Every week or so I've been coming up with a new arcade racing game to talk about here lately, and I don't want to spoil the series. This week's new favorite is Parking Garage Rally Circuit, a game about power-sliding through multi-story parking garages designed to look like a lost Sega Saturn game. It now has a release date: September 20th.
Watch on YouTube
Thick polygons? OK. Halftone effects to make pixels pop? Yes. Anti-aliasing? Nope.
Set in a future where American parking lots have been turned into race tracks for some reason, you turn corners and collect “Mario Kart-style power-ups” to win races and time trials. There are eight cars to unlock, three increasingly difficult car classes to drive, and online leaderboards to climb.
There's also an online multiplayer mode for up to 8 players. Most of these arcade racing games lack this, opting for split screen first and foremost, so for that reason alone I'll give Parking Garage a pass.
Parking Garage Rally Circuit is primarily the work of indie developer Walaber, a name that makes me kind of itch when I hear it. That's because he was responsible for some beloved early physics games like JellyCar and Trampoline from the 2000s. Walaber has a history page on his site that features some of his earlier work.
My only gripe with the way Parking Garage Rally Circuit looks so far is that power-shifting through parking garages brings back terrible memories of trying to get through the tutorial in Driver One on the PSone. Kids today don't know the sheer embarrassment and anger of renting a game from the video store for two days with your pocket money and spending all your time just trying to get through the first mission.
I'm sure Parking Garage Rally Circuit won't leave me dirty like that. It'll be out on Steam in two weeks.