Hmmmm, a bit up in the air with this one.
I confess I only got this collection for Moto Racer 1 and 2, not even being aware that Moto Racer 3 and the 15th Anniversary were a thing. Also, I'm guessing since Moto Racer World Tour had no PC port, that means it didn't manage to appear in this collection. Oh well.
This is a collection of old games, in case you haven't figured it out. You get 4 games, all in their many levels of playable.
Since I only got this for Moto Racer 1 and 2, those are the games I'll be covering, so let's get to it.
Moto Racer 1 is clearly in a state where you gotta do some tinkering for it to run properly on modern PCs. If opened by itself, the menu opens at a crazy framerate, making the scrolling background go insane. It's actually kinda funny.
dgVoodoo is a must for this game in particular, and not only that, it requires it to recognize a CD drive? Not a disc, a drive. It's really weird that the game won't open unless it realizes there's a CD drive somewhere, although that's nothing Daemon Tools can't handle. Or you know, an actual, physical CD drive. xD
Moto Racer 2 suffers similar problems, although it's much easier to get things rolling with dgVoodoo. I'd say this is the selling point of the entire collection, as this version of Moto Racer 2 is pretty damn good. Four player split-screen? HELL YES. It's so weird having so many modern racing games not have a two player split-screen mode nowadays. Just one thing, though.
The PC version is more close to the PAL version of Moto Racer 2 rather than the NTSC version of Moto Racer 2, which normally wouldn't matter, except that both versions had different tracks for each, not to mention each has a unique soundtrack. I honestly would love to know what's the reasoning behind this. They're almost two different games, it's so bizarre.
And oh yeah, the final positive of Moto Racer 2: Track Editor Mode. Add some mounds, make the geometry of your choice, choose a background tileset and you're good to go. It's not the most in-depth thing in the world, but for a 1998 game, it's more than acceptable.
dgVoodoo is straight up mandatory when it comes to these two games, not only for resolution purposes, but to prevent bugs and crashes. I guess this is a true preservation of games, because they've done absolutely nothing to change their issues, preserving them in their incompatible state. xD
Also, if you're wondering why my playtime is so low, here's why: Steam only counts the time in the game selector window. So you can spend hours and hours in them, but since you spend barely any seconds choosing a game in the collection, it's like you've barely played it. Go figure.
If you're a fan of the series and you're willing to tinker with dgVoodoo to get those two games in a playable state (which I'm sure is what most people are seeking for anyway), then by all means. That being said, this isn't something every single person knows how to do or will want to do. It's easier to just emulate the first two games on PS1 than going through the motions to do all this, and that's coming from someone who likes Moto Racer 2, who even at his best, is an average racing game.
Oh well, at least it's super cheap on a sale, so it's not a total loss, I guess.
