Reviewed: August 30, 2000
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
Acclaim
Developer
Acclaim
Released: August 8, 2000
Genre: Racing
Players: 2
ESRB: Everyone
1
1
6
1
1.5
Supported Features:
As October 26th looms ever closer SEGA seems intent on shoveling all sorts of crap out the door before you go and spend all your money on a PlayStation 2. Acclaim's newest release (or should I say "port") of Jeremy McGrath Supercross 2000 for the Dreamcast is one of the worst games I have ever seen for this system. It is even worse than some of the worst of the launch titles I played last year. Everything about this game stinks of "Rush Job".
There are some early warning signs of a potentially bad game.
- Be suspicious of any game that uses a movie or sports hero tie-in or endorsement. This is almost a sure sign of a lousy game.
- Watch out for games that blatantly advertise famous musicians who did the music for the game.
- Watch out for games that aren't system exclusive (i.e. Dreamcast only) or at least released on the better system first.
Jeremy McGrath Supercross 2000 has made its appearance on just about every system out there. It should be called Supercrossover 2000. I just saw that it's coming out for the Gameboy Color. I wouldn't be surprised to see a 3DO or Turbo Grafx version coming soon. I've logged about 20 minutes on the Playstation version and about 10 minutes on the N64, so I wasn't in total shock when I played the Dreamcast version. I was just hoping for more; at least a facelift.
No physics, no control, no fun, are just a few of the first things that leap to mind. The analog control is very jerky and there is no smoothness to the controls or the movement of the bike. The tracks are low detail and pretty boring. The invisible walls on either side of the track keep you from taking shortcuts or landing too far away from the track on the larger jumps. When you do hit a real wall you simply bounce off and keep going.
The AI of your computer opponents is horrid. You will easily lap most of the field, even on the hardest difficulty as long as you can keep it off the walls and on the track. Your opponents will meanwhile crash into each other and anything else they can find trying their hardest to lose the race.
When you get tired of the tracks that come with this title you can make your own using the track editing software. You basically pick pre-fab pieces of track from a menu and assemble your own course. You cannot alter the ground elevation so your tracks are strictly limited to the pieces available to you.
The graphics are even worse than the gameplay (if that is possible). This game has been ported to every current system on the market. The PSX and N64 versions were very close in graphics quality although the N64 did offer better textures. The Dreamcast version uses textures very similar to the N64 or perhaps even those very same textures. Don't let anyone tell you that Acclaim jazzed up the graphics for the Dreamcast. They didn't do a thing to the graphics except increase the resolution and when you stretch poor textures even bigger they look even worse. Visually, this title is an insult to the Dreamcast's graphic engine.
Framerate simply sucks no matter if you are playing by yourself, with a friend, against the computer, or any combination. The more complex racetracks slow the frames down even further making it virtually unplayable. The animation is terrible. Those of you who have played Motocross Madness 1 or 2 will remember the great roto-scoped animated riders and lifelike bone crunching wrecks. Well don't look for any fancy body motion in this game. Your rider has about four moves and he only makes them during extreme events like stunts, hard turns, or the end of a race.
There are some really lousy weather effects, which have nothing to do with gameplay or control. It is strictly a visual effect and has no bearing on how your bike performs or handles. There are also night and day options but they only change the color of the background since there is no attempt of any kind for dynamic lighting in this game.
The opening movie is high quality video of bikes in action set against some thumping rock and roll and is about the only good thing I can say about this game in this part of the review.
Remember rule #2 from above. This game is boasting music from the Offspring. While I hope nobody goes out and buys a game because of the musicians who did the soundtrack, I must admit the music and other sounds in this game are above average if not excellent. Even the engine noises are believable.
Jeremy McGrath offers tips on how to race each course. These are interesting but often useless since the game is practically unplayable. You'd be better off using this disc as an educational CD and going out and buying your own dirt bike. You'll have more fun.
What do you mean, "how long will you play"? You aren't still considering buying/renting this game are you? Why am I here? Seriously, I give this game about 30-60 minutes before you realize the error of your ways and return this title. Then you can send me email saying how you "should have listened to Sinjin" and I can write back saying, "told ya so".
If for some strange reason you have no other outlet for your overpowering 2-wheel racing desires and decide to keep and play this game you can expect about 10 hours of play time just completing the Series Mode and the Freestyle Mode. You can play around and tweak the settings on your bike and customize your rider, but again this is all cosmetic fluff as these changes have little to no effect on your bike. When you've beaten all the tracks and unlocked the bonus tracks you can always create your own (indoor tracks only) using the easy-to-use but no-frills track editor.
Divide your screen in half and also your frame rate. Split-screen two-player mode becomes a slide show. Don't even try to include computer opponents in this mode or you can kiss this game goodbye. As with most split-screen games your view is so cropped that you have no time to react to direction changes or other riders who seemingly appear out of nowhere.
It's sad to see such garbage being released as we near the one-year birthday of the Dreamcast. This game may have gotten 2 stars a year ago but in the last 11 months this console has shown us what it can do with many quality titles being released. There is no reason we should have to tolerate games of such poor quality, and game companies should stop going for the quick buck by porting titles across systems without tweaking it for each console.
Sure this is the only motocross game on the Dreamcast, but there will be others and they can only be better than this. Steer clear of this racing game, even if you see it in the bargain bin. Unless you are a mindless Jeremy McGrath groupie who must own everything with his name on it, this game has no place in anyone's Dreamcast library.
Oh, and Jeremy. If you are reading this then I hope you are enjoying your paycheck for "selling out". You are going to lose a lot of respect for allowing your name to go on this piece of software.
