Cyber Spin (SNES) Playthrough
136A playthrough of Takara's 1992 racing game for the SNES, Cyber Spin.
Cyber Spin is an arcade-style top-down racing game created by Arc System Works that resembles games like Super Cars, Thrash Rally, and Power Drive.
There are nine courses to race on, each based in a different country, and before each race, you do a qualifying run to determine your position in the main race. The tracks are closed circuits filled with turns telegraphed with blinking signs, just like in Sega Rally, but without the disembodied voice constantly telling you things like, "Long medium right!" Drifting plays a big role, especially in the later races filled with back-to-back sharp corners, as does the turbo booster. You have to be careful with the speed boosts, though: they draw their energy from your power gauge which does double-duty as a life gauge, and it can only be refilled by pitting. If you rely too heavily on the turbo and then find yourself inadvertently skidding into a wall or another car, kaboom. You're dead.
The car has a good sense of weight and the controls are tight, but you really have to memorize those later tracks. The AI doesn't leave much room for error, and in the latter half of the game, the courses' slippery surfaces and sudden hard curves will spell certain doom unless you can anticipate what's coming ahead of the indicator. The graphics are a bit plain, but they've got some cool moments of parallaxed background scrolling, and a couple of the music tracks are memorable.
That's about it. It's extremely simple, it's fairly difficult (maybe a bit too much so at times, but you do get passwords!), and though there's not a lot of content, I thought it was pretty fun.
That ending is great, too. I don't think any other game has ever turned me into the North Pole as a reward for beating it! Gotta love hokey translations, eh?
Cyber Slip was always a game that struck me as an oddly hollow and barebones experience, though, and it wasn't until many years later that I found out why. The original Super Famicom version was a licensed game called Shinseiki GPX Cyber Formula. It was based on the anime Future GPX Cyber Formula, and it featured a full-blown story mode with cutscenes starring characters from the show. Instead of localizing all of that content (which would've been be welcome, even sans license), the US release leaves the primary game mode on the cutting room floor. Ouch.
Cyber Spin is a neat game on its own, but it's a real shame that all of the penny-pinching compromised the US version so badly.
(Remember what Konami did to Pop'n Twinbee: Rainbow Bell Adventures for its English release? Pretty much the same thing.)
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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