DGC Ep 423: Interstate '76 (part two)

Dev Game Club

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on 1997's Interstate '76. We talk about physics again, mission design, input, and other topics. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: Roughly six missions (B), technical difficulties (T)

Issues covered: end of mission two sitting duck and acting, many controller bindings, driving an automatic, mapping onto the character's body instead of the car, the hardware abstraction layer and Direct X, enumerating devices and buttons, IBM PC light grey numpads, mechanical keyboards, the nostalgia of two hands on the keyboard, extra peripherals, simulating the character vs the car, the car as the crosshairs, getting stuff off the battlefield, upgrades, managing weight, racing missions, the potential of weight impacting the simulation, a game that's not well-preserved, weird configuration and axes, mission design, following the guy you're racing, broken physics world, compounded errors, blowing up the diner, 90s references, failing the mission multiple times, guiding the player back, being unable to save Skeeter, level of detail issues, sim mission design, cheating the sim, car condition, wanting to try the flight stick, the band, good looking cars, mayhem on the field, now available on YouTube.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Falcon, XvT, MechWarrior, Steel Battalion, Guitar Hero, Microsoft, Forza, TIE Fighter, Tipper Gore, Escape from New York, Third Eye Blind, fbrccn, MuzBoz, Twisted Metal Black, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Notes: The more common and cheap keyboard type that Brett didn't know the name of is a "membrane" keyboard.

Next time: More I '76

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