Hello! My name is Robert, I’m from Brazil and I am 28 years old. First of all, I wanted to say thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for this collection as a hole. I’ve bought it today no PC and I’m still stunned to be able to play this. All the games are great, but one in particular is VERY dear to me, and that one is Rock N’ Roll Racing. Let me give you some context before telling you the reason for this message.
As a child/teenager, me and my friends played RRR A LOT, and I really mean a lot. We used to play it on the SNES together on a rental place, for hours, and have a hell of a time. Since then, the game holds a very special place in our hearts and we’ve been sporadically playing it through the years. As an adult, I’ve managed and promoted multiple local tournaments for the game, since it is very loved in Brazil to this day. I consider myself a great player and even got first place in the last one we had last year.
I’m an enthusiast of old school “couch” local playing, I have 5 SNES consoles, more then 15 SNES controllers and a multitap for 5-players madness. But as you know, RRR only supported 2 players. 4 players was a dream for years and we reached everywhere for an experience closer to what a RRR 4 players vs. would provide (BlazeRush for PC was a close one), but it was never the same. Until now.
Now that I hopefully made clear how important this release is to me and to my friends, I will give my feedback on it and really hope that someday I could see something done about this, which would make the perfect, definitive and unmatchable RRR experience.
The excellent points:
- Playability is completely unchanged from the SNES original, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT!
- 16:9 upgrade and all the graphical upgrades, including new backgroung effects, added assets, effects on the animations (like the lightning bolt when you respawn) and the zoom function look AMAZING! You guys kept the spirit of the original and yet gave it a new spin!
- The new upgraded soundtrack, with new songs and arrangements and the re-recorded Larry lines are INCREDIBLE! Getting Larry again was a nice touch that only you guys could do and I’m glad you did!
- Keeping the original releases included was also something special, that shows you really care about your history and your fans
Ok, so now we got to the aspects to improve. I REALLY hope you guys care about what I’m about to say, because these are the only points that are in the way of this game being perfect. All of them are specific for the 4P Versus mode, ok? Here we go:
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First thing I did was to hook my USB SNES controller adapters to use my original controllers, to which nothing compares, but I quickly noticed that I wouldn’t be able to use them for one single reason: there is no option to skip actions. The controllers are all recognized immediately, which is incredible, but as I began to map the controllers to let them identical to how it was on SNES, I mapped the directions and when I come to the “Start / Pause Game” command and press Start, it’s the same as “Cancel”, so I can’t go forward and map the other actions. Since the SNES controller has fewer buttons, it needs a “skip function” option, so we can “ignore” some actions and map the most important ones to the buttons it has. A mix of controller and keyboard inputs would be incredible. If you think people using older controller formats to play these games is rare, search “8bitdo” and you will see that are companies making new versions of these old controllers, with bluetooth support and more.
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The default controller mapping is completely different from the SNES default mapping. Although I think changing the default now can confuse players that are already playing like this since the game launched three days ago, a “SNES mapping” option is not essencial if custom mapping is there, but would be nice anyway
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Please, add an upgrade selecting function. This game would be perfect to high-level competition and tournaments, but always starting with everything maxed out destroys that possibility, it just doesn’t work (believe me, I’ve tried doing a tournament like this and it was a mess, there’s not strategy involved in playing like this). We need the option to choose which upgrades everyone has, including shots, mines, engine, tires, health, etc. Many players probably like to play this way, but we should at least have the option to choose.
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We’ve noticed that even if we are playing with 4 human players, as soon as the leader controller finishes the race, the match is over, giving other players the position they were in that moment. This is not good, other players should be allowed to finish before the race is over, especially on a competition where the overall points matter.
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With passwords, we were always able to choose the same characters (or more importantly, the same two attributes) for both players. It would be great if we could still do that in this one. Maybe alternate character colors for the same character, similar to what happens in fighting games? It would improve the game even more.
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Last but not least, online would amazing, but I wouldn’t be bothered if it’s never added
I think that’s basically it! I mean, it’s incredible how perfect this remaster is and how few the flaws are. I’m totally sure that you guys can work out and I will be super glad to spread to the world how incredible your support and this game is. Thank you SO MUCH for making this game, you really brought happiness to many people.
I really hope that these messages catch the support’s attention, reach the devs and doesn’t end in the “thanks for your feedback, we’ll see” garbage. I’m a true passionate fan of this game and waited more than 25 for this to happen, so I hope you guys at least take my messages seriously.
Much love,
Robert