Weekplay 202609

It is kind of amazing how good Rave Racer feels to control. There's a fluidity to this age-old arcade racer that makes it more of a prototype Ridge Racer(s) for PSP. You can easily engage the drifting and scraping the corners while doing so is a delight. The only thing missing is the nitrous boost.

That also is influenced by Rave Racer's track selection. The three arcade Ridge Racer games feel more like incremental upgrades than actual sequels. The first track, which is known now as the Ridge City track, is present in all three, and it's Rave Racer that introduces two new track called (confusingly) City and Mountain. They're both great and provide ample opportunity to go ham with your drifting. To a certain extent it makes the original obsolete, never mind Ridge Racer 2, so I can see why the sequel was skipped by Hamster for Arcade Archives 2 and they went straight to number 3.

Speaking of the original, I also gave that Arcade Archives 2 entry another spin. Which is a lot more difficult than the PlayStation-version with its different cars. Having to relearn the Ridge City track perfectly is taking some time as I grew up with the console version, but it's still a blast to play regardless.

One fun comparison with Rave Racer, is that I vastly prefer the announcer in the original. The one two in Rave Racer feel disingenuous, in Ridge Racer the announcer feels properly excited. Even though sometimes his announcements are a bit unclear. Did I really rip that section? Did he say shit?

Duke Nukem 3D: 20^th Anniversary World Tour was barely 2 euros on the Nintendo eShop, so that seemed like a fair price to travel down memory lane. I still have the first two Doom replays relatively fresh in my mind, so playing this makes me go 'ooo' in a good way.

I still remembered the game as a Doom-clone, but it's so much more. This reissue applies a certain amount of polish, but leaves the graphics mostly intact. It's fun, but it's also less impressive in the gameplay department than its inspiration. Duke Nukem really get its kicks from graphical prowess and that includes a level of titillation that feels exceptionally crass these days, but it suits its price.

Finished off this weeks playtime with some Hebereke Enjoy Edition. This is a Nintendo Switch port of the Famicom game Hebereke, better known as NES game Ufouria: The Saga in Europe. The Enjoy Edition is a 60Hz version (as opposed to Ufouria's 50) and while it's entirely in Japanese, the game provides translations for all the text boxes in the Enjoy Edition menu screen.

That's more than strange. I do get the intention to provide the Japanese original and back-porting Ufouria's localisation into it might be more of a hassle than it's worth, but in its current guise this feels tailor-made for an incredibly tiny niche within a niche.

Now I do fall into that niche and this is just an excuse to replay a NES-era metroidvania, but I really do wonder how many digits the sales figures of this particular title have reached so far. I'm guessing three would be generous?