Test Drive Cycles - Hong Kong Track - Cancelled Dreamcast Game
1I hope you are all healthy and safe wherever you are in the World right now and whatever challenges you are facing.
I'm a huge fan of the Dreamcast and long time viewers of my channel will know I tend to support independent game development (as well as releases of Beta's & Prototypes etc) through platforms like GoFundMe, IndieGoGo & Kickstarter.
Back in 2020 the fairly playable version of Heroes of Might & Magic III was released via GoFundMe & after backing that it was followed up by another GoFundMe organised by Jack Barber/FatalistDC (apologies for the mistake in the video) for an early version of Test Drive Cycles. This was accompanied by a video showing it was indeed running on a Dreamcast but was very early with no opposition racers, no sound, graphical glitches & slightly wonky controls. There was also only 1 Track accessible.
You accelerate by pushing up on the Analog Stick so I suspect the plan was to have controls similar to the Moto GP games on the XBOX where you shift the weight of the rider.
The target was a very reasonable 130 Euro so I contributed a small amount just because it is always good to see this stuff get released.
Once it was released and people dug into the code it turned out there were a total of 10 playable tracks buried in the code. To access these tracks required a re-direct/rename of the Folders & creating a new image i.e. an new image for every track.
It has fairly smooth graphics & an interesting dual mirror type effect. While I quite like the look of the Hong Kong Track I do think this would have struggled to stand out among the glut of quality racers already in the systems library.
Still - its nice to see this stuff that never quite made it.
If you'd like videos of the other tracks just let me know :-)
As always if you enjoy this video let me know. As always this is running via a burned image from the above link on original hardware in this case a PAL Dreamcast. Also let me know if there are particular games or systems you'd like to see.
As always this is uploaded under the Fair Use Policy - no money is being made from this video.
Stay strong, stay safe and stay healthy - Grey Fox