NFSUnlimited.net

I'm a huge retro gamer. Recently I bought an old Sega Saturn game from 1994 called Gale Racer and after playing it a bit, it struck me that the whole premise of the game is identical to NFS: The Run

• Race involving lots of cars across the USA from West Coast (San Francisco) to East Coast (New York).
• Arranged in a series of linear races where you must move up from last place to first by the time you hit New York City.
• Different stages representing the major regions of the US as you progess across the country.
• Different driving tasks, surfaces, time of day and weather in each stage.
• Sub-bosses every so often that try to take you out.
• A cop chase.
• A train chase.
• An evil end-boss that tries to kill you.
• Cows.

.. and the list of similarities goes on! Here's a video I made of my run across the country in Gale Racer so you can see what I mean.


Gale Racer

.. and here's the original arcade game that Gale Racer was based on, Rad Mobile:


Rad Mobile

Did Black Box model their game on Rad Mobile / Gale Racer?? You decide!

I bet they did... and The Run just lost one of the few good things it had: originality. I thought the concept was pretty cool and new, as probably most gamers thought. Seems like Blackbox most likely based their game on this. :\

Oh well, I still think all three games are pretty fun. That's what matters in the end, right?

Well yes, but I appreciate when a game brings something new, or at least tries to. Take as an example Crysis 1. I loved the entire concept of the game, an island to explore, jungles and beaches, different ways to complete the goals, etc. And then a couple of years later I played Far Cry 1 and bang! Crysis lost a big chunk of its appeal and originality, to me at least.

And The Run is not much fun, but that's my opinion. Now that I know the concept isn't as original as I though, the game has very little to offer.

Well I played The Run back through a couple months ago and while I didn't really have much good to say about it the first time around, I really did enjoy the second playthrough. I ignored the game's attempts to hurry you along and just had fun with each stage, retrying them until I was satisified with my performance instead of moving on immediately as soon as you scrape through with a medal. It was infinitely more satisfying and enjoyable this way.

Edit: BTW I actually recorded the entire playthrough and it's available here on NFSUnlimited, if anyone is interested: http://www.nfsunlimited.net/therun/walkthrough

Well it's not really a new concept as the coast to coast races started back in the 70s if not sooner:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball ... rophy_Dash

There's also several movies and a really interesting article about a 2007 attempt when they actually broke the record
http://www.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/ma ... ntPage=all

So yea, The Run definitely didn't invent this race

Well sure, everyone knows the Cannonball Run, mostly thanks to Burt Reynolds and his shiny black Trans Am.. I'm just sayin' that the concept had already been done in a game well before NFSTR.