By Sam Estall
It might seem that, to those that don’t know me very well, that I really like racing games. Especially so after reading this article. It’ll seem like I’m the sort of gamer that has Dirt 2 posters plentily plastered over my study walls whilst I write the article you’re reading now with a force feedback steering wheel, watching episode after episode of Gran Turismo 6 Let’s Plays on a second monitor. There’s the fallacy. I don’t particularly like racing games. I can’t even claim to currently own one outside of Rocket League. However — I really love Big Red Racing.
Big Red Racing was released in 1996 on DOS systems to what I can only assume was a collective “ooh that was a fun play,” followed by each and every gamer forgetting they owned it in the first place. One destined for the platinum collection this ain’t.
It’s what could only be described as a no-frills arcade game. No bells and whistles, just what it says on the tin- Big Red Racing. The locations were big. The cars were red. You raced. To win? You win the race. No points, no leaderboards, no eSports competitiveness. It was pure fun, through and through. I’m going to give you a rundown of the game as best as I can, describing why 4-year-old me loved this game so much when he discovered it sneakily installed on his Grandmother’s computer back in the 90s.
Like most games, you start at the menu, and that was an experience. The fit-inducing mania of the menu, fonts shifting and cycling on fraction-of-second intervals can easily be described, yet probably not understood, in the below picture.
Every choice is as shitty as the next and I love every part of it. Even the cursor, more similar in shape to a hang glider than your typical pointer, was bizarre. Each and every click of the mouse was accompanied by the same soprano pitch ‘WOOHOO!’ But it captured the insanity that was due to follow and so it worked. Oh, and the insanity to follow.
Load up a map, choose your car, race. That was how simple it was. Once the race loaded? How about a questionably racist commentator (The 1990s, where we didn’t realise casual racism wasn’t okay) shouting at you, followed by the most drum-synth-heavy soundtrack that would assault the eardrums for the next 3-5-minute race. The map that looked as if it had been drawn in MS Paint, the odd blades of grass on the track that were absolutely bigger than the tiny men driving your car. But you didn’t mind, because even for DOS, these locations and sounds were astonishing. Broken, dry dirt races, lush vistas… Mars[1]… you name it, they had charm and boy, did they have it where it counted.
Every race was a little different. There were no power ups, no breakages on the car to look out for, yet each race was unique. For example, take the Germany-based ‘Sound of Munich;’ in this you’re about to race without a track, so the game offers you helicopters. Of course, this being Big Red Racing, you have no choice but to say yes and accept the egregious amounts of fun you’ve just been spoon fed. Unwieldy to control and sound effects that sounded like a small child flapping a sheet of A4 in your ears for slightly-too-long, they were insane, yet weirdly fun. Like mastering the controls actually gave you a reason to replay the levels until you’d perfected them.
And there lies the thing I remember so fondly about Big Red Racing. When I was four, I didn’t care about prizes, progress or sequels. I cared about instant gratification – was I having fun? With Big Red Racing, I certainly was. It was arcade-style in the truest sense of the phrase. You opt-in and just play. No progress, no ‘finish first to unlock hard mode’- just good, old fashioned play. That’s why I’d call it an ‘old game done good.’ Because maybe it wasn’t done well- it didn’t really warrant replay ability or satisfaction to a more hardcore gamer, but it was done GOOD. A solid game that I’ve got fond memories of to this day.[2]
Notes
[1] To those that are wondering, some of the final levels in the game involve racing levitating rovers on Mars, which is an entirely separate article in itself, introducing some of the weirdest and most memorable gameplay I’d ever experienced as a child.
[2] Big Red Racing is available online. (Through certain sites which at the time of writing I’m not totally sure are legitimate or not.)
Popsplaining 