Enduro Racer

[ninjabearhug]

I haven't got round to playing Enduro Racer yet. I'll have to dig it out and give it a try, although you lot have made it sound pretty easy.

[Aypok]

ninjabearhug said:

I haven't got round to playing Enduro Racer yet. I'll have to dig it out and give it a try, although you lot have made it sound pretty easy.

It is. But, more importantly, it's also fun. :)

[balkry]

Enduro Racer is really a good game, and as many say, it was a cheap game in the old time. But instead of that price, graphics were good, and I think that it's the only game which it's usefull to have the Control Stick.
It's not really difficult, but if you have only 15 minutes for playing sms it's a good idea to have a run. If you have only 10 minutes try The Terminator.

To complete look at this end ( the japanese one ), which is strongly better.



smsconnection.free.fr/pages/affiche_fin.php?num=137

[grolt]

I finally got around to playing this again. So easy, it's true, but what fun it is! You can really cruise, and the level design strikes a fine balance between repetitive and challenging. The later levels are fun to really rip though, and dodging all those extra bikes makes for good fun. This game definitely owns Excitebike. The graphics really are great, but really, would it have killed them to add another music track? It's a shame we didn't get those extra Japanese levels, but pulling an Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars and making them play them over with more challenge isn't so bad considering all the levels are very enjoyable.

I never even thought to play it with the control stick, but I'll have to give it a go tomorrow.

So hows about a best time posting? And none of this emulator crap.

My first time was 8'36"21 but that could do for some major improvement, since I really chugged the water on level 8. You miss one jump on that level and it's tough to get out of the funk for the rest of it.

Great pick!

[grolt]

6'59"83 baby!

[uffbulle g]

Good choice, the game is fun but a bit on the easy side and I wish it was 2-player. I like to come back to this one once in a while and I think it has held up pretty well over the years.

[Roth]

I got my blue cart in the mail today, so I sat down and tried to actually play it for my first time (besides checking it out via emu). I figured out how to make the jumps boost haha! Man, I wondered why I couldn't get very far with everyone saying that it's relatively easy. Good pick, I'm diggin' this game

[grolt]

I'm really glad SEGA redesigned the game and didn't just try to port the arcade version. It really would have been just another HANG-ON/OUTRUN clone had they not opted for the isometric viewpoint. I think it's the stance that really sets this game apart.

That and the ending. The awesome, awesome ending. Stan, if you ever interview another SEGA employee in the future, please make sure it's the person who wrote that ending. I just can't stop beating it just to read that amazing scroll. The media of a race. Amazing. I love this game.

[outruner]

cool little game,very easy to complete but still very enjoyable.

[grolt]

Okay, the Japanese version is wack. First off, it just ends on the champagne image...no amazingly philosophical dissection of technology and transportation. That immediately takes it down a notch. Secondly, like Playgen said, those last two Japan-only levels are just insane. It's not that they can't be mastered, but they are so frenzied it's like the courses got acne. I'm game for a challenge, but the problem is that the "damage" bar is way unfair, and it's only in the Japanese version that its faults really make themselves apparent.

Basically every time you hit a rock it's 4, you come to a standstill it's 8, or crash outright and it's 10. With ten levels and a maximum of one hundred, it becomes pretty easy to max it out for the game over well before the finish. The left to right control isn't the most responsive, so on those last two levels especially, you're going to hit something. It's inevitable. A few times tonight I had around 30 damage points going into the last level, and I still managed to max it to over 100.

You get to go to the item shop after each level, so buying the "Item" item (yeah...) to decrease your damage will help, right? No. For some bizarre reason, the number of damage points deducted is completely random (whereas every other item is set throughout the game). Why? Why?! My strategy at the end was to only spend my money on items, and even then I was getting the -4 and -2 items even when my damage points were up there in the 70s. How fair is that? It drove me nuts, since I wanted to spend that extra money on engines so I could cruise through the easy levels.

That's the other problem with the Japanese game - the balance between levels is totally off. In the Western version, they did a good job of making each track more challenging than the next, so you could really rack up the item points in the first three levels, then start spending them on the last two for both cycles. Here, the first two levels are easy, the next three are tough, the next three are simple and then the final two are hell. Overall, that's as bumpy a ride as that final track.

I really do appreciate the extra levels on the Japanese version; on their own each is good. It's the way they are put together, though, that makes it much more of a mishmash than the Western version. The snow level is probably the best of the bunch, since it combines challenge and speed the best. The last two create rage, while the other two are fun for a quick and easy cruise.

I know I'll come back to the Mark III game more and more to master those exclusive levels, but I have to say that this is one case where a shortened version is actually the better version. Hell, the Western version could only consist of that ending and I think I'd still rate it one of the best games ever.

[playgeneration]

Its been a while since I played the Japanese version now, but if I remember rightly the last two tracks are great. Yes full of obstacles, but thats a good thing. I didn't have any trouble beating them, it just took more concentration. Infact I believe I finished the whole game first time.

[grolt]

Jan 17, 2009 11:12:43 GMT playgeneration said:

Infact I believe I finished the whole game first time.

You are a master. I think perhaps my controller might not have been the most responsive. I usually use the control stick, too, but for some reason my Japanese system was rejecting it, so I just used a Genesis controller. Still, I was dumping all my points on damage reduction throughout.

[ShadowAngel]

I just love the japanese version. The last tracks are a challenging thing of beauty. While you play the european/us/whatever version and finish it in under 10 minute the first time you play it, the 'original' version takes a bit more time.