Moto Racer by Electronic Arts

Overview

Motorcycle racing games have been a favorite in old arcades for several years. You know which games I mean — the ones where there’s an actual motorcycle body you can sit on and you really have to lean into the turns. The illusion of racing a bullet bike at breakneck speeds is sometimes irresistible. Even better are the arcades that have several machines linked for multiplayer racing. This style of game has been mostly an arcade-only experience until now. Moto Racer brings the adrenaline rush to the PC, and even though it still has a long way to go to match the full arcade machines it was still lots of fun to play, especially with friends.

Gameplay

When you first start Moto Racer you can select one of two modes — a single-race practice mode where you can run a time trial, or a practice against the computer opponents and a Championship mode where you go through all the tracks in a preset order. At first only four tracks are available; four more are made available as you win races in the championship mode. There are both on- and off-road tracks — to win the game you must take first place on all eight.

The controls are very simple — you can accelerate, brake and turn your bike, and there is also a turbo that can give you an extra burst of speed to edge out an opponent. Selecting a manual transmission adds gear up and down commands.

In each race you start at last place and must pass all the other bikes to win. It is possible, but since the computer drivers don’t seem to make mistakes it can be tough to beat them. With the limited number of tracks and unintelligent opponents, Moto Racer quickly becomes boring in single player mode. To really enjoy the game, you will want to hook up with other players either on a local network or over the Internet.

A lot of attention has been paid to track details — the scenery around each track is unique, ranging from brooding castles and steep cliffs to downtown cityscapes. Extra touches like balloons and birds flying over the course make the track feel alive. The driver animations are fantastic — you can watch each driver react to the bumps and jumps in the track, check behind for approaching opponents, and lean hard on the sharp turns. One problem with Moto Racer is the inconsistent treatment of terrain. On tracks that are mostly paved road your bike never skids out of control, even when the terrain looks like dirt or sand. And when on the snow-covered track, you still skid and send up showers of snow when you enter the tunnel where the road looks dry.

Graphics

Moto Racer really shines when played on a system equipped with a Direct3D-compatible 3D accelerator, but on a system without one the display can slow to the point where the game is unplayable. On my Pentium 133 with a Voodoo-based 3D card, the game ran very smoothly. There are a couple of problems with the graphics, though — the first is with the detail level settings. When the detail complexity is set to the highest level, it is almost impossible to win a race. Race times that beat the track records aren’t good enough to get you more than eighth place in the race. But if you drop the detail level even one notch, you can easily get first place with the same time. This is poor programming — players shouldn’t lose the game because they have pretty graphics. Another problem is the apparent distance in front of you at which objects along the sides of the track appear. On several tracks it looks like there is a clear straightaway when suddenly a wall will appear directly in front of you. This makes it very difficult to win on any of the tracks the first time through — you have to replay them after learning where the corners will appear.

Audio

The sound effects are fairly well done — the engine sounds of each bike move around you and change in pitch as you pass your opponents, and the voice-overs are good, but most of the other effects such as crashes and extra environmental sounds are fair at best. Each track also has its own theme music that fits the style of the race.

Documentation

The documentation for Moto Racer is practically non-existent — not that you need much for a game this easy to play, but it would have been nice to have more information on the different options and on setting up multiplayer games.

System Requirements

Required: Windows 95, Pentium 90, 16 MB RAM, DirectX compatible video card with 2 MB RAM, 2X CD-ROM drive, DirectX compatible sound card. IPX or TCP/IP network connection required for multiplayer play
Recommended: Pentium 133 or faster, 4X CD-ROM drive, Direct3D compatible 3D acceleration card

Bottom Line

While it is the best motorcycle racing game at it’s time, Moto Racer fails to stand up to other old racing-style games when it comes to fun and replay value. The limited number of tracks is the biggest drawback, although the great support for multiplayer gaming is a huge plus. Overall, I would recommend it for die-hard motorcycle race fans, but for those not as dedicated to owning every racing game this is probably a good one to skip.

Download

You can download Moto Racer by Electronic Arts via Mininova’s Torrent Tracker. At the time of this post, there are 6 seeds and 8 leechers for this old game torrent of 571.42 MegaBytes. The download won’t be that fast, but the seeders kept it alive for 86 days. Please seed so other retro gamers can enjoy this old racing game too.