Why the 1993 MegaRace game looked great for its time
If you let your imagination run wild, you often have no control over the end result. So when developer Cryo Interactive released a demo of a hypergraphic sci-fi racing game in 1993 MegaRace When home computers could barely display a spreadsheet, that demo was both a curse and a blessing. Because what they had come up with technically did not initially seem feasible on the computers of that time. Too hard, too slow. But graphically it should be great, then again.
What Cryo did? Instead of building a Blade Runner-like environment from blocky thick pixels – that was common in games at the time – they came up with something else. Normally, angular 3D graphics in real time displayed all over your screen, resulting in long loading times and slow screen changes as you blast through futuristic landscapes. But Cyro figured they could have some kind of CGI-esque video preloaded, with much better ones graphics, which then sets the background of the MegaRace would form.
The cars were another layer
On top of that, a separately programmed layer was placed with the cars that you drive. So a fairly realistic background with smooth foreground in which you actually played. Which made it a bit like fast-forwarding a VHS video instead of accelerating your car.
But against all odds played MegaRace quite tasty. Especially because it was less focused on cutting apexes tightly and driving around quickly. No, it was more about shooting your fellow road users. As a law enforcer, you had to fight off a pack of speed demons by chasing them and machine-gunning them out of the game. Things that were really cool in the 90s.
Mega Race (1993)
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