On completing a 26-year old game for the first time

 

I have loved "Metropolis Street Racer" since the first time I played it all the way back in 2000. It was a weird and wonderful year, with many personal highs and lows but I remember picking up a Dreamcast just to play Crazy Taxi, and this game was released shortly afterwards. 

Coldplay's "Parachutes" was nailed into my stereo, I'd just met an amazing girl at work (who would later become my wife) but I spent my spare time handbraking around corners in various high-powered production cars in this game. 

Recently I thought I'd fire it back up again, via the wonders of emulation. I do still own the original Dreamcast and the game itself, but emulation was more convenient - and best of all meant I could chip away at the game while sitting on the sofa as the Steam Deck emulates the Dreamcast - and this game - absolutely perfectly. 

Starting from scratch, I realised that the game's method of starving you of cars and garage slots meant that it built a unique piece of strategy into the game to ensure that you couldn't just blitz your way through it in double time. Each unlocked car can sometimes be a step forward in terms of power and acceleration, or sometimes a step backward in terms of handling, so you have to be careful about what you choose. Even unlocking extra garage slots (through races that rely on you playing at all times of the day and night due to the way 'special' races are locked behind a world clock or a specific car choice) doesn't guarantee that you'll have the right car for your particular choice of challenge, but sometimes you get lucky and find a particular vehicle that just 'fits in' with the tiers of races you're working on. 

With this new playthrough, it took me about 56 hours to get to the very last tier. The game treats you to an unskippable credits sequence before you're let near the final challenges, but once you're there, the last few races are relatively easy in comparison to stuff you've played in lower tiers. The last race in particular was pretty tense, and you had to really 'milk it' to complete it, but once you won the last car (a Nissan GT-R) you could then go back and pretty much complete all the other challenges and tracks (though there's one that still eludes me, I just can't overtake 6 vehicles on the penultimate tier). 

Essentially though I've finished the game. I spent a bit of time working out how to unlock some of the 'weird' vehicles (San Francisco Bus, Double Decker London Bus, Yellow Cab and an utterly useless lawn mower!) but it felt fantastic, and also strangely sad to have finally reached the end of the game. 

A jaunty salute to Bizarre Creations for creating one of the best racing games ever created. I now keep thinking I should get back to Project Gotham Racing 1 through 4, but sadly emulation for those is still really poor, so there's no way of emulating those - but I do still have the OG Xbox and copies of the games, so I guess it might be the only option.