VGEsoterica
Member
Sometimes a game is a straight 10/10 and nobody knows about. Nine out of ten times that is because for some reason or another it became exceedingly rare and nobody really got a chance to play it in the first place. That description is PERFECT for Thrill Drive 2 and the entire Thrill Drive franchise.
It's as good of an arcade racing game as Sega or Namco ever put out...except its been 100% forgotten about over time and since none of the games ever saw a console home port...barely anyone has ever even seen the game outside of Japan. Which sucks because I wish I could let everyone who ever wanted to experience the game play my copy.
It's legit arcade racing gold; amazing handling, wild sense of speed, some of the best designed courses I've ever seen in a racing game...and of course the wild hook of crashing can cause fatalities with ragdoll animations and some straight up horror elements. Its total white knuckle driving at its absolute best.
Sadly Thrill Drive, Thrill Drive 2 and Thrill Drive 3 are all stupidly rare arcade boards. Its taken me almost three years to acquire them all and a ton of hours repairing the boards to get them to function. You can emulate Thrill Drive and Thrill Drive 3 which is GREAT...but sadly Thrill Drive 2 on the Konami Viper does NOT emulate.
But if you ever wondered where the Criterion team got the idea for Burnout from, they stated they were directly inspired by Thrill Drive and rumor has it they had an arcade cabinet of it in their offices during development.
So if you ever see a cabinet...throw money into it!
But I am curious GAF...who here has played Thrill Drive and knows it exists?
It's as good of an arcade racing game as Sega or Namco ever put out...except its been 100% forgotten about over time and since none of the games ever saw a console home port...barely anyone has ever even seen the game outside of Japan. Which sucks because I wish I could let everyone who ever wanted to experience the game play my copy.
It's legit arcade racing gold; amazing handling, wild sense of speed, some of the best designed courses I've ever seen in a racing game...and of course the wild hook of crashing can cause fatalities with ragdoll animations and some straight up horror elements. Its total white knuckle driving at its absolute best.
Sadly Thrill Drive, Thrill Drive 2 and Thrill Drive 3 are all stupidly rare arcade boards. Its taken me almost three years to acquire them all and a ton of hours repairing the boards to get them to function. You can emulate Thrill Drive and Thrill Drive 3 which is GREAT...but sadly Thrill Drive 2 on the Konami Viper does NOT emulate.
But if you ever wondered where the Criterion team got the idea for Burnout from, they stated they were directly inspired by Thrill Drive and rumor has it they had an arcade cabinet of it in their offices during development.
So if you ever see a cabinet...throw money into it!
But I am curious GAF...who here has played Thrill Drive and knows it exists?