Gale Racer
From Sega Retro
| Gale Racer | ||||||||||
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| System(s): Sega Saturn | ||||||||||
| Publisher: Sega Enterprises, Ltd. | ||||||||||
| Developer: System Sacom[1][2], Sega CS1[3] | ||||||||||
| Sound driver: SCSP/CD-DA (16 tracks) | ||||||||||
| Peripherals supported: Arcade Racer | ||||||||||
| Genre: Racing[4][5] | ||||||||||
| Number of players: 1-2 | ||||||||||
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Gale Racer (ゲイルレーサー) is a Sega Saturn driving game developed by System Sacom[1][2] and published by Sega. A port of the 1991 Sega System 32 arcade game Rad Mobile, it was released exclusively in Japan in December 1994, and is the first driving game released for the Sega Saturn.
Contents
Gameplay
Gale Racer shares similar gameplay to Rad Mobile, with the player driving eastwards across America against rival cars against a strict time limit. There are, however, a number of graphical and technical changes to better suit the Saturn's hardware, and rather than one continuous journey, "areas" are split up by loading screens. There are also 23 rival cars, as opposed to the arcade's 14.
Gale Racer has the player drive a completely different vehicle to Rad Mobile, and renders all the rivals as polygons, rather than resized sprites. Similarly to Rad Mobile, a Sonic the Hedgehog "mascot" hangs from the car's ceiling (resembling his look in Sonic the Hedgehog 3), however others from the Sonic series are available, including the first home sightings of Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel.
However, despite being a port of a then-three-year-old game (for arcade hardware that had been retired), Gale Racer is noticeably scaled back over its arcade counterpart, running at half the frame rate with lower draw distances, and less detailed "textures" for the road and scenery. The breaking up of areas means stage transitions no longer exist, and the road is always the same colour. The physics of the mascot are also simplified, always swinging and rotating at the same rate regardless of what is happening in-game.
There are also no exploding police officers when the player finishes first.
Production credits
- Producer: Youji Ishii, Yutaka Sugano
- Director: Tomohiro Kondo
- Game Designer: Koji Iwashita
- Graphic Designer: Takashi Thomas Yuda, Keiichi Matate, Makiko Banju
- Program: Toru Asato, Shiori Hongo, Kaoru Aota, Akio Ujino, Yumiko Hide
- Computer Graphics: Count Zero
- Design: Ginji Sabano, Shin Kato, Makiko Ozawa, Sozi Kano
- Sound: Yoshito Kida
- Adviser: Manabu Ishihara
- Special Thanks To: Kazuhiko Nagai, Yoshio Inoue, Jill Alexander, Daisuke Teraguchi
Magazine articles
- Main article: Gale Racer/Magazine articles.
Physical scans
| Sega Retro Average | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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47 |
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| Based on 13 reviews | |
| Saturn, JP |
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  Cover
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 Spinecard  Disc  Manual |
Technical information
- Main article: Gale Racer/Technical information.
External links
- Sega of Japan catalogue page (Japanese): Saturn
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/System_Sacom
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Blog:Gale_Racer_(Saturn)
- ↑ produced by Yoji Ishii
- ↑ File:Galeracer sat jp backcover.jpg
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 https://sega.jp/history/hard/segasaturn/software.html (Wayback Machine: 2020-03-04 08:13)
- ↑ File:Galeracer_Saturn_JP_SSEnding.pdf
- ↑ Consoles +, "Janvier 1995" (FR; 199x-xx-xx), page 148
- ↑ Computer & Video Games, "February 1995" (UK; 1995-01-15), page 34
- ↑ Excalibur, "" (CZ; 1995-08-01), page 1
- ↑ Famitsu, "1994-12-23" (JP; 1994-12-09), page 1
- ↑ Joypad, "Février 1995" (FR; 1995-0x-xx), page 56
- ↑ MAN!AC, "03/95" (DE; 1995-02-08), page 36
- ↑ Mega Force, "Janvier 1995" (FR; 199x-xx-xx), page 86
- ↑ Mean Machines Sega, "February 1995" (UK; 1994-12-30), page 52
- ↑ Saturn Fan, "1995 February" (JP; 1995-01-07), page 32
- ↑ Sega Pro, "February 1995" (UK; 1994-12-29), page 22
- ↑ Sega Saturn Magazine, "Readers rating final data" (JP; 2000-03), page 16
- ↑ Ultimate Future Games, "February 1995" (UK; 1995-01-01), page 109
- ↑ Última Generación, "Marzo 1995" (ES; 1995-0x-xx), page 72
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