Retro Thoughts and a long comma'd flash back, sorry Frozen and others, who thought, but never said it!

For some reason, last night,  I was thinking (yes still capable) about a Burnout Track that you can't crash on, you know, a semi-tube track, like a side-ways C, and you race down the middle, but as you do corners you go up the side, then you have jumps,  over gaps and different paths of sideway C's. Then I was thinking about Extreme G (which was, I think, what I was really thinking about, and it’s a rip off from Wipeout, I think, the time line is very fuzzy, must stop thinking, danger, danger, Will Robinson), the space bike game with guns and bombs and mines. I enjoyed that game, well all versions of it, which were on N64, and I preferred it over Pod-Racer, though that was a cool game also and very fast too. Then Boot names Turok, which I played the first 3 games, though I did not like Rage War and was it the Xbox version or a 360 version that really Sucked bad eggs. But that weapon, the Cerebral Borrer (now some spelling issues), where you shot at a bad guy and the bullet drilled into his head, got in and rattled around and then exploded.

Then I remembered a game called Speed Kings by Akklaim, so went to look it up, as I forgot its name and also found the game called Road Kill, which was GTA with Cars and Clowns, back to that laters.

When I first got SK’s, I thought it was Burnout for bikes, and you could argue that, because it takes a lot to compare, Akklaim released Criterions Burnout 1 and 2, through their studio (is that right?), it’s a fast game, and you have to avoid traffic and there is a boost bar, but it has a different name, a Powerband and that was it, to the sharing and comparing. The sound was poor, graphics repetitive, with the same cars and scenery, over and over again. It did have some cool stunts that make the ones on PG4, a bit tame (Handstands on the handle bars), and dropping to the side, onto your knee, you could slide under trucks, which was cool for a while. You could jump road works and stuff, it was very fast though. But no-one else played it, so I got bored with it (I was very competitive in them days, due to youth, and games of Golden-Eye and other four player games on the N64, Snow Bo Kids another, and LAN based Halo, Combat Evolved). Unlike Burnout 2 'Point of Impact', which was shiny, had particle effects, a great sound track, that if listened to without the game would be a bit repetitive, but with the game was awesome, rising in cadence as you hit the boost. But the good thing about it was the multi-player, crash and pursuit, played for a good couple of hours, a week. SK got a couple, full stop, with different people, at different times, over the course of a month, and then I traded it in. But Burnout 2 was played solo for turned based multi-player; a mate and I took turns, trying to beat our own lap times in time trials.

There was one track (can’t name it, altzimers supposedly), that you went up the mountains, and had to do some serious drifting, after the start you went along a dam, go oncoming and near misses all the way, important for boost, avoid the truck, or put your other multi-player into it, then some easy turns to a 4 or 6 lane highway, that was twisted and buckled (4 lanes I’m sure, or was it 4 then 6 then 4. And that tunnel on my first game was the direction of choice, see learn from your first mistake, lol),then at the end of that, you had to do a 45 degree left turn, it was sharper than that but its Sunday, and I’m writing, not doing math/geometry, go up hill, a short straight, where another 90 degree left turn, with oncoming about to pop around the corner, appears, but that was an optical illusion, because it was not that sharp of a bend, and took me 50 hours to learn to follow the white line (or was it yellow, something about caution don’t over take, bend coming), miss that car, a short straight, another left turn of sharpness, then the snow would come down, (if turned on),  another short straight, a 45 degree right turn with a van on it, and if you wanted the lap time, you had to go under it, no, sorry that’s not how you say it, you have to go on the inside of it, then there was another straight'ish bit, with a bump at it’s a slight  bend(to the left) in the middle with oncoming, boost jump (yes people here is where it really worked), zip past that oncoming, going downhill to a left bend, not so sharp as the others, but going that fast, you can crash into the bend and fall off the track to the one below, and gain a lead and cut some time off, (yes, I too, have glitched on a snowy mountain track, may have done it first as a paying customer, and it could be done on the reverse Big Shores tracks too, and its variants, at the top of the S bends after the dirt track bit). Anyway, race continues and a good straight to a huge bend  to the right that can be done in one drift, staying on oncoming, miss the truck and a car sometimes, fly past your multi-player mate’s crash, who just glitched to try and do a vertical, using aforementioned  glitch, “dude that  was awesome, nice try, but that puts you behind big time” as I drive away laughing, but in awe of the first potential vertical from a great height, (we did get it to work, but both of us crashed, but it looked brilliant). Now here is where it gets blurry, I know the end of the race, start/end is just before the dam bit, but from that dropdown glitch straight, you have to drive on, do a left bend, go down a bit, NOW THIS IS THE MISSING BIT OF TRACK, was it a series of bends and tunnels going downhill, with some very ill placed oncoming of doom, or did you go right and do some turns into a sharp T junction downhill, then a sharp right, you’ll have to play it, and maybe I will when I can get my account to work on my Xbox again ? The snow eases off,  do a nasty right, into 3 oncoming trucks, see a red ‘ala Golden Gate’ bridge, miss that blue car that has two pin holes of light for headlights, I think its blue, sometimes red, like the guys who die in Star Trek, it’s in the shadow of the bridge so it’s dark, but I hoot my horn (yes, I remember a horn), then a hook a left into a straight, that goes into some S bends, with again, some hair raising oncoming, onto a downhill straight, with some more trucks, that I go in between, (I must point out that when I played Burnout 2 ‘Point of Impact’ I kept to the middle of the road, tearing down the dotted line as it were, so cars would always be near misses from both sides of the road, it got to the point with Partisan(will be introduced later), that both of us could, chase each other through the traffic, and cut in and out of it, like going around cones for a motor bike test and still keep the ‘car train’ going, some of our times were just tiny nano-seconds apart, but for the same race, and tailgating boost was not in the game till 3, I think, and if it was I don’t remember, and no wonder he kept up),after the trucks the track would drift left a bit, over a cross junction (try and go between the cars here, it can be done), a bit of a straight, then came a sweeping right turn to the left, drop down, past the line and switch right, then left onto the dam. Now this sweeping turn had different traffic on each lap, well they all did, but this was the winning corner for this track, if you did them right you would win the race. On lap 1, there was a truck and couple of cars, on lap 2, there was cars coming around the bend, making you take it wide, and to the right, you can cut inside them, but then, it was not a good line as it took, a combination of taps on the brake and accelerator, to flick the car around, to avoid the barrier of that last left turn, and then do the switch right, then left to the dam, but it can slow the car down a lot. And on the last lap, of 3, there was either loads of traffic or none, and that traffic came around the bend and up into the straight, which you either took wide and safe (not fun and knoobish), or take the risk and go down the middle and miss, graze really, the front of one of the cars, or truck, as you hit the bend, or stay in the middle and as the bend hit, cut in on the inside of the traffic, cut left and boost jump (yep another one) down over the line pulling right, switch the car over to the left to hit the dam road with all 4 wheels spinning and shoot off. Now if there was no traffic that means that there was a car at the bottom of the dip left, switch right, switch left turn dam straight, coming up, for a vertical takedown, if it was possible in this version of the game, but when you did hit it, don’t, your car would fly off the dam, in some occasions, in others cause a pill up that your multi-player mate would crash into and who ever spawned first won, bar steward behind me for most of the race, normally.

Now you know why I played for more than 2500 hours on it, and the guy I played with was called Partisan (as motioned earlier, he had the same amount of hours, probably more, as he did more all nighters and I was working then with two jobs, day and night, then messed up my back, more time to play Burnout, yes), and that was the last Burnout he ever played, he watched me play 3 and R, and picked up the controller a couple of times but, he seemed to be intimidated by real people, on-line, so never moved on, but we did play a lot of 1 on 1 with Burnout 2 for a while, chasing each other around every track, they all worked, we even used different cars, the Hot Rod, the Green Bogey and Car of Choice the Roadster, was it the Super Roadster, that was the best car? We used that for lap times. I went on line with BO3, picked a Tuned Super, after that and took the Xbox over from that day forward, and been a member of Live since, about a year after it came out.  I bought Live for Halo 2, played for a few hours, got fed up with Lag and Kids swearing so played BO3 and  for 3 days with 6 hours sleep, almost went Korean, and could have died? And have been a fan since.

Anyway, if Partisan, did get himself an Xbox and got into the Burnout series from that day (Burnout 3) onward and played Revenge and got a 360 etc, lap times would have different names in front of them, today, and there would have been, a happier Suffur, in a place where he thinks he should be (LOL), but just never really put the hours in and really learned to boost jump ala Revenge Style, unless I had my Burnout Buddy, Partisan. Now I have drunknnumpty as a Burnout Buddy, which is awesome, dude, but if history was different, would the gang have liked me kicking their ass across the track, and doing it with my light/shadow that was Partisan? Would we have been the Kings and Untouchable Ones on Revenge, would we be the ones with multi-tags, (when I say Ones I mean the gang, with Partisan teaching us the way) or am I dreaming once again.

 The rumour is when the price comes down, he (Partisan) might buy a 360 for Halo 3, get Live, meaning I might have to get that 50 meg line, with 2 meg upload, and talk him in Paradise, but the man’s confidence is shot, so I don’t think we will have that lost star, shining again. But I will make him even if I have to buy him a copy for Christmas, it will be out by then, won’t it Alex?

Anyway enough Burnout 2 nostalgia, I mentioned Road Kill in the first paragraph, it was like GTA, Merc’s and a bit Burnoutish,  with guns, all mixed up, my point of view and not really accurate, but they had some nuts driving courses and wicked jumps, off plane wings and over roofs and stuff. This was a good game and if it was made for the 360, would have had big on-line support, and would have brought the craze of seeing how many Clowns you could have stuck onto your front bumper and still drive around and kill more. It was sort of a Twisted Metal Black type of thing. Another game I still have a copy of is, Crash’n’Burn, now this game did not have the graphic flare of the Burnout games, and the handling was a bit off, but its game play on-line was great, especially Kamikaze races, where half the opponents start facing one way and the other half going the other, and you still got to win the race, mad as a bag of spiders, Hula Hooping with Polo’s.

It seems that Retro gaming is only strong if you go back to the SNES or Game and Watch, the rest in between seems to be forgotten (not so much, mind, as Xbox Live Arcade has a few Retro Games of old, and the BCL as well). There was Wave Racer for the N64 which I don’t think has really been beat in terms of visuals and game play, there was a game called,  Carve which was out for the Xbox, which I still have, which was similar (the cube version of Wave Racer was OK, but not as good as the original) and talked the tribe into getting, but when its only a couple of you playing and it’s a new experience for most, it does not have the trill, like Burnout, but it was nice for people to give it a go. I know game developers are looking for new games and want to put some new elements into a game, but I would like to see some old games get a makeover, tweaked a bit and looking stunning.

We, and when I say we, I mean Zombie and I would like to see Burnout 2 ‘Point of Impact’ being put on the Backward Compatibility List, for the 360, it was the Game that really, showed what the Burnout Team where trying to do, fast insane driving, drifting, missing cars, crashing with style and pushing what they tried to do in Burnout 1, and visually looking better than Burnout 1. I did not play 1 that much, as I went to 2 first, I think, then 1 and it was hard to sort out controls and drift styles etc, but now that it is on the 360 which is great, I might buy another copy and see how it plays?

Anyway something for people to read while sitting at their desks when they are supposed to be working, have a good week everyone.

PS still using the Criterion 205, end of week 2, unless the room is locked, then a Euro, still rather drive the Criterion 205. I even use the Criterion 205 for road rage with good results, especially Es-cap-e (ing) ala Dory style, and the other day in a race won Sunshine Keys R, beating 5 Revenge racers, who had decent ranks and skills, I might add, lol, if I had a video of that game, my driving even scared me as I avoided other people’s messes, going under and around them. Not to say, that I won many races, timed out on a few in that session. But fun all the same, we even had a couple of 202 Works races, nice to see some colour in the game, and Baked Bean is a cool colour, will we be able to get to chose that colour in Paradise, lol?

Any hew I’m done, till next time, keep on Burning and playing games, it’s good for eye and hand coordination and some thought processes, so a medical study says?

Patience is something I taught myself, so I never know when it's going to run out?