The Sega / Namco Rivalry, part 12...

Namco became aware of the popularity of retro-inspired remakes one the past few years. Despite a strong opening in the early '90s they had failed to topple Sega by the end of the decade. The studio came back in the new century looking to expand their market base in new media. Nothing in the past few years had grown as rapidly as social networking games and mobile titles. Young developers had a chance to create a breakout hit like certain Angry Flappy Birds. A great mobile game could make millionaires out of independent developers overnight. A big studio like Namco, and more recently Nintendo, had a lot to gain by remaking arcade classics for mobile devices. Mobile games tended to work best when players only had a few minutes to spare and games could be enjoyed in short bursts. Many arcade games were perfect in this regard. Pole Position Remix was released in 2008 to iOS devices like the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It had garnered great reviews from editors and players alike. It was an iconic series and audiences had great expectations. Namco did not disappoint. The game was easy to get into and enjoy. Despite being on a smaller mobile device the graphics and sound was far superior to any prior Pole Position and even Final Lap arcade release. Thank goodness for advances in technology! Namco gave audiences more than they expected. The game included all the classic tracks including the renamed Namco track (Fuji), Speedway (oval), Wonder (Suzuka), Seaside (Long Beach) and the new Misaki Point.. There were also all sorts of items that could be unlocked.

Namco allowed players to earn skins to change the look but not control of the racers. If players wanted to see what the racers looked like on an alien planet they could choose a theme that turned the F1 races into alien ships. Even the scenery and rival cars were changed to complete the theme. Namco made sure to give the title the same TLC that their original arcade hits had. The music, control and design were impeccable. The game was a bargain for the price especially considering how much content Namco put into it. To be fair the company certainly got far more than 99 cents out of me when the original Pole Position was in the arcade. Long time fans were happy to see Namco returning to their roots. If the studio kept up the momentum then they could find tremendous success on the various mobile platforms.

When people said that they grew up in the arcade they were often serious about it taking up the majority of their childhood. For my brothers and I it was no different. We knew where all the good games were and were on many as soon as they were released. It seemed that there was not one mall, laundromat, convenience store or restaurant within a 40 mile radius of Long Beach where we did not know what arcade machines they had. A visit to a new mall was often met with great enthusiasm because it also meant that we would get to discover a new arcade in the process. The amount of time and money we spent in the arcades was substantial. The arcade experience certainly did define our childhoods. Of course it also defined an era for millions of kids in the US and abroad. Many went into the game industry themselves because they had such enjoyable memories while growing up. I knew that I was not the only racing fan that was affected by the majesty of the tracks featured in the Sega titles. Two fans Antonis Pelekanos and Tyrone Rodriguez started up a Kickstarter Campaign to help fund his game project. The 90's Arcade Racer was an homage to the great racing games of the '90s. The creators cited the Sega and Namco racers as his biggest inspiration. The track layouts, details and even cars he selected were an amalgamation of Daytona USA, Ridge Racer and SCUD Race.

Every turn featured on the demo race course featured a jaw dropping spectacle to drive past, under or through. The skyscrapers, glass sea wall from SCUD Race were the most obvious but throw in a large animatronic dinosaur head, rocket ship and six story astronaut balloon and the stages became as over-the-top as arcade visitors remember them. Mr. Pelekanos and Mr. Rodriguez had clearly been doing their homework. Copying an old racing game would be one thing but recreating the look and feel that the designers at Sega and Namco had spent the better part of two decades perfecting was brilliant. Based on the development diaries the selection of vehicle types and course details audiences would be having a severe case of deja vu for a game that never really existed. The 90's Arcade Racer would be nothing without impeccable track layouts. Sega wrote the book on level design and every developer big and small has had to study their work over the past two decades. The next blog will look at just a few chapters in their amazing legacy. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Sega / Namco Rivalry, part 11...

Race fans enjoyed the sense of speed that a great game provided. They enjoyed the challenge of controlling a several-hundred horsepower car on a tough and winding course. Whether it was against a computer or human opponent there was a genuine sense of tension each time the green flag dropped. That energy was palpable even to non-race fans. The biggest reason why racing games exploded in popularity in the '90s was due to the introduction of 3D engines in the arcade. Casual fans would watch in awe as cars flew by some breathtaking scenery at over 200mph. Leading the pack was Sega. The company was no stranger to success. It had been at the forefront of arcade technology for decades. In fact Sega was an industry leader before the videogame as we know it had been born. In the early days the studio created electromechanical cabinets that featured moving components and no video screen whatsoever. Once the industry went digital Sega was ready to go. They had the talent, the production facilities and a network of arcades ready to distribute the machines.

Daytona USA was the 3D racing series by which all other titles would be measured against. The game was based on the large and powerful Stock Car / NASCAR racers from the US. Early racing games tended to focus on the light and lean Formula-1 cars which were more popular in Europe. In a moment of inspired design or mad genius Yu Suzuki and his team at AM2 decided to put the stock cars on twisting F1-type courses. This guaranteed two things, lots of drifting and plenty of spectacular crashes. Stock cars by their nature were heavier than the F1 cars and tended to slide around turns. Even on extremely banked courses it could be difficult to keep a stock car from sliding around. The original Daytona USA played up the fact that the cars were difficult to control and rewarded players by allowing them to drift (slide) and "slingshot" past opponents so long as they were also drafting (using the lead car to block the wind). This type of racing was unrealistic and unconventional, yet it also made for a great gameplay mechanic.

I had mentioned in an earlier blog that Daytona USA, released in 1994 actually featured less polygons than Virtua Racing from 1992. The addition of textures over the polygons created the illusion of greater details for the cars and environments. Daytona USA was the debut of Sega's proprietary Model-2 hardware, Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter ran on Model-1 hardware. In 1998 the Model-3 hardware was ready to be unveiled and Sega used Daytona USA 2 as one the new platforms to highlight the new architecture. The hardware introduced a greatly improved rendering engine which featured new lighting, transparency and particle effects. The stages that racers drove through were jaw-dropping. Still photographs could never do justice to how amazing the circuits looked in motion. Even impossible to recreate in real life locations seemed perfectly plausible in the Daytona USA series.

Only Suzuki and his team could have transformed a simple three turn track into a work of art. The Forest Dome was a beginner track featured in Daytona USA 2 Battle on the Edge edition. It was inspired by a real world getaway destination inside the Tropical Islands resort in Europe. Of course the Sega level took the idea one step further and featured a racetrack that was surrounded by a rainforest nature preserve with cascading waterfalls and grandstands all encapsulated by a gigantic crystal dome. Each track that Sega developed from that point forward was a work of art. The locations were so imaginative and wonderful that players often asked themselves why real world places couldn't be as cool. Game site editor Sam Kennedy once remarked that the Sega races all seemed to take place on the most utopian day ever. The skies were perpetually blue, there was no litter on the streets and all seemed right with the world.

Something that most arcade visitors didn't realize was that the first Model-3 racing game was released a few years prior and had tracks which could be considered as good if not better than any track featured in the Daytona USA series. SCUD Race / Super-GT was released in 1996 and featured four real world super cars in an all-out battle for supremacy. SCUD stood for Super Car Ultimate Drive and the purpose of the game was to give arcade fans the sensation of going absurdly fast in million dollar super cars. Suzuki was an adamant Ferrari fan and made sure to include the F-40 in the lineup but to appease the rest of the racing community he included the Porsche 911, Dodge Viper and McLaren F1. These were all production cars that were capable of going over 180 MPH and in the case of the McLaren go over 200 MPH. No ordinary circuit would be good enough for these flashy rides. Sega had to invent tracks that were even flashier. Even the beginners track, like the Forest Dome, was gorgeous. The Dolphin Tunnel was a glass tunnel that connected a seaside city freeway. Racers would drive by miles of coral and pass all sorts of marine life on the way to the checkered flag.

The track actually started above ground where cars would pass by a stadium and marina. Cruise ships and even tall mast sailing ships were waiting in the harbor. The circuit was framed by enormous skyscrapers which were polished to a mirror finish. Every element on the track was eye candy that made the experience of racing all the more enjoyable. Every time I raced on that track I was reminded of San Diego and my hometown of Long Beach. The two port towns were absolutely stunning on clear days. I often wished that one of the cities would build part of the freeway underwater or at least create a transparent seawall near the lowest part of the harbor. Of course feats of engineering like that could really only happen in a world where the national budget was focused on infrastructure rather than war. Despite all of the advances in graphics technology and the evolution of gameplay there were many fans that longed for racing games that were easier to get into and enjoy. A pair of retro-inspired games had been released recently which help appease fans of the golden era of racers. The next blog will look at these titles. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Sega / Namco Rivalry, part 10...

Sega had released its first 3D racing game years after Namco had put several in arcades. In the market the first game in a particular genre was usually the more successful title but this was not the case for the 3D titles. Time and technology made the later games appear superior by a wide margin. Sega completely overshadowed their competition thanks to Virtua Racing. A couple of years later however Namco responded with a game which would eventually outlive the competition. Ridge Racer debuted in 1993. The game had a few notable things going for it. It was based on modified street legal performance cars rather than Formula-1 cars. The game was set on the streets and highways of the fictional Ridge City rather than an identifiable race course. It featured textured polygons, already making it appear graphically much more advanced than Virtua Racing. Sega would not have Daytona USA in the arcades for another year. Many of these innovations would be copied time and time again by other studios.

The cars in Ridge Racer were not licensed but inspired by popular and affordable real world sport cars. The focus on attainable rides went over very well with audiences. Up until that point many visitors were driving race cars in popular circuits. These were vehicles that many would never even see in real life driving on tracks they might never visit. Many of these racing fans had come of legal driving age at the start of the '90s and were looking to buy or lease their first performance car. They would start with inexpensive consumer sport cars and then little by little tune them into real performance machines. Several of those drivers would be using their neighborhood streets and freeways as makeshift racing circuits as well. Namco was spurred in part to pursue the entire sub culture of street racing thanks to the success of the the Megalopolis Expressway Trial films. The series was inspired by the Midnight Car Club, a notorious group of racers that ruled the Japanese freeway system in the '80s. Magazines used to glamorize their exploits and post their insanely fast times doing laps on the busy expressways. This insight and influence to street racing culture predated the Fast and the Furious movie franchise by more than a decade. It showed how much closer the game industry was to understanding their audience than the movie industry.

Ridge Racer created a spectacle around the tuned racer. Drifting around corners was a major selling point for the gameplay. In other titles losing even a little bit of traction caused a car to spin-out or lose momentum and the race itself. Instead the curving tracks of Ridge Racer lent themselves to drifting, allowing the player to block a pass attempt and add the much overlooked cool factor of overtaking an opponent by sliding around them. Experienced players learned when to brake and throw the steering wheel into the right direction to cause a successful drift, sometimes avoiding narrow walls by mere inches and never straightening out completely for several hundred meters at a time. It could be unnerving in the first person perspective watching a cliff wall directly in front of the car while sliding in the right direction. The entirety of Ridge City seemed to celebrate this race culture. Audiences lined the roads, "race queen" models held up starting cards and a news helicopter followed closely overhead. Even a radio station (labeled 76.5 / Ridge City FM in Ridge Racer V) was dedicated to providing the music and commentary for the racers driving in and around the town. The game was very flattering to the "tuners" that players were becoming in the real world.

Ridge Racer got a sequel in 1994 it was out the same year as Daytona USA and Ace Driver. The graphics, courses and gameplay in Ridge Racer 2 had been turned up by a notch. What the sequel needed however was a major upgrade and it simply didn't have it. At the very least Namco had the street racing scene pretty much locked up but in other genres they had a hard time keeping up. A little known R&D group called AM5 released Sega Rally Championship in 1994. That team was probably best known for creating the Crazy Taxi series in 1999. At one point the collective was also known as Hitmaker and Sega Rosso while developing console releases and adaptations for Sega. What audiences did not realize however were that the founding members of AM5 used to work for Namco. They had created the original Ridge Racer and had jumped ship to make the Sega racing games even better.

AM5 took everything that they had learned in Ridge Racer, especially the drift physics and used that on a World Rally Championship-type game. Rally races feature heavily modified cars that have been strengthened for endurance racing. The races can actually take place on any type of course, both on road and off road, as well as in any type of weather and even at night. The course maps are handed out before the start of each race and each team has to have a driver and navigator. The navigator keeps an eye on the map and calls out the coordinates before each turn so that the driver does not go blindly through twisting roads. The studio actually licensed out a few real rally cars for their game, including the Toyota Celica and Lancia Stratos. The game made great use of different terrain, like gravel, mud, sand, asphalt and snow to challenge the driving ability of players.

Namco countered with Dirt Dash in 1995. It featured some great new gameplay elements and a diversity of road types as well. There were three different types of cars, unlicensed of course. A buggy type for beginners, an off road truck for novices and a sport car for experts. The cars were unique in that they had body panels that could take damage, flap in the wind and even break off depending on the severity of a crash. The Sega Rally cars did not feature those details. Actual rally cars seldom finished a race, let along a stage, without suffering some sort of damage. Sometimes the damage was cosmetic, like a hood or fender getting torn off by a tree or rock. Sometimes the damage was more severe like a wheel breaking off from the force of a hard landing. In either instance the cars were usually very tough and could continue under their own power. In Dirt Dash each car was voiced by a different navigator, they all had a distinct personality as well. They complimented the driver if they raced effectively and reprimanded them if they were sloppy. The game even featured a few shortcuts and alternate paths for repeat players to discover. The game was great in design and execution but it felt too little too late for many gamers. Graphics, level design and gameplay had made the Sega racers untouchable in the eyes of many arcade visitors. Namco had lost the F1 and Rally fans seemingly overnight. When Sega took on the Stock Car and GT fans the entire industry took notice. The next blog will look at how Sega set the standard yet to be beaten. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Sega / Namco Rivalry, part 9...

Sega released Virtua Racing in 1992, a year before their popular fighting game Virtua Fighter. Both games were developed by Yu Suzuki. He was the Ferrari fan that had created OutRun. For Virtua Racing he wanted to give the world a taste of virtual reality racing. Not necessarily in the sense of giving drivers a helmet which displayed a virtual environment but instead by generating the first Formula-1 style racer that featured 3D environments a 3D racing car and believable physics. The team at AM2 was able to craft a car and several tracks that responded very realistically. While the polygon count was still low by modern standards at the time it was revolutionary.

Cars would reflect light or cast a shadow depending on their position relative to the virtual sun. The exhaust on the racers would explode with sharp angled flames when downshifting, they could also bottom out on bumpy roads and send sparks flying from the undercarriage. The cars could even send up plumes of smoke from their tires if they got too loose on a turn. These details may seem insignificant and they were to many arcade visitors. They had seen sprite based racing games recreate many of those same effects. Many of the older Sega games also featured these details. The goal of Suzuki was to convince gamers that the polygon was the best tool in which to create the ultimate racing experience. While crude the flat blocky surfaces still had a sense of weight and depth unheard of in any other racer.

At first I was unconvinced by Virtua Racing. It certainly did look much better than Namco's Winning Run but the cars and locations were still blocky and rough. F1 Super Lap was a year older and still provided some amazing visuals. In many regards it looked better than Virtua Racing. The cars were highly detailed and not blocky at all, the courses realistic and the physics somewhat convincing. I spent a few weekends going back and forth between the games. Little by little I began to notice all of the nuances that an actual 3D engine brought to the experience. Knowing when to shift and when to brake suddenly became much more challenging. Coming up to the apex of a turn at the right angle and then accelerating past a computer rival came with a genuine sensation of speed. In sprite based games it was possible to memorize when the computer AI would go for a pass, or what landmarks to watch for when getting ready to downshift or enter a turn. That changed completely in Virtua Racing because suddenly the computer AI could adapt to the player and put cars in different positions each time they played. It was up to the gamer to become a better driver and learn to change tactics based on the opponents. It was not a sim experience, which was what had hampered Winning Run, instead it was very forgiving and played more like an arcade racer should. The game itself was selling a sense of immersion more than any fancy sit down cabinet ever could. However when the graphics and control were combined there was little reason for a car fan like myself to ever leave the arcade.

Sega did not capture the lighting in a bottle one time. They did it again and again and again. First with Virtua Racing, then with the even more well regarded Daytona USA in 1994. The funny thing was that Daytona USA actually featured less polygons than Virtua Racing, however the polygons that the engine did render were textured, giving the illusion of greater fidelity and improved graphics. It was the same thing that Namco had done to make Tekken appear graphically superior to Virtua Fighter. The leap in graphics technology did not come from in-house. General Electric Aerospace Simulation & Control Systems, which was creating polygonal rendering technology for contractors like Lockheed-Martin was shopping their technology to big companies like Disney, and Universal. Sega reached out, and visited their offices in Daytona Beach Florida. The rest as they say is history. Sega then married a more powerful rendering engine with textures in the 1995 title Indy 500. By then their domination on the racing market had all but been won.

Namco had actually tried to make a better Formula-1 racer after the release of Virtua Racing. The studio had been burned by failing to break new ground with Final Lap and had beaten Sega to the 3D punch with Winning Run but both games did not generate the responses they had hoped for. So the developers went back to the drawing board. They created a new F1-like franchise that played nothing like Pole Position, Final Lap or Winning Run. The new game would be generated in 3D and feature texture mapping and other graphic nuances. The Ridge Racer team had worked with Evans & Sutherland, another military contractor to get their hardware up to spec. Ridge Racer featured contemporary looking sports cars, Ace Driver had cars and tracks that were set slightly forward in design, with only subtle science fiction elements drawn in as with Cyber Cycles. 

Sadly the release of Ace Driver in 1994 and its sequel Ace Driver Victory Lap in 1995 had failed to pull many eyes away from the Sega racers. The Ace Driver games were very well done. The control was much improved over previous Namco F1 racers. It played much more like and arcade racer should have and not at all like a simulator. The designs of the cars, selection of race types and tracks were memorable as well. However the Sega game engines were more powerful and the difference in graphics capabilities was starting to become apparent to some arcade visitors.

For the majority of gamers there wasn't much difference between the Sega and Namco racers. Both companies still managed to produce games and graphics far ahead of the competitors. The true rivalry was between the two companies and it seemed to peak in the mid '90s. In the first few years of the decade Namco had actually done well at responding to what Sega had just released. If there had been only two next generation F1 games then Ace Driver would have beaten out Virtua Racing by a wide margin. Unfortunately the multiple arcade R&D teams at Sega were all focused on new racing titles and had released those games in rapid succession. It was everything that Namco could do to keep from falling behind the curve. A cameo from a Tekken character would not be enough to save all of the Namco racers. 

Namco was determined not to fall behind their competition. In 1993 they released one of the greatest arcade racing games of all time. Ridge Racer would become a hit in the arcades, and iconic on the upcoming Sony console known as the Playstation. We will look at this in the next blog. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Sega / Namco Rivalry, part 8...

There was no doubt that Namco and Sega had created the first cult of speed for arcade visitors. Pole Position and OutRun would become elevated to icon status by many long-time gamers. If there were a videogame hall of fame those two would undoubtedly be the first racing games inducted. While pursuing 3D technology for the arcade both Sega and Namco had to convince fans that future titles would all be in that format. It would be a tough going considering the visual quality that many sprite based games brought. Surely the studios could continue to push the boundaries of sprite-based engines for another few years based on a title like F1 Super Lap alone. That would not be the case. Once 1990 hit there seemed to be an internal mandate to get Sega to change its arcade development focus. The consoles could continue to rely on sprite-based ports for a little while longer but even those would have to give way to 3D console technology very shortly.

Home computers had come down in price through the '80s and some of the more innovative 3D racing games were available at home instead of the arcade. The arcade publishers knew that they had to change with technology or be left behind. As far as I can remember Namco was the first studio to get a 3D racing game, made out of polygons instead of sprites, in arcades. Winning Run was a rare game from 1988. It predated Atari's Hard Drivin' 3D game by one year and Sega's Virtua Racing by four years. It certainly was ahead of its time. The graphics did look more advanced than what was available on home PCs but not by much. The game looked and played much more like a sim than an arcade racer and that was possibly what kept it from becoming a bigger success.

Arcade racing games were supposed to have some sense of realism but not be completely rooted in reality. Not to burst the bubble of many long-time players but the best arcade racing games were designed by dumbing down the driving experience. Driving a real Formula-1 car could be very difficult. Expecting to be able to fight through a field of other racers while keeping the car on the course could seem impossible for a newbie. Instead studios like Sega and Namco allowed much room for error. They programmed in computer AI that could hold back or charge ahead depending on how well a driver performed. They also limited the amount of oversteer and understeer so that the cars would stay on course, often no matter how fast players were going. Winning Run changed a lot of those rules. It could be somewhat forgiving but was a much more realistic experience than other racing games. It certainly was not a 3D version of Pole Position.

Players worked through five gears on a simple polygonal course. The high walls made it easy for developers to limit the draw distance of the course. As advanced as 3D graphics were becoming they still had a long way to go before they could render scenery and other details with any sort of fidelity. A few buildings and grandstands were all that the player could see over the fence. The car models themselves were very rudimentary. They had rough flat shapes, like a simple paper craft model. Although they did have a few colors on the bodies to signify the team livery none of the cars had sponsor stickers or other identifiable details. The other racing games from that era had big beautiful sprite-based cars. Each sprite model had dozens of colors, sponsor stickers and other details that made them look very realistic. The sprite-based games even had multiple teams and sponsors, each with their own detailed racers. The tracks were often decorated with sponsor logos as well and even hundreds of sprite based fans filling the grandstands.

Aside from the graphics which failed to wow audiences and the control which was too sim for many there were other things that Winning Run had going against it. The game must have been extremely expensive and extremely delicate. In the dozens of arcades that I visited throughout my life there were less than a handful of Winning Run machines that I actually saw. Of those machines very few were working so I only had a chance to play it a few times. Despite my observations the game must have sold enough units for Namco to start a franchise. A year after it debuted the game had its first real track for players to try out. Winning Run Suzuka GP came out in 1989. The graphics and control hadn't been improved but at least the turns and rises and drops in elevation were fairly identical to the famous Japanese speedway. A three-screen build called Driver's Eyes came out in 1990. I think I saw three of those cabinets in my lifetime. They were huge and expensive for the time. However being the racing fan that I was I did enjoy the immersive experience the game provided. The graphics were still very rough but the expanded field of view had given me more of a sense of momentum and acceleration than any other racing game of the era.

Namco had done an amiable job bringing arcade racing out of the dark ages and into 3D. The franchise would make it to see a new decade but go no further. Winning Run '91 was the last game in the series. It had finally had the boost in the graphics and control department that arcade visitors had been expecting but it was too little too late. Other franchises had caught their attention and the home console was becoming a real drain on the arcade market. The PC especially was providing fun 3D racing experience as well. Thankfully Capcom had introduced Street Fighter II at this time and gave the arcade industry a much needed booster shot. The owners of the arcades were still hoping to see a racing experience that would recapture the imagination of the public in the same way that Pole Position and OutRun had done years earlier. They wouldn't have to wait long. Sega had something brewing in the wings. The next blog will look at this title. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Sega / Namco Rivalry, part 7...

Namco decided to dress up their fighting game character Paul Phoenix in leather motorcycle gear and have him ride around in a big custom bike in the game endings and official game art. These changes were made to make the character appear less generic and less like a clone of Ken from Street Fighter. It was also one of the early jabs that the studio took at Sega. The designers at Namco noticed that if Sega were going to link the Virtua Fighter star Jacky to their racing legacy then they would begin putting Phoenix and the other Tekken fighters in other titles as well. Since Jacky was a poster boy for Sega's auto racing lineage then Namco decided to put Phoenix on a motorcycle. After all bikes were supposed to be much cooler than cars and no motorcycle shouted America louder than a flame painted Harley Davidson. Or at the very least a Harley Davidson knock-off.

Cyber Cycles was a motorcycle racing game that Namco released in 1995. It was out about the same time as Virtual-On and Cyber Commando. Since science fiction design was working very well in the early 3D titles and even contemporary racing titles were given locations and vehicles that were ahead of the curve. There were three classes of motorcycles featured in Cyber Cycles. The easiest to control had the slowest top speed. The fastest in the game was the most difficult to control and of course there was a bike in the middle that was easy to control and had a good top speed. The easy and medium class bikes looked like Japanese or Italian racing motorcycles however the difficult one with the biggest engine looked like a classic American chopper.

To give the appearance of multiple characters in the game each bike had four possible colors. The riders in the title never took off their helmets but the designs on the back of their jackets were different. The rider on the blue chopper had an orca on the back of his, the one with the yellow had a cow skull and the one in red had a pin up girl. The one in black had a skull and swords logo as well as flame designs on his pants. The character and his livery were identical to Paul Phoenix and his Wild Hog custom bike which had debuted just a few months earlier. Without naming the character Namco had put one over on Sega.

Arcade visitors had by and large become addicted to fighting games thanks to the smash hit Street Fighter II in 1991. In just a few short years every major developer, and even dozens of unknown developers had released a fighting game of their own. Sega and Namco had raised the bar by moving the genre into 3D. In 1995 Tekken 2 was arguably the hottest thing in the arcades and the designers at Namco knew how to capitalize on its success. Although there were many different teams working internally, just as there were at Sega, they saw the potential for cross pollination early on. The team working on Cyber Cycles did not need to name Phoenix in game or make an exact replica of the Wild Hog but audiences that might not have normally played a motorcycle game found sudden interest in it.

Sega actually had a reply waiting for Namco. The studio had Manx TT out in arcades in 1995 as well. The Sega game appeared superior visually to the Namco game and controlled as well if not better. Sega's title was based on the actual Isle of Man superbike race. Which was one of the most thrilling and dangerous courses in the world. However despite the awesome efforts of AM3 many arcade players slept on the title. Of the two big racing games released that year the cameo from Paul Phoenix took Namco over the top. The next motorcycle game from Sega would completely break all conventions. The studio licensed the actual Harley Davidson name and set a 1998 game on an open world map based in Los Angeles. The game Harley Davidson and L.A. Riders had players racing through random checkpoints all over the city. The game handled far more realistically than Cyber Cycles and I would have to say that I saw more arcades with L.A. Riders cabinets than Cyber Cycle ones. Yet that same year they released something that was so wild that audiences had a hard time describing it.

Motor Raid was a tournament combat racing game set in the far future and across several alien planets. The title could only barely be considered a motorcycle racing game. It did indeed feature two-wheeled vehicles, a circuit and a countdown clock like previous racers. The settings, locations, gravity defying tracks and ability to fight opponents however made it more like a vehicle combat game, a nonstop rolling version of Twisted Metal in the far flung future. Motor Raid was visually stunning. Sega plucked science fiction ideas and designs from a who's-who of anime titles including Akira and Venus Wars. Those films had amazing motorcycle sequences and respective designs from the visionary Katsuhiro Otomo and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. The motorcycles were dangerous but refined, not unike the weapon designs of Masamune Shirow. They featured a perfect blend of hard features and soft curves. The racers themselves wore armor which mirrored the type of motorcycle they took into battle.

The only real competition that Sega faced in the arcade was from Namco. Both studios were constantly pushing the uses of 3D engines in game development. Every genre that they applied the new architecture to was a major milestone for the industry. The polygon was make or break technology for other studios but between Namco and Sega it would be a jumping off point for every battle. The racing genre would be the subject of the biggest war between the two companies. The next blog will look at where Namco seemingly took the lead. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Sega / Namco Rivalry, part 6...

Through the early '90s Sega was doing anything but sleeping on the job. They released Virtua Fighter, the first arcade polygon fighting game in 1993 the same year that Cyber Sled came out. It featured a diverse cast of characters and a new game mechanic that allowed players to push opponents out of the ring and disqualify them. Virtua Fighter tried to focus on more realistic combat and fighting styles than the more traditional 2D fighting games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Many arcade gamers were not initially drawn to the title because it moved much slower than traditional fighting games. Moreover the polygonal characters in Virtua Fighter were extremely blocky because of the limited computing power of early hardware. Namco would not answer the challenge to develop a 3D fighting game for a few more years. When the studio released Tekken in 1995 then arcade visitors began to take notice. Namco had only slightly bumped up the polygon count for their 3D models. What really changed the perception from gamers was the use of textures. Because the polygonal characters in Tekken had textured skin, clothes and hair and the environments did as well they appeared much more detailed than the Sega characters.

The diversity of the Tekken cast was not any different than what players had seen in other games but the moves that each character had were not necessarily grounded in reality. Tekken was one of the first 3D fighting games to employ the absurdly overpowered strikes seen in kung-fu cinema. Characters could kick each other into the sky and then punch them a few more times before they hit the ground. It was a mechanic that looked amazing in 3D. As far as design went the characters seemed to be a mix of those found in Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter. For example the main character Kazuya Mishima was Japanese and wore white, his rival was an American named Paul Phoenix that wore red. The two were similar to Ryu and Ken from Street Fighter but also Akira Yuki and Jacky Bryant respectively from Virtua Fighter. The similarities didn't end there.

Paul Phoenix was typical of US characters in Japanese games. He was brash and flamboyant and enjoyed being the cool guy. The same thing could be said of Jacky Bryant. To many gamers Phoenix seemed to be a parody of the archetype. He was so cool that he was absurd as well. Insiders noted that he was created to take a jab at the Sega, and even Capcom designs. Jacky for example was not only an accomplished fighter but he was also a professional race car driver. It was as if he simply excelled at everything he tried out for. Sega did everything to make him appear cool in the series. The way they dressed him, the cars he drove personally and professionally. He was the ideal that gamers were supposed to look up to. It seemed to be pandering the way Bryant was juxtaposed to cars that brought back the memories of OutRun and Daytona USA, the earlier Sega racing hits. After all if the American characters were good at one form of racing then it would have to be driving a stock car in a circle.

Sega seemed infatuated with the "hey look at this cool guy" school of design. It became fodder for Namco through the rest of the '90s. When they created Paul Phoenix they went out of their way to make him look even cooler, at least by Japanese aesthetics. Phoenix had actually changed greatly between Tekken 1 and 2. In the original game he wore a red gi and had a tall haircut. Long time fighting game fans noted that he looked like a mix of the US characters Ken and Guile from Street Fighter. Guile had a very tall flat top haircut and Ken wore all red. Jacky from Virtual Fighter was an American that also wore red. He had a red tank top and red pants in the first Virtua Fighter but his costumes would become more casual and race inspired. Namco began to change the look of Phoenix considerably over the next versions of the game to make sure that their fans understood how over-the-top the character was supposed to be. The studio would often portray him as a down-on-his-luck fighter while his Japanese rival rose to prominence.

Phoenix was clearly a powerful fighter as he could hold his own against the top characters in canon as well as within the game. Yet the outlandish hair and strong attacks were not enough to get a message across to Sega. A few years later Namco introduced an obese fighter into Tekken named Bob Richards. The freestyle karate fighter had the dashing good looks of a typical American character, along with clearly died blonde hair. He even wore a red top and jeans. The only difference between he and Phoenix was about 250 lbs of fat.

Bob had a patch on the sleeve of his shirt, a bright Hornet which would become his icon. In different costume variations the Hornet could be seen on his belt buckle as well. Those that were long time Sega fans knew that the Hornet was the signature car in Daytona USA. One of the first polygon racing hits. Bob was essentially the fat American stereotype and arcade fans either loved it or loathed it. Those that were not in the know simply saw a fat fighter that looked a little odd in the lineup. It would not be the first time that Namo had fired a shot across the bow at Sega. The beef between the studios could be traced back to their racing rivalry. The next blog will look at the period where both companies were going head to head across different racing formats. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Sega / Namco Rivalry, part 5...

Namco and Sega were locked in perpetual battle for the hearts of gamers. Every title that one company released often had an answer from the rival. Sometimes the answer was better and sometimes it wasn't. Sega never had Namco's Pac-Man level of success with any of their maze games but when it came to racing games they showed that they could catch up to and beat Pole Position. It was not the only genre where the studios would compete. For science fiction shooters Sega raised the bar in 1985 with Space Harrier. It introduced audiences to a world in which they could fly up, down and across the screen and shoot at alien lifeforms and giant robots over a quickly scrolling battlefield. The technology that Sega used was not really all that new, it simply built on sprite scaling engines that they had used in Turbo, Hang-On and OutRun. Those racing games taught developers great concepts and applications that would work in other genres.

Prior to Space Harrier most space shooters were single screen affairs, often from an overhead perspective. The 1979 Atari game Asteroids was among the most influential and earliest examples of a space shooter. The vector based graphics rendered amazingly sharp details and the game engine added some realistic physics on top of that. Unfortunately all of the early vector-based games were in black and white with hollow shapes making up the characters or ships. Namco showed the West how they could improve upon the genre, they released the full color space shooter Galaxian the same year as Asteroids. Then they added a scrolling background in 1983 with the hit Xevious. Sega redefined the space shooter with Space Harrier but Namco was barely getting started, in 1988 they released Burning Force. The game featured similar mechanics and even the graphic techniques used in Space Harrier. Burning Force differed in that as the character progressed they went from flying atop a rocket bike to being encapsulated into a small space ship. The game also allowed players to earn weapon upgrades, which was something that they had been used to seeing in the earlier overhead scrolling shooters from the company and other Japanese studios.

Namco had shown that they could probably top anything that Sega had came up with even as a smaller company. It did not matter how imaginative or outlandish an idea was, they were the ones that could improve upon it while adding a unique twist. Where the the two studios really began to eclipse the competitors was in 3D technology. Plenty of studios did amazing sprite based games but few were willing to put in the investment required to shift operations into 3D. The hardware was new and the software yet to be written. The gambles not only with a production budget but with an entire company were at stake. Both Sega and Namco began the '90s with a dramatic shift from the old ways of development. The gameplay elements that they pioneered would be copied by the industry over the next two decades.

Game fans had gotten a taste for computer generated graphics thanks to the film TRON. Released in 1982 the movie revolved around stolen code from the fictional game titled Space Paranoids. The graphics in Space Paranoids were way ahead of their time but audiences knew that someday the arcades would meet that level of technology. Growing up I had no idea that it would take over a decade to get there. The early polygonal games were not quite at the level that TRON promised, however they showed more than enough potential.

In 1993 Namco released Cyber Sled. The game revolved around futuristic tank combat. The tanks were set in arenas with free standing pylons and walls. They provided cover from the machine gun view and missiles that all of the tanks could fire. All of the stages were timed so the more aggressive and tactical player was usually the victor. It was essentially an updated version of the Atari 2600 classic Combat. Players piloted the tanks via a dial joystick yoke, like an actual tank driver. The polygons were bright and colorful and the animation and music very uptempo. The three-dimensional graphics were seamless. The tank and character designs simply oozed style. They were heavily influenced by science fiction animé and looked unlike anything seen in Western cartoons or films. In typical game fashion they each had their own strengths and weaknesses, from light and fast to heavy and powerful. The machines, like many early polygonal games, cost a bit more than the average arcade unit. Only the larger arcades could afford it and many of the early 3D titles.

Science fiction design went over very well with the early polygon hits. Sega released a robotic combat game in 1995 titled Cyber Troopers Virtual-On. That same year Namco released Cyber Commando, a spiritual successor to Cyber Sled. In just a few short years of working with 3D technology the quality of their polygonal engines had grown exponentially. Everything moved faster and responded much more fluidly than the early polygon titles. Visually each generation of 3D game was more gorgeous than the prior. Virtual-On and Cyber Troopers featured new lighting techniques and particle effects that were impossible to reproduce in 2D games. The environments and machines of war that each game featured were very convincing. Gamers could get a greater sense of simulation from these sit down cabinets than ever before. The models in each game gave off a strong sense of weight and mass.

Once the various genres started moving into 3D it was tough to go back. There were no equivalents to Virtual-On or Cyber Sled in 2D. Granted, some genres seemed to have better gameplay in 2D but both Sega and Namco would begin luring players away from those games as well. Even classic light gun shooters were made amazing thanks to polygon technology. Sega released Virtua Cop in 1994, and Namco responded with Time Crisis in 1995. Audiences on both sides of the Pacific began to notice the quality of each game had was only getting better. They also began to notice that Namco seemed to revel in taking shots at their bigger rival. The next blog will look at the game that created one of the longest running rivalries in the arcade. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Sega / Namco Rivalry, part 4...

In a previous blog I had highlighted the 1989 Super Monaco GP arcade cabinet. The game itself was considered a successor to the classic 1979 Sega game Monaco GP. It was revolutionary in terms of graphics, sound and control (it was the one that featured paddle shifters). Unlike the stall that Namco had between Pole Position and Final Lap. Super Monaco GP was a game that pushed the genre forward. It was something that fans, and especially newfound fans of Formula-1 could get behind. When the game was ported to the consoles Sega had signed up the super talented and charismatic driver Ayrton Senna to be the poster child. The console version did not have the amazing graphics of the arcade but it added plenty of real world tracks to keep the player going. Sega was dead serious about dethroning Namco as the makers of the best F1 racing titles. In format and presentation Final Lap and Pole Position were very similar. Granted Final Lap looked much more detailed it still had a very similar aesthetic. On the other hand the graphical leap from Monaco GP to Super Monaco GP was like night and day. Sega broke even more ground with the 1991 racer F1 Exhaust Note.

The game used pixel scaling to create roads that had a feature that the Namco games did not. The tracks in Exhaust Note, like Super Monaco GP featured changes in elevation which reflected the actual tracks that the game was set in. The game was also much easier to control than Final Lap while still providing a genuine challenge to veteran gamers. That title featured a car that was massive on the screen and among one of the highest detailed sprites ever created. The tiny cars and flat tracks in Final Lap were outdated by comparison.

A year lated Sega topped themselves again with F1 Super Lap. The 1992 title was actually a licensed game and featured actual logos and livery from Formula-1 teams. Prior to that Sega, like most companies simply mimicked the colors and logos from companies. Those shortcuts were often good enough for most gamers and even racing fans. Apparently the publisher had done so well in arcade and console development that they could afford the pricey licensing costs. The game itself was stunning. They had improved on every element that made Super Monaco GP and Exhaust Note so successful. There was a bump in the graphics department, the winged cars and sprite based tracks had never looked better. The detail that I found most improved over the previous Sega titles was actually the rear view mirror. The studio had used it in previous games to help players block out cars from trying to pass them. The "fish eye" camera effect that the rear view mirror had in Super Lap was amazing. The sprite cars seemed to distort and deform in real time depending on their proximity and position to the player. It was a unique visual trick that I would not guess to fathom how much programming was required to accomplish.

Namco seemed to be outclassed at this point. The Sega F1 gems were released in quick succession following the debut of Final Lap 2 and 3. To clarify the Sega graphic powerhouses actually predated even Final Lap R. Namco did not seem to have an excuse as to why older games from a rival studio looked much better than their own. The house that Pole Position built had been shaken to the core. Yet Namco and Sega both knew that sprite based racing games were nearing the end of their life expectancy. In fact the reliance on pixel art was becoming slow and time consuming for all the major publishers. Time was money and the man hours spent fine tuning hand drawn art to work in a game engine would hurt the bottom line. Sooner or later sprite based games in every genre would be falling out of favor. The industry would have to look for new ways to develop and render visuals that were faster, more cost effective and more aesthetically pleasing. Three-dimensional polygons seemed to be the next step for computer-aided visuals. Both Sega and Namco would begin pushing their teams in that direction. Those studios knew that they had to create hits in the most popular genres using 3D technology. They could not rely on just racing games to do that but had to branch out into different experiences.

Sega and Namco were no strangers to other formats. Both studios had released titles in plenty of genres. Puzzle games, brawlers, sports, sci-fi, action, fantasy, shooters and RPG hits had given both companies a broad portfolio to draw inspiration from. Yet they also knew that they could not simply release a 3D version of an older game and expect a positive response. Early polygonal engines were very crude and blocky. They did not appear to have as nice visuals as many sprite based hits. Aesthetically that was the case but polygon games offered a realistic sense of depth, weight and physics that no sprite based title could ever hope to recreate. Sega and Namco had to refine the tastes of their long time followers. They had to build a case and convince the most die-hard fans that their favorite titles would have to evolve or the company would die. They had to change the culture that they helped build through the '80s and the only way to do that was by showing audiences how amazing the future was. It was not easy at first but little by little both companies won over audiences. The next blog will highlight were Sega and Namco began to pull away from the competition while still managing to trade blows with each other. As always if you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!