True Arcade Racer "Classic Sport Driving" Publicly Releasing June 12

ClassicSportDriving_title.jpg
Classic Sport Driving, a title by French game-developer and former amateur bike racer Sylvain Debaudringhien and his studio Pixel Wrappers, revealed its release date during AG French Direct Showcase today. The indie title aims to capture the essence of classics like Lotus Turbo Challenge, Jaguar XJ220, Lamborghini American Challenge, and OutRun in its Steam Release on June 12.

You might recall seeing an article about this that I wrote last year in autumn. I proclaimed this game gave me "nostalgia for something I never experienced". This holds true to this day. While back then, it was "just" a beta, Classic Sport Driving is finally receiving its full release.

What is Classic Sport Driving All About?​

You know how in arcades of old you would just drive along sprint tracks, trying not to crash into stuff along the way and making it to the finish line in the fastest way possible, right?

That is exactly what Classic Sport Driving is all about.
A to B racing with online leader boards. Simple enough isn't it? Well that's not all!

Regularly, the game features different circuits. Completely different ones. And non featured, you have about as many choices of tracks as there are combinations of letters in the alphabet. That's right. You can generate the streets you are racing on by entering different "seeds".

You could enter the name of your favourite car. Or your favourite actor or actress. Or what about the name of your hamster? There's endless possibilities to find new circuits to race for the record.

The best possibility about this might be to just use a search term that nobody would think of and share it with your friends or community to make a "private" tournament of sorts.

You can even customize the weather. Oh, and the game allows for analogue input.

Who is Classic Sport Driving for?​

If you are a purist of sim racing, this game is not for you. It is not a hardcore simulator. IT doesn't aim to be. It doesn't need to be!

If you are open to just having a bit of arcade fun on the side in the meantime, but with a competitive twist, this game might just quench your thirst.

Personally, I will be looking forward to the release of this game. I can't wait to finally get a whole bunch of people to virtually race against.

Classic Sport Driving is set to release on June 12 via Steam.
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About author
Julian Strasser
Julian Strasser
Motorsports and Maker-stuff enthusiast. Part time jack-of-all-trades. Owner of tracc.eu, a sim racing-related service provider and its racing community.

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Comments

Two Hands
Premium
I might have to check this out. It reminds me of some of the old cabinet games at arcades in the past. It really does manage to have an old school look.
 
Retrolux
I am getting Lotus 3 on the amiga500 vibes. Loved it back in the day and its music. But not sure if I would play a nodern version to be honest. It still looks nicely done though.
 
Gevatter
Premium
I played the demo back then and at least the arcade difficulty was really fun. Will be interesting to see what changed since then.
 
andrewaugust93
To be honest it looks like the kind of low effort product that ends up in the backlog with 20 minutes playtime that you forgot to refund. It is sad that "90s Arcade Racer" the game died due to crappy publisher, that game would have been what we all needed. Not this.
 
Jugulador
I simply hated the demo. Hated how the car handles, the swallow gameplay and uninspired track design. Hope they put some efforts to change that, because I really liked the overall idea.

For now... will stick with the PC release of Horizon Chase 2:

This is the Apple version... the PC will be a huge improovement over it.

And the Classic Sport Driving video (that is lacking on the OP):

 
ChaosZeroJK
What indie developers don't seem to understand is that games like Outrun, Top Gear, Pole Position, Road Rash and many others like them were intended to be coin magnets and little more than that.

Extremely difficult, unforgiving and almost impossible to beat on a single coin (usually with 3x lives) because that was the point, to get kids and teenagers addicted enough to buy more coins and thus throw away their weekly allowance and they just don't work when played on a home console or a pc.

And the same goes for non-racing games as well, like Streets of Rage or Metal Slug. If you have unlimited lives to beat each level, you're doing it wrong.

Indie developers think that people want "retro arcade games" in 2023 because "muh nostalgia", but they don't understand why those games worked during the '80s and the '90s and, similarly, they don't understand why those games don't work today. I don't think they even understand that virtually nobody is asking for these games to be made. They're popular for like 2 weeks, then the playerbase falls off a cliff.

"Point-to-point arcade style" is an outdated game design philosophy, one that has not aged well at all, be it "vertical" (like a racing game) gameplay or "horizontal" gameplay like a beat 'emup game.

If I want something like this, I just fire up my Outurn 2006 PSP port, play it for 20 minutes, get bored because the replayability factor is next to none, quit and only come back to it in another 2 years or fire up my stupidly expensive Metal Slug Anthology for the PSP and play it for a few hours every few months.
 
Gevatter
Premium
ChaosZeroJK said:
why those games worked during the '80s and the '90s
Click to expand...
They worked because arcade games had state of the art graphics, sound and speed no home system in the 90s could match, and in the 80s, arcades were the only way to play videogames at all for most people. That and the competition aspect of having your initials in the top ten scores.

Games like Classic Sport Driving absolutely bank on nostalgia. If you weren't there in the 80s/90s you'll probably have very little reason to play this over something like Forza Horizon or Need for Speed. It's the 2nd best thing after emulating the originals, which can be tricky.
 
Richard Wilks
ChaosZeroJK said:
What indie developers don't seem to understand is that games like Outrun, Top Gear, Pole Position, Road Rash and many others like them were intended to be coin magnets and little more than that.

Extremely difficult, unforgiving and almost impossible to beat on a single coin (usually with 3x lives) because that was the point, to get kids and teenagers addicted enough to buy more coins and thus throw away their weekly allowance and they just don't work when played on a home console or a pc.

And the same goes for non-racing games as well, like Streets of Rage or Metal Slug. If you have unlimited lives to beat each level, you're doing it wrong.

Indie developers think that people want "retro arcade games" in 2023 because "muh nostalgia", but they don't understand why those games worked during the '80s and the '90s and, similarly, they don't understand why those games don't work today. I don't think they even understand that virtually nobody is asking for these games to be made. They're popular for like 2 weeks, then the playerbase falls off a cliff.

"Point-to-point arcade style" is an outdated game design philosophy, one that has not aged well at all, be it "vertical" (like a racing game) gameplay or "horizontal" gameplay like a beat 'emup game.

If I want something like this, I just fire up my Outurn 2006 PSP port, play it for 20 minutes, get bored because the replayability factor is next to none, quit and only come back to it in another 2 years or fire up my stupidly expensive Metal Slug Anthology for the PSP and play it for a few hours every few months.
Click to expand...
Well, if they were addictive in the first place, then it's because they were fun to play..a concept that works then and still works now, or else there wouldn't be so many indie devs doing it. If they do it, it's because there is an audience, that buys them in suficient numbers. How much they play it it's their problem later.
 
ChaosZeroJK
Richard Wilks said:
Well, if they were addictive in the first place, then it's because they were fun to play..a concept that works then and still works now, or else there wouldn't be so many indie devs doing it. If they do it, it's because there is an audience, that buys them in suficient numbers. How much they play it it's their problem later.
Click to expand...
The "addiction" came from knowing you only had 1x coin with 3x lives and you had to get as far as possible in the game to get a higher score than your friends, and if you lost all your lives then you had to put another quarter in to get another coin, rinse and repeat.

But that's besides the point. The point is that this specific style of gaming often falls flat on its head and doesn't have a lot of replayability because it's trying to mimic something that was never meant to have any depth to it.

In Metal Slug you shoot fake Nazi, aliens and zombies until you run out of lives, in Pacman you try to eat all of the candies before you get eaten by a ghost yourself, in Outrun you try to get the blonde lady sitting next to you in your Ferrari as moist as possible before the timer runs out. In Crazy Taxi you try to get as many fares as possible before All I Want stops playing. It's fun for a couple of hours, but when you realise that that's all there is to it, you put the game down and never touch it again.
 
Richard Wilks
ChaosZeroJK said:
The "addiction" came from knowing you only had 1x coin with 3x lives and you had to get as far as possible in the game to get a higher score than your friends, and if you lost all your lives then you had to put another quarter in to get another coin, rinse and repeat.

But that's besides the point. The point is that this specific style of gaming often falls flat on its head and doesn't have a lot of replayability because it's trying to mimic something that was never meant to have any depth to it.

In Metal Slug you shoot fake Nazi, aliens and zombies until you run out of lives, in Pacman you try to eat all of the candies before you get eaten by a ghost yourself, in Outrun you try to get the blonde lady sitting next to you in your Ferrari as moist as possible before the timer runs out. In Crazy Taxi you try to get as many fares as possible before All I Want stops playing. It's fun for a couple of hours, but when you realise that that's all there is to it, you put the game down and never touch it again.
Click to expand...
I don't know about you, but i enjoyed those games. I played them not because i had only 1 or 2 coins. Hell if i had a bill i would play them regardless. Getting the highscore wasn't even on my radar, i wasn't that good as the kids that spent every night there in some of them, but nothing matched it, and specially going one on one against some stranger literally standing next to you.

I can replay metal slug every year almost, it's endlessly fun and funny, and everytime i find something new. Same with outrun, always trying to get to all the possible endings.

I think you really don't know what these games are all about. Simple gameplay, but big challenge, with lot's of colorfull graphics and cool music.


edit: oh and guess what, retrogaming is a big market now, there are young people that never played these back in the day enjoying them, and more indie devs making "new" ones, so i don't know where you get this idea that this is some dead concept.
 
Last edited:
Jugulador
Rot Teufel said:
i think it'll remain forver an Apple Arcade exclusive since Aquiris Game Studios has become Epic Games Brasil in late april '23.
And it means basically they're forced to work only on fortnite and nothing else...

source: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/epic-acquires-aquiris-and-forms-epic-games-brasil
Click to expand...
Says nothing about don't release PC games. Probably will be an Epic Store exclusive (what is not good).

They always were a mobile dev... the HCTurbo was only an exception. I still count on a HCT2.
 
R
I understand the appeal of this type of old school arcade racing games, but why sacrifying graphics? The point of arcade games was always to put impressing graphics and high sense of speed in front of your eyes, for immediate thrill.

Imo the game which really modernised this old school formula (after Outrun 2) was Need For Speed the Run. Obviously this is not EA here so I can understand a small team takes the opportunity to create a "retro" looking game ; it is better than not making any game although, seeing what single developpers can do for the visuals in the First Person Shooter genre, I do think a small team making an arcade racing game should be able to achieve something nice visually. One can argue stating that this is an artistic choice but if this game looked like NFS The Run, wouldn't it get more attention?

On the positive side, the track generator, if well done, is a great and major feature by the way. Just imagine a game looking like The Run with such a feature...

In general I would be more interested in "retro" games at least with a flawless VR implementation (you sacrifice the graphics, give us VR). Some low quality graphics games include VR like Touring Karts, Formula Retro Racing World Tour, Ultrawings, Hellcats vs Zeroes (flight sims) and others. These are games I wouldn't even look at if the hadn't VR.

I hope the track generator and the driving are going to be really good and appealing enough yo make this game successful. Anyway, there's a demo, it costs nothing to try it and maybe be highly surprised.
 

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