I'd say Wacky Races is about 100x better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6OP1r4ZEzM
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I'd say Wacky Races is about 100x better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6OP1r4ZEzM
Mario Kart...
When was the last time we saw Wacky Races again??
There is no Mega Drive equivilant to Mario Kart - it was just too God damn awesome.
A comparison between Wacky Races, Street Racer and BC Racers would be way mor appropriate, especially since neither of each can hold a candle to Mario Kart. Saying otherwise would be fanboyism bordering on being delusional...
Street Racer is on the SNES too, so you could compare directly. (the racing is most competitive as soccer and battle are crap on the MD -racing uses linescroll rather well on the genesis but not much if any added effects like scanline scaling or such to enhance perspective or create hills -like the road in Road Rash, Skitchin, or the batman CD driving games -EA's racers also seem to have software scaled sprites to some extent rather than choppy animation)
A shame Sega didn't push that on the Genesis (let alone CD), could have been pretty good if optimized right (linescroll/linescaling stuff and maybe EA style software sprite scaling would be best -the latter could give smoother sprite "scaling" than Mario Kart). Street Racer shows potential, but they could have pushed further. (albeit even that alone could have been pretty good, especially with the 4 player mode -and with some tweaks for better items/powerups and obviously sega characters/themes)
Rather odd Sega pushed 2 Sonic kart games on the GG but nothing on the MD. (nothing to really counter F Zero either)
Wacky Racers is an unfinished mess that's nothing more than a technical curiosity. (it did do software plane 3D warping -looks like it might be a simple vector line overlay onto a dithered texture BG on a separate layer, probably less aesthetically pleasing to many than the linescroll type methods)
The more extreme examples of 1D line scaling and linescroll for 3D perspective effects are cases like Panorama Cotton which does it so well that it looks like texture mapping. (I thought it WAS software 3D textures at first) However, that only works if you limit perspective to an on-rails set-up. (for free roam/360 decgree 3D plane stuff it won't work -I think software affine texture mapping is beyond what the MD CPU can do at a decent framerate -the vector lines/polygonish stuff in Wacky racers is a fair bit simpler than that)
Ther's also the option for tilemap rotation and a broad selection of tiles to use (and that's what Red Zone does), but that's also limited to mainly just direct overhead/flat rotation, not warping.
Hmm, OTOH, Zero Tolerance, Toy Story, Duke 3D, and Battle Frenzy seem to push actual texture mapping via column rendering, so maybe something closer to mode 7 really could be pushed. (they also might use lines to fill the floor/cieling -and only toy story does a textured floor/ceiling -mirrored though so only the top 1/2 is rendered and the bottom is mirrored by the VDP, Battle Frenzy does that too)
OTOH, even if you could manage it for single player, 2 player split screen would really put a hurt on things (unless maybe if you dropped resolution further for 2p mode -ie used 4x4 pixels and/or a smaller screen).
That really goes back to the linescroll/line scaling methods being more attractive looking/playing in general (on stock MD hardware -ie no add-ons of any sort).
The MCD or SVP would change that dramatically (let alone 32x), though much simpler/cheaper DSP/coprocessor options may also have been possible (and earlier). (for specific scaling/rotation/blitting stuff, it probably would have been simpler/cheaper to use a direct derivative of the ASIC in the MCD, but cut back to only logic that would be needed to interface via the cart slot and read from ROM as well as a buffer -maybe stay simple and clock it down to 7.67 MHz directly on the 68k bus with a single buffer RAM chip to render to -and halted when the VDP asserts DMA to read the buffer or ROM, but possibly interleaved for 68k accesses)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Smith
seeeeeen
On the PC there was also Wacky Wheels
Anyway, I've never liked any of these racers with a mode7-ish perspective. Even the more primitive fake 3D effect of Outrun and the likes had a much better feel.
I'm with you. I've always felt like the only person who never understood what the big deal was about Mario Kart. I'm not one for racing games though. I only ever really got into Road Rash.Quote:
Originally Posted by GeckoYamori
SMK obliterates Wacky Races and other similiar style racers on MD
I swear you're making polls left and right just to be posting. Who would ever choose Wacky Races?
All these polls are pretty dumb if you ask me. Only worthy part each time is to see kool kitty's posts =p
Didn't Fonzie figure out a way to do mode 7 on a stock genesis? It's used in a Pier Solar mini game supposedly, I'd really like to see it in action (Sadly I don't have a working genesis anymore, and no intention of getting one soon, much less the game).
It's truly a shame that there are no proper racing games on the sega cd, they'd be way better than mode 7 racers (just look at batman and robin), heck even mode 7 racers would be easy to do...
We evidently have 5 very delusional forum members.Quote:
Originally Posted by Phantar
i assume you have had a bad day, mr badnusty....i sense frustration and possible anger within your words....let it out bro, let it out. ;)
I've never been a fan of Mario Kart, but Wacky Races is crap.
Mode 7 belongs to SNES and is something a Mega Drive can never do, since the VDP cannot be changed. Background scaling and rotation can be done in software though, and it is used in Pier Solar.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamahl