Trigger Happy
and only does so when available CPU power is already maxed out. The problem is, as we shall see, that videogame “realism” is always a fix anyway. Furthermore, simulations stomp roughshod all over one raison d’Être of certain types of videogame, which is to let the player perform amusingly dangerous and unlikely maneuvers in perfect safety. If playing an arcade-style racing game is like being a car stuntman in The French Connection or Ronin, playing a simulation is a much more earnest business. Martin Amis again: “It sounds rather like driving, doesn’t it?”
Unlike Space Invaders et al., racing games offer the perfect opportunity for competitive two-person action, either with two arcade cabinets linked together or with one home console splitting the television screen into two separate viewpoints for each player. And you need not be satisfied with racing mere cars against a friend. The racing-game genre splits into driving games (what we have seen so far) and the rest, which encompass cartoon go-cart competitions (the superb Super Mario Kart), snowboard piste challenges (1080 Snowboarding), tiny cars speeding over a kitchen table (Micro Machines) or futuristic hoverplanes thundering around a sci-fi rollercoaster of a course (WipEout).
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