Suzuki Alstare Extreme Racing

"So close, and yet so far...."

All right, I admit it: I love motorcycles. It runs in the family, so to speak, and I've been around 'em all at one point or another. I've read enough to know how Harley Davidson deliberately engineers the suspension on their bikes to vibrate more, not less, in order to maintain that bare-chested, hairy, ''manly'' ride that has attracted Hell's Angels (and yuppies) for years--shades of the Chevy Corvette (the old Corvette, not the new one). I know the difference between a Goldwing Interstate and an Aspencade. Basically, I've grown up around the things. And yet, there are so few worthy motorcycle racing games, that you can practically count 'em on one hand. I'll admit to playing the first two Road Rashes, but really, the king of motorcycle racers (in my mind anyway) so far has been Manx TT, a wonderful arcade racer from Sega that showed up on the Saturn, and even then it wasn't perfect--not enough tracks, and way too short. You could beat it in an hour! Sure, there are other bike racers--a handful of motocross games that aren't too bad, the Moto Racer series on the Playstation--but there just aren't enough.

Imagine my pleasure when I find a bike racer just for the under-used household Dreamcast. And imagine my disappointment once I got into the game....

Control: 6/10

Let's start with the control, which is tight beyond belief. In fact, it's much tighter than you'd expect, probably--even most of the tight, 90-degree turns can be taken fast. However, what looks like a ''10'' score for sure at first has to be brought down.

You see, the controls only offer two settings. You can use the shoulder buttons to accelerate and brake and the other buttons to shift (and why do all racing games on the Dreamcast seem to use this idiotically inconveniencing layout, and why do they all set it as the default setting?), or you can use the shoulder buttons to shift up and down and have the accelerator and brake on the other buttons. Period. End of discussion. You don't have the option to configure the pad yourself, and you also don't have the option to use the D-pad for anything at all (although it works on the menus up front, for some reason I don't understand). Now, the game controls fine with the stick, but not offering the option to configure the pad any way you please is a pain the butt. Configure options aren't hard to code, and they don't take up much room, so far as I know. It's pure laziness to not bother including the option, and that laziness is an omen of things to come.

Gameplay: 5/10

Let's start with the one unarguably positive aspect of the game and its saving grace: This thing *moves.* The insane sense of speed this thing generates with the fastest bikes is a lot of fun and even outdoes Gran Turismo 2 and Star Wars Episode 1 Racer (IMHO, the previous speed champs). Unfortunately, not everything else lives up to that. With tight control and mostly decent track layouts, there shouldn't be any reason to take off points. Yet there is, in the form of some highly questionable collision detection and AI problems.

First of all, any bike that hits you will either force you to the side of the track, or slow you down incredibly (sometimes, when hit from behind, you'll end up doing somersaults). Okay, that's close to what would actually happen in real life, but the other bikes do not suffer any consequences. Instead of crashing themselves, 90 percent of the time they just keep on cruising without even slowing down.

Second of all, there's the walls. Nearly every wall in the game will crash you when you approach it, even if (in real life) you'd simply be sliding along either the wall itself or the ground right in front of it. You'd slow down, possibly injure yourself, and every now and then, yes, you would crash. But in this game, even approaching the wall from the side is a cue for the game to send you sailing off into space as your bike spins around lazily and at least four other riders merrily pass you. Sometimes you bounce off the wall like a pinball, regardless of your angle of approach. And with any of the mountain or hillsides in the game, you can find yourself sliding sideways up the hill, which ends in either an interesting jump or a crash, even if you were aiming away from the hill. You can, on rare occasions, get stuck behind a wall. And on other rare occasions, approaching the side of the road will force your bike into a 180, while to your amazement you start heading the wrong way without touching the stick. The collision detection in this game is so sloppy and buggy, it nearly ruins the game all on its own. If any care or time had been taken with this port, it could easily have been addressed with minimal additional effort.

On a more general gameplay note, you'll find yourself racing many of the same tracks over and over again. There are twelve tracks, a pretty decent array, if not a staggering one, most of which are actually different from each other--there's only three ''clone'' tracks in this game, an impressive achievement. For the most part, they're laid out well, but there just aren't enough jumps to go around, and on a couple of tracks (Winter Lake and Tobacco Road leap immediately to mind) you have to slow down so often with the faster bikes that winning becomes annoyingly difficult.

What does this have to do with overusing some tracks? Well, there's nine sessions in the main racing mode, each with three to six races. That's somewhere close to fifty races (no, I didn't count, but that's my best estimate), and a few tracks only come up two or three times, which leaves a handful of tracks that come up over and over again. I got so sick of Orchard Lane (which, once you earn it, seems to show up in nearly every session) that I never wanted to race on it again after I finished the main mode.

Then there's the extras. Beating sessions (by coming in first in point rankings) will earn you one or two tracks and possibly a new bike. You start with only three tracks and one bike, but you'll have unlocked all the tracks by about the time you beat Session 7, and you'll also have all the bikes before you get Session 9. This gives you the reverse championship, in which you race all the tracks again, backwards (in a desparate attempt to add replay value to the game, one supposes).

There isn't much variety to the bikes, either. Every bike is a variation on the previous one. Basically, all that happens is that each successive bike goes faster than the one before it. Apparently, it was too hard to actually go to Suzuki and test out different types of bikes. You can ''tune'' the bikes, but in reality, you're handicapping yourself. You can go for extra power, but if you do, your braking and steering are going to be negligible (and if you ever wanted to find out what it felt like to steer a balky land barge around, here's your chance). If you opt for steering, your braking will still stink, plus your bike will lose speed more easily and not accelerate as quickly. And if you opt for braking, your bike will have low power *and* steering, making it useless. What fun! You can, of course, try to adjust it more subtly, but it's a pain.

Finally, the AI. With no difficulty setting per se (the game just gets harder as you go until you earn the Reverse mode, at which point the AI stays the same as it was in the last three sessions), and with many of the tracks being fairly easy to navigate even with the fastest bike, the game relies on the aggression of its bikes to make the game harder. The CPU's bikes take an unholy amount of glee out of trashing you and forcing you into wrecks, and in cutting you off, while the same tricks often fail for you, thanks to the collision detection. Bottom line: Scads of frustrating cheapness. The only way to avoid all of the above pitfalls (and it's not foolproof) is to race perfectly. You simply can't wreck more than once or twice or take crazy chances (by using your turbo on a curve, for example). It's possible to squeeze some fun out of this game, but not easy.

Graphics: 6/10

Why the heck is everything so bright?? The textures in this game in no way resemble reality, and they aren't particularly impressive, especially for a Dreamcast game--this thing doesn't even outdo Sonic Adventure, for one--but they are distinctive. Everything looks artificial, even stones. Some of the rocky hills in Rocky Drift look like potatoes that have welded themselves together into a lumpy mass. There's also a large amount of draw-in and some pop-up, things you don't expect to see in a Dreamcast game, and the designers didn't even bother to design the tracks to hide it, which adds a surreal element to the game that can on occasion actually be entertaining to watch (''Wow, a mesa just materialized out of thin air, and from the top down no less!''), but is nonetheless another sign of indifferent sloppiness.

A further problem is the bikes themselves. There are only two body designs in the game, the standard (has a large fairing) and the racing version (doesn't have a large fairing). Also, there are only three different outfits to choose from, and while that may not seem to be a big deal, it determines what colors your bike is. So, there are (visually speaking) two different bikes with three different colors. Wow, don't try too hard to impress us, guys. The bike designs are incredibly generic, anyway, and show no sign of anyone having tried to adapt the actual models that the names come from to the game.

On a positive note, the frame rate (which adds immensely to the wonderful feeling of speed and seems to be about 30 fps) is rock solid and never wavers. Only twice did I ever see any slowdown, out of many, many hours of play, and it was minimal and only lasted a couple of seconds. Also, there aren't any seaming problems or break-up (surprising, considering the pop-up and draw in problems).

A few little details are in there too, such as tire marks (which don't last long, but are there) and headlight beams, which smack of some effort and are nice to have.

The two-player split-screen mode is surprisingly stable, running at the same frame rate and with most of the detail (and all of the flaws) from the normal game. That's one more small plus.

Sound: 5/10

Resolutely generic electronic beats and generic sound effects (the engines all sound like lawnmowers) make this game neither outstanding nor awful in the sound department. It just sits there and exists. Go buy Moby's ''Everything Is Wrong'' and race to that music instead. In fact, just about any music is better to race to, except for maybe Slim Whitman and Bavarian funeral marches.

Overall average: 6/10

I'd pan this game outright if it weren't for two things: 1) There aren't yet any other motorcycle games for the Dreamcast as I write this. 2) I actually enjoyed racing on some of the tracks. There are just so many things I haven't touched on. The ''ending'' (credits on top of dull stills, anyone?). The lengthy, ludicrous crash animations that make it much, much easier for your opponents to pass you. The fact that you have to manually load and save the game. Even the fact that you can't save in the middle of the session (the save file only flags itself to save your ''player name,'' your options, your race times, and which sessions you've completed, so you can't quit between races in a session, save, turn off the machine, and come back later, because you'll have to start the session over). But the game is worth a rent if you can get someone to play it with you, or if you just want to play a motorcycle game on your Dreamcast (good bike racers are way too hard to find). But if you're easily frustrated, or don't care much about motorcycle racing, skip this one and wait for a better game. It just falls so short in too many departments for any kind of real recommendation.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/23/00, Updated 04/23/00