Were Racing Games Good Before the PS2 Era?

[qw90700]

Again, not alot of people played the game back in the day because it wasn't released outside of Japan. My god what even is this essay?

Okay. I'll just write "you are so wrong" and call it a day lol.

I guess people who know Japanese are not people and there are not many Japanese-speaking people as if Japanese is so rare it's like some random African village's language not many people knows. Yeah, only like 7 people played Racing Lagoon in Japanese. If it had released in English it would be popular, not because it's a great rich street racing RPG shaked the gamer world so people made it popular but just because people can understand it as if everyone knows English and they absolutely doesn't ignore playing games when it's not translated to their native language and people absolutely doesn't learn English and Japanese to play games.

We also didn't play Tsubasa in Japanese too on our NES because there is no way we would. We also didn't bother learning English to play games too. If games had to be translated to our native language video game industry couldn't exist. Imagine people doesn't even learn English just to play games and I can assure you due to my native language learning Japanese was way easier for me and people in my country would at least prefer to play the game in Japanese, not English due to way how different our native language is compared to English and this is why translating games important so you cannot just translate games to English and expect people to play it.

But yeah you are right. You are like Einstein wow. You bend space-time with your wisdom lol. We should clone you so you will be our eternal prophet solving world problems wow wow wow. Carry on lol.

I hope this 1,60 KB text that's way less than what 2nd grade kids has to read in 5 minutes of their class is "low" enough for your mind to comprehend because 1 minute to read text shouldn't be too much for you lol. Blame your beloved English if concepts takes too long to write, and blame yourself it's too much for you because it's a "you problem" lol.

 

[Tortuga]

Again, not alot of people played the game back in the day because it wasn't released outside of Japan. My god what even is this essay?

Again it has nothing to do with the quality of the game

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Again it has nothing to do with the quality of the game.

I don't get the whole "it's Japan exclusive therefore its intrinsic qualities are null" argument honestly.

Yes the game that never released outside of Japan was "peak".

Again, not alot of people played the game back in the day because it wasn't released outside of Japan. My god what even is this essay?

I'll tell you something:

Regardless if it hasn't released outside of Japan nor that many played the game if a game is good it's good.

It's not popularity that defines quality per se. You get great gems that never released overseas that get a peak of interest when a youtuber talks about it or when you get to see it re-released for good in the west.

I remember how good Back to the Future Part 2 on the Super Famicom is compared to the mediocrity we got on the NES and Master System.

I also know how F-zero Climax may be the quintessential "2.5D style" F-zero game next to the SNES game.

We cannot ignore the actual quality of a product even if most haven't experienced it.

 

[PlayerJuan]

"Let's go Mr Driver!" - which is a nice segue into...

 

[RebelofDaNeonGod]

I would say that yeah, we had a glut of good racing games before the PS2 came out. You can have your opinions though, not everyone is gonna have this kind of knowledge for every aspect of retro gaming. But people tend to overlook a lot of the classics, shit like micro machines and the sort

 

[qw90700]

Regardless if it hasn't released outside of Japan nor that many played the game if a game is good it's good.

It's not popularity that defines quality per se. You get great gems that never released overseas that get a peak of interest when a youtuber talks about it or when you get to see it re-released for good in the west.

I understand the mentality of "if the game were in English it would reach more people" argument but it would only make sense if the game's language was some rare language like some random African tribe language or something. They have no idea how much Japanese gamers are and how many non-Japanese people who learned Japanese just to play games. Until 2 decade ago official English translated games weren't a popular thing but when there was either the game had cut content like Ace Combat 3 and Shiritsu Justice Gakuen series or translation quality is so bad which this is still a great issue can make people want unofficial better English translations to games that even has official English translations lol. As a result it made people learn Japanese back then instead of English because of then Japanese versions of games are better one and actually gotta learn Japanese to play lots of games when English-only games tend to not have a text you have to even understand. No wonder it made people naturally learn Japanese as they play games way more than they learn English.

As for Racing Lagoon specifically, there are no better street racing game exists and it's why the game was always popular. Street racing was so popular beyond video game, it was a popular life style starting from 50s and it had peak moment around 90s and early 2000s but only recently it lost its popularity. Because of it It's like number 1 Japanese-only game people literally cried for official translation and fan translation. When a person may have no idea of Japanese-only games they would hear about Racing Lagoon regardless, even people who don't play games much. The game turned into that legendary game that people who wished knew Japanese, some learned Japanese just play that game. It's the game people played in Japanese without understanding it when they ignored rest of Japanese games. It was always way more popular than any Japanese-only game in existence. Clearly this person has no idea, they believe Racing Lagoon is "hidden gem" as much as the Zero Champ series or way "so rare not many people know" titles like Fire Woman Matoigumi, Kenka Banchou series, Kowloon's Gate, Yuuyami Doori Tankentai, et cetera lol.

 

[Bluewyne]

I'm not a fan of racing games in general, but even I remember there were some good ones on the N64.
The best example would have to be the Cruisin' series: