably will be for years to come.

 

No, agreed on Outrun2. I was more thinking along the lines of @mushashi and his Ultra 64, where good coin-op arcade racer competition has been so slight recently that Cruis'n - even fuck'n Cruis'n - has managed to manoeuvre into being among 2021's best arcade racers.

 

I'm actually quite happy for Eugene Jarvis and his team. I think the series has always been his quirky passion project. 

[Kevvy Metal]

On 18/09/2021 at 21:04, b00dles said:

HAVE

HAVE

FUCKING HAVE

 

Wait what? What should I of said?

[dumpster]

On 19/09/2021 at 17:30, b00dles said:

Why would you call it the ultra 64 when it isn't known as that anywhere?

 

Why not project reality if you're trying to be oblique/ show off your 1337 games knowledge?

 

I mean, I'm sure we all know what you're talking about but come on.

 

Edit: I'm assuming you mean the arcade version but it came out on the n64 as it is, in case that's the response I'm going to get.

I believe the arcade game was marketed as Ultra 64, and displayed the Ultra 64 logo in the attract sequence.  The hardware was later changed and became the N64 and the game was converted to that format.  So the OP is correct to call it Ultra 64, and I am a pendantic twat for pointing it out.

[b00dles]

2 minutes ago, dumpster said:

I believe the arcade game was marketed as Ultra 64, and displayed the Ultra 64 logo in the attract sequence.  The hardware was later changed and became the N64 and the game was converted to that format.  So the OP is correct to call it Ultra 64, and I am a pendantic twat for pointing it out.

Yes I know.

You're both being pedantic twats.

[milko]

fwiw you can get this for just over £27 if you do the ebay ShopTo PURCHASE4LESS 20% off code.

 

And its the game on a cartridge so you (I) can sell it if it turns out not to be to your (my) taste. I'm in!

[Strafe]

10 minutes ago, dumpster said:

I believe the arcade game was marketed as Ultra 64, and displayed the Ultra 64 logo in the attract sequence.  The hardware was later changed and became the N64 and the game was converted to that format.  So the OP is correct to call it Ultra 64, and I am a pendantic twat for pointing it out.

Beat me to it.

[moosegrinder]

59 minutes ago, milko said:

fwiw you can get this for just over £27 if you do the ebay ShopTo PURCHASE4LESS 20% off code.

 

And its the game on a cartridge so you (I) can sell it if it turns out not to be to your (my) taste. I'm in!

 

This is suddenly incredibly tempting. Had I not just bought Metroid Dread for the same amount is probably have gone for it.

[matt!]

On 19/09/2021 at 11:06, MDY said:

 

Speed Devils was a port of an original PC game: Speed Busters (which just added online play and a few extras..) 

Both were by Ubisoft Montreal, with Speed Busters being one of the first titles that studio developed..  

 

Speed Devils got two releases on Dreamcast. One without online, and the following year another one with online. 

[Gregory Wolfe]

 

Eugene Fuck'n Jarvis.

[spatular]

initialy this is lots of fun, all the crazyness going on, backflipping dinousours etc, nice and smooth and looks good in motion, and while the handling is not bad, in some ways it's good, it's easy to get into, nice and responsive, easy to drift - but for me the handling is where it falls down, there's no challange/depth to it. it's like that easy to pickup, hard to master thing (like outrun 2 and ridge racer have) - this just has the first part. but it is still fun, and i think had i waited till it was a bit cheaper i wouldn't have minded that it was just a fun rollercoaster type thing. even though it also has it's problems i think i'd recommend the recent inertial drift over this - although that has the opposite problem that it could be hard to get into, and it's quite different, the tracks are pretty dull in comparison and no backflipping dinosours so it depends what you're looking for i guess.