The evolution of racing games, part 3
The history of car simulators began in clubs with slot machines . During this period, the main characteristics of modern games were born: tactile response, view from the cockpit or outside the car, games with different types of transport from spacecraft to fire engines. But even then the race became available happy owner of game consoles of the first generation.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the capabilities of computers and set-top boxes increased significantly. The developers have moved from two-dimensional sprite graphics from pseudo-3D to real 3D-polygonal graphics. In the 1990s, the history of the main racing franchises began - Need For Speed ​​and Gran Turismo.
Today we will talk about games since 2000. What do you remember? Write in the comments.
')
Although the opportunity to choose a turn or somehow change the route in some games was added for about fifteen years, only in the late 1990s did the world begin to open up. However, he was not always fictional - because you can transfer real locations to the game.
In Midtown Madness, released in 1999, it was possible not only to watch pedestrians jumping beautifully from the path of your car, but also to explore the real city of Chicago. Knocking down the pillars and crashing into other cars. Critics noted good graphics and the lack of brakes, but also talked about the irrationality of what is happening.
Midtown Madness could boast of several modes, including circular races and the study of the city in a single pass and capture the flag in a multiplayer game. In addition to various cars, such as the Mustang and the Beetle, you could ride the bus.
Unlike Carmageddon, it was impossible to crush pedestrians here.
Slot machines, despite the dominance of consoles, have not disappeared anywhere. Crazy Taxi was first released for the Sega arcade machine in 1999, then transferred to many platforms, including the PlayStation 2, GameCube and mobile iOS and Android.
The action takes place in San Francisco. The player must carry passengers for a certain time and simultaneously perform various tricks on the road. You can briefly escape from the text and see this gameplay with the music of The Offspring. By the way, this is one of the main advantages of the game, except for the explosive gameplay - the soundtrack was created by Offspring and Bad Religion. The lack of this music in versions for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and iOS critics perceived negatively.
The game was advised to those who do not spend a lot of time on the console. There is no need to go through long missions, it’s enough to get behind the wheel and drive a few people with a breeze - crashing into other cars, cutting the road through the forest or flying from the overpass to the parking lot. The crazier the trip, the more money the driver gets from his crazy passengers.
There are obvious shoals, like the fact that the passenger passes through the car (you can see it in the video), critics noted strange phrases and the absence of one of the city streets from the real world. But this is all overlapped by the gameplay.
Game mechanics used in The Simpsons: Road Rage and Emergency Mayhem. The first time it came to court, which was settled by peaceful means.
In 1999, another interesting open world franchise began - the Driver series. You played as an undercover cop, who was introduced to the enemy camp as a driver, and performed missions in Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York in the 1970s.
The plot was worked out in the image of the film “Driver” of 1978, although it has many differences - for example, in the film the driver and the policeman were different people. The game had to perform various missions, pick up criminals after a robbery, bring people up, get away from the police and smash other cars.
Despite the limited physics of cars, which differ only in speed, the game has interesting control features. To successfully pass it, it is necessary to be able to start abruptly from a place, make a police turn and turn to 360 degrees, as well as maneuver jewelry in a stream of cars.
The gameplay of the first part of Driver is similar to the later GTA III, but without the ability to jump out of the car at any time, beat a few confused baseball bat and hijack another car. In Driver 2, released in 2000, it was already possible to get out of the car and steal someone else's.
Since we are talking about Driver, you can remember the whole series of games Grand Theft Auto. The first 3D game of the series, GTA III, was released in 2001. The developers of these franchises frankly trolled each other. Driver, with the help of people’s lifesaving circles, reminded that the characters in the GTA do not know how to swim, and Rockstar said that it is necessary to remove the driver from the game with a strange gait, who has never left the car.
In GTA III, again, it was necessary to carry out missions tied to the virtuoso driving. And also push people and avoid arrest. More on this franchise, we will not stop, it’s not that a full-fledged auto-simulator is an action or third-person shooter with the ability to drive.
In 2000, Angel Studios, now called Rockstar San Diego, released Midnight Club: Street Racing for Sony PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance. In this game there were two cities - London and New York. Players are free to choose races, open cars and competitions.
The Midnight Club presents such types of races as “Cruise” - you freely drive around the city changing the time of day and weather conditions, “Head to Head” - competitions with another racer, “Waypoint” - you pass through checkpoints in any order, and “ Capture the Flag ”- you need to pick up the flag and take it to the checkpoint. In career mode, you need to defeat the best street racers of the city and take away their cars.
The continuation of the Rockstar San Diego franchise, Midnight Club II, could boast not only cars but also motorcycles. And the ability to shoot down pedestrians. In this world, the developers added three cities: Los Angeles, Paris and Tokyo.
The game has the opportunity to ride on two wheels in a car and use nitrous oxide to accelerate.
Ultra-realistic game Gran Turismo 2, released in 1999 in the United States and in 2000 in Europe, was one of the most ambitious games at that time. Here it was possible to compete on 27 race tracks. 650 cars were added to the game. The first part of the game was a commercial success, so the continuation was a matter of time. Publishers have decided to prepare the game for the Christmas holidays, but did not calculate a little over time and released a partially raw product. This applies to typos, problems with game statistics, incorrect classification of cars. However, the game was greeted very warmly.
Some developers do not just introduce destruction into the game mechanics, but build the whole gameplay around them. One of the lines of games of this type is Burnout. The first game was released in 2001. The main thing here - to get to the finish line first, but in the process - also break the cars of rivals.
EA in 2002 continued the chase theme and released its first game for consoles of the sixth generation - Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. The gameplay for Need for Speed ​​III: Hot Pursuit has changed slightly, but the graphics and intelligence of the opponents has improved.
Of course, everything was much better with physics. But NFS has never set itself the goal of making a full-fledged auto-simulator, the developers preferred the arcade style of the game.
And in realism is the main difference between the game Live for Speed, the demo version of which was first released in 2002, from the NFS series. This is not about graphics, but about the behavior of cars.
The game has 8 autodrome, 20 cars and 4 game modes. Each car is modeled in detail according to the rules of Newtonian mechanics. Damage is simulated on impact, and the temperature of the tire varies depending on the type of surface. In most games, a different approach is used - the task of performance indicators, while the realism is not so high.
Another game featuring a high level of realism came out in 2004: this is Richard Burns Rally. Richard Burns, who became the world rally champion in 2001, took part in the development. Earlier, his colleague, Colin McRae, also helped make the Colin McRae Rally series of games.
The death of Burns was one of the reasons why the game did not become a franchise. But it is still being updated thanks to the community of fans. Among the advantages of the game is called realism, which is higher here than in Colin McRae Rally.
In 2003, the developers of Need For Speed ​​decided to radically change the series of games. Instead of the usual semi-professional racing and police persecution, as in previous franchise games, we got the world of street racing. Tuning engines and exterior, excellent graphics, atmospheric, several modes, including drift, made this game, in my opinion, one of the best. 13 years have passed, and it will still be a pleasure to play it.
A year later, the Need for Speed: Underground 2 came out. In the first part, the world was not open - you had to participate in the races by choosing them from the garage. In the second there was an opportunity to drive around the city, to call in at special beacons for the selection of competitions. The game has become a bit more like the MidNight Club. If it were not for one thing: the graphics and gameplay were at a completely different level. You captured areas, passing the race. Upgraded your car. An exciting (in fact, no, but at least there is) plot appeared. Drift went beyond the special tracks - now it was necessary to maneuver among other cars. If the first part of the game has become a real bomb in terms of sales, then the second is also a very high-quality and well-developed product.
To some, illegal races seemed incomplete due to the absence of police chases, one of the most interesting details of the previous games. These people immediately liked Need For Speed: Most Wanted, in which the pursuit mode moved to a new level. The barriers and spikes on the road were supplemented by developers with heavy police cars, boldly marching to the rammers.
It's a pity, but you can't play for the police here. But you can destroy police cars, the benefit of your car - not killed. You can crash into the police, you can crash into designs like water towers and billboards to crush other cars and escape from the chase. The faster your car and the longer you run, the greater the number of cars you pursue.
In 2005, Microsoft Game Studios released the Forza Motorsport auto-simulator, very similar to its rival Gran Turismo. The game boasted 231 cars, including racing prototypes, a wide range of external tuning of the car and a large number of real racetracks.
An important difference from the Gran Turismo was the damage model: not only dents appear here, but the car starts to go differently due to the blows received.
The franchise got 8 more games, the last of which was released in September 2016. Forza Motorsport 4, released in 2011, was created in partnership with Top Gear Show. So voiced her by Jeremy Clarkson.
But what are we all about good? Racing, in which there is an open world, transferred from the real, fascinated and Russian developers. In 2006, the game came out in the genre autosimulator called Lada Racing Club.
Here you could drive around the streets of Moscow on AvtoVAZ cars. Unfortunately, the game had several problems: the absence of sane physics, the monstrous graphics for this period, and a low level of intelligence. And the game itself, rather, was more like a joke.
And it spent 500,000 dollars. Of these, 120,000 was spent on advertising, because in that year it was one of the most anticipated games. Among those who waited for her, I was - yes, yes, because of the opportunity to drive around Moscow. The disappointment was great.
If you love Kasta, see this full-length ad. If not, do not turn it on.
In 2009, the Moscow drove out, as the answer to the Lada Racing Club. The studio, whose platform was originally to be used in the LRC, said it would make real races in Moscow better than in the 2006 game.
When you bump into, for example, Star Doggs' stall, it just jumps up a couple of meters and turns on its side. And the car stops on the spot.
Let's return to decent games. In 2008, Burnout Paradise appeared, the fifth game in the series. She received many awards and was warmly received by critics. The developers themselves noted that in order to restart the franchise, they had to make the game from scratch. We are again witnessing the concept of an open world that has become popular in this decade.
The history of car simulators began with slot machines, then the games were transferred to consoles and personal computers. Thanks to the huge number of smartphones sold, the game from mobile consoles, conventional consoles and PCs began to be made for Android and iOS. One of the most famous mobile racing franchises - Asphalt - originates from the 2004 Asphalt Urban GT for the Nintendo DS, Nokia N-Gage and Symbian. In 2009, Asphalt 5 was released, including for Android.
Control is carried out both with the help of on-screen arrows and with the help of a gyroscope. In my opinion, the most interesting thing in this game is the ability to destroy rivals by pressing them against a wall or forcing them to crash into other cars.
Interestingly, Gameloft in 2012 began to release the game series not only on mobile devices, but also on PC.
Racing in 2000 went on the evolutionary path of development. We are seeing improvements in graphics, physics, open worlds, transferred from the real world to a city game. Publishers have worked on this before, but the possibilities have become increasingly wider every year. One of the important factors for the industry was the emergence of a new type of players - those people. who play exclusively on smartphones. At the same time, the same games are sometimes published both on the console and for mobile platforms.
It is impossible to cover each of the games created during this period. But you can write in the comments about what you remember. Anticipating questions about motorcycle racing: they are not in Evolution, since they deserve a separate article or even a series of articles.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the capabilities of computers and set-top boxes increased significantly. The developers have moved from two-dimensional sprite graphics from pseudo-3D to real 3D-polygonal graphics. In the 1990s, the history of the main racing franchises began - Need For Speed ​​and Gran Turismo.
Today we will talk about games since 2000. What do you remember? Write in the comments.
')
Although the opportunity to choose a turn or somehow change the route in some games was added for about fifteen years, only in the late 1990s did the world begin to open up. However, he was not always fictional - because you can transfer real locations to the game.
In Midtown Madness, released in 1999, it was possible not only to watch pedestrians jumping beautifully from the path of your car, but also to explore the real city of Chicago. Knocking down the pillars and crashing into other cars. Critics noted good graphics and the lack of brakes, but also talked about the irrationality of what is happening.
Midtown Madness could boast of several modes, including circular races and the study of the city in a single pass and capture the flag in a multiplayer game. In addition to various cars, such as the Mustang and the Beetle, you could ride the bus.
Unlike Carmageddon, it was impossible to crush pedestrians here.
Slot machines, despite the dominance of consoles, have not disappeared anywhere. Crazy Taxi was first released for the Sega arcade machine in 1999, then transferred to many platforms, including the PlayStation 2, GameCube and mobile iOS and Android.
The action takes place in San Francisco. The player must carry passengers for a certain time and simultaneously perform various tricks on the road. You can briefly escape from the text and see this gameplay with the music of The Offspring. By the way, this is one of the main advantages of the game, except for the explosive gameplay - the soundtrack was created by Offspring and Bad Religion. The lack of this music in versions for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and iOS critics perceived negatively.
The game was advised to those who do not spend a lot of time on the console. There is no need to go through long missions, it’s enough to get behind the wheel and drive a few people with a breeze - crashing into other cars, cutting the road through the forest or flying from the overpass to the parking lot. The crazier the trip, the more money the driver gets from his crazy passengers.
There are obvious shoals, like the fact that the passenger passes through the car (you can see it in the video), critics noted strange phrases and the absence of one of the city streets from the real world. But this is all overlapped by the gameplay.
Game mechanics used in The Simpsons: Road Rage and Emergency Mayhem. The first time it came to court, which was settled by peaceful means.
In 1999, another interesting open world franchise began - the Driver series. You played as an undercover cop, who was introduced to the enemy camp as a driver, and performed missions in Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York in the 1970s.
The plot was worked out in the image of the film “Driver” of 1978, although it has many differences - for example, in the film the driver and the policeman were different people. The game had to perform various missions, pick up criminals after a robbery, bring people up, get away from the police and smash other cars.
Despite the limited physics of cars, which differ only in speed, the game has interesting control features. To successfully pass it, it is necessary to be able to start abruptly from a place, make a police turn and turn to 360 degrees, as well as maneuver jewelry in a stream of cars.
The gameplay of the first part of Driver is similar to the later GTA III, but without the ability to jump out of the car at any time, beat a few confused baseball bat and hijack another car. In Driver 2, released in 2000, it was already possible to get out of the car and steal someone else's.
Since we are talking about Driver, you can remember the whole series of games Grand Theft Auto. The first 3D game of the series, GTA III, was released in 2001. The developers of these franchises frankly trolled each other. Driver, with the help of people’s lifesaving circles, reminded that the characters in the GTA do not know how to swim, and Rockstar said that it is necessary to remove the driver from the game with a strange gait, who has never left the car.
In GTA III, again, it was necessary to carry out missions tied to the virtuoso driving. And also push people and avoid arrest. More on this franchise, we will not stop, it’s not that a full-fledged auto-simulator is an action or third-person shooter with the ability to drive.
In 2000, Angel Studios, now called Rockstar San Diego, released Midnight Club: Street Racing for Sony PlayStation 2 and Game Boy Advance. In this game there were two cities - London and New York. Players are free to choose races, open cars and competitions.
The Midnight Club presents such types of races as “Cruise” - you freely drive around the city changing the time of day and weather conditions, “Head to Head” - competitions with another racer, “Waypoint” - you pass through checkpoints in any order, and “ Capture the Flag ”- you need to pick up the flag and take it to the checkpoint. In career mode, you need to defeat the best street racers of the city and take away their cars.
The continuation of the Rockstar San Diego franchise, Midnight Club II, could boast not only cars but also motorcycles. And the ability to shoot down pedestrians. In this world, the developers added three cities: Los Angeles, Paris and Tokyo.
The game has the opportunity to ride on two wheels in a car and use nitrous oxide to accelerate.
Ultra-realistic game Gran Turismo 2, released in 1999 in the United States and in 2000 in Europe, was one of the most ambitious games at that time. Here it was possible to compete on 27 race tracks. 650 cars were added to the game. The first part of the game was a commercial success, so the continuation was a matter of time. Publishers have decided to prepare the game for the Christmas holidays, but did not calculate a little over time and released a partially raw product. This applies to typos, problems with game statistics, incorrect classification of cars. However, the game was greeted very warmly.
Some developers do not just introduce destruction into the game mechanics, but build the whole gameplay around them. One of the lines of games of this type is Burnout. The first game was released in 2001. The main thing here - to get to the finish line first, but in the process - also break the cars of rivals.
EA in 2002 continued the chase theme and released its first game for consoles of the sixth generation - Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. The gameplay for Need for Speed ​​III: Hot Pursuit has changed slightly, but the graphics and intelligence of the opponents has improved.
Of course, everything was much better with physics. But NFS has never set itself the goal of making a full-fledged auto-simulator, the developers preferred the arcade style of the game.
And in realism is the main difference between the game Live for Speed, the demo version of which was first released in 2002, from the NFS series. This is not about graphics, but about the behavior of cars.
The game has 8 autodrome, 20 cars and 4 game modes. Each car is modeled in detail according to the rules of Newtonian mechanics. Damage is simulated on impact, and the temperature of the tire varies depending on the type of surface. In most games, a different approach is used - the task of performance indicators, while the realism is not so high.
Another game featuring a high level of realism came out in 2004: this is Richard Burns Rally. Richard Burns, who became the world rally champion in 2001, took part in the development. Earlier, his colleague, Colin McRae, also helped make the Colin McRae Rally series of games.
The death of Burns was one of the reasons why the game did not become a franchise. But it is still being updated thanks to the community of fans. Among the advantages of the game is called realism, which is higher here than in Colin McRae Rally.
In 2003, the developers of Need For Speed ​​decided to radically change the series of games. Instead of the usual semi-professional racing and police persecution, as in previous franchise games, we got the world of street racing. Tuning engines and exterior, excellent graphics, atmospheric, several modes, including drift, made this game, in my opinion, one of the best. 13 years have passed, and it will still be a pleasure to play it.
A year later, the Need for Speed: Underground 2 came out. In the first part, the world was not open - you had to participate in the races by choosing them from the garage. In the second there was an opportunity to drive around the city, to call in at special beacons for the selection of competitions. The game has become a bit more like the MidNight Club. If it were not for one thing: the graphics and gameplay were at a completely different level. You captured areas, passing the race. Upgraded your car. An exciting (in fact, no, but at least there is) plot appeared. Drift went beyond the special tracks - now it was necessary to maneuver among other cars. If the first part of the game has become a real bomb in terms of sales, then the second is also a very high-quality and well-developed product.
To some, illegal races seemed incomplete due to the absence of police chases, one of the most interesting details of the previous games. These people immediately liked Need For Speed: Most Wanted, in which the pursuit mode moved to a new level. The barriers and spikes on the road were supplemented by developers with heavy police cars, boldly marching to the rammers.
It's a pity, but you can't play for the police here. But you can destroy police cars, the benefit of your car - not killed. You can crash into the police, you can crash into designs like water towers and billboards to crush other cars and escape from the chase. The faster your car and the longer you run, the greater the number of cars you pursue.
In 2005, Microsoft Game Studios released the Forza Motorsport auto-simulator, very similar to its rival Gran Turismo. The game boasted 231 cars, including racing prototypes, a wide range of external tuning of the car and a large number of real racetracks.
An important difference from the Gran Turismo was the damage model: not only dents appear here, but the car starts to go differently due to the blows received.
The franchise got 8 more games, the last of which was released in September 2016. Forza Motorsport 4, released in 2011, was created in partnership with Top Gear Show. So voiced her by Jeremy Clarkson.
But what are we all about good? Racing, in which there is an open world, transferred from the real, fascinated and Russian developers. In 2006, the game came out in the genre autosimulator called Lada Racing Club.
Here you could drive around the streets of Moscow on AvtoVAZ cars. Unfortunately, the game had several problems: the absence of sane physics, the monstrous graphics for this period, and a low level of intelligence. And the game itself, rather, was more like a joke.
And it spent 500,000 dollars. Of these, 120,000 was spent on advertising, because in that year it was one of the most anticipated games. Among those who waited for her, I was - yes, yes, because of the opportunity to drive around Moscow. The disappointment was great.
If you love Kasta, see this full-length ad. If not, do not turn it on.
In 2009, the Moscow drove out, as the answer to the Lada Racing Club. The studio, whose platform was originally to be used in the LRC, said it would make real races in Moscow better than in the 2006 game.
When you bump into, for example, Star Doggs' stall, it just jumps up a couple of meters and turns on its side. And the car stops on the spot.
Let's return to decent games. In 2008, Burnout Paradise appeared, the fifth game in the series. She received many awards and was warmly received by critics. The developers themselves noted that in order to restart the franchise, they had to make the game from scratch. We are again witnessing the concept of an open world that has become popular in this decade.
The history of car simulators began with slot machines, then the games were transferred to consoles and personal computers. Thanks to the huge number of smartphones sold, the game from mobile consoles, conventional consoles and PCs began to be made for Android and iOS. One of the most famous mobile racing franchises - Asphalt - originates from the 2004 Asphalt Urban GT for the Nintendo DS, Nokia N-Gage and Symbian. In 2009, Asphalt 5 was released, including for Android.
Control is carried out both with the help of on-screen arrows and with the help of a gyroscope. In my opinion, the most interesting thing in this game is the ability to destroy rivals by pressing them against a wall or forcing them to crash into other cars.
Interestingly, Gameloft in 2012 began to release the game series not only on mobile devices, but also on PC.
Racing in 2000 went on the evolutionary path of development. We are seeing improvements in graphics, physics, open worlds, transferred from the real world to a city game. Publishers have worked on this before, but the possibilities have become increasingly wider every year. One of the important factors for the industry was the emergence of a new type of players - those people. who play exclusively on smartphones. At the same time, the same games are sometimes published both on the console and for mobile platforms.
It is impossible to cover each of the games created during this period. But you can write in the comments about what you remember. Anticipating questions about motorcycle racing: they are not in Evolution, since they deserve a separate article or even a series of articles.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/369849/
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