Excessive Speed

[h1]I can't believe I get to experience Excessive Speed again! [/h1] Thank you so much [b]Piko Interactive LLC[/b] for acquiring the rights and re-releasing Excessive Speed on Steam and GOG! I played this a lot on the family PC when I was a kid. Later, I tried to install it with my disc on a newer system and I couldn't get the sound working...I kinda gave up on ever playing the game again unless I got a retro 95/98 or low end XP gaming PC, until now! Excessive Speed is a combat racing game from the late nighties with lots of vibrant tracks and an amazing soundtrack. Each track has its own song that plays and there are lots of different powerups scattered across each track. The early tracks have slower cars and early powerups, but the more you progress across the tracks, the more different )and powerful!) powerups and cars you come across. Excessive Speed has lots of different events and a good sense of progression bcause of it. [h2]Compatibility[/h2] Since I couldn't get the game running on a modern system before this Steam (and GOG) release, I wanted to emphasize something first. I played this on three totally different systems so far and it runs flawlessly on all three of them.…

Excessive Speed is an old game and, even in its heyday, wasn't particularly good. As such, I mostly purchased it out of nostalgia. It's a 2D racing game that isn't meant to feel realistic, similarly to something like Micro Machines. You'll race against opponents on a variety of sometimes quite fantastical courses and shoot them with rockets, drop mines and get turbo boosts. Cars will explode in a cartoonish fashion and respawn quickly. Throughout playing the game you'll unlock more courses and cars, and the game will become slightly more complex. AI seems to race a little smarter in later stages and there'll be a greater variety in power ups that appear (though nothing spectacular emerges). To progress you'll need to win races and beat the computer in time trials (including dynamite time trials where your car explodes at the slightest collision). After unlocking every stage you gain access to all stages ridden in reverse making for somewhat of a New Game+. There are quite a lot of tracks and they vary significantly in look (you'll visit a Haunted Town, a Military Base, a Space Station and a Mine). One problem is that this is largely set dressing as the tracks themselves offer v…

EXCESSIVE SPEED (1998) REVIEW: A BEAUTIFUL, BRUTAL BLAST FROM THE PAST Man, Excessive Speed is such a wild time capsule. Released back in 1998, this top-down arcade racer is totally gorgeous, but it will absolutely punish you. A NOD TO THE PRE-RENDERED ERA If you've been playing PC games for a couple of decades, you probably remember this very specific era of graphics. Right before our hardware could handle fully 3D worlds with high details, developers used 2.5D graphics. They would take incredibly detailed, pre-rendered 3D models and turn them into flat 2D sprites. Because the game engine didn't have to render all the 3D physics and lighting effects in real-time, the developers could pack the screen with a crazy amount of detail. The 14 different tracks are vibrant and full of life, ranging from spooky towns to underwater stages complete with swimming dolphins. The cars themselves look like highly detailed little toys. It really is a cool nod to the past, capturing that brief window where pre-rendered art looked way better than the early, blocky real-time 3D games of the time. BRUTALLY HARD The difficulty borders on masochistic. The AI is super aggressive, and the collision …

(I've played for much longer than 20 minutes, Steam doesn't track this game's playtime properly.) Fun, challenging racing once you get a feel for the handling physics, great soundtrack, and wonderfully 90's pre-rendered visuals.

Bought this game as I wanted to re-live some nostalgia I had for this game. The game is quite cute and the isometric style of gameplay is pretty decent and can keep you entertained for a few hours or so. There are some issues here and there with the game though. Playtime doesn't track through Steam properly unless you go out of your way to fix how Steam launches the game. Also, the game forcing your monitor to a specific resolution will mess with a multi-display setup (if you don't have more than 1 monitor then this won't be an issue for you), which also causes any notifications your computer might display to appear extremely big and cover a good portion of the screen. I did have a bunch of fun with the game though. Price is pretty decent too, but if you're hesitant to try it out, wait until it's on sale