XBLA Sega Rally online arcade 30fps WTF !!!!!

[Enemy]

Anyone else not understanding why this isnt 60fps, as i am totally perplexed by the 30fps crap they have dished out !!

[louisg]

Maybe they learned their lesson from Sega Rally 2

[antares]

What? I was hoping to get at least one good arcade racer this year but now my hopes are getting smaller

Maybe they learned their lesson from Sega Rally 2

Good one.

edit:

I found this interesting comparison on gamespot:

Sega Japan converted / published :
After Burner climax 60fps No tearing
Virtua Fighter 5 60fps No tearing
Virtua Tennis 4 60fps No tearing
Virtual On OT and VO4 60fps No tearing

Sega Europe
Virtua Tennis 3 60 fps but some slowdown. The best
Sega Rally revo / 3 30fps Screen Tearing
Sega Superstars tennis 60 fps drops to 10
SASASR 30 fps / screen tearing
OOA 60 fps drops to 20

[louisg]

I think jp arcade devs just tend to be much better at that sort of thing. In the US (and europe?), all the programmer gaming culture centers around the PC, a platform which makes it literally impossible to have target hardware. There's also a misperception that vsync slows games down, which is probably why you see a lot of tearing.

It's also a question of slowdown vs. dropping frames. If you code something for dropping frames, it's more of an admission that the game will not be able to run at the target rate for more than a second or two at a time. If you code for slowdown, it makes it somewhat more of a bug to be avoided. I noticed that even a full 3d game like Crazy Taxi will go into slowdown-- but it's only triggered by (relatively) rare circumstances.

[Limbrooke]

Maybe they learned their lesson from Sega Rally 2

Unless you're talking about PC/Windows SR2...

Too bad to hear another entry in the Sega Rally series is prone the 30fps itch.

[Obiwanshinobi]

These days Japanese programmers don't seem to have any edge left over western ones, be it know how or ethos. Some of the fastest and smoothest last gen arcade racers (Burnouts, Jak X) are western. This gen Wipeouts and Burnout Paradise - games made in the UK - are where it's at. Moreover, when BP came out for the PC, it was arguably its ultimate version.
Companies like Midway with 30 fps Hydro Thunder Hurricane (decade-old PC port of the first one performs better, mind you) and Sega with Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (don't know about the retail versions, but demo had performance issues pretty bad for a racer, not even particulary good looking at that) seem to have lost interest in pleasing people raised in the arcades.
P.S. EA's Shox (somewhat akin to Sega Rally) and Sega's OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast were developed by British studios as well. As for PC exclusives, Techland's cheap and cheerful car games (Xpand Rally, GTI Racing) looked and performed well on fairly average computers, and I'm pretty sure TrackManias took nothing special to run at 60 fps either.

[louisg]

These days Japanese programmers don't seem to have any edge left over western ones, be it know how or ethos. Some of the fastest and smoothest last gen arcade racers (Burnouts, Jak X) are western. This gen Wipeouts and Burnout Paradise - games made in the UK - are where it's at. Moreover, when BP came out for the PC, it was arguably its ultimate version.
Companies like Midway with 30 fps Hydro Thunder Hurricane (decade-old PC port of the first one performs better, mind you) and Sega with Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (don't know about the retail versions, but demo had performance issues pretty bad for a racer, not even particulary good looking at that) seem to have lost interest in pleasing people raised in the arcades.

That's probably true, and reinforced by what I've seen (crapola like No More Heroes, or the somewhat underperforming Sega lightgun ports to the Wii). When we think of good Japanese game programming post-16-bit, it's generally limited to arcade games and ports, and excluding Konami . And, well, arcades are dead. The games that remain are running off PCs. I don't know the details, but I've seen the results, and I would not be surprised if most of them are designed to run off of varying hw configurations.

The Burnouts were exceptional last generation (as were other western-dev'd racing games like Test Drive Le Mans). And, I think Halo performed well too, even though I wasn't a fan of the game. That and Metroid Prime (developed afair in Texas).

Some of those European game studios were always very good. I wonder how much is just that action game and console development is younger in the US than in places like the UK. US-based action game studios practically started with id software and epic-- this would be as opposed to the other game styles that were commonplace beforehand (old EA, SSI, Origin, etc etc). I can't name any US-dev'd NES games besides some of the ports from home computer; it seems like EA might have led the charge when it comes to US-dev'd console releases (which, imo, were generally pretty damn sorry for a number of years).

The "hey hey 16k" song with the "it made a generation who could code" line comes to mind

[D]

Why would you expect 60 fps? SRR was 30 fps.
Just get a ps2 for arcade racers. (Most are probably also 30 fps)
The big question is: will there ever be an arcade racing game released?
Where´s Battle Gear 4 [2010 version]?

[dcharlie]

Lol, menus are 60fps ... with slowdown!

[antares]

I think this game is worth buying for one important reason: It feels like Sega Rally! I played this with my Racing Wheel and the handling is very close to the Sega Rally arcade games.

Sega Rally Revo was a good game on it's own but car handling had nothing in common with the old Sega Rally games plus steering wheel controls where totally fucked up.

If you are a fan of the old SR games and play with a wheel I recommend buying SROA.

[neorichieb1971]

Sega don't have the talent anymore. Sad that a whole industry will fall with them.

XB360 and PS3 could emulate Model 2 at 60fps so its no excuse really.

[Zaarock]

Sega don't have the talent anymore. Sad that a whole industry will fall with them.

XB360 and PS3 could emulate Model 2 at 60fps so its no excuse really.

VOOT, Outrun online, and Afterburner Climax XBLA ports were great though. But looks like we won't be seeing more stuff of that caliber :/

[neorichieb1971]

Outrun online I thought was crappy. They could have uprezzed the graphics at least.

[louisg]

I think this game is worth buying for one important reason: It feels like Sega Rally! I played this with my Racing Wheel and the handling is very close to the Sega Rally arcade games.

That's awesome news! I liked SR1 a lot, but wasn't as much of a fan of the handling in 2 (didn't play the later ones; they looked more sim-like)

[Strider77]

Uhhhh...... Outrun Online did uprez the graphics and added lighting effects.

[Ghegs]

OOA is awesome, end of that story.

SROA is pretty fun too. The multiplayer netcode seemed fine. The menu system is a bit dumb, makes it unnecessarily hard to find the mode/car you're looking for. And it's a bummer I can't set the controls to be like in OOA, the upshift/downshift buttons are in different places. Gonna take a while to get used to it.

But overall, good show. Certainly worth 800 points. Feel free to hit me up for some racin'.

[gameoverDude]

I'm thinking about getting SROA. It does have the Championship Battle with the 22 car pack from the arcade, instead of the different one from Revo. $10 isn't bad considering the arcade version costs that much for about 5-8 plays.

As for the XBLA/PSN version being 30FPS, the arcade version's hardware is above a Lindbergh. Sega Rally 3's Europa-R board has 8 GB of RAM and a dual core 3.4 GHz processor. The GPU is an Nvidia GeForce 8800 (which was rebranded later as GTS 240). I think this GPU may be a little above the current consoles. PS3's RSX is based on the GF7800.

Where´s Battle Gear 4 [2010 version]?

Exactly what I'm wondering, especially after Taito had bothered to port the first three to PS2 (yep, it has the BGM from both of the first two and BG1's tracks are available to unlock).

[TrevHead (TVR)]

UK - are where it's at

I dunno if thats still the case anymore, from the picture I get painted to me is that the UK games industry has been badly hit this generation, with studios closing or outsourcing to countries like Australia and Canada. Japanese Publishers like Sega and SquareEnix now own parts of the UK industry, so im hoping something good can come out of that marrage

Still im an outsider who doesnt know that much, maybe someone in the know can tell me if im correct in what im saying?

[Never_Scurred]

Arcade-style racing games, RIP

[louisg]

UK - are where it's at

I dunno if thats still the case anymore, from the picture I get painted to me is that the UK games industry has been badly hit this generation, with studios closing or outsourcing to countries like Australia and Canada. Japanese Publishers like Sega and SquareEnix now own parts of the UK industry, so im hoping something good can come out of that marrage

Still im an outsider who doesnt know that much, maybe someone in the know can tell me if im correct in what im saying?

It all went downhill when Bitmap Bros closed up shop, Psygnosis was bought out, and DMA became The GTA Company

[PC Engine Fan X!]

So what's a good 360 force-feedback steering wheel setup to get?

I've noticed that USA based retailers don't sell the Official Microsoft 360 steering wheel nor the Logitech 360 steering wheels any more. It seems that only Madcatz sells the MC2 force-feedback based steering wheel + gas & brake pedal combo for the 360 nowdays (priced at $99.99 USD at the local Best Buy stores). I'd like to get a solid 360 force-feedback based steering wheel setup that's compatible with Namco's Ridge Racer 6 and other 360 racing games.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[neorichieb1971]

UK - are where it's at

I dunno if thats still the case anymore, from the picture I get painted to me is that the UK games industry has been badly hit this generation, with studios closing or outsourcing to countries like Australia and Canada. Japanese Publishers like Sega and SquareEnix now own parts of the UK industry, so im hoping something good can come out of that marrage

Still im an outsider who doesnt know that much, maybe someone in the know can tell me if im correct in what im saying?

It all went downhill when Bitmap Bros closed up shop, Psygnosis was bought out, and DMA became The GTA Company

And RARE spend all their time on vacation on Microsoft expenses.

[trunk]

I picked this up the other day. I am perfectly fine with 30fps, the game runs fine. I'm having lots of fun with it.

The physics feel like classic sega rally to me. I was not a fan beyond the first game due to physics but it appears to be sorted now.

Feel free to hit me up for some racin'.

We're not really online at the same time but I've been racing against your uploaded ghosts(you fast), checkout the time attack on the tropical stage time

[Ghegs]

We're not really online at the same time but I've been racing against your uploaded ghosts(you fast), checkout the time attack on the tropical stage time

Oh, sweet. I haven't really played Time Attack since starting the game, I've been spending most of the my time on multiplayer. Maybe an hour or so every day. The really good players seem to be doing only Time Attack though as I keep winning almost all my races...or maybe I'm just not online at the same time with them. Would be fun to race against you and Dandy_J and F40 online. Zaarock and nZero are good drivers too.

That said, I went and beat your time on Tropical.

[trunk]

We're not really online at the same time but I've been racing against your uploaded ghosts(you fast), checkout the time attack on the tropical stage time

Oh, sweet. I haven't really played Time Attack since starting the game, I've been spending most of the my time on multiplayer. Maybe an hour or so every day. The really good players seem to be doing only Time Attack though as I keep winning almost all my races...or maybe I'm just not online at the same time with them. Would be fun to race against you and Dandy_J and F40 online. Zaarock and nZero are good drivers too.

That said, I went and beat your time on Tropical.

Dang...It's going to be hard beating the andorra racer. I decided I want to stick to regular cars for time attack. I had barely beaten your Lancer

I raced F40 once or twice in OOA drafting helped alot with no collision so I could cover my mistakes and kinda keep up.

I did play online and the first day I beat everyone easily. The second time online I stayed competitive but I usually got second when somebody took one of the special cars (buggy,bowler,andorra,ice).

It's cool that you can race a ghost, that way we're racing passively if we're not both online. Do some more time attack so I have more ghosts to chase(preferably regular cars)

[dcharlie]

As for the XBLA/PSN version being 30FPS, the arcade version's hardware is above a Lindbergh. Sega Rally 3's Europa-R board has 8 GB of RAM and a dual core 3.4 GHz processor. The GPU is an Nvidia GeForce 8800 (which was rebranded later as GTS 240). I think this GPU may be a little above the current consoles. PS3's RSX is based on the GF7800.

whilst the PS3 has a fairly poor GPU, the Xenos should be able to match up there or there abouts to a -stock- 8800 with few corners cut. I doubt the 8 GB ram makes much difference and 3.4 GHz CPU Intel Pentium D 945 - this is pretty dated tech and the multi-cored PS3/X360 should have enough to match whatever it's doing.

weird

[Ghegs]

Dang...It's going to be hard beating the andorra racer. I decided I want to stick to regular cars for time attack. I had barely beaten your Lancer

I raced F40 once or twice in OOA drafting helped alot with no collision so I could cover my mistakes and kinda keep up.

I did play online and the first day I beat everyone easily. The second time online I stayed competitive but I usually got second when somebody took one of the special cars (buggy,bowler,andorra,ice).

It's cool that you can race a ghost, that way we're racing passively if we're not both online. Do some more time attack so I have more ghosts to chase(preferably regular cars)

The car thing is actually something I'm disappointed in - the Andorra is just too good. The Icelandic Racer is actually faster on straights, but it loses a lot more speed in corners. I thought they'd do it OOA-style where the cars have subtle differences (handling, how quickly they recover from drift, etc) but none is clearly the best. But here they put in the unlockable cars that are just plain god-tier. My main car is actually the Peugeot, I use only that in multiplayer. So when I do Time Attack in Andorra it takes a moment to get used to it since it's faster and corners better. Annoying. I just beat F40's time in Tropical with Icelandic Racer and there's no way in hell I'm the better driver. The fact that he can beat so many Andorra's and Icelandic's with the Celica just proves that the man's god-tier himself.

The whole Time Attack is kind of broken anyway since there are glitched times on the leaderboards. On Tropical the first 31 submissions are glitched. At least you can still time attack against the rest, but it's still frustating. I don't think there's much hope for a patch that fixes the glitches, balances the unlockable cars against the WRC ones (or just bans them from Time Attack and maybe even multiplayer) and clears the Leaderboards...

Oddly I've never raced against the Andorra online. Whenever I see people pick the unlockable cars they always go for the Bowler for some reason. And then I beat them anyway. With the Peugeot.

Slightly off-topic, but do you/have you played Revo? Just curious if it's still worth getting and would work in giving me that Sega Rally fix, SROA's meager five stages are starting to feel limited.

[trunk]

The car thing is actually something I'm disappointed in - the Andorra is just too good. The Icelandic Racer is actually faster on straights, but it loses a lot more speed in corners. I thought they'd do it OOA-style where the cars have subtle differences (handling, how quickly they recover from drift, etc) but none is clearly the best. But here they put in the unlockable cars that are just plain god-tier.

I agree, Outrun was great at balancing. SROA I feel did good with the regular cars in terms of balancing too. Unless there's something I'm not aware of.

My main car is actually the Peugeot, I use only that in multiplayer. So when I do Time Attack in Andorra it takes a moment to get used to it since it's faster and corners better. Annoying. I just beat F40's time in Tropical with Icelandic Racer and there's no way in hell I'm the better driver. The fact that he can beat so many Andorra's and Icelandic's with the Celica just proves that the man's god-tier himself.

The guy certainly has a knack for these driving games, but this does show that the bonus cars are that much more powerful. Speaking of the celica, are the 2 classic cars about the same as the regulars in terms of speed in this game?

The whole Time Attack is kind of broken anyway since there are glitched times on the leaderboards. On Tropical the first 31 submissions are glitched. At least you can still time attack against the rest, but it's still frustating. I don't think there's much hope for a patch that fixes the glitches, balances the unlockable cars against the WRC ones (or just bans them from Time Attack and maybe even multiplayer) and clears the Leaderboards...

I also saw in the championship leaderboards that the best times are 2 minutes I think they could at least clear the glitches as that is actually broken and start on the leaderboards fresh, the game just came out so it is still early. OOA received patch updates so I don't see why SROA would be any different. Beyond glitches the ban from time attack would be the most I could ask for. I don't think there is catch up enabled online so keeping the special cars available helps people who have less skills.

Oddly I've never raced against the Andorra online. Whenever I see people pick the unlockable cars they always go for the Bowler for some reason. And then I beat them anyway. With the Peugeot.

I think most people have not unlocked all the cars yet and I believe the bowler was the easiest to get so it will probably show up more. I don't think I am good enough yet to notice the differences between wrc cars in this game. I main the Lancer because that's what I like, although I did feel that one of the wrc cars felt weaker than the others.

Slightly off-topic, but do you/have you played Revo? Just curious if it's still worth getting and would work in giving me that Sega Rally fix, SROA's meager five stages are starting to feel limited.

I played the psp version and it was not good at all. I have only briefly played revo on xbox.

F40 has some impressions of revo vs sroa on gamefaqs that might help your decision http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/620599-s ... e/59278099

Post edited for more informed opinion and broken links.

[Ghegs]

Speaking of the celica, are the 2 classic cars about the same as the regulars in terms of speed in this game?

I haven't played enough with them to make a rock solid statement, but I think they're about the same. They only have five gears as opposed to the regulars' six, I wonder if that's got something to do with F40 playing one.

OOA received patch updates so I don't see why SROA would be any different. Beyond glitches the ban from time attack would be the most I could ask for. I don't think there is catch up enabled online so keeping the special cars available helps people who have less skills.

Oh, I didn't remember OOA got updates. Well, maybe SROA has some hope then, too. There is no catch enabled online nor is there slipstreaming or anything similar. I'm torn on whether I prefer it that way or not, slipstream is pretty fun in OOA and it doesn't break the game or anything. I'd be fine with keeping the unlockable cars available in multiplayer, but I would like to have a "WRC cars only"-checkbox available in that case.

I don't think I am good enough yet to notice the differences between wrc cars in this game. I main the Lancer because that's what I like, although I did feel that one of the wrc cars felt weaker than the others.

The differences are pretty subtle but noticable. I'd say if you're whooping ass with one, you can whoop ass with any of them. I'm not sure why I ended up with the Peugeot, I actually like the Lancer better on a more personal level. But the Peugeot just feels slightly more agile to me.

F40 has some impressions of revo vs sroa on gamefaqs that might help your decision http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/620599-s ... e/59278099

Thanks, good info there. Need to download the demo again and see how I like it this time.

[antares]

The main problem with Sega Rally Revo is that it's just not Sega Rally. It's like Sega made an arcade style rally game and decided to call it Sega Rally to get better sales out of it or whatever.
Second problem is the racing wheel controls are basically undriveable.

But if you play with a pad and if you can forget the Sega Rally name and approach it on it's own it's a superb arcade racer, actually the second best racing game of this generation (after Ridge Racer 6/7) imo.