Gentlemen, who here likes racing games from the arcades?

Suddenly I had the idea of making Let's Play styled videos for the aforementioned subset of games, which have always piqued my interest. Record the video, post-comment, upload, profit. Pretty simple, huh? The twist is that I'll play games all over the years and ranging from legendary (Daytona USA, Out Run) to popular (Cruis'n USA) to forgotten (Ridge Racer) to unknown (Cyber Cycles, Super GT 24h). Naturally, MAME is my emulator of choice, but it will be asisted by El Semi's Model 2 Emulator and Supermodel (a Model 3 emulator, for games like Scud Race).

Well, since there are so many games to play, I don't really know where to start from. Anyone help me in this? I think I need a little help deciding on what sort of commentary to have, since I'm starting to think post-commentary is the best choice, but it makes natural, spontaneous commentary a good deal harder.

Don't just respond to that. Any other questions, comments or tips are much appreciated.

I am of the generation who played Ridge Racer and its sequels when they were actually in the arcades, and played them again on console. Starting a Let's Play on the first one may be quite cool to see. In my view, and this is informed by me living in Britain, if you want to do a good racing commentary, you need to study Murray Walker and James Hunt - their work on Formula One races was the gold standard. Listen to their beats, how they talk about the track and the drivers, and how they explain what the track conditions do to both car and driver. The races they commentated on are available on Youtube, as far as I am aware.

Well, that's quite off the wall, but as I've said that wasn't quite was I strove for; rather, I wanted something more akin to a Let's Play...

edited 3rd Sep '13 2:46:37 PM by AngelG55th

I remember one that I Always played, I think the name was Off-Road Challenge, it was basically one in which you drove pick-ups by irregular tracks.

Yes, there's a game called that; I'd play it if it wasn't unplayable in MAME. *sadface*

I played Ridge Racer before, also in the Play Station.

I haven't really progressed much with Maximum Tune though, although I have a 3DX card that can easily be changed into a Maximum Tune 4 one.

There's Rave Racer. First appearance of Reiko Nagase clad all in leather. There was also this Formula 1 game that shook the seat and if you crashed it shook to the point you could do yourself a proper injury. Anyone played that?

I still get to play that one, moving seats and all.

My favorite was always Arctic Thunder. Something about riding through Chernobyl on a snowmobile as a spy or a chimpanzee while shooting missiles and doing stunts appealed to me. Or maybe it was the force-feedback seats.

I played Mario Kart in a Japanese Arcade

Of course there's the Initial D games but I don't play them as often.

Oh yeah the moving-seats F1 game was Namco's Ace Driver: Victory Lap (I remembered 'Victory Lap', but only after checking Namco's arcade games page did I see the complete name). The first game in the series has uh...static seats. The sequel occupies more space to accommodate the moving seats.

There's still that one other game series that I play often...can't remember the name though but starting with the 3rd game in the series it features a manual transmission like in a real car.

I feel like I'm one of the very few that actually preferred Daytona USA 2 to the original. Don't get me wrong, the original's fine, but 2 blew it out of the water in terms of gameplay and driver selection (no longer are you stuck with just the Hornet, it's now joined by the Chum's Gum/J.C. Eagle car, the Scorpio Plasma Batteries car, and the Phantom Full-Force machine). It's an injustice that DU 2 has never seen the light of day outside the arcades...

I used to absolutely love the Cruisin' series back in the day. Mind you, I wasn't ever any good at them...

Glad I have Daytona 2 Power Edition at my local arcade. Sadly, it's only a single cabinet. It's not complete without at least another cabinet for linked games.

I've always liked Battle Gear 2 and 3 by Taito. Simple Japanese arcade torque racers, with a good selection of cars, and with a visible learning curve you can see yourself improve in each time you play, not to mention a lot of influence from Initial D.

Battle Gear! That's the series of games that I mentioned previously which I can't really remember. LOL