Super Mario Kart on the SNES was a racing gateway drug in our household in the 90s. We liked SMK. We LOVED SMK. All of us, me, my daughter and my son, mastered SMK. And we had a Playstation, so we turned to Need For Speed and many of its sequels to get that same joy of racing each other, togetherness as a family, etc.
I’ve become thoroughly disenchanted over not having a car of my own. I scour Craigslist for non-scams daily. Having never owned a Toyota, I’ve decided nonetheless when the Honda drivers attack, I will stand shoulder to shoulder with my Toyota brethren and sistren and win the battle of street racing supremacy, like in Initial D. In fact, I probably need to hunt down and buy a mid-late 80s Toyota racing machine, like the Toyota Corolla GT-S AE86, the infamous “hachiroku”.
Need For Speed World has an AE86. It’s an MMO (kinda). It’s free. And I’ve been playing it for hours.
MMOs
Massively Multiplayer Online games – our first step into the Metaverse.
DDO: Beholders are racists.
So I knew this going in, there’s nobody that hates us Drow more than your average beholder. There could be two paladins bashing away on it, a favored soul doing whatever it is they do, a sorcerer baking it in magical flames, and me plinking away at it from fifty meters away, trying to get … Read more
EQ Nostalgia: Old Freeport in Minecraft
For all those old EverQuesties who remember the glory of Freeport before it was ruined and destroyed in the Prophecy of Ro expansion, Utenan1 has recreated West and North Freeport in Minecraft. They are so dead-on that even more than a decade in, I could still find my way around blindfolded. (Can anyone claim that … Read more
Rift: Just give me what I want…
All I want out of a fantasy game is dragons and the tools to kill them. DDO (more on that in another post) is a disappointment there. They should just rename that game “Dungeons and ????? Online”. But Rift… Rift is just lousy with the big lizards. The whole rift concept seems tailor made for them as well. A dragon pushes a bit of its own reality into Telara; it comes with buildings, henchmen, swirling, floaty rocks and storm winds, and we push it back.
Right in the open world, too, among other adventurers going their own ways. They can even decide to join in for some rewards. I was benched out in Saturday’s Greenscale raid, so while waiting for a spot to open, I went on a couple of pickup daily raid rifts. It’s difficult to see how raiding could be more accessible than it is in Rift. Pickup raid rifts take about fifteen minutes to do, once you get started. Loot usually is a couple of planar essences and a bit of gear, as well as the inscribed sourcestones used to buy “best in slot” essences back in the capital. So there’s a powerful incentive for even raid-geared folks to get these daily raid rifts done.
More dragons and lots of other stuff, after the break.
The Miseducation of MMO Players
I believe the only way to do anything is “all in”. When I started getting into anime in the 80s, I took Japanese lessons to better understand. When I watched the street racing anime Initial D recently, I learned for the first time how cars were tuned for specific road conditions (and watched a lot … Read more