Over Rev (Arcade)

You might already know that I love arcade racing games, especially ones from the mid-90s, with their bright colours and relatively low (compared to modern console games) polygon counts. Over Rev is the second racing game Jaleco released for SEGA's Model 2 hardware, and it hits most of the right spots that a 90s arcade racer should. I should also mention here the same disclaimer I put at the start of my post about Motor Raid, that I emulated this game and played it with a normal analogue controller, so my experience will be slightly different to that of someone playing on a real arcade cabinet with steering wheels and fancy moulded seats and the like.

It's got bright blue skies, it's fast, it has cool backdrops, all it lacks is a cool soundtrack. Once you start the game, there are two modes to choose from: Challenge Cup and Time Attack. Challenge cup is the harder of the two modes, but also the one that has a chance of giving a longer game for your credit (if you're a good player). In it, the player drives each track in order, having to not only reach checkpoints to prolong the time

limit, but also finish the race in a minimum position, which starts at 5th and gets higher with each race. (Because I'm terrible, I only got to the second stage in this mode D:). Time Attack mode allows the player to choose any of the four tracks to play on, though you only get one race per credit. All that needs to be done in this mode is get to the checkpoints and finish as quickly as possible, your position in the race isn't important.

The four tracks (there might be a secret track, or maybe a fifth track in Challenge Cup mode, but I haven't found any mention of one online anywhere) take place in Shibuya, Ariake (which includes driving under the Tokyo Big Sight!), Tsukuba (the most boring track, taking place in a racing arena. Are they called arenas? I don't know.), and Hakone (a very nice-looking track taking place in a forest, with waterfalls and trees and such). There's lots of nice little touches, like planes flying past, trains

going over overhead bridges, and so on, that make the stages feel a little more alive, though there doesn't seem to be a crowd of any kind watching on the Tsukuba track, which seems odd.

There's seven cars to choose from, though three of them are very slightly hidden, being revealed when the accelerator is pushed on the car select screen (oddly, the brake is used to select things in this game). Unfortunately, the three hidden cars aren't anything too outlandish or interesting like the hidden horse in Daytona USA, just two more sports cars and a pick-up truck.

In conclusion, Over Rev is a pretty fun game, definitely worth playing if you're sick of seeing Daytona's

tracks over and over again and want something new to scratch your Model 2 racing itch. It's just a shame that it never got a home port, unlike Jaleco's earlier Model 2 racer, Super GT 24hr (which maybe I'll write about sometime in the distant future? I'll think about it.).

The Last Tempest (X68000)

This is a game that was almost, thanks to the short-sightedness of its developer, lost to the ages. It's only down to a helpful poster at the Tokugawa Corp forums, who found a way round the game's copy protection that it can now be emulated, played and written about.
On to the game itself, it's an action game taking place on floating isometric islands, and on each stage, the player must find and kill all the enemies therein. The hook is that the player is some kind of evil skull-

worm-thing, and the enemies are angels, saints, apostles and other biblical figures. Enemies are killed simply by repeatedly ramming them with your face. The game delights in being disrespectful and irreverant, too: cherub enemies are labelled "angelic scum", the good samaritan is pointed out with a big red arrow instructing "KILL HIM!", and the homing shots fired by the Archangel Gabriel are "angelic sperm".
The game is a lot of fun, and though the stages all have the same basic goal (kill every enemy), there's still a lot of variety in them, and another nice touch is that though each stage has a boss (usually an archangel, though I've also encountered a bronze serpent summoned by Moses and Aaron, who also float around on their own little island summoning explosions and rains of holy water to further annoy you), they don't have to be killed last, and will often roam about the stages attacking at will.
Another interesting point is that the player character is technically invulnerable to direct attacks, with death only coming from falling off the islands, which actually serves to make it more annoying, especially when, as is often the case, death comes from the player's own clumsiness, without even needing any enemy

intervention.
Despite this frustration, this is a game I'm going to be sticking with for a few reasons. Firstly, the charm of its adolescent blasphemous trappings (as an aside: though it came out in the same year as Neon Genesis Evangelion, since that series debuted in October, it's probably just a coincidence), contrasted with the high quality of the graphics and music and how well put together the game is in general is nice, and secondly, as I said, every stage is unique and full of nice little ideas, and I want to see more of what the game has to offer.
Special thanks to Japanese PC Compendium for helping me get the disc images and the save state needed to run them.