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Showing posts from January, 2022

RPM Racing: Neither radical nor psychotic

RPM Racing was the first video game made by Blizzard (original name: Silicon & Synapse), the company that makes World of Warcraft. It was so eclipsed by its sequel, Rock n' Roll Racing , that it's hardly remembered today. The RPM in the title stands for Radical Psycho Machine, a suitably 90's name for a racing game, but what struck me most when I started playing was how slow the vehicles are. It takes them a while to get going, they never get very fast, and they lose a lot of speed with every collision. The second thing I noticed about the game is how barebones it is. The tracks are plain and unadorned, beyond the track is just green grass, and the background music is bland and unmemorable. One annoying quirk is that RPM Racing is always in split screen, even when you're playing alone! The bottom half of your TV is wasted showing a computer car's movement. The game uses the SNES's Mode 5 graphics, which are supposed to be higher quality, but you would never