Roadsters (Dreamcast)

Описание: Welcome back to Roadsters – a game we first played (and heavily criticized) over a decade ago. Some of you asked us to give it another shot, just to see if time (or nostalgia) might change our minds. Spoiler: it didn’t.

The controls remain the biggest issue. As you’ll notice in the gameplay, something constantly pulls the car in odd directions. Whether it’s a hidden rail mechanic or quirks in the physics engine, it makes every race unpredictable. Sometimes you can anticipate it, other times it throws you into a wall out of nowhere. Getting stuck on the track geometry can ruin long runs, while the AI feels completely random—brutally tough one race, half a lap behind the next.

Compared to Need for Speed: High Stakes, which launched around the same time, Roadsters doesn’t stand a chance. The graphics, physics, and overall polish are on a totally different level.

But after spending more time with it, we did notice something hiding behind the rough edges. Roadsters feels half-baked rather than outright hopeless. The vehicles lack stats, the drivers have no personality, the sound effects feel stock, and the presentation is barebones. Even the manual tells the same story—it’s just a folded sheet, one of the thinnest in the entire Dreamcast library. The cover art? Just as uninspired.

The biggest problem is that Roadsters doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. It flirts with sim mechanics, borrows ideas from kart racers, and tries to deliver arcade-style action—but ends up being a master of none. Around the same time, Gran Turismo 2 perfected the sim formula, Mario Kart 64 nailed the kart racer charm, and Need for Speed: High Stakes pushed arcade realism into a new era. Roadsters, meanwhile, wandered in-between and never committed.

It’s scattered, unfinished, and inconsistent in every area. And yet, underneath it all, you can sense that the developers did have a vision. Time was the missing ingredient. With more polish and focus, Roadsters could have been something truly worthwhile.

There is a certain charm under all the mess, but sadly not enough to make it worth playing today. Even though the game is cheap, there are countless better racers from around the year 2000 that deserve your time. Good try, Titus… but we’re sorry.

Then again, this is the same studio that gave us Superman 64. Enough said.