Hidden racing game gems – The Traxion Podcast, episode six

Thomas Harrison-Lord
Hidden racing game gems - The Traxion Podcast, episode six

In this episode of the Traxion podcast, we’re here to discuss games that time has not been kind to. These are great racing games that were over-looked in their original era and now even time has forgotten them. 
 
Well, time might have, but us three nerds haven’t! This is a good one, even if we do say so ourselves, as we dip into the memory bank of nostalgia to each pick out two racing titles that deserved more. They can be arcade, or sim, old or relatively new – but the point is they were underrated and deserve a second chance.

We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please, reply on social media or in the YouTube comments what your favourite hidden gem racing games are – we’d love to know!

The Traxion Podcast is available on all major podcast outlets. Simply search “Traxion Podcast” on your favourite podcast service and subscribe to get instant notifications when the latest episode releases.

Hosted by Justin Sutton, John Munro and Thomas Harrison-Lord.

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SPOLIER ALERT!

Do not scroll down further until you have finished listening to the podcast. Below are images of each game mentioned.

Auto Modellista, 2002

Auto Modellista 01 Nissan Silvia
Auto Modellista 02 Toyota AE86 Togue Corolla

Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero, 2001

Known simply as Tokyo Xtreme Racer in PAL and Australia.

Tokyo Xtreme Racer, Toyota Supra
Tokyo Xtreme Racer, Subaru Impreza WRX STI

Total Immersion Racing, 2002

Total Immersion Racing 02 Lister Storm

Superstars V8 Racing, 2008

Superstars V8 Racing BMW M5
Superstars V8 Racing M5 02

Driver, 1999

Driver 01
Driver 02

Kellogg’s Frosties Grrr-grand Prix (2003)

KELLOGG’S FROSTIES GRRR-GRAND PRIX (2003) box

The Traxion Podcast episode six, full transcript

Here’s the automated transcript which we all know you love to read.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Hello, welcome to another episode of the Traxion podcast. I’m your host for this particular episode, Tom and joining us today is someone who is the official Formula 1 esports commentator for the Challenger series and someone who isn’t that. Welcome Justin and John, how you both doing?

Justin Sutton:

Thank you.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

All right. So today we’re going to talk…

John Munro:

Yeah i’m good thanks.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Oh good. That’s great. Today we’re going to talk about hidden gems and more specifically hidden gems within the racing game genre. So I’m going to throw John a curve ball straight away and ask to you, what is a hidden gem? How would you define a hidden gem?

John Munro:

A hidden jam for me is a game that not enough people discovered relative to how good the game is. So it’s a game that was maybe under appreciated or forgotten about or missed out that some people have come back to in the future. And it turns out it’s actually a really good game. So what I’m looking for here is a high quality game that maybe didn’t get the sales, it deserved due to its quality and just whatever reason. So that’s kind of how I would describe it.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Right. Interesting. I think I would agree with that, but Justin, do you think, they have to be an old game or can they be a recent game, do you have an opinion on the age of a hidden gem?

Justin Sutton:

I think, if it’s older then it could have been popular at the time, and then kind of fallen off as John said, kind of forgotten about a little bit. But yeah, you could have a modern, hidden gem. It just has to have like a really low player base or just isn’t really well known, or something like that. But I would say at this point, probably most of them are old games, it’s hard, especially if you follow Traxion, you’re going to know about every racing game that comes out. There’s not going to be any hidden gems, but the older games for sure.

Justin Sutton:

And especially, with kids that didn’t grow up, putting CDs into their consoles and stuff like that, they will be especially hidden for them.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Right, right, right. So I hope today in this episode and we all do that. You’ll discover, if you’re listening or watching on YouTube, some games that you might not have heard of before that are really quite good, under appreciated in the racing game space, whilst there might be some games that you’d completely forgotten about and that jogs your memory and you go, Oh yeah, I did see a demo for that or a video for that. Alright. Maybe I’ve even played it and completely forgotten about it. And so that’s kind of why we’re doing this whole topic for this podcast episode in particular. And I think what we’ll do is something slightly different. So we’re each going to talk about a couple of games each.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

I’ll lead with the first one, if that’s okay. But when I say the name of the game, I’d like Justin and John to live Google the game, see if they can find it. And also, I think it might help if they see images of the game, if it brings up some memories, if they’ve never heard of it, then they get some instant reaction goodness. And then we’ll each do that for each of our games that we sort of introduce. If you’re listening at home on the older version of podcast, just pause, you can play along. Or if you go to the Traxion GG website on the podcast post, we’ll put some of each game that we mentioned in depth on there too. So without further ado, here’s my first hidden gem. Are you ready?

Justin Sutton:

Ready?

John Munro:

Kudos.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Ready, John. All right. Yeah. Good. Right now this one, this one’s very difficult.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

I get very confused with the name of it. So not Automobilista or Automobilista 2, which is a current game, but Auto, I’ve have to read my notes, Auto Modellista. Stick that in your windpipes.

John Munro:

I have heard of this.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

This was from 2002 initially on the PlayStation 2 then came a year later to the OG Xbox and the game cube. And it was by Capcom. Also, they use the base of this game to do like a semi sequel ish. But then within a year that was, this was effectively kind of the last game that Capcom ever did with cars in it so very interesting aesthetics. So I don’t know if you guys can see it.

John Munro:

I right in saying Tom, that this game is as much about kind of customization and developing your own kind of styles and stuff like that.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Right.

John Munro:

It looks interesting.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah. So this is kind of like a weird game. It’s a Japanese game. And as you can both see now, what do you think to the style? It’s basically a shell suit, it looks like a cartoon or an anime, but with cars.

Justin Sutton:

I played it before. I didn’t buy it though. I rented it back.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Good old rentals.

Justin Sutton:

And I love the style. I absolutely loved the style of it. I think it looks fantastic. In fact, it’s still looks fantastic looking at it today because it’s stylized because it’s got that comic book nature to it. Yeah, it’s very comic booky, especially with the stuff that comes, like when you start drifting, it’s like Mario Kart where you get the waves coming off, your wheels as you’re drifting. And I remember the customization was really good too. I remember being disappointed by the handling. I don’t remember why. I don’t remember why exactly, because this was now almost 20 years ago at this point. So it was a long time ago that, and I’m weirdly not much of a retro gamer. If something gets remastered, I’m interested, but I’m not one to go boot up a PS1or PS2 console, or install an emulator or something like that. For whatever reason that that sort of thing just doesn’t appeal to me. But, I remember really, really just being disappointed with the handling on this one. I was so hyped for it.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah. Because I think that the aesthetic is incredible. And as you say, it’s timeless because it’s Cel shaded, easy for me to say that I’ve always struggled with that and it sort of looks like the cartoon and that’s great. It’s got a really amazing when you’re going really quick as well. You can sort of see the wind. They have like the white lines. And the letdown was the gameplay. And unfortunately this is a great example of how the game play is king.

Justin Sutton:

And they need to try and build a good game around it. This was sort of style over substance, which is a shame, but it’s a hidden gem because I don’t think many people, bought it, played it. And I feel like there’s potential to bring it back with some nice physics. I mean, it’ll never happen. Capcom’s out of the game, they own the license probably, but someone could do a similar style of game. And I think John, even though it’s very different, we’ve seen like a Renaissance of some of the more cutesy stylized games. Like I think you’ve been playing art of rally recently. It’s very different to this, but it shows a scope for some different looks.

John Munro:

Absolutely. I think that, it’s something I’ve never really considered before is designing a game that may have looked really modern and really up to date at the time. But because of the style they’ve picked, it’s actually timeless and people would choose to design a game like that. Now, even wit, modern capabilities of design, I’ve never really thought about it, but I wonder if that’s inspiration for some, new game makers to think, okay, maybe these graphics are going to look rubbish in 10 years or 20 years. I mean, we all think how could these get any better, but they will undoubtedly will. And I think that that’s maybe a way round that, trying to go for something that’s a little bit more of a style of its time and has a little bit more of that cartoony feel to it, especially if it’s like an arcade game, because then you’re going to make it more timeless as you guys have been saying. I think it looks awesome. It kind of gives me Gran Turismo vibes. Maybe that’s just the year. But yeah, I think it’s really, really nice. I love that kind of anime style as well. I think a lot of the cars in this game are like Japanese cars and it’s a lot about tuning and stuff like that.

Justin Sutton:

Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I’ve got an interesting point about that because to try and make it successful in America, you might appreciate this Justin, they added one oval truck and the Dodge Viper to the cover of the game.

Justin Sutton:

Yeah. No, it did not work, but yeah, the thing is, it was very Initial D in the, in the lineup of cars, with like EVOS and RX7 and Sylvia’s and the sort of stuff that you would expect to see in Initial D and it made it really, really good. I really, really enjoyed the car selection and that sort of stuff. And it really reminds me, the Cel shading, the look of it. It reminds me a lot of Borderlands, the looter shooter, yeah, which is also Cel shaded, was recently remastered for 4k, I think, or something along those lines, 4k textures.

Justin Sutton:

It looks incredible and I don’t think too much effort went into it honestly. So yeah, I think a real case can be made and I don’t think it needs, I don’t think it needs much in terms of, the gameplay. I think it just needs to be arcade. Like I wouldn’t try to make it work with a wheel. I would make it controller only. And I would make it handle very, like, I don’t know, really arcadey, like way more grip, taking way more speed through corners, than you should be able to, but otherwise just leave it unchanged. I mean, it’s gorgeous. It’s beautiful. I remember liking the music. The menu system was even really good, everything about it. The problem was as soon as it said go, it’s like, Oh wow.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

It wasn’t kind of arcadey to drive with. It was almost trying to be a Gran Turismo, which you both mentioned, which is correct. So it had like the car upgrades, one thing it had better than Gran Turismo. It had a lot more visual upgrades to the car, like spoilers and wings, kind of like a Need for Speed. But it also had a real life tollgate road that they used, which is weird. They actually made a railroad that’s in Japan, you can drive around, lots of fictional stuff, but there was also Suzuka in there, the actual track. And so really, it was just totally a bit weird with that, but I just love the sort of vibe. So anyway, that’s the first one Auto Modellista not Automobilista.

Justin Sutton:

It’s two words. Auto space Modellista. Yes.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah, absolutely. Thank God for auto-correct and Google suggested search. You can find it there. But anyway, that’s the first ones and now I’m going to switch across to someone else’s going to have a little ramble. I’m going to get my device ready here and I’m going to go, Justin, I think you might have a hidden gem for us that we’ve maybe neither of us have heard of we’ll find out soon. What is it?

Justin Sutton:

I’ve actually got one that’s kind of related to that loosely. So I’m actually going to go with that since that’s a nice segue. And when I say loosely, I mean, mainly the car lineup actually is very similar in this game and it is Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero specifically now, Xtreme is spelled without the E at the start. So it’s Tokyo space, the letter X TREME.

John Munro:

I wonder why anyone would just use the letter X in a word instead of the proper spelling? I mean that’s such a crazy idea.

Justin Sutton:

It came out in 2001. Yours came out in 2002, which I think shows our formative years. I think it really reveals our age.

Justin Sutton:

But yeah, it came out in 2001. I was 16 at the time I was really into PC gaming at the time. I think that’s right around the time I was getting into unreal tournament and Diablo, Diablo 2 specifically. And so like, I was really heavily into my PC gaming. No, not at all, but, this was one of the few games that kept me playing on a console. It was one of the things that brought, kept me coming back because it wasn’t available on PC. It was a, I want to say a PS2 exclusive, I don’t think it was available on any other console. But yeah, specifically Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero. I’ve played other Tokyo Xtreme Racer games, but Zero was the one that captured me the most. It really felt like the highway racing version of Gran Turismo.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Right, so it’s all on the street?

Justin Sutton:

Yeah, it’s not just street, it’s all on highways in particular. So it’s very high speed. So it’s, one of those things like rolling starts at a hundred kph, and it’s 1 v 1 battles for the most part. It’s been so long since I played it, but yeah, it’s almost entirely 1 v 1, in traffic is huge. Obviously traffic is a big part of it. You only drive with traffic though. If I remember correctly, you can’t drive into oncoming traffic. So it’s not like a Burnout game or a Need for Speed, Hot Pursuit or something like that. You’re very limited to just the correct side of the road, which is on the left side. But it’s through Tokyo. So you get these cityscapes and these lit up bridges and it’s always at night, it’s always at night.

Justin Sutton:

I mean, it’s, yeah. I don’t think it’s ever during the daytime.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

You gotta do your illegal activities under the cloak of darkness.

Justin Sutton:

Exactly, exactly. But it’s got the upgrade kind of system that GranTurismo has. So it’s got that kind of customize and it’s got that great career mode, that feeling of progression where you start off with some terrible woeful, sad car, that’s just absolutely terrible. And you upgrade it just because, you want to get rid of it faster, essentially, you want to just get the thing faster, upgrade it and then replace it and never look at it ever again. And it’s very similar to Gran Turismo in that sort of respect, I think. But it was, really heavy as well in terms of the physics. The cars were pretty, heavy feeling, moving from lane to lane and stuff like that. But yeah, really high speed. I think there was a Viper in that one too, which makes me wonder if Japan yeah. Or Japan has some sort of like obsession with the Dodge Viper, which is cool with me. It’s like a top five car for me. It’s one of my favorite cars of all time so.

John Munro:

I’m actually looking at it, It says there’s 165 cars in the game. That’s a huge car list, I don’t think they’re official. I think it’s unoffical versions. I sound like an expert. Thank you, Google.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Have you played it before?

John Munro:

I have not played it before. I love the fact there’s an NSX on the front cover, you know what it reminds me of though talking about that kind of era and it’s called Tokyo Xtreme racer, which instantly made me think of city driving and racing. And it reminds me of a game I used to play called London Racer. I think it was London Racer.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

I’ve heard of that.

John Munro:

And, yeah, it’s probably the equivalent. Well, I played when I was younger, but basically with London racer, it was a similar kind of thing. You start in a rubbish, little car, maybe a mini, which isn’t rubbish, but it was a really rubbish in terms of speeds. And I think you could develop your way through. I can’t perfectly remember it, but it kind of gives me the similar vibes. You only ever raced around the streets of London. And I loved that game when I was younger.

Justin Sutton:

I don’t think I’ve actually played London Racer weirdly, but yeah, but it’s sort of like the British Tokyo Xtreme. Well, so speaking of Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero is so cool that it’s actually being revived. Not by the people that made the game, which was, it was like Crave. I think it was, they did a number of games that I really liked.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

It was like a popular Japanese publish house.

Justin Sutton:

Genki, it was also, it was developed by Genki as well. Yeah. So yeah, another very popular Japanese in the PS1, PS2 era developer. But, um, so there’s something called the Shutoko Revival Project.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

I had to read that out now from your computer screen, cause that is not easy to pronounce.

Justin Sutton:

And it’s got a Patreon, that you can, you can join. And essentially it’s a very, in-depth set of mods for a Assetto Corsa. And I don’t actually own it. I only learned about it very recently because of an empty box video, empty boxes, like an old school iRacing YouTuber. That’s been around for years and years and years. And, went on like a hiatus for a while and now he’s back and he, he did a video on a Shutoko Revival Project and it looks absolutely gorgeous.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Sorry, what’s it called again?

Justin Sutton:

Shutoko Revival Project. And it looks gorgeous just like, Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero did, by the way. Also Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero games, have some of the best intro videos of all time. Cause back in the day PS1, PS2 era, it was all about that intro video.

John Munro:

So important.

Justin Sutton:

Exactly. And you get the CGI cinematic that plays, it gets exactly, it looked nothing like the game in fact, the pre-rendered scene at the beginning of Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero, I think somebody has done like a 4k AI upscale on it. And it still looks like crap compared to like Forza Horizon 4 ingame graphics.

Justin Sutton:

But at the time it was absolutely gorgeous and it was one of the big selling points of it. It also just had a great kind of like, there was this music that would play when you would challenge a rival by flashing your headlights at them and stuff. You know what I mean? Like it just really set the mood really, really well. And, there’s actually a Corvette by the way, I believe in the opening cinematic of Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero like a modified West Corvette, West is like a modification code in the US.

Justin Sutton:

There’s a West modified Corvette, C5 Corvette, I believe with a huge wing. But yeah, if you’ve never heard of Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Zero, just watch the opening cinematic later on it’s it’s well worth it. But what I’d like to do is actually try out Shutoko Revival Project at some point in the near future, because it sounds cool.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

That’s interesting. Yeah. I hope they get their backing to do that. And it’s all legal with the Assetto Corsa engine, right? Oh, that’s a really good one. So we’ve got two Japanese theme games so far and just very quickly, both especially your’s Justin reminds me of a chap called Smokey Nagata. Now, if you’ve not heard of him, if you listen to the podcast, listen to him another time, he did tuned Japanese, it still does as a company that do tuned and Supra and Skylines and stuff. And he drove at night on the streets of Tokyo at high speed. And in fact, he came to the UK and got arrested for doing 200 miles an hour on motorways. Very famous story. So check it out, well with the watch, but anyway, moving away from the Japanese theme. Oh, maybe not. We’ll find out John Munro, would you like to enlighten us all with a hidden gem, please?

John Munro:

I am going to save my best hidden gem for later. I’m going to go with my second vote at the moment.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

So this is John’s second best hidden gem.

John Munro:

Yeah. I’ve already ruined it for it, for this particular game. What, what did you guys say your years where I think the first game was? What was Auto Modellista?

Justin Sutton:

’02.

John Munro:

’02? And then the second one was ’01?

Justin Sutton:

’01. Yeah.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah.

John Munro:

And you guys were saying it was showing your age.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah.

John Munro:

Yeah. Well, my game is from 2002.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

This is obviously a golden era for racing games.

John Munro:

I’ve spoken to Tom about this game. I don’t know if I’ve spoken to you about this, Justin. But some of you who probably, you’re probably more likely to have played this game if you were, I guess my age growing up, it was the perfect game for like a young racing fan to get into. And that was a game called Total Immersion Racing.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Oh yeah.

John Munro:

Oh yeah, indeed.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

I don’t need to Google that one, I’m on board.

Justin Sutton:

I just typed in Total and it was the first result, but no, it’s not immediately ringing the bell for me.

John Munro:

So I think I got this game really cheap back in the day as well. Like I must’ve been like, well, six when this game came out and I remember it was cheap even when it was released. I mean, I know video games have gone up in price hugely in the recent years, but, this was a cheap game and I remember i didn’t really have any expectations for it. Even as a excited six-year-old who loved racing games. I wasn’t expecting this to be amazing, but I got so much love, so much time out of this game. Basically, it’s a GT endurance style racing game, where you have a bunch of different classes and you can work your way up through the career mode and sign for different teams. Right. And you think that’s for a game of 2002, that was, felt like relatively low budget.

John Munro:

It was not like it’s Grand Turismo or something like this, or Need for Speed. And it felt like it had a lot of depth to it. And the best thing about this game, is the car list. I think the, the first GT class, and I might get this wrong in terms of my facts here, but the first GT class contained like a BMW M3 race car. It contained a Noble M12 GTO. It contained a Quaife, which is a really rare racing car.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

That is obscure John.

John Munro:

Yeah. They make gearboxes, now Quaife. And they always did make gearboxes, but they made, built a car, which was a GT car. And then as you move up through the classes you get into GTS, which was, I think the equivalent of what GT1 was in real life. So you have the McLaren F1 long tail. You have a Centura, which is just amazing. I think you had the front engine panels Esperante as well.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

That’s another obscure one there John.

John Munro:

Yeah, well, exactly. That’s why it’s so good because these cars are absolutely magic cars that people would, I’d love to have them redone in a modern game, but this game had it. And the fictional circuits on the game were incredible as well. So many, so many classics that I would just love to revisit.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Were they all old fictional trucks or were there some real tracks aswell?

John Munro:

I think there was some real ones in there as well, because Rockingham’s in there. Cause there were a few real ones, but, and Silverstone, I believe as well, but there were a bunch of fictional ones as well, which were just absolutely amazing. I also should mention they had an LMP class too, with your Audi R8, your Bentley, Speed 8, basically like the kind of early two thousands Le Mans era, late nineties, which I’ve talked about too many times on these podcasts because it’s one of my favorite years of racing. But yeah, that game was phenomenal and it was actually the game I learned to do manual gears on a keyboard at the time. That’s what I used to play it on and it drove really nicely on the keyboard for the time. I’m not going to play it again now because I don’t want to ruin that stigma. It was amazing. Great fun.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Justin have you played this before or heard of it?

Justin Sutton:

It’s not jogging my memory immediately.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

It was pretty obscure. I wonder if it was only pal released.

Justin Sutton:

I may have like played it at a friend’s house or something like that. I probably didn’t rent it or own it, but I may have played it at a friend’s house at some point, potentially.

Justin Sutton:

It was UK developed aswell by the way. So yeah, it may have been more prominent in the UK than in the US.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Because I think the Centura and the Quaife were British GT specific cars.

Justin Sutton:

I looked up the Quaife GT one, by the way. And it is a good looking car you’re right. It’s almost like a XJ 220 modernized a little bit, you know what I mean? It’s also kind of like a long (inaudiable).

Justin Sutton:

It’s front wheel?

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Four wheel drive.

Justin Sutton:

Four wheel, the XJ 220 initially planned to be four wheel drive. Did somebody defect from Jaguar to Quaife make that car? Because it almost seems like XJ 220 or what the XJ was supposed to be.

John Munro:

They kind of combined a few cars from different classes into the same thing. So that led the DTM Audi TT in there as well. I’m pretty sure.

Justin Sutton:

Yeah. I saw that there’s like an MG yeah. There’s like a BMW. I saw.

John Munro:

Yeah they did a collection of different things and they also had some amazing unlockable cars. So in the, in the LMP class, for example, there was the Panoz LMP as well. So you had the front engine Panoz, which was such a famous car, beautiful car, amazing In video games, they also had like an unlockable. They had a Lister Storm LMP car, which was unlockable.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

That’s my favourite.

John Munro:

They had a LMP and they also had a single seater. Once you got to the end of career mode, sorry if I’ve spoiled anyone who’s been playing that game recently.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

I never knew that.

John Munro:

Amazing stuff. Yeah. So much good stuff.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

What sort of single seater was it?

John Munro:

It was just like, I think it was kind of based on like a kart kind of car, at the time it felt like, you know, the kind of car that would be like a demo car for people to come and try and experience Formula 1, but not really Formula 1. If that makes sense, I might be wrong on that. I think it was kind of based loosely on like kart era. But that game was just so much fun actually came out on PC, PS2 and XBox as well. So, I tried on the PC when I was younger, but they clearly got out there and I’m sure some of you watching this, I’m sure will at least have played this game and will know what I’m talking about.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Maybe not. Maybe it’s just me and you John.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

I certainly, I picked you up cheap on the PlayStation 2 back in the day, and it was one of those where I didn’t get it when it was new, I got it used from a shop, for like £2. I had some trading credit. Oh, this has got cars in it and actually quite enjoyed it. Yeah. Because I remember the Bentley Le Mans car, the Audi DTM car, they were really cool. I seem to remember some track. It was either Suzuka or it was like it, but not quite that sticks in my brain in this, for this game, but yeah, an interesting one, very obscure and I would love a modern day sort of GT class car racing game that isn’t just like, GT3 and GT4 as some of the classic stuff and some of the Le Mans stuff. Yeah. That’d be really cool. I mean, actually, we’ve got an article on the aTraxion GG website of what racing games we’d like to see and in that someone suggested the BPR series, which was just before FIA GT and this game, I don’t think it has those cars, but it’s similar and close.

John Munro:

It came out just after yeah. The BPR series were the kind of, I guess the first models of any, when, when the manufacturers didn’t really know how to make the most of GT 1 regs, and there’s all these cars that were really quite bad, but so exciting and unique and fast as well, because it’s so much power. So no, it was good.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah. Okay. All right. So we’ve got two sort of Japanese theme picks and one that’s very British as well. So I’m going to move things on to something that’s Italian. So were getting all that, maybe in the past, people used to do games that were sort of region specific. I don’t know. Now this game is so obscure that I’d like to do both do a very quick Google, but then we’ll just sort of discuss it. Cause there’s not much out there. There isn’t, the Wikipedia entry for the game has like two sentences and the sequel doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry. Alright. And it’s not that old. It’s not that old. It’s from 2009 and it was called Superstars V8 Racing. So have a quick Google and then we’ll have a quick discussion about it. But this is by Milestone the Italian developer who now does the official MotoGP games, the official like Supercross, an MXGP games.

Justin Sutton:

We know them well at Traxion.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah we know them well. We’ve got reviews and articles and videos for all of these games, but also a Hot Wheels branded game coming out later this year. And, but before all that, they did this little obscure touring car game, which focused on the superstars V8 series, which was an Italian touring car series at the time, which was trying to sort of ape DTM, but with sort of less success and less budget. So have either of you heard of this or played this game. John’s smiling now.

John Munro:

Yes. I have.

Justin Sutton:

Not even a little.

John Munro:

That was like, the great thing about that is that it was an instant, like I would never would have remembered that game and you’ve just unearthed it for me. I bought this game. If you remember, if you listened to the Formula 1 podcast last week, I talked about this particular game shop. I went to my local city, Inverness when I was younger. And I remember picking up this game by Superstars V8 Racing along with three other racing games on one of these buy four games for £15 or something, the games are just being thrown in the bin and no one wants to, I took it home. And I specifically remember a lot of the tracks on it. I knew a little bit from like the Superbike games and stuff.

John Munro:

They had stuff like, Portimao was on it. They had Vallelunga, I’m pretty sure Misano all these kinds of places. And I remember specifically liking the game because the cars were mega. The tracks were a lot of tracks I’d never driven before in other games because they’re quite obscure Italian tracks a lot of the time. But also it felt like a car version of the Superbike game and that era to me, which I did not know it was Milestone. So, but like, it’s funny how that kinda ties in, in the future. But, that was a cool game. The cars were magic and we just, they just kind of disappeared and they’re so obscure. So I love that pick.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah, yeah. Maybe one day I will go back and revisit it and the fill in the Wikipedia entry for it. I don’t know.

Justin Sutton:

Is it like V8 Supercars from Australia, but 10 years ago? Basically.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

That’s a better, yes, right there. They were trying to combine DTM and V8 Supercars into one aligned series. And so yes. Good point to raise. It was a real life series and this is an officially licensed game.

Justin Sutton:

So Germany plus Australia equals Italy. I did not know that.

John Munro:

I learn’t that in school Justin, it’s just simple maths really.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Which is why a lot of the tracks are Italian because it’s kind of an Italian series, but in real life to try to expand the popularity. So Kyalami is in there in South Africa as well. They actually went there and bought them out, which you mentioned. So there’s actually some interesting tracks. And the key was of the time with a controller, I’ve got to stipulate that.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

The handling of the cars was very good. So the game itself was quite basic, but the gameplay was good. And the sequel added these cool wet track effects where almost look like there was a dry line, if it rained and then worn out. Now the physics of the game didn’t replicate that at all. Right. But it looked really good in terms of wet weather on the track. And I was like, wow, this is the future. What also made it a bit more obscure, especially for you Justin was, I think only the sequel was available in America. And it was only as a download, whereas in Europe it was available physically where two games, but even then it was a popular over here.

Justin Sutton:

I would imagine as well. It probably looked like a knockoff, NASCAR game, to an American audience, you know what I mean? They’re like, we already have a huge V8 racing series, so why would we need this one? And so, yeah, I would imagine easily overlooked. And again, I, a lot of renting happened for me, the PS1 and PS2 era.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

And you can’t rent the downloads.

Justin Sutton:

Yeah. And that one doesn’t really seem like one that would be available to rent in the store anyway.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

No it wasn’t.

John Munro:

For me it was the kind of game. So like, I agree with you, Tom. I think the driving physics were really good in it for its time with a controller. I remember specifically thinking this, and again, it’s another like era of car where I’d love to drive those in a really modern SIM and see what the cars felt like. Right. I think the issue for me, from memory that I didn’t really, I didn’t play it for too long because it didn’t really have any depth to it. I don’t think there was a career. It was just like, you do a bit racing against some AI. It’s pretty cool. And, but it didn’t feel like I was part of a story or anything, which is kind of why I went off of it.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah, exactly. It was affordable as well, I don’t think it was ever full price from new. And the sad thing is that series in real life folded as well, a few years after. So you don’t hear about it anymore. Also it was an officially licensed game of the series. So it had the drivers and the tracks and the cars, except the Chevrolet and the Chrysler cars. They didn’t have the license for. So I’m going to check my notes here. They were called the Cluster and the Barricade, which was hilarious.

John Munro:

There was some good drivers, right? There were some, there’s some reasonably, I mean, there’s a lot of obscure Italian touring car drivers and people that we would necessarily wouldn’t have heard of much. But I think there was a few big names in there.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Ex Formula One drivers, Gianni Morbidelli, who drove for Sauber once, he drove the series at the time from a touring car side, Fabrizio Giovanardi, was in it, for a bit, although not in these games. Johnny Herbert drove a Maserati in it for one season. Yeah. There’s some random people did a period. Oh, Vitantonio Liuzzi as well. But again, not in this game. So sort of, if you’re finished Formula One for a bit, you sort of went to drive for this series for a year, a bit messed around in the midfield. Yeah. And final point, I guess I’d say on this is if you’re into your achievements or trophies, you could get platinum trophy on PlayStation, or all the achievements on XBox side within about two, three hours. And almost, I felt like it was a marketing exercise. All right. We’ve got this budget game for this series. No one cares about, but there are people that love their achievements and trophies let’s make it really easy. So there was that, so cool. So that was that one. So we’ve got four games down. Hopefully people listening have heard of it, or if not, these games they’ve searched around. So it’s on to you, Justin, do you have another hidden gem for us? And is it Japanese?

Justin Sutton:

Nope. It’s not Japanese this time. Actually, well, I know I’m pretty confident. It’s not Japanese. I don’t actually know. I’ll look it up. I’ll look it up. I’ll look it up. But I can tell you that it’s the first one, not from the 2000’s, because so far we’re batting a thousand when it comes to picking games between 2000 and 2009. So, I’m not going to deviate far from that decade though. My second one is from 1999, specifically June of 1999. So yeah, it’s only just inside the nineties by about six months or so. But it is Driver 1. So when you Google it, put in the number one after it, so Driver 1.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

No that’s coming up with a game called Driver.

Justin Sutton:

Yeah. Driver parenthesis, video game Wikipedia.

John Munro:

Yeah.

Justin Sutton:

Single player.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Oh, it’s just called Driver.

Justin Sutton:

Also known as Driver: You Are The Wheel Man.

John Munro:

In North America.

Justin Sutton:

That’s right in North America because yeah. Nobody else would ever say that ever.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

You are the wheel man.

Justin Sutton:

And it’s actually weirdly, I’ve never looked into it. I hadn’t really thought about it for a while until, you mentioned this podcast, and what we were going to be talking about and stuff. And I was like, Oh right and I immediately went back and I remembered a whole bunch of things about it, but also I’ve forgotten a lot of things about it as well, too. So I’m going to do my best here. One thing I can tell you though, is it reminds me a lot of Wreckfest in terms of the speed and the cars. So there’s a lot of big, heavy seventies and eighties, American rear wheel drive cars. They’re not good cars. They’re not even fast cars, but they’re rear wheel drive. And lairy as all hell, the back end, it’s on leaf Springs or whatever.

Justin Sutton:

So the back end just does whatever it wants. And it takes place in. I thought I was right on this, but I had to, I did have to look it up. It takes place in multiple cities. It was, I believe San Francisco, Miami, Los Angeles, and New York. So you get four different backdrops for you basically. And yeah, you get a variety of cars. So I remember there was one car that was like, sort of reminiscent of a Chevrolet Chevelle. There was like taxis and stuff like that, like old Buicks and that kind of stuff. Again, when you think of seventies and eighties rear wheel drive American cars, you’re thinking of the right stuff in this game. And it was a lot of like challenges and storyline and stuff like that. And like, it was really, really blocky and it was PS1. So if you’re playing along at home and you’re looking up and you’re going, well, this looks a lot worse than the other games I’ve looked up so far. That’s why it’s because it’s on the PS1. So it’s really, really old

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Just to be clear, Justin. I think we just knew it as Driver over here in Europe and there was a Driver 2. There was a Driver 3, which was Driv3r. Yeah. So here’s a question for you then Justin, did anyone ever pass the tutorial in the car park at the beginning? That for me was the hardest thing I’ve ever did in a video game.

Justin Sutton:

I remember spending hours at my friend, Mike Boba’s house, Mike Boba and I have not talked in decades. There’s no way he’s listening to this. So he will not mind that I am mentioning his name, but I was at Mike Boba’s, his house in like 1999 or whatever, probably that summer of 1999. Cause I remember I was hyped about that game. This was one that I owned, I own this game and I think he did too as well. And yeah, I think it was like a sleepover situation. You know what I mean? Like I stayed over one Friday night or Saturday night and we just played the hell out of that game and just absolutely beat it. And I don’t remember. So I think, I assume it’s American based on the locations and the cars and everything like that.

Justin Sutton:

I’m assuming that it’s American, but I don’t know. It just lacks some of the, so I would say what it captures is the same thing that Wreckfest captures, which is the, it’s not quite a SIM. It’s not quite arcade it’s somewhere in between. It’s not really a racing game. I don’t really remember going head to head a lot. I don’t know if there was a very, very single player,

Tom Harrison-Lord:

There were a lot of missions, where you had to someone, right? In a car and not get too close.

Justin Sutton:

It is single player. There’s no split screen. And PS1, obviously there was no LAN or online or anything like that. So it’s only single player, the first game. And I didn’t really play Driver 2 and 3 all that much. I did play Driver San Francisco. And I actually brought it up in a conversation with you guys one time, but I thought it was Test Drive San Francisco because I was so discombobulated with games at the time. But Driver San Francisco was also kind of neat. It was, yeah. You could like teleport from car to car as you were driving, which just made it, it just added an interesting mechanic to it, but staying on topic Driver 1, I think that’s a prime candidate for a remaster. I will drop 60 bucks on that. So fast.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Have you played it, John? Or is it a bit too old?

John Munro:

I haven’t played it. Thank goodness Justin, you didn’t rent this game. Cause imagine being stuck in a tutorial. The whole time while you were renting it, that would not, I do have a spanner to throw in the works though. The Driver series I’ve heard of the Driver series, I looked this game up and I, I recognize the cover. I recognize the follow-up games. So what is it about this game, Justin? That for you makes it a hidden gem specifically.

Justin Sutton:

It was like the, it was almost like the location and stuff and just like the way it handled. And it’s really tough to explain, but it was very different from anything. So obviously the dominant racing game title at the time for PS1 was Gran Turismo, which I played shortly after it came out and I didn’t even own a console. I actually got my parents to rent me a PS1 and Gran Turismo for my birthday one year. And that was my first experience with Gran Turismo. And then, yeah, I ended up getting a PS1, not that long after with Gran Turismo, played the crap out of Gran Turismo 1,2,3,4, all of the, I was very loyal, but Driver was so different. Because Gran Turismo was Japanese car heavy being from Japan, Driver was American. And, again, it was much slower, you never got up above like 85, 90 miles an hour, much like a seventies or eighties American car could do. They weren’t, they weren’t like 120 mile an hour machines or anything.

Justin Sutton:

So, it was over-steery like Wreckfest as well while being forgiving. You could drift in Gran Turismo, but you often had to pick the right setup, pick the right car, pick the right tyres, adjust the tune and then you could have a car that drifts and Gran Turismo. Driver was out of the box ready to get sideways. And again, it definitely, it felt like Wreckfest, it had that heavy sort of, feel to it. But at the same time it felt like the tyres had no grip, which of course they wouldn’t back then, the tyres could have absolutely no grip at all, which is why the cars were locking up and skidding all the time. It wasn’t because they were exceptionally powerful. It’s just because the tyres were terrible.

Justin Sutton:

So, but yeah, I think it just hearkens back to a simpler time where it wasn’t even, I don’t even really remember races, but I remember like driving through narrow alleyways and the boxes are going, flying. Like it’s like, it’s a Hollywood movie, you know, if you’ve ever, if you’ve ever seen Ronin or, Blues Brothers or something like that, it’s like that the video game, you know what I mean? Like it’s just so pure and simple and it did have that really, really hard tutorial, but at the same time, it was fun to fail, I guess. I don’t know. But again, but basically it just, it wasn’t a game that required you to beat the clock or to beat other people, I guess you had to beat the clock, but the challenges and stuff like that. And just the loose nature of it, the storyline stuff like that, it was just so simple and pure again, it really reminds me of Wreckfest actually a lot.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

It was mission-based stuff. Wasn’t it? It wasn’t racing on a track.

Justin Sutton:

Yeah, it was also open world in a city and stuff which was great.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Yeah. Which is really ahead of like Grand Theft Auto at the time. I think it was by developed, by Reflections in the UK of all of all places. And I’m actually going to pick you up at something here, Justin, I’m going to throw you off the podcast. No I’m not, you see, the thing is in Europe, that game was massively popular. So therefore it wasn’t very hidden, but obviously in America.

Justin Sutton:

It’s forgotten about now, especially the series I would say. Yeah. I completely forgotten about completely abandoned.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

It’s a shame. Yeah. Because like you say, there was some dodgy ones in the middle of that series. The final one parallel lines was really good. As you mentioned, there switching between the cars was really weird. And I think it’s a big shame that doesn’t exist anymore. This is true. All right. So John Munro take the stage. What’s your final sort of main hidden gem for this particular episode?

John Munro:

Well, in the words of Rebecca Black, gotta have my bowl, gotta have cereal. Now there is a game, I’ll leave it at that. And that can, and there’s a game. And I don’t know if you’ve ever played this Tom or heard of this, but you could get this game from buying a certain brand of cereal in your local supermarket. This was not the game you would just buy in the shops. This is a game that came as a disk within a cereal box. And I’m sure many people listening.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

So it’s hidden because it’s literally hidden inside the cereal box.

John Munro:

It’s literally hidden inside of, I don’t know if I can say the brand of cereal, but I think it will become very clear in the name of the game because the game is called Frosties Gr-r-rand Prix.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Oh my God.

John Munro:

Have you heard of this?

Tom Harrison-Lord:

As in “they’re grrrreat”. I’ve not heard of this game at all. I’m Googling it now.

John Munro:

Someone’s listening will know what I’m talking about? Someone who’s listening is going know what I’m talking to.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

I don’t believe you that this exists.

John Munro:

I cannot spell this out for you carefully because there’s a lot of ours, but it’s like Gr-r-rand Prix. This game came in four parts, four disks and was available, if you buy a certain type of cereal, which becomes apparent when you name the game. Right? Right. You guys, you guys laugh, laugh away. It came in four parts, four boxes of cereal and hope that they were the different parts, right? So like you could buy, you could buy four boxes of cereal and you can get four of the same disk, but then you can trade them with your mate who also ate the same cereal. Right. And the way it works is each part of the game.

John Munro:

Each disk? Sorry, there was disk one, disk two, disk three, disk four, each one would unlock a different amount of tracks that you could drive. Okay. So I should explain this game is based on Formula 1. Okay. It uses the physics from Ubisoft’s Monaco GP Racing Simulation 2 which is a game from 1998.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Oh, i’m interested now.

John Munro:

Yeah. This is no joke. This is a serious, serious podcast and a very serious game. Right? So they had the Formula 1 tracks and from real life. So maybe disk one, you’d have Albert Park, you would have Jerez, you would have whatever the tracks were. And then you would unlock part two, you would get Spa and Monaco and Magny-Cours and all these places. Okay. There was also game modes that you could unlock with more disks, so if you had two disks, you’d unlock the scenarios mode, which would give you certain scenarios.

John Munro:

You would be racing in the rain with eight laps to go, and you’d have to overtake three people on wet tyres or you’d get a puncture and you had to get it round to the end of the lap. It also had a career mode, which you could play, and it had classic tracks and classic cars, which you would unlock if you had all the games. So there was like a classic version of Spa and you could race round there in like a fifties F1 car. Now I am not joking you, this was an incredible game, right? The physics of this back in the day. So this was 2003, I think, so it was a little bit ok, at this point, it was five years out of date, the physics engine or four years out of date, but I’m telling you, this was one of the best games available at the time.

John Munro:

And you had to just buy the cereal to get it. It was honestly so good. You could actually customize the driver names and the team names. So what would happen is you had a certain team that were like red and I would always pretend they were Ferrari. So I would rename them the drivers of a certain season. So the cars looked like ’97 F1 cars, ’98 F1 cars. And I would put the Ferrari drivers from the ’97, ’98 season into the game, I would do the same for all these different teams. I think there was like 12 or 13 teams. And then what you could do is when you drive, you would have the, the real life F1 graphics from the late nineties. And you could basically recreate an entire F1 career in this game, like genuinely because you can change driver names. So as you move to the next season, you can. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then you can save your career modes and races and you can even spectate AI races. So for me, this was like an alternate universe Formula 1 game where I could recreate an entire career of Formula 1, all the teams, all the drivers do my own driver changes. And this all came from a box of Kellogg’s Frosties.

Justin Sutton:

A box of cereal, a box of cereal. It’s not that it’s not even that expensive. And you said it was four disks total?

John Munro:

Four disks. So say you had to buy it each week.

Justin Sutton:

So did they release all four at the same time? And then you had to just keep buying cereal until you happened to get all four or did they just do it like this month is? Okay.

John Munro:

No, I think, I mean, I don’t get don’t quote me on this cause I do not know the facts for this. I remember as a kid. But I believe that they released all four discs. And then, so you could just start with disc three, that could be the first disk you owned and I think I did start with disk three.

Justin Sutton:

Did you trade with people at school? So would you be like, Hey, I got disk two. A spare disk 2, you give me your disk three.

John Munro:

I had a friend who wasn’t even into car racing and he had two the disks I needed for the Frosties game. So we did some trading and it built up the collection. You install them all one by one. And the reason I honestly, for anyone who’s played this game, I’m sure they can back me up on this. It may not hold up well now, but the physics of this game and the mechanics on a keyboard were as good as anything else back in the day, like this was a high level game. That’d been rebranded to be in a cereal box. And I’m telling you for the price of, maybe okay, 10 boxes of cereal, but you also get your money’s worth because you get the cereal so effectively it’s free, If you love cereal. If you know what I mean, this game was really high quality, customizable, hours and hours and hours of fun in my childhood, even had damage model, it had punctures, you could run over something, get a puncture and you could see it and you’d have to drive back with it. Pit stops. You could do full a hundred percent races, everything. It was phenomenal.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

So effectively, this is the first ever video game, that’s bad for your teeth.

John Munro:

Yes.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

I’ve never heard of it. So that is truly, truly hidden. And also, it seems like the early days of loot boxes where you couldn’t, you didn’t know what version you were going to get. Can I ask if you put in discs three…

Justin Sutton:

Loot ceral boxes.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

… did you have to have disk one for it to work?

John Munro:

No, no, no, no, no. These are essentially four parts of the game that you can unlock. They happened to have numbers to mame it easy.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

So they just had different tracks?

John Munro:

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Justin Sutton:

They’re not sequential.

New Speaker:

No, not sequential in the calendar. So I disk three and it unlocked tracks like two, seven, nine, and 12 or whatever they were and they might have been Monza or Silverstone.

Justin Sutton:

Which was the best disc that you got to tell me. One disc was the best that you played more than the others, which was it?

John Munro:

No, because once I, so as you add to the collection, it just adds to the previous game. So for me, the best thing to unlock was the fourth disk, because I thought the game, I thought I rinsed everything out of this game and I was spent like month hoping to get this disk.

Justin Sutton:

Oh cause its a PC game? Right, gotcha.

John Munro:

Yeah. So you add them together and that creates the full calendar. So when you installed the fourth disk, It unlocks two extra teams. So two new liveries and it also unlocked the vintage classic modes. So for me and the final tracks to be able to do a full season. So for me, like I think Albert Park was the first round of the season that year. And it got added with my final disk and then I could do a proper F1 season and I’m, and I’m not joking here. This was phenomenal. Like, and we talk about them early loot boxing and you have to, Oh yeah, I have to buy all four desks and it’s luck, which one you get. But it’s basically, it’s a free object within another item. It’s like getting a meal deal and getting a free toy with it. It’s the same thing. And what you got was a video game that was stacked up to any big full-price video game. Phenomenal.

Justin Sutton:

I guess they could do that now with like codes, like they put, they put the code inside the box to redeem and then eventually you can redeem enough codes to unlock all the, all the contents there. So it’s not the worst idea now that I’ve, now that I’ve understood how it works, because you’re right. Yeah. If you’re going to be buying cereal anyway, you might as well buy the one that, gives you access to the game that you want to play or whatever, unlocks more content for that game or whatever. Absolutely.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Well that tops it. So we’re not going to give awards, but you’ve won.

Justin Sutton:

It should have been on our racing strategy podcast as well too. We should have discussed it there.

John Munro:

You didn’t need to tell me I had one there Tom, cause I just knew, I just knew it, this game can not be beaten.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Listen, we’ve gone on a very, very long time here and we’ve each covered a couple of games, but just quickly before you jump in or say anything, Justin, did you have any other honorable mentions yes or no?

Justin Sutton:

Yeah. So I picked a third one that popped into my head randomly.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

So you’ve got another one to quickly talk about all right. Okay. Fair enough. And John, have you got some more that you’re going to quickly mention? Yes or no?

John Munro:

Yeah. A couple, yeah.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Okay. Right. So you’ve each going to go. I’m going to give you each 30 seconds to tell me, Justin you’ve only got one, so you have to talk about ON RUSH and John, you’ve got 30 seconds to read off your list of honorable mentions. Is that okay? Cause otherwise we can go on for six weeks. I’m going to get a timer ready. Are you ready? Okay, Justin, you’re going to go first. Your time starts. Now.

Justin Sutton:

I love the asthetic of ON RUSH right away. When you see like the trailer and the pictures and all that kind of stuff, you can tell it’s wild. It’s crazy. It’s got the characters and stuff like that. It’s super cool. And also it’s not a racing game. Technically it’s just a game where cars are going around and you’re fighting each other. And it’s so different from your traditional race, your racing game. The only reason I didn’t play more of it was because it wasn’t on PC. If it was on PC, I would’ve played it 200 hours.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

That was good. And yes, that is a recent hidden gem. I would completely agree with you. So fair play, shame, it was overlooked. That team did go on to make DiRT 5. So they’re still employed and now they are owned by EA, so we’ll see what happens in the future. All right, John Munro, are you ready? Your time starts? Now.

John Munro:

Okay. Richard Burns Rally would’ve been an honorable mention, but I think it’s been unearthed by everyone so that doesn’t, no longer, as a hidden gem. EA Formula 1 Manager from 2000 on PC, a great manager F1 game, you could sign drivers from other teams, it was all officially licensed. You could buy different engines, you could sign engineers, you could sign team owners, everything like that. It was incredible. Get Luca Badoer up to the top of the grids. Final mention is a game that was mentioned earlier in this podcast and that is Art of Rally. Now I think this is a future hidden game, it depends if people actually see it and play it more, but genuinely Art of Rally is such a fun arcade game is different to anything else and I love it.

Tom Harrison-Lord:

Right? Very well done. That was three games into the 30 seconds. Fair play. I agree with Art of Rally. I love it, it is hidden for now, but hopefully they make some console parts this year, and then it becomes unhidden. Then it just becomes a gem, I guess. Anyway. Right? So that’s it for this week’s Traxion podcast. Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much. Justin and John for their suggestions. If you’ve got any other hidden gems by all means, find us on social media search Traxion GG, Justin will tweet back. if they’re good ones or not, we’re going to put, like I say, images of these games that we mentioned in the post on the Traxion.gg website, don’t forget to like and subscribe on YouTube or follow or subscribe. It’s free on your favorite podcast platform. And yes, I need a haircut. See you next week and keep it pinned.

John Munro:

Gr-r-reat.

Justin Sutton:

Gr-r-rand Prix, it’s oh, it’s three R’s by the way, I looked it up.

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