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Test Drive II: the Duel

beemacbeemac Registered User new member
Hi all.

I've been reading PA since jokes about SIN loading times were things I actually understood. I still read, though my gaming time is way down. As a job, I write about cars for a few newspapers, the BBC, and elsewhere.

When I was a kid, there was a game called Test Drive II: the Duel, and it figured hugely in my adolescence. Not long ago, I started idly researching it, and figured out that it was coded in my hometown (Vancouver), and after a bit of sleuthing via screenshots of abandonware, I managed to track down most of the original programming team.

Here's the story - nothing groundbreaking, just a few guys out there on the edge of the coming gaming explosion, working in a small dedicated team. They've all taken very different paths after the fact, but it was just cool to remember what it was like to play these games for the first time, and to hear what a lasting experience it was for many of the coders.

Thanks!
-b

driving.ca/ferrari/auto-news/entertainment/the-duel-set-the-stage-for-racing-games-everywhere

Posts

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    One of the first p.c. games I ever played was Test Drive. In 4 glorious colours (including black and white, cyan, and magenta)! Test Drive 2 was an old favourite but didn't get as much playtime as the original.

  • MetalbourneMetalbourne Inside a cluster b personalityRegistered User regular
    I never owned that game but my brother and I might have rented it thirty times for the swag genesis

  • beemacbeemac Registered User new member
    One of the first p.c. games I ever played was Test Drive. In 4 glorious colours (including black and white, cyan, and magenta)! Test Drive 2 was an old favourite but didn't get as much playtime as the original.

    That's rad. Cyan! Apparently, the original was based on the drive up the old Sea-to-Sky highway. If you're ever in Vancouver, the old road still exists.

  • WeedLordVegetaWeedLordVegeta Registered User regular
    I miss burnout

  • beemacbeemac Registered User new member
    Hullis wrote: »
    I miss burnout
    One of the coders said Burnout was his favourite modern racing game.

  • POKÉMON MASTER WT SHERMANPOKÉMON MASTER WT SHERMAN i can make this march and i will make georgia howlRegistered User regular
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5I_hgxTDRQ

    this here was the shit i played when i was, i dunno

    four?

    look at that intro

    anyway please do not let four-year-olds drive your ford. thank you. thanks

    vQ77AtR.png
    steam | xbox live: IGNORANT HARLOT | psn: MadRoll | nintendo network: spinach
    3ds: 1504-5717-8252
  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    I used to play test drive 2 a lot with a friend.

    When I wasn't playing it, it was my job to figure out if the upcoming cars were on the left or the right side.

  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    That was back in the days when computers had turbo buttons!

    We would turn the turbo button off when the game got really hard so we would have more time to react.

  • FishmanFishman Put your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain. Registered User regular
    I had the first Test Drive back on the Amiga when I was like, 7. It was one of our earliest games, so everyone in the family tried their hand at it at one point or another. And, in those early days of pre-game literacy, it was hard. We played for days, weeks, everyone picking a Porsche or a Ferrari and trying their hand to get to the top of the mountain. It was days before we even cleared the first stage; it was months before anyone made it as far as the top, and I only managed it a few times in those early days of my gaming legacy.

    Years later, near the end of the Amiga's life, I kicked it up again, on a whim, remembering the difficulty and the challenge. I picked a car, and drove it easily to the top of the mountain on the first attempt. Years of gaming and experience had taught me the language of videogames. My fingers could move effortlessly of thinking about it; I could touch, and the the car would move just as I wanted. It was simple for me now I had muscle memory and skills, and the only difficulty had been I hadn't yet developed that ability.

    That didn't stop me from getting the third game on DOS when we moved to a PC system a few years later. Still one of the best driving games; an open world experience, multiple routes, secret paths and jumps, and traion crossings featuring an actual train that went around and around on a neverending loop.

    X-Com LP Thread I, II, III, IV, V
    That's unbelievably cool. Your new name is cool guy. Let's have sex.
  • pimentopimento she/they/pim Registered User regular
    Test Drive II was the game that sucked me into cars and PC gaming both. The F40 has been top of the tree for me ever since, and I thought the intro in the instruction manual was the coolest thing ever (I was 7, gimmie a break). I still have my copy of it, and about 10 years ago when PCs were still DOS based I tracked down (on an abandonware site) the extra car expansions for it and got it running again. That brought back memories. As an experience it was forever eclipsed by NFS:SE, but still great memories.

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
  • pimentopimento she/they/pim Registered User regular
    Was that the F1 game? I did too! Such fun. Still a shame I tore that 286PC to pieces.. I have the processor around here somewhere, but the rest ended up in the bin.

  • ProlegomenaProlegomena Frictionless Spinning The VoidRegistered User regular
  • PeasPeas Registered User regular
    I couldn't remember the name but that arcade machine with tag team driving and shooting was pretty rad

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular

    Wow, that's got to be AT LEAST 5 frames per second, maybe even 6!

    Reminds me of Stunts:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CITIXlw_T4

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Peas wrote: »
    I couldn't remember the name but that arcade machine with tag team driving and shooting was pretty rad

    Lucky and Wild?

  • pimentopimento she/they/pim Registered User regular
    Anyone else with fond memories of Interstate '76? More games need a poetry button.

  • beemacbeemac Registered User new member
    pimento wrote: »
    Anyone else with fond memories of Interstate '76? More games need a poetry button.

    I actually used to play the soundtrack in my car because it was so dang funky.

    It's funny, I had the opposite experience as some of you re: difficulty. In order to find these guys, I had to run the game on an emulator to get the credits to track these guys down so I of course played a loop or two. Tricky stuff, or at least without a joystick it is. But maybe I'm just out of practice.

    Brad Gour, who was hired on to do TD II, was involved in most of the NFS series, including Porsche Unleashed, which was one of my favourite games back in the day. It had that glitch where you could fix 'em up and then sell for essentially limitless profit.

  • PeasPeas Registered User regular
    edited August 2014
    Peas wrote: »
    I couldn't remember the name but that arcade machine with tag team driving and shooting was pretty rad

    Lucky and Wild?

    Yea

    YEAH!

    Thanks!

    Edit:

    Oh my spoilered for slight nsfw preview

    Peas on
  • pimentopimento she/they/pim Registered User regular
    beemac wrote: »
    pimento wrote: »
    Anyone else with fond memories of Interstate '76? More games need a poetry button.

    I actually used to play the soundtrack in my car because it was so dang funky.

    It's funny, I had the opposite experience as some of you re: difficulty. In order to find these guys, I had to run the game on an emulator to get the credits to track these guys down so I of course played a loop or two. Tricky stuff, or at least without a joystick it is. But maybe I'm just out of practice.

    Brad Gour, who was hired on to do TD II, was involved in most of the NFS series, including Porsche Unleashed, which was one of my favourite games back in the day. It had that glitch where you could fix 'em up and then sell for essentially limitless profit.

    I used the keyboard back in the day!

    Heck yea, Porsche Unleashed was the pinnacle of the NFS series. It helped that Porsche was a brand that you could 'drive' a chronology through but I really loved the idea of it. It would be nice to see Forza and GT put a little more focus on the historics in their single player campaigns.

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Peas wrote: »
    Peas wrote: »
    I couldn't remember the name but that arcade machine with tag team driving and shooting was pretty rad

    Lucky and Wild?

    Yea

    YEAH!

    Thanks!

    Edit:

    Oh my spoilered for slight nsfw preview

    I liked it best as a three player game, one to drive, and one each on the guns.

  • FishmanFishman Put your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain. Registered User regular

    Wow, that's got to be AT LEAST 5 frames per second, maybe even 6!

    Reminds me of Stunts:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CITIXlw_T4

    I played both of these games.

    They weren't a million miles apart.

    X-Com LP Thread I, II, III, IV, V
    That's unbelievably cool. Your new name is cool guy. Let's have sex.
  • BeastehBeasteh THAT WOULD NOT KILL DRACULARegistered User regular
    fucking yes, stunts

    with the weird bad loop de loop

    it was that and pinball dreams for me

    and that amiga strip poker

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Just in case anyone is interested, there is a company selling brand new Amiga computers. They call their new model the 1X1000 and it costs about £2000. It comes with AmigaOS 4.1 release 6!

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