MegaRace (PC) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
978A playthrough of The Software Toolworks and Cryo's 1994 FMV combat-racing game for PCs running MS-DOS, MegaRace.
All of the races are played on the "hardened" difficulty level, and the ending is shown. At the end of the video I included the Tokyo race, which (I believe) is only accessible from the level select menu that is made available after finishing the game.
MegaRace is a classic hallmark of early "multimedia PC" gaming. This icon of Cryo Games, a dev in its prime in 1994, was packed in as a freebie with several pieces of computer hardware - I remember my friend had a copy of it that game with his old Packard Bell Legend desktop, and I had a copy of it that game in one of those budget packs of several CD games that game in the clear plastic-hanging packaging (anyone else remember those? Awesome value if you were interested even only one or two of the 6+ games!). I actually had a retail copy of this one too, somehow. I think I'm the only person (at least, that I've ever known of) to specifically purchase MegaRace on PC - anyone else out there?
There were also ports to the 3DO and the Sega CD. The 3DO version was a reasonable facsimile of the original, and to be kind, I just won't say anything about the Sega CD port.
Anyway, it's with good reason that so many bundles had this game included. It wasn't shovelware - not by a long shot. It was an incredibly smooth-moving and impressively produced bit of tech. Like most of Cryo's games... and I think nearly all of them in the mid-90s were interactive movies making extensive use of prerendered CG... Mega Race is a looker. It was unbelievable when it was new to watch a PC (on a 386, no less!) play it at full speed. But that certainly wasn't its only good point.
The action racing was pretty solid. Granted, the FMV dominated the playtime - of this hour long video, the racing might comprise 20 minutes of the total run time - but it was solid, responsive, and fun. Incredibly frustrating at times too, until you had the tracks memorized and could reliably avoid road markers that could screw you over. The whole point of the game is to be the only one left before reaching the end of the third lap - you can pass a rival and once they fall far enough back they will explode, you should shoot them until they blew up, or you could ram them into walls to eliminate them. Good stuff!
And of course, no discussion of MegaRace is complete without a shout-out to the inimitable Lance Boyle (Christian Erickson) as host of the preceedings. It's hard to put into words why his performance works, but there's no question that the grossly named host is an integral part of the experience. Regularly rooting for you death, Lance's creepy, smarmy, and entirely flamboyant demeanor is perfect. The humor is dark and unbelievably strange at times, and Mr. Erickson is the master of facial expressions for effect. He's as repellant as he is charismatic, perfectly paralleling the TV show's amusingly self-contradictory "in virtual world, it's hyper-violent and totally safe!" messages.
Mr. Lance Boyle. He's an unquantifiable quantity. He's a bloodcurdlingly disaffected symbol of how media desensitizes. And he's awesome. Thank you, Mr. Erickson, for giving the bird to expectations, doing your own thing, and making the game so memorable/scarring! :) I can't wait for the reboot's release!
*Sorry for the repost for those of you that saw it earlier. I didn't mean to hit the publish button, and only realized later that I accidentally uploaded an edit-in-progress version, not the final render. Everything is good to go now though, this is the file that was meant to be published!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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