Vanishing Point

[matt!]

I've recently been plugging away at this having only played it briefly a few years ago - to finish off stunt mode - since my bug session around the time it was released in 2001.

Here's a retrospective review of it I wrote recently:

http://dreampast.tumblr.com/post/1200852380/vanishing-point

Graphically it's still very impressive, 60fps in the DC with lots going on. The handling is sloppy, but you can work around that. Parts of it remind me of Ridge Racer, of course, but some remind me of more modern racers like Split/Second or Burnout Paradise. It's a great racer.

And here's my current completion stats after "10 years" of play: I'll get there eventually.

Anybody else fans?

[Dimahoo]

Well, you could probably guess i am.

About 4 of the levels had trains in and, whilst a bit sloppy, it felt quite good at speed because of the way the physics worked. Many racing games of the time were far more rigid so this was a breath of freash air.

I recall the EC computer show it was shown at too, as Acclaim had Trickstyle on the other booh...so that was, what 1999?

Trickstyle had the arena level being shown and when i saw the roof and how high it looked, i was blown away.

One of the last ECTS's i attended and one of the best as there was a glut of great PS1 games. I didn't buy a DC until 5 years later.

[Grey Fox]

I'm a huge fan of this (the EDGE 3 out of 10 review score was a joke)

I absolutely love this game. The twitchy arcade handling takes a while to get used to but once mastered you can weave through traffic with laser like precision. The handling reminds me of a cross between Daytona USA, Sega Rally and OutRun 2. Graphically really, really impressive and good soundtrack too.

A real hidden gem on Dreamcast.

[matt!]

Glad to see I'm not alone!

Does anybody know what the team who made it went on to do?

[K]

I played the living shit out of this on the Dreamcast, and kind of loved it even though it was massively flawed. The handling was just too spongey, and you’d wipe out way too often just from a slight miscalculation on a turn. A wheel made it better, but it still needed tightening up. It was especially bad with the faster cars, which were ridiculously unforgiving. The tracks were great though; I have lovely nostalgic memories from my last year of university, of many hours spent driving through the daytime city course while listening to The Wiseguys on some crappy Pye stereo.

One major problem with it was the difficulty – you had to get all gold medals in a race set with a particular vehicle to progress, and because you only started with two vehicles, if you hit two tricky races, you were pretty much permanently stuck. I seem to remember reading an interview with one of the developers in some Dreamcast mag where they said this was an error, and they meant to give the player much more vehicles at the start, but they mastered the wrong version of the game or something.

As an aside, I remember the into to the game was amazing, but bore little resemblance to the actual game – with the oncoming traffic and the coastal roads and the brutal crashes, it pre-empted Burnout by about a year or so.

[matt!]

You can get rid of the spongy feeling. Tune up you car as follows as soon as you unlock the means do so: lower the dampening 50% and stiffening the anti-roll bars 25%. This makes the faster cars feel more like Burnout Paradise.

Not sure I buy the "mastering the wrong version" story, as the PSX version is the same from the outset and I doubt they'd master the wrong versions of both. The difficulty is a bitch though, I think it you should have had at least one retry per track.

You're spot on about the intro, though. I think the sequel to VP could have been a Burnout style game. Stunt Mode was glorious, too.

Here's my review, again: http://dreampast.tumblr.com/post/1200852380/vanishing-point

[trickytree]

The developers of this, Clockwork Games, worked from my home town Nottingham. There's an interesting fact only to myself. They also did 3D Lemmings on PS1/Saturn.

I remember the first thing to do on Vanishing Point was change the handling sensitivity - the default was slippy-slidey but changing it improved things.

[nakamura]

I was looking forward to this game hugely but I just didn't get on with it when it finally came out. Part of the reason was the handling and the other part was Shutokou Battle, loved that.

I would actually like to give this another go though, lovely 60fps which is something EA could never managed on any of their PS2 games.

[trickytree]

lovely 60fps which is something EA could never managed on any of their PS2 games.

Didn't their first PS2 racer Rumble Racing run at 60fps? It looked crap though, not as nice as Vanishing Point.

One thing Vanishing Point got right visually was that 'blue skies' arcade look.

[Wizcat]

loved this, probably in the top 10 of my most played DC games. Stunt mode was fantastic, and it really rewarded replaying and improving your times.

[matt!]

You're bang on

[Pekoe]

Another fan here. The main difficulty I had with the handling was that I always race in bonnet/bumper view and the collision zone is slightly in front of your car, which meant for some unfair crashes.

I was always disappointed that mags/websites never made more of the weekly time trial updates. It was always ironic that much was hyped about online play with the dreamcast, but unique changing content like this and user created content with games like Tony Hawks were completely ignored.

[Yoshimax]

Another fan here - great game - stunt mode was all kinds of amazing.

[nakamura]

Didn't their first PS2 racer Rumble Racing run at 60fps? It looked crap though, not as nice as Vanishing Point.

One thing Vanishing Point got right visually was that 'blue skies' arcade look.

Actually yeah that was 60fps but it was utter pants. I must admit I was meaning EAs main franchises, Need for Speed in particular.