This is a mirror of something over on my Cohost. I've been putting a few things up over there when the motivation strikes so feel free to follow me over there if you wish. Anything like this I will likely repost here but sort (i.e. one or two paragraphs) stuff will likely stay over there.

Keep cases for F-Zero GX, G-Surfers, Jet Ion GP, New York Race, Quantum Redshift, Wipeout Fusion, and Extreme G 3 laid out on a bedsheet.

It's the early 00s and you're in the market for a futuristic racing game, what's your pick? Back in the late 90s and early 00s you'd be hard pressed to find a publisher that didn't release at least one racing game, regardless of how much prior experience they had in the genre. It was a fairly interesting time compared to now where only a few of the AA and AAA publishers put out even one. Within that bustling genre was the equally active sub-genre of the futuristic racer, popularized primarily by F-Zero and WipEout. The selection of 7 games here are all from the first 3 years of the 2000s.

F-Zero GX - "The Future of Racing!" - (Amusement Vision) (Nintendo) (2003) - I haven't played enough of a lot of these games to really say which one I think is the best, but based on reputation alone F-Zero GX is a clear winner. It's admittedly not unusual for fans of Nintendo consoles to overinflate the reputation of many of their system's exclusives, but in this instance an arcade racing game developed by SEGA being very good is not much of a stretch. They know what they're doing.

G-Surfers (aka HSX: HyperSonic.Xtreme) - "This is the real thing - the World's fastest racer!" - (Blade Interactive) (Midas Interactive & Majesco) (2002) - This one is definitely the most budget of the games here. The environments look simpler than than those of the others, though it makes up for this by having a built in track editor, a unusual feature for a console racing game of this era and one it prominently mentions on the front cover. Speaking of the cover, the back of the UK copy I have here is a bit amusing. They feature various review quotes but they clearly couldn't get as many as they wanted, cause they end up using 3 separate quotes from the Official PlayStation 2 Magazine, as well as a fourth OPL2 quote on the front cover. Also one of the screenshots on the back shows a billboard with a Innocent Drinks ad for some reason? As far as I can tell this ad doesn't appear in the game itself, so it appears to be something that was removed before release. The developer behind this exclusively made Pool and Snooker games prior, and would only make 2 other racing games in their decade long billiards-centric gameography.

Jet Ion GP (aka Hresvelgr) - "The fastest and toughest race you'll ever run!" - (Gust) (Gust, Crave, & Ubisoft) (2000) - I was not aware this game even existed until I stumbled upon it at the local CEX back in September. A racing game centred around flying vehicles developed by Gust, the developer behind the long running Atelier series of JRPGs. Interestingly, this English localization is a PAL region exclusive. I can only assume a US release was planned at some point but fell through for whatever reason. This game honestly looks really cool and I can't wait to really dive into it and give it a shot.

NYR: New York Race - "Inspired By The Fifth Element" - (Kalisto) (Wanadoo) (2001) - Out of all of these games this one is definitely the weirdest. It's a racing game "inspired by The Fifth Element", developed by the same company who did the somewhat infamous Fifth Element game on PS1. This really feels like a situation of "well we have the license so why not?" Though they should have really come up with a better name. That aside this does look pretty cool, who knows whether it actually holds up while playing it though.

Quantum Redshift - "Faster, Deadlier, Personal" - (Curly Monsters) (Microsoft) (2002) - This is another game I'm kinda interested in digging into more. It's an early Xbox exclusive, and like a few early titles on the platform it gives the impression of someone at Microsoft pointing to a popular game on one of the other consoles and saying "we need one of those". This is the second of the only 2 games this developer ever made, the other being N.GEN Racing on PS1 which I've heard positive things about. The ship designs on the front don't exactly inspire interest at least for me, but hopefully the game itself has a little more meat.

WipEout Fusion - "Are You Good Enough?" - (Studio Liverpool) (Sony) (2002) - WipEout Fusion is the only one of these games that I've put a decent amount of time into as I am a fan of the series. It doesn't have the best reputation, making a few changes to the series' gameplay and visual style that would later be rolled back in the safer and more traditional WipEout Pure on PSP. Though some features like the Zone mode would stick around. The main gripe I feel is how the scoring in the league mode works, as unlike previous games you get points for eliminating other racers. This results in situations where you can get first place in every race but end the league in second due to a player behind you knocking out more ships. In spite of that I do like how the game varies up the track layouts a little, with areas that open up into rough dirt tracks. It's not something that's usually done in these types of games and I appreciate that.

XGIII: Extreme G Racing - "Beyond Speed, Beyond Combat, Beyond All Racing" - (Acclaim Cheltenham) (Acclaim) (2001) - The N64 exclusive Extreme G series makes its way to PlayStation consoles for the first time. You can definitely tell this release is trying to get the attention of fans of the WipEout series, prominently mentioning its use of licensed electronic music from UK label Ministry of Sound on its front cover. Presumably it worked out for them, cause Acclaim managed to push out a fourth game in the series in 2003 before their bankruptcy the following year. I admit I do have a soft spot for Acclaim Cheltenham thanks to their work on Re-Volt, an old favourite of mine on PS1, so I definitely want to give this series more of a chance in the future.