Saturday, August 28, 2021

A Night of Road Rash & A Morning Of Smule


 Good afternoon everybody,

Last night the plan was to feature the Road Rash Trilogy of Games on the original PlayStation, which includes Road Rash, Road Rash 3D and Road Rash Jailbreak... things didn't totally go as planned. 

Anyway, we lead of with Road Rash, a game I have played before on an IBM PC back in the 90s that used Windows 95. Needless to say I have fond memories of that version of the game, in fact I still have the CD-Rom for that version! Anyway, playing it's PlayStation cousin was really cool, in fact it felt natural to play in terms of what buttons did what, and nothing felt over thought out. The biggest gripe I have with it is how loud the engine sound effects are, and the general lack of audio settings in the game's option menu. It was great seeing the different FMVs for when you win, lose or wreck your bike, as they really strike a great done. 


This game certainly holds up very well for being over 25 years old, but it did take some adjustment getting use to seeing when objects would appear ahead of you so that they could be avoided. It's not much of a problem on the Thrash Level 1 or Level 2, but one Level 5 when using the fastest bikes in the game it's real noticeable at how little time you have to recognize realize and react. I wouldn't mind seeing a remaster or remake of it, hell all Electronic Arts would have to do is look at what they did with it and duplicate it with some nice 3D models


Then we went to play Road Rash 3D... and it didn't work. It would load up, show the PlayStation Logo and get to the menus to navigate. But when going to do an actual race, it would not work, it got stuck on an infinite loading screen with no clear indication it was going to actually load the race I intended to play! I tired it on both my PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3, and no dice. I would have tried in a PlayStation One, but I need to find the correct power cable for it, So disappointed that we couldn't check Road Rash 3D out, but that's  the risk of old games, sometimes they work, sometimes they don;t... but from what I saw from the controls, it looks like EA was over thinking how to use every button.

However, I couldn't leave this alone, and since I needed an excuse to test a PSOne Slim I recently acquired to possibly handle games that are region locked to outside North America, I hooked it up and guess what... it was able to fully play Road Rash 3D. So at some point we'll do a PSOne night and will featured this particular game.


Anyway, we were able to play Road Rash: Jail Break, and boy is this an ugly game to look at with muddied visuals that really makes it hard to see what's coming. The controls are very similar to Road Rash, and the game-play handles pretty well. But there is no stand alone Race Mode, it's all tied to the game's campaigns. There are time trials which are kind of fun, but wanting to just play a racing game without having to worry about story progression or stat keeping is annoying. Still I probably had more fun seeing all the different ways I could crash as some of the rag doll physics were incredible to look at

Twitch Clip Links

 Following the Stream we sent everyone over to DaWorstGamerEver 25 (twitch.tv/DaWorstGamerEver25) who was playing American Truck Simulator. I've known him since High School, he's a real good guy and I hope you'll check his streams out when he's live! 

We have a new art piece from DaemonsW0lf (www.darkwolfcreative.com / twitch.tv/daemonsw0lf), and all the instruction I gave was for them to have fun and surprise me. What they came up with was an incredible portrait of The Bunny looking bad ass and geared up to be in Tom Clancy's The Division.


We added another Funko figure to the collection, from the My Little Pony Vinyl Collectable Series, Dr. Whooves, who was basically an in-joke of working in the 10th Doctor into My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic without having to go through the BBC. It's a nice little figure that goes with with the similar Rainbow Dash figure I have in terms of book-ending Funko Row on my desk shelving. 

Picked up two Custom Game Cases for South Park: Chef's Luv Shack and WCW Vs The World from www.customegamecases.com because I really really hate having loose games. If I can get a proper case for them I shall pursue that. 

We have six new additions to the collection. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga II, which complete the collection of games from that series for the PlayStation 2. For the PlaySation 4 we've added ZOne of The Enders: The Second Runner - Mars, Tales of Berseria, Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition,and Tales of Zestiria. Am somewhat kicking myself, because we added Tales of Berseria a few months ago... oh well, guess the 2nd one will remained sealed! We also have Tales of Vesperia for the Switch, so that will remained sealed as well. `

Finally caved in and messed around with Smule this morning because breaking out The Bunny last night for a few minutes was a reminder of how much I enjoy Twitch Sings. Now Smule may have a huge song library, but there appears a lot of alternate arrangements for everything. The biggest gripe I have is that since Smule is only for mobile devices, it makes it really awkward to hold my phone to balance the camera and sing at the same time. Anyway here are the links to some stuff I did this morning.

Smule Recordings

Now this does raise some questions... how come the RIAA has no issues with Smule but had major issues with Twitch Sings?! Is it because some of the leadership at the RIAA have ties to Donald Trump who was trying to use the office of the President of the United States to target Jeff Bezos? All signs point to yes that was indeed the case. 


Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 491 kcal. The exercise sets for today were Weaving Combo #1, Intermediate Combo #2 and Advance Combo #1.

For tonight's stream we are continuing Pokemon: Let's Go Eevee.. we have eight gym badges and our next destination is Victory Road. Could we possibly finish this game tonight? We shall see!

So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Overwatch 2 and other notes

We were joined by PandaSweet for many matches in Overwatch this evening, and I branched out a little playing as a wider variety of character...