GALE RACER (SAT)
Few games better illustrate the merciless march of the times like Gale Racer did during the early nineties. Rolling into arcades under the name Rad Mobile in 1990, SEGA’s System 32 racer, a tentative successor to Outrun, was met with a reasonable reception. Fast-forward four years, however, and its choice as an early Saturn release seems spectacularly ill-judged. Made to look ancient by the emergence of Ridge Racer, it was SEGA’s own Virtua Racing that would make for the most uncomfortable comparison. A fully 3D racer that was superior by almost every measurement, its exploits on the older Mega Drive platform cast an especially harsh light on Gale Racer’s floundering gameplay. This was not the next-gen we had been promised, and it would likely have done as much to put off potential converts to the Saturn as encourage them.
The premise will sound familiar to SEGA fans: a trans-American checkpoint racer that sees the player at the wheel of a speedy sports car, weaving through traffic and navigating a host of stage-specific hazards. Gale Racer is an abject game, forgotten to time and wisely never released beyond its native shores. How did this come to be? There’s a whole catalogue of significant problems, a majority of which relate to the driving. A dashboard camera plays host to an uneasy, not-quite-2D and not-quite-3D scrolling effect that is particularly unconvincing in the corners. Anticipating track rotation proves really awkward, whilst the handling is slow to respond and heavy when it does. Add to this a piteously poor draw distance (exacerbated during fog and night stages) and you’ll have cars appearing a split second before inevitably piling into them.
Gale Racer has one or two nice touches but its gameplay and presentation fall well short of what's expected from SEGA
There’s no question, Gale Racer tries hard to integrate some novel touches into an otherwise bog-standard driving game. Single-use functions, such as switching on windscreen wipers or high beams for night stages make for nice (if superficial) micro-interactions, whilst stages offer a variety of road profiles and challenges. Some of them hit the mark: the Springfield stage allows the player to take a risky shortcut across train tracks, all the while pursued by a locomotive looming large in the rear-view mirror! The Mojave Desert stage near the beginning tasks the player with snaking around oncoming traffic and Las Vegas has a reasonably glitzy skyline, as long as you don’t look too closely.
Other scenarios strike a bum note, like the Rocky Mountains that challenge the player to find a way around a huge, super-speedy lorry on narrow roads that can see you plunging down a ravine and losing bags of time. Between the erratic collision physics, poor scrolling and dodgy handling, it’s an exercise in frustration. The forest canopy of Philidelphia is an absolute eye-sore, whilst the Rust Belt plays host to a night race where it’s little more than guesswork as to where the road’s headed.
Other scenarios strike a bum note, like the Rocky Mountains that challenge the player to find a way around a huge, super-speedy lorry on narrow roads that can see you plunging down a ravine and losing bags of time. Between the erratic collision physics, poor scrolling and dodgy handling, it’s an exercise in frustration. The forest canopy of Philidelphia is an absolute eye-sore, whilst the Rust Belt plays host to a night race where it’s little more than guesswork as to where the road’s headed.
FOCAL POINT: SONIC'S SURPRISING DEBUT
Here’s a zinger to impress your gaming-minded pals. Rad Mobile was released into arcades in October 1990, some eight months before the original Sonic the Hedgehog platformer landed on the Mega Drive. SEGA’s speedy blue mascot makes a cameo in the form of a small toy that pendulums from the interior of the car. This marks the iconic hedgehog’s first gaming appearance, meaning (remarkable though it seems) he appeared in a 32-bit game before starring in either the 16-bit or 8-bit adventures he would become so synonymous with. Extended play sees Gale Racer expand on the theme, allowing players to unlock mascot versions of Tails, Knuckles and Metal Sonic among others.
Its presentation is also a letdown by SEGA standards. The graphics are really bad, with sparse, ugly-looking backgrounds and some horrifically pixelated road surfaces. Despite arriving four years after its arcade counterpart, Gale Racer’s scenery is noticeably stripped back. Some of the cars don’t look terrible: the arcade version’s sprites have been swapped out for polygon models. Whilst they’re very boxy-looking (even for an early 32-bit racer) and their movement is entirely unconvincing, the vehicle’s designs are at least varied. You’ll encounter lorries, saloons, the occasional exotic ‘rival’ and oncoming traffic. The music is nothing to give Outrun sleepless nights, but it’s alright. That said, underwhelming sound effects and weedy engine drones are way short of the standard you’d hope for from a Saturn racer.
The problem is, Gale Racer’s suspect handling model and dated game engine cling to it like a ball and chain. The collision parameters are completely ridiculous. You might abruptly smash to a halt upon hitting another car. Alternatively, it’s possible to drive straight through them as if they aren’t there. This is probably just as well, as between all the traffic and the car snagging on walls, reaching the finish without a bit of inadvertent help would prove unbelievably tedious.
The problem is, Gale Racer’s suspect handling model and dated game engine cling to it like a ball and chain. The collision parameters are completely ridiculous. You might abruptly smash to a halt upon hitting another car. Alternatively, it’s possible to drive straight through them as if they aren’t there. This is probably just as well, as between all the traffic and the car snagging on walls, reaching the finish without a bit of inadvertent help would prove unbelievably tedious.
The Lincoln stage late on in the game has to rank amongst the worst levels SEGA has ever been responsible for: a sunset stage that sees the player “racing” two very persistent opponents. These dogged competitors repeatedly snag the player’s car, robbing your motor of its momentum, and rather than pulling legitimate overtakes, they’ll repeatedly clip right through your car, all the while flickeringly horribly. To add insult to injury, you can expect them to block you from one of the many awful banked road sections, that appear more like a sequence of steps than a believable road gradient.
Having a two-player option should have afforded the game some bragging rights, but it’s an absolute snooze-fest, with four featureless courses on boring routes that offer next to nothing in the way of enjoyment or quality. The options present three difficulty settings and I say this purely for the record, as it’s unlikely to have a meaningful impact on the lifespan. You’ll struggle to muster the enthusiasm to return beyond a couple of goes. For die-hard racing fans or Saturn completists at least, this Japan-only release is fully navigable in English.
Having a two-player option should have afforded the game some bragging rights, but it’s an absolute snooze-fest, with four featureless courses on boring routes that offer next to nothing in the way of enjoyment or quality. The options present three difficulty settings and I say this purely for the record, as it’s unlikely to have a meaningful impact on the lifespan. You’ll struggle to muster the enthusiasm to return beyond a couple of goes. For die-hard racing fans or Saturn completists at least, this Japan-only release is fully navigable in English.
There's a sprinkling of creative battles, but Gale Racer's ideas struggle under significant technical limitations
The Saturn’s first racer, then, was a deeply underwhelming effort and it’s no surprise that it has been largely forgotten. Every single active SEGA platform offered superior racing alternatives at the time of GR’s release and it ranks amongst the worst console releases the company has ever been responsible for. But for the quirk of offering Sonic the Hedgehog a cameo, it would have passed entirely without note. Despite its name, Gale Racer will do anything but blow you away.