Midnight Run: Road Fighter 2 (PS1) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
172A playthrough of Konami's 1998 arcade racing game for the Sony PlayStation, Midnight Run: Road Fighter 2.
I play through all three races at the default difficulty level in this video.
Like its predecessor, Road Fighter, Midnight Run's PS1-exclusive console port was released only in Japan and in PAL territories. And like Road Fighter on the NES, the PlayStation port looks and sounds pretty similar to the arcade original. The resolution has been slashed pretty hard, but it looks like everything made the transition intact, and the game holds a steady framerate no matter how much is going on on-screen. The sound is about the same - it's a little muffled, but it otherwise mirrors the arcade version, right down to the conspicuous lack of music for the races.
You can find my playthrough of the NES version here if interested: https://youtu.be/yF-zuQh3lhg
So far, so good, right? It might not be dazzlingly impressive, but it gets the job done in mimicking the arcade game's presentation.
But then we get to the gameplay. Oh dear.
If it played like it looked and sounded, Midnight Run would be a fun, fluffy, expendable experience. Just like the arcade game. There are only three tracks, four cars, and there isn't any sort of console-specific mode to pad things out. Of course that worked fine in the arcade, but you usually wouldn't have paid $50 for 20 minutes at an arcade machine.
But taking exception to Midnight Run's paltry bit of content is just tap-dancing around the real issue, because in all honesty, you'll probably find all the game you can stomach here. The single element here that rides the wrecking ball through the whole experience is the controls. The game does not support any form of analog control (seriously?) and the digital controls don't seem to have been designed to compensate for this in any way. You can only turn hard left or hard right, and you'd better make sure you only tap the d-pad. The controls are way too touchy, and until you figure out some sort of feathered touch, you will eat the walls *nonstop.* The whole thing just feels wrong, and the controls make me feel like I'm attempting to recreate the luge with a jar of vaseline and a generic brand slip-and-slide in my backyard.
But even once you somehow adapt (or submit) to the thoroughly broken control scheme, if you ever manage to hold the lead for longer than a few moments, the second-place car will suddenly rocket up behind you at ridiculous speeds and steal the win at the very last second, and this happens far too often to feel fair at all. This is next-level rubberbanding, folks. I'm amazed I didn't break a controller in half for the number of times it took me to luck into a win on each of these races while I was recording.
It's a shame that they would resurrect the Road Fighter name just to do this to it, especially when the only apparent similarity between the two is that you drive a car. The original deserved a sequel that was... well, marginally playable, at the very least. Midnight Run's controls easily make it the most frustrating and least fun arcade racer I've ever played on the Playstation.
It's amusing now to look back at how awful Midnight Run on the PS1 truly was, but imagine that poor kid that got this as a birthday present. Damn, life can be mean sometimes.
The man that was once that kid probably would probably still appreciate a hug of consolation all these years later. This game would've had to have left psychological scars in its wake.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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