They’re all named with ciphers so as to avoid having to be licenced, but it’s pretty clear which real-life vehicle has inspired them. For example, the first character Alexa is a brash American lady, so she has a 70’s era Corvette, a Nascar type racer, a Pontiac Firebird and a thinly veiled Dodge Viper. The bright palette and polygonal style give HSR a very distinct look, just as the bold character designs are very deliberately stylised.Įach of the eight characters is rather cliched, just as their four vehicles fit their nation. Our optimism was largely well placed as initial impressions are good. Hotshot Racing was always going to be day one purchase for us anyway, so it’s fair to say we are positively biased towards it. Having a development partner in Sumo has really helped get Hotshot over the line, especially given their work on the fantastic Outrun 2006: Coast 2 Coast, aspects of which you’ll see here.Īnyway, enough preamble. Hotshot Racing is a wonderful paean to those days of yore, only in this case you’re playing on a lovely big TV in your living room rather than feeding a machine with pound coins for four minutes of adrenaline. Long since shut down, these defunct arcades are emblematic of a gaming age.

Anyway, latterly we would travel up to that London and the Funland/Segaworld arcade in Piccadilly’s Trocadero. Our first regular haunt was on Union Street in Aldershot, sadly our last visit there was one of disappointment with the only non-gambling machine being some crappy phone game that dispensed tickets. Unapologetically an arcade racer harking back to those halcyon days when you had a local arcade before most operators filled them with fruit machines. Notably the golden age of blue sky Sega AM2 racing games, namely Virtua Racing, Daytona USA, Sega Rally, SCUD Race and Outrun plus its sequels.

Formerly known as Racing Apex and some ten years in the making, initially being intended as an iOS release.įor anyone as long in the tooth as we are, it’s pretty clear where Lucky Mountain’s influences came from. Septemin PS4 / Reviews tagged am2 / arcade racer / blue skies in gaming / hotshot racing / racing apex by Ianįrom Lucky Mountain Games (aka Trevor Ley) in conjunction with Sumo Nottingham, published by Curve Digital, comes Hotshot Racing.

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