MegaRace 2

I grew up watching friends play games like this at LAN nights, and firing up MegaRace 2 today is a trip back to an era when pre-rendered tracks and FMV game show hosts counted as cutting edge. This is a rail-based combat racer from 1996, re-released on Steam via DOSBox in 2017, and it carries both the charm and the baggage you'd expect from that vintage. You pick from 14 armored cars, load up on missiles, mines, and oil slicks bought with race winnings, and then barrel through six pre-rendered tracks spanning environments from a futuristic foundry to an alien planet and the Bayou. The tracks are gorgeous artifacts of their time, the cars are full 3D polygon models rather than sprites, and the whole thing is wrapped in FMV cutscenes starring the gloriously over-the-top game show host Lance Boyle and a co-host whose name he can never quite remember. The loop itself is simple: finish well enough in the first two races on each track to qualify for the finale, where weapons are banned and first place is mandatory. Between races you spend your prize money on rockets to clear the road ahead and mines or oil slicks to punish whoever is drafting behind you. It is arcade racing stripped to its bones, and for short bursts that stripped-down feel works. The track shortcuts add a little tactical wrinkle, and firing weapons backwards - a first for the series - gives you at least some recourse when someone is glued to your bumper. Forget wheels and pedals here; this is strictly a keyboard or basic gamepad affair, and a four-direction input is all you actually need. That said, be honest with yourself about what you are signing up for. The rubber-band AI is genuinely shameless: lead the pack by a comfortable margin and the game will still manufacture a drama, with rival cars seemingly teleporting onto your tail. There is no rear-view mirror, so when you are out front you are essentially taking unseen hits from behind with no way to react intelligently. The six-track count feels thin compared to the original game's lineup. And the Steam port has real problems: save functionality is broken, meaning you have to beat the whole sequence in one sitting or start over, and some players need to apply community fixes just to get the game to launch at all on modern Windows. Lance Boyle's extended FMV segments, charming in small doses, wear out their welcome faster here than in the original. For the nostalgia crowd who remember this from a mid-90s Windows PC - or for retro gaming enthusiasts who appreciate the specific weirdness of a dystopian TV game show crossed with a combat racer - there is genuine fun buried in here. Just go in with eyes open: the broken save system is the real killer for new players, and the AI will frustrate anyone who expects a fair fight. If you can stomach community-guide setup steps and session-length runs, the FMV personality and the pre-race weapon shopping still hold up as a curiosity worth an evening. For four drunk friends on a couch, though, this one stays solo - there is no multiplayer of any kind.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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