"Victory Run" - Turbografx-16/PC-Engine
AKA - ビクトリーラン栄光の13,000キロ― - "Victory Run: 13,000 Kilometers of Glory"
Turbografx's very own video-game about the Paris-Dakar Rally. What a random topic.
The Paris-Dakar Rally was a rally that went from Paris, through the upper part of Africa in a windy loop and ended at Dakar. In 2009 they moved it to South America for fear of terrorist attacks on the French in Africa though, so this game is about the old rally.
Interestingly enough, this game's music is composed by the same person who did the music from our last Turbografx-16 game, J.J. & Jeff, Takeaki Kunimoto. I guess it makes sense because the game is also developed by Hudson Soft, who developed that game, as well.
And what kind of game is it?
The Paris-Dakar Rally was a rally that went from Paris, through the upper part of Africa in a windy loop and ended at Dakar. In 2009 they moved it to South America for fear of terrorist attacks on the French in Africa though, so this game is about the old rally.
Interestingly enough, this game's music is composed by the same person who did the music from our last Turbografx-16 game, J.J. & Jeff, Takeaki Kunimoto. I guess it makes sense because the game is also developed by Hudson Soft, who developed that game, as well.
And what kind of game is it?
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| Perhaps if we stop talking and PUSH RUN! we'll find out. |
----- Playthrough -----
Instant F-1 Race vibes.
Victory Run was the latest (in 1987, anyway) in the growing line of racing games where you race into a fake 3D scrolling effect on consoles that weren't capable of doing actual 3D (well, actually the Genesis came out before the Turbografx-16 and could handle 3D without any expansion chips, but I won't say it handled it very well most of the time).
Anyway, when you start up Victory Run you're asked to pick how many of each type of spare part you'd like to bring along for the trip, and you're allowed 20 spares over-all. I chose to just evenly distribute them because I have no idea, and I felt like if I needed more than 4 of anything I was probably doing something wrong.
If you followed along with the F-1 Race review, the rest is going to sound familiar to you. The idea is to get from the start to the goal as fast as possible, and you have a limited amount of time to do so.
I believe the time reflects a one day cycle, because the sun will be going up and down throughout most of your Victory Run experience, and the time that you're allotted in between checkpoints seems to amount to about one full rotation.
To achieve your goal, you have all the workings of a car at your disposal-- at least, the important ones. Namely, you have a gear shift which has 4 gears, a brake pedal, a gas pedal, and a steering wheel. And hey, what else does a guy need?
For the most part, all you need to worry about is shifting at the right time and not running into stuff ahead of you. Unlucky for you, at least one of those things is really hard to do-- and it's not shifting at the right time.
Because of the low graphical fidelity afforded by the 3D effect which culminates in what can't be a 10 pixel width at its furthest in the distance, it can sometimes be absurdly hard to tell which lane a car is actually going to be coming in. To make it worse, they'll often change lanes as you approach.
That can be cured mostly by some fast reflexes though, because once they get close you can tell a little more clearly as long as you don't try to speed past them. Unfortunately, you can't maintain that because the game clearly expects you to perform at the top of your ability at all times-- after 4 tries, I still ended up going 20 seconds over the allotted time into bonus time on stage 1 on my best run (I only went off the road a couple times...).
Once you get to a checkpoint, you're allowed to use your spare parts to fix up your vehicle. Different actions will cause different parts to wear out-- for instance, braking frequently will wear out your brakes, jumping in the air will wear out your suspension, etc.
After a few tries I was able to get into stage 3 before losing, but that was as far as I could make it. If you keep going, supposedly there are three environments. I got to see the city road, and the desert (stage 3), but apparently there's a "bush" environment later on in stage 6 according to the Japanese Wikipedia page.
It also tells me the game was rated 482 out of 485 of the best PC-Engine software of all time by "PC Engine FAN," a magazine dedicated to the PC Engine. Apparently that's one to get out of the way...
Victory Run was the latest (in 1987, anyway) in the growing line of racing games where you race into a fake 3D scrolling effect on consoles that weren't capable of doing actual 3D (well, actually the Genesis came out before the Turbografx-16 and could handle 3D without any expansion chips, but I won't say it handled it very well most of the time).
Anyway, when you start up Victory Run you're asked to pick how many of each type of spare part you'd like to bring along for the trip, and you're allowed 20 spares over-all. I chose to just evenly distribute them because I have no idea, and I felt like if I needed more than 4 of anything I was probably doing something wrong.
 |
| I don't know, just give me 4 of everything, John. Yes, I do need to carry 4 engines. Who's the driver here, John? |
If you followed along with the F-1 Race review, the rest is going to sound familiar to you. The idea is to get from the start to the goal as fast as possible, and you have a limited amount of time to do so.
I believe the time reflects a one day cycle, because the sun will be going up and down throughout most of your Victory Run experience, and the time that you're allotted in between checkpoints seems to amount to about one full rotation.
To achieve your goal, you have all the workings of a car at your disposal-- at least, the important ones. Namely, you have a gear shift which has 4 gears, a brake pedal, a gas pedal, and a steering wheel. And hey, what else does a guy need?
 |
| No, John, not 'love.' What are you, some kinda pansy? |
For the most part, all you need to worry about is shifting at the right time and not running into stuff ahead of you. Unlucky for you, at least one of those things is really hard to do-- and it's not shifting at the right time.
 |
| Just taking a quick breather. |
Because of the low graphical fidelity afforded by the 3D effect which culminates in what can't be a 10 pixel width at its furthest in the distance, it can sometimes be absurdly hard to tell which lane a car is actually going to be coming in. To make it worse, they'll often change lanes as you approach.
 |
| We got some, uh, 30 foot wide vehicles approaching, please advise? |
That can be cured mostly by some fast reflexes though, because once they get close you can tell a little more clearly as long as you don't try to speed past them. Unfortunately, you can't maintain that because the game clearly expects you to perform at the top of your ability at all times-- after 4 tries, I still ended up going 20 seconds over the allotted time into bonus time on stage 1 on my best run (I only went off the road a couple times...).
Once you get to a checkpoint, you're allowed to use your spare parts to fix up your vehicle. Different actions will cause different parts to wear out-- for instance, braking frequently will wear out your brakes, jumping in the air will wear out your suspension, etc.
 |
| Yeah I'd like to just replace one of my tires. I only brought 4, please don't give me a hard time about this. |
After a few tries I was able to get into stage 3 before losing, but that was as far as I could make it. If you keep going, supposedly there are three environments. I got to see the city road, and the desert (stage 3), but apparently there's a "bush" environment later on in stage 6 according to the Japanese Wikipedia page.
It also tells me the game was rated 482 out of 485 of the best PC-Engine software of all time by "PC Engine FAN," a magazine dedicated to the PC Engine. Apparently that's one to get out of the way...
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| It's right there! It's twenty feet away! I can read the sign: "CHED PANT"! |
----- Review -----
Innovation:
Does the game show anything not yet seen on this system/ever before?
Well, the parallax racing thing has gone un-done on the PC-Engine since the start, so I guess so. But honestly, by 1987 this faux-3D thing had already been done plenty of times, so it's hard for me to sit and call it an innovation. It looks pretty good in this though, for what it's worth.
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Well, the parallax racing thing has gone un-done on the PC-Engine since the start, so I guess so. But honestly, by 1987 this faux-3D thing had already been done plenty of times, so it's hard for me to sit and call it an innovation. It looks pretty good in this though, for what it's worth.
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Intuitive Design:
How easy is it to intuitively understand the game?
Like F-1 Race there's really not much opportunity for misunderstanding. The actual driving is as simple as can be (this is one of the strengths of having a controller with two buttons...) and parts are color coded to make plain that they're becoming damaged and whether they should be replaced. The time limit and shifting seems self-explanatory to me as well.
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Gameplay / Difficulty:
How rewarding does playing the game feel?
This game is hard as balls for a racing time-attack game, you really have to perform nothing but absolutely perfect runs. I can't say that it's super rewarding as a racing game either, it's mostly just frustrating because it feels like a guarantee you will occasionally crash. Things come at you so quickly (the mud puddles especially) that I don't see how you could possibly have time to react while also going fast enough to not lose the stage.
The Japanese Wikipedia threw me a bone by saying "the difficult is fairly high," which makes me feel like less of a whiner.
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Depth:
How deep/long is the game?
The whole repairing the parts thing adds an extra element to the game but it doesn't really make it significantly deeper. Ultimately, it's still just a racing game, and other than figuring out which parts get damaged the most during your play overtime, the main challenge is still just dodging things and going forwards fast. There's only 8 stages as well, and three types of stage, so there's not a huge amount of variety, really.
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Design:
How's the sound? How are the graphics?
The parallax thing is handled well here and overall the game looks pretty good, especially in motion. I wish that it were easier to tell which lane upcoming cars were going to be in but it's just a limitation of the resolution.
The music is honestly a little underwhelming after the awesome music from J.J. & Jeff, considering it's the same composer, but it's still pretty nice, if not really amazing.
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| She can be pretty when she wanna be. |
The music is honestly a little underwhelming after the awesome music from J.J. & Jeff, considering it's the same composer, but it's still pretty nice, if not really amazing.
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Personal Chord:
Does the game have that undefinable "something" for me?
I like it okay, but it's not quite there for me. I think the graphics, music, and gameplay all lack something which would otherwise make it a real hit with me. Everything feels just a little too "loose". I'm not really sure what that means, but by golly if it doesn't sound like the right word to me at the moment.
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Should You Play:
Is there a reason to even bother with this one?
Probably not, honestly. If you want to see an old racing game there are probably lots of much better examples. Probably the oldest straight-up racing game that I still would point to and say you should totally play is the original Ridge Racer, so until we get at least that far it's going to be a hard sell for me, but I'm open to having my mind changed.
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