It's a Saturday in August 2016, which means, for me, it's the perfect time to mess around with PS1 racing games, a group of games I find more fascinating than good, but enjoy playing just to look at how games used to be and explore the weird oddities that don't really exist in today's more polished video games.

Today I messed around with two titles: Hi-Octane: The Track Fights Back and Toy Story Racer. Both were picked up digitally on PS3 for under a buck during the big digital PS1 sale last year.

Hi-Octane: The Track Fights Back

Hi-Octane is a futuristic battle racer, in the vein of Wipeout, which came out on PlayStation a few months earlier.

This was a very early PlayStation game and oh boy does it show. Beyond the barely there presentation (The game has a menu straight out of the CD-I era, and while it has a good suite of options like single race, championship, racing a ghost, and battle mode, it makes no real attempt at story or even character) the graphics are bad and as far as I can tell there's only one music track, on a pretty short loop (despite being a CD game the ROM is only 35 megabytes). Most notably the draw distance is truly hideous, with the track blatantly popping into place about 100 feet in front of your car, far enough that you can generally navigate it okay, but giving the already unappealing graphics a very shoddy and unfinished feel.

The tracks themselves are all named after evocative locations like Shanghai or New Chernobyl, but lack distinctive features and all come off as "Generic Future Race Track #2" or GFRT #4. The cars are apparently lacking in textures and definitely lacking in character, with generic shapes like "big van" and "standard future car" mixing with only slightly more interesting fantasy vehicles like an X-Wing/Tie Fighter Interceptor hybrid.

How does it play? The controls are a bit floaty but not so bad that you can't get a handle on them after a few races. It's a combat racer, which means that you're often getting shot by machine guns from the back, and you need to worry about managing your shields, ammo, and fuel in addition to racing and collecting other power-ups, but the gameplay is neither notably good nor terrible. It's just a clunky early 3D racer. The AI is pretty bad, though, so it's not hard to pull off victories on some of the twistier courses where it gets caught up on corners.

A couple things worth noting. 1) You can turn the sky texture off and on in the options. I don't know why, though I suspect it has to do with 2) which is that this is a game by Bullfrog, and was on PC before being ported to Playstation (or maybe co-developed.) I suspect that helps explain the terrible draw-in (which might have been better on a PC) and perhaps the sky texture option, which might have helped with PC performance? Doesn't explain the single song soundtrack, though.

I never figured out why this game is subtitled "The Track Fights Back." The tracks do have some interesting elements to them, like shortcuts and areas to recharge shield or weapons, as well as hidden power ups, but I didn't find any hazards, and it's not like these were particularly new ideas. F-Zero (a MUCH better game) had shortcuts and shield recharge areas at the launch of the SNES.

Oh, and as far as I can tell there is no way to exit a race until all computer players have finished, which can take awhile. Overall Hi-Octane is a mildly interesting curiosity, but not something I can see a lot of people having really cared about, and a game that was rendered totally superfluous by the existence of Wipeout.

Toy Story Racer

Toy Story Racer, on the other hand, was a very late Playstation game, released in 2001 about 6 months after the launch of the PS2. It's a Mario Kart clone featuring the cast of Toy Story, from Buzz and Woody to Rex and Bo-Peep. What a difference a console life cycle makes! While Hi-Octane felt like a barely held together pile of code, Toy Story Racer features the rock solid graphics of late PS1 games, with much higher rez textures and some decent lighting effects. There's no real pop-in and the tracks are all very distinct and clear real world locations, while the racers all look great.

Toy Story Racer was made by Traveller's Tales and by 2001 they knew how to make a Playstation game. It features great presentation with voice clips from Toy Story, an interesting and vast progression system, lots of content, and awesome track fly throughs before you start each course. I couldn't find a way to turn the sky off, though.

The thing is, there's not much to say about Toy Story Racer. It's a very competent kart game with all that entails: including nice looking tracks with short cuts, power ups and weapons, and an Etch-A-Sketch that appears to point you in the right direction if you get off course. I'm sure a lot of kids have fond memories of playing the game when it was released, but it also launched onto a platform with a ton of games, many of which were better. Toy Story Racer is no Crash Team Racing, for example, and there are literally hundreds of other racing games for the PS1, almost all of which were released earlier. Playing it in 2016 it's just mildly entertaining, and not nearly as interesting as the weird and kind of broken Hi-Octane, which I spent more time with.

Overall

I had a decent time messing around with these two games. I enjoy looking back at the PS1 era, which to me is in many ways the worst but also most interesting era in gaming, and these two racing games provided decent bookends. Toy Story Racer is by far the better game, but there's something about Hi-Octane that gives it a shabby charm, like an old car with a mismatched door and big rust spots that seems held together with duct tape but somehow still runs. Would I recommend picking either up? Toy Story Racer might be worth a play if you're a huge fan of the movies, but even then you're better off just watching the trilogy and playing Mario Kart or CTR. Hi-Octane is a goddamned mess and I cannot recommend it for anything beyond a curiosity. I got my 96 cents worth of fun out of both of them, though, so if you are interested and see them super duper cheap I'm not going to try and stop you.

Until next time, I'll be here playing old Playstation games and wishing that I could turn the sky off during heat waves, or when it's heavily raining. Stupid real life should come with a fully featured options menu!

I have fond memories of a PS1 racing game called Rollcage and this post reminded me of it, so thanks. You should check out Rollcage.

@citizencoffeecake:I think I played a Rollcage demo back in the day (or at least definitely saw some video on a demo disk.) It seemed alright but I never picked it up. If I see it for cheap one of these days I'll pick it up and give it a spin. I'm interested in the spiritual sequel too.

@kingbonesaw: I never actually owned a Ridge Racer game. I know this is blasphemy of the highest order, but I played some demos and the games never really clicked with me for whatever reason. I was more into games that were either total fantasy (like Wipeout) or a bit more realistic, like Gran Turismo or even Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (I played the HECK out of that game.) I should definitely go back and fill in that gap. R4 is on PSN so I COULD just grab that and play that this evening...

Hmmmmmm.

@bigsocrates: Yes, I strongly recommend picking up Ridge Racer 4. That's one game with really good graphics for the PS1, and does an especially fantastic job at the color palette for the night time races.

The TOCA games are pretty good too.

When I think racing games on PS one I remember being floored by dat waterfall in rage racer

Now that you mention it, the PS1 is probably the system where I played more racing games than on all other systems combined.

Gran Turismo 2, Crash Team Racing, Ridge Racer 4, Jet Moto 2, and many others all come to mind. And with the Twisted Metals included, I may have done more miles there than I'll actually drive in my lifetime.

Destruction Derby 1 and 2. Such simple yet awesome games that are; oh wait, a CPU spun me around, hold on I wi- DAMMIT SPUN OUT AGAIN! Fuck these games.

Demolition Racer is also pretty cool and has a lot more features than Destruction Derby 1 and 2.

Give Crash Team Racing a try. Multiplayer modes are so good, I loved that game. So much value for the money.

NASCAR Rumble!

@citizencoffeecake: Rollcage is awesome. You aware of its upcoming spiritual successor, Grip?

@yesiamaduck: Rage Racer for whatever reason remains my favourite racer of all time.

When I was a kid I played the crap out of Walt Disney world quest: magical racing tour, rollcage, and moto racer. Probably not the best games if you played them today, but I thought they were awesome!

Hi Octane on PC was awesome. Super fast, super smooth. Still very bare bones and you wouldn't wanted to have bought it at full price but the going fast and exploding stuff part of it was wicked. A weird, flawed non serialized Bullfrog joint in the vein of Flood. Very strange.

I'm super gutted there is no Motorstorm 4/HD/collection or anything like it for PS4 with the glorious fast split screen and all. Pacific Rift might be my favorite PS3 game, certainly one of the few I can be bothered booting the thing up for. I will continue to hate Drive Club unless they patch it to have motorstorm tracks, cars, sense of speed, music, the works.

While Gran Tourismo and Rage/Ridge Racer are my favorites, I have a soft spot of TOCA Championship Racing. While not as flashy as GT, it did have a lot of excellent physics, AI and content for it time. TOCA was miles ahead of GT in terms of having racing with pits lanes that actually did stuff.

But, again, I have to admit I was a bigger ran of GT and Ridge Racer because I did like the flashy stuff. ;-)

Two that I have fond memories of but I bet are not very good:

Chocobo Racing

LEGO Racers

Speed Freaks is a good Mario Kart clone you should give that a try.

I believe Magical Racing Tour was the one that was on a demo disc along with Jedi Power Battles. I didn't own a PSX at that time but I remember playing the one track at a friend's house for like at least an hour if not two. That game was pretty awesome. :)