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MegaRace

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MegaRace
DOS version of MegaRace
Developer(s)Cryo Interactive
Publisher(s)The Software Toolworks
Director(s)
  • Rémi Herbulot Edit this on Wikidata
Designer(s)
Platform(s)
Release1994
Genre(s)Retro/Third-person shooters/Racing
Mode(s)1 player

MegaRace is a videogame created by Cryo Interactive, released in 1994. It features pre-rendered 3-D graphics and over twenty minutes of full motion video of fictional game show host, Lance Boyle. It was released for MS-DOS on March 28, 1994, for the Sega CD on July 30, 1994 and for the 3DO on September 5, 1994.

Plot

MegaRace takes place in the distant future, where the player is a contestant on a game show, called "MegaRace". MegaRace is on the VWBT (Virtual World Broadcast Television) television channel where they play a live or die race match against Hells Angels-like speed gangs. MegaRace's host is the eccentric Lance Boyle (played by Christian Erickson). He guides you throughout the game, introducing new levels and enemies to you and tries to discourage you. In Lance's own words:

  • "Do you ever wonder what it's like to race a real high-performance sports car? You know, like the ones those punk speed-gangs drive on the freeways? Those guys really think they rule the road, right? I mean, where do they get off intimidating law-abiding citizens and tax-payers? You know what I mean? And you know something else, you are absolutely right!"
  • "So you say, 'Somebody outta DO something about them criminal highway gangs!' And VWBT says, 'Oh yeah?! Well, why don't YOU do something, mister big-mouth!'. You don't have the car? We'll give you the car! You don't want to get arrested for taking the law into your hands? Not a problem! You know why? Because it AIN'T REAL! It's a whole lot better than real, baby! It's virtual television: reality's worst nightmare!"
  • "Here's the deal: our chosen candidate - and everyone with a death-wish is free to apply, including men and women of either sex - our candidate, who we call, 'The ENFORCER', gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to terminate a whole lotta slime-balls, and there's nothing anybody can do about it. You see what I mean? Because it all happening right here on VWBT; where the cops move over and the Enforcer takes over!"
File:Lanceboyle.png
Lance Boyle talking to the player in MegaRace.
  • "We have fourteen amazing race tracks in five totally different environments. We have cars, you'd sell every drop of blood in your body to own! We have exclusive contracts with five - yes, I said 'FIVE' vicious speed-gangs each with a 'pack-leader' you don't ever wanna meet. Believe me, I did and I still feel sick."
  • "Wait till you hear this! Every time you kill a pack-leader - and when I say "kill", I'm talking virtually, not reality, okay? In MegaRace, nobody actually dies - it just looks and feels like it, and that makes you feel a whole lot better about yourself, now doesn't it? Every time you kill a leader, you not only score big time, you also win some major bonus prizes. His personal music CD and his customized car are both yours!"

A video of the whole intro to MegaRace is available here.[1].

Objective

The object in MegaRace is to kill all of the speed-gang members in each race before you complete three laps. The first race starts out with a small number of speed-gang punks but more of them come back in each upcoming race. There are three ways to kill your opponents: you can slam them into the sidewall of the track, you can mow them down with the missiles mounted on your car, or you can pass them, putting enough distance between you and your opponent that they are forced to explode. Missiles are more effective; however, you can run out of ammo, so be careful. If you do not kill all of the opponents within the three laps, you lose and you have to start over, unless you saved your game. If you DO terminate all of the opponents, you move on to the next race.

Gameplay

Megarace is an Vehicular combat game with arcade gameplay, similar to that of RoadBlasters and Spy Hunter. However the game is also a rail shooter, in which the player doesn't really control the car (i.e. he/she cannot fully stop the car in the game) and the speedway is actually a pre-rendered full-motion video playing on a loop. But your car can move from one side of the speedway to the other as not only do have to kill the opponents, but you have to avoid or run over "symbols" on the speedway itself. These symbols can help you through out the game by improving your car's performance for a short time, but there are also symbols to avoid. Almost every symbol or marking on the speedway has an opposite effect. For example, there is a "Speed Up" marking and a "Slow Down" marking, affecting your car if you drive over them. As you play through out the game, not only you have to kill each enemy in the race, you also have to use and avoid the symbols on the speedway, which in some levels (especially Paradise Valley) is very hard to do.

Cars

There are a total of 8 cars in the game. Three of the cars are all ready available to choose from when you first start the game.

The Enforcer's Cars

  • Ouzbel is one of the first three cars you can drive in MegaRace. While its armor is very bad and handling is not that great, it makes up for weapons and taking damage.
  • Luis is green in color and it "specs" are average. It not the easiest car to control, but it has good weapons and armor.
  • Jose has bad weapons and not so great on the armor but it handling and shields are something to brag about.

Speed-Gang Cars

  • Ramon is the car of choice for the "Vultures" speed-gang. It's great when it's taking hard turn or firing weapons, but not great in shields.
  • Maria is the "Sharks" speed-gang official car. It features average weapons and armor, perfect handling, and not so great shields. It also has a nice rear spoiler, too!
  • Hooper are the preferred rides for "Big Bob and the Power Tools". These unique SUVs feature great armor, shields and handling, but lack good weapons.
  • Omega is driven by the speed-gang known as "King Kool and The Master Class". While it's great to handle and has perfect shields, it's hard to miss the poor weapons and armor.
  • Paloma is a sport car driven only by "The Scabs" speed-gang and is the last car in the game. It's excellent with armor and weapons and has good shields, but is hard to control.

Speed-Gangs

  • The Vultures - The first speed-gang you meet, the packleader's name is 'Jailbait'. They control the NewSan levels -Uptown, Sunset Boulevard and The Golden Gate Speedway- and drive RAMONs. This speed-gang has a lot of rage and they like to liberate those feelings by smearing people across the highways.


  • The Sharks - The second speed-gang you meet, the packleader's name is 'Hammerhead'. They control the Magical Maeva levels -Atlantis, Aqualand and The Blue Lagoon Funworld- and drive MARIAs. This speed-gang was actually bought because Maeva didn't have any vicious speed-gangs.


  • The Power Tools - The third speed-gang you meet, the packleader's name is 'Big Bob'. They control the Factory Land levels -Industrial Park, The Snake and The Big Zero- and drive HOOPERs. They don't like robots and they don't like robot-lovers.


  • The Master Class - The fourth speed-gang you meet, the packleader's name is 'King Kool'. They control the Fractalian Space levels -Belly Of The Beast, Particle Accelerator and Paradise Valley- and drive OMEGAs. They come from the finest families, rich kids with attitude, they're tired of the ugliness that see all around them.


  • The Scabs - The fifth and final speed-gang you meet, the packleader's name is 'Rabies'. They control the Terminal City levels -Wasteland and Orbital Junkyard- and drive PALOMAs. They are degenerate bunch of people that want the Enforcer to put them out of their misery.

Other Speedgangs

There are at least two other speed-gangs that are not named, these two control The Skyholder and The Can levels. The first appear to be driving either MARIAs or LUISs, it is hard to tell because it only shows their cars from the front, the latter drive PALOMAs. Of course both of these speed-gangs could be completely virtual with nobody controlling them except VWBT.

In the Sega CD version there is a packleader on the Hall Of Fame with the name of 'Wolfgang' with a score of 20,000 on the Orbital Junkyard, perhaps he belongs to one of these speed-gangs and Lance Boyle belongs to the other.

Speedways

There are fourteen speedways in five worlds. This does not count two extra races, The Skyholder and The Can. Depending on your difficulty setting -'Novice' or 'Hard'- The tracks will look different, the tracks outside will be night-time, while the tracks inside are different colors, the symbols on the tracks will also be different.


Worlds

  • NewSan - (Futuristic San Francisco)
  • Maeva - (Underwater levels, also known as 'Magical Maeva' or 'The Aquatube')
  • Factory Land - (Various Construction Sites)
  • Fractalian Space - (Various Alien Locations)
  • Terminal City - (Landfill, Suburb of NewSan)

Speedways

in the words of Lance Boyle.


  • Uptown - "VWBT designed this incredibly expensive speedway for the beautiful people. So go ahead. Sit back and daydream about the elegant night life and you are chopped liver, bud."


  • Atlantis - "Drive through a legend and into the jaws of hell. The Sharks are gonna getcha in the Aquatube raceway, Enforcer."


  • Industrial Park - "Put on your hard hat and tough it out in an atmosphere of burning tires. Remember, rubbing is racing. So, ya better burn rubber if you don't want your car customized with a can opener!"


  • Belly Of The Beast - "Imagine what it would feel like to be swallowed whole. Better pray you don't find out, because few have escaped the Belly of the Beast."


  • Wasteland - "So called because this is where Enforcers get wasted! Better step on the gas. Time is a wasting."


  • Sunset Boulevard - "VWBT poured virtually billions into the superb speedway. Keep your eyes peeled, because now you see it, now you don't can mean lights out for you."


  • Aqualand - "Viewers at home can enjoy the wonder of an enchanted garden beneath the sea, while you fight off The Sharks."


  • Particle Accelerator - "Time for warp speed against five warped competitors."


  • The Snake - "Put your pedal to the metal. The official name for this track is Extraction Facility 17. Your stomach will let you know why it's called The Snake. It's pure poison to the incompetent."


  • Orbital Junkyard - "Enjoy driving in the dark, Enforcer? Well, try racing through a bunch of defunct space ships floating in zero G. This track is a dream come true for some; a nightmare for others!"


  • The Blue Lagoon Funworld - "VWBTs 20 billion dollar underwater raceway is the perfect spot for a family vacation for dolphins!"


  • The Big Zero - "So far, nobody has beaten Big Bob and his bad boys on this track. Legend has it that his is the Robots burial ground. Certainly, its where most Enforcers bite the dust."


  • Golden Gate Speedway - "Take a dawn drive over VWBTs special tribute to OldSan. Watch out for The Vultures circling, or you will be old news."


  • Paradise Valley - "A vision of unspoiled loveliness. Count your blessings. This may be the last thing you will ever see."

Bonus Speedways

  • The Skyholder - An entirely virtual speedway where the Enforcer's brakes have been removed, and he/she must dodge oncoming cars. Your opponents appear to be driving MARIAs or LUISs.


  • The Can (Also known as 'The Last Chance Speedway' or 'Tokyo') - A circular speedway in Tokyo. Your opponents drive PALOMAs.


The purpose of The Skyholder is score bonus points, while The Can (AKA Tokyo) is a last-chance speedway, meant only for a last chance, lose this race and you are outta' there. The only ways known to race in Tokyo are to:


  • Finish 'Belly Of The Beast' in second place.
  • Finish 'Particle Accelerator' in second place after playing so far without losing once.
  • Finish all 14 speedways on both difficulties and select Tokyo in the level select menu.
  • Play from beginning and beat Lance Boyle's score and come in second place on any track without losing once so far.

(Note: The ones that require you play so far without losing once, do not work if you just started from a saved game)

  • If you beat Lance Boyle's score, play for a sufficient long time, and come in 2nd, 3rd or occasionally 4th, Lance will let you move on to the next track.

Prizes

Throughout the game you will win prizes for each race that you win, however if you do really bad (get a low score) you will not receive any prizes, also in the first stage, Uptown, you do not receive a prize anyway. The prize you win is totally random, there is no way to tell which one you will get.

  • Car-seat covers
  • A fully qualified Dolphin dentist
  • A genuine Scottish accent
  • A second pair of arms
  • A watch
  • A fully functioning scientist's brain
  • A trip to the Seychelles islands
  • An invitation to spend the evening out with yourself
  • A biography on Lance Boyle
  • Invisibilty cream

-Gallery Coming Soon-

Lance Boyle

Coming Soon...

Music

MegaRace features a techno chiptune soundtrack composed by Stephane Picq of Dune fame. The music uses an AdLib sound card for playback and unfortunately due to the sound card's lack of support and little documentation on Cryo's file extensions, the music cannot be loaded into an audio player. However, the raw musical data for all the songs in the game have been captured and saved into the RAW file extension, which is playable in AdPlug, a plug-in for Winamp. You can download the RAW files here. The MegaRace music can also be heard on the Kohina online radio station.

Legacy

MegaRace was a success when it first came out selling over 100,000 units. MegaRace also spawned two sequels, MegaRace 2 in 1996 and MegaRace 3 in 2001, the former using the same pre-rendered method introduced in MR1 (albeit with 3D polygon car models instead), the latter featuring full real-time 3-D graphics. Lance Boyle also returns for both sequels. MegaRace also came included with some Packard Bell computers during the early to mid-1990s.

Trivia

  • The music for the race track, "Maeva" in the Sega CD version of MegaRace is completely different from the music of the same track in the MS-DOS version.
  • The car RAMON is colored differently in the Sega CD version, it is tan with a blue stripe down the middle instead of gray.
  • In the Sega CD version in the Hall Of Fame there is a racer called Wolfgang, with a score of 20,000 on the Orbital Junkyard track on Hard. He is there instead of Lance Boyle.
  • The Thrillometer measures how exciting the current race is, if it falls into the gray zone then the audience isn't getting enough thrills. However, this does not affect gameplay or score, you could play the entire game with a low Thrillometer and still get the best score.
  • If you play the game on Novice, once you beat Paradise Valley the game will start over on Hard, you must beat this too in order to beat the game entirely. However, if you play on Hard from the start, once you beat Paradise Valley you will win and not start over.
  • There are six different endings, four bad endings, two good.
    • The first bad ending is when the Enforcer dies (Car blows up during race).
    • The second bad ending is when the Enforcer 'can't take the heat' (Quits the game early).
    • The third bad ending is when the Enforcer didn't kill the Packleader in three laps.
    • The fourth bad ending is when the Enforcer is defeated and 'chickens out'. (Loses and quits).
    • The first good ending is when the Enforcer 'gets some well-earned rest' (Kills every Packleader once and quits).

Template:Spoiler

  • The best ending is when the Enforcer defeats every Packleader on all 14 speedways. This is the 'true' ending. The Enforcer receives the 'Solid Gold Enforcement Officer' Award.

Template:Endspoiler

  • In the "Special Thanks" section of the credits, one of the persons credited is Carroll Shelby.
  • According to the computer file that contains the subtitles to Lance Boyle's dialogue, one of the lines was originally removed from the final game (although some games did ship with the original dialog). The dialogue the player hears in the game is:
    • It's because of quitters like him that vicious speed-gangs miss out on a wonderful rehabilitation program! Tune in next time to Mega Race when we'll have a real Enforcer to admire!

The original line went like this:

    • It's because of quitters like him that vicious speed-gangs miss out on a wonderful rehabilitation program developed by New Directions in Meat Incorporated, makers of Bleed, the candy-bar poor folks love to be a part of! Tune in next time to Mega Race when we'll have a real Enforcer to admire!
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