High Velocity – Mountain Racing Challenge

Sega Saturn

CAVE / ATLUS

1995

 

Throughout the journey of collecting a complete library of games for a specific console, one faces some unique potentialities. The old favourites will always be there – the titles you’ve played a hundred and one times that you already know you love. The games that made you fall head over heels for the machine in the first place, ultimately influencing your decision to take on the gargantuan task of hoarding together every single game available for the platform of which they call home. Those games always promise a rad time, but what about the releases that slipped through the cracks, fell under the radar – the one’s that you’re barely familiar with? What will happen when pop the lid on your console and start spinning those discs? Were you wise to avoid them for all of these years? Discovering that they’re nothing more than shovelware best left to collect dust on the shelf? Or will you stumble upon the incredible? The absolutely righteous. The hidden gem that you feel like everyone should know about. Fortunately for me, such a gem was dusted off when I really started jamming with High Velocity – Mountain Racing Challenge.

Developed by CAVE (of DoDonPachi and Deathsmiles fame) back in 1995 (one of the bullet hell company’s earliest offerings) and published by ATLUS, High Velocity – Mountain Racing Challenge is a love letter to fans of Japanese street racing. But what really sets the game apart from other racing offerings of its time are all of the unique features that it offers. In the middle of the 90’s, the game was a technical powerhouse. Let's dive a bit deeper into why I found this lesser spoken of racer so impressive.

High Velocity mainly focuses on one-on-one races conducted on circuits resembling mountainous roads in Japan. One of the first features that caught my eye upon revving up for my first race was how incredible the graphics looked. Everything from the vehicles hitting the pavement, to the backgrounds of each track, regardless of what time of day your race is being held (morning, afternoon or night), all look awesome. CAVE hit the ball out of the park in the visual department with this release, as it only looks a half step shy of titles like Cruis’n USA for the more 3D capable Nintendo 64. Speaking of the 64, the console became somewhat infamous during its heyday for showcasing less than stellar draw distances (basically, how far away the player can see from where they’re standing; see: Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, or if you’re really brave, Nightmare Creatures) in a lot of its games. That’s not a problem in High Velocity as the game has been praised for having one of the most capable draw distances of its time, one that almost always extends to the horizon as the player accelerates forward. This is really impressive stuff considering the amount of complaints some developers had regarding the Saturn’s hardware and how difficult it was to work with. The player can also tweak their viewing preferences by enabling a widescreen mode, an option that wasn’t yet prevalent in gaming. 

Harping back on my mention of the Cruis’n series above, High Velocity plays similar to games of that franchise, if not with a bit more of a sophisticated touch. Six vehicles can be chosen to drive (all of which can be changed in colour), with the majority of their parts being modifiable to suit the player’s liking. The tuning options came as a surprise to me as the game initially felt like a Midway arcade racer. My impressions changed as the game quickly encouraged me to explore a bit more of the customization available for the cars when I started getting my rear end handed to me in later races. The controls can be a little touchy as (from what I can tell) the game was meant to reflect a more serious, in-depth side of racing upon comparison to its much more arcade-like counterparts. I like playing with the “Type E” vehicle as it offers pretty sweet drifting capabilities for those tight corners. 

There are three tracks to race on in High Velocity, all of which can be completed in reverse, which adds some variety to the apparent lack of course choices. In King Battle (the game’s main mode) races are conducted in heats, and the player must secure first place to successfully complete each round. As with most racing games now and then, there are also Vs. Battle (allowing for two-player gameplay) and Time Trial modes. I should also mention that another unique feature that High Velocity offers is the choice to switch between vertical or horizontal split-screens while playing Vs. Battle, something that was seldom seen in 1995. Heck, I never came across that option at all.

 

The background tunes that spin while racing in the mountains are righteous – all really great. I enjoyed rocking out while taking on rival racers in the middle of nowhere. I also liked how the game speaks to you in Japanese at certain parts, not straying too far from its routes and giving the game a really authentic feel at a time when nearly everything imported from Japan was dubbed over in English. 

All in all, High Velocity – Mountain Racing Challenge is a really good time. A perfect pick-up-and-play title that can keep you busy for anywhere from ten minutes to two hours. It’s actually been distracting me from the other games that I’ve been trying to complete lately, some of which are RPGs, further increasing my potential doom of getting lost in that “I haven’t played this RPG in a few days and now I have no idea where to go” abyss. So, if anything I’ve covered sounds interesting to you, give Sega Rally and Daytona USA the day off and check out High Velocity. If you’re a fan of racing games, you won’t be sorry you did.