Just a small review, since it's been a while since I last posted, and I did say I'd try to post more often.It's surprising that it's taken this long for me to post about a game for one of the old Japanese computers, and there's actually a few games on the PC-98 and X68000 I intend to write about eventually.
Anyway, this game is Runner's High. It's a racing game by Compile. You play as a girl wearing a jetpack, and you choose one of three tracks, then attempt to fly three laps though it before the time runs out.
The problem is, that's it. Doing the four laps of any one of the three courses is going to take less than two minutes, and even the hardest course you'll be able to finish in a couple of
goes. There's no mode where you race against other opponents, be they CPU or human, no career mode or anything like that. There are rankings boards for fastest times around each of the tracks, but the game isn't really fun enough that you'll want to play it after completeing them all once (if you even bother to get that far). It seems strange that Compile would release this as a stand-alone game, as I've played longer games on their Disc Station diskmags.It's not all bad, though: as you'd expect from Compile, the graphics and all-round presentation are excellent, and there's some really nice still art in the intro, too.
I thought this sounded familiar, but I was thinking of RunnING High, an also-obscure game for the PS1. A rare 3rd Person on-foot "cart racer" from System Sacom. I mean, honestly, I can only name a handful of those - Mad Dash Racing, Sonic R, Infinium Runner, Rayman R and Running Wild are the only others. The whole sub-genre of "cart" racer where the competitors are on-foot is pretty obscure, but this one takes the cake easily!
ReplyDeleteWhat's crazy is that Running High was released in '97 - only ONE year after this. This looks ancient by comparison! I dig the chiptunes here though. It sure is an odd one...