Racing Apex Fuses Virtua Racing With Mario Kart Combat, And It's Racing Towards Wii U

Looks a bit off, even though it has the arcade feel, something aint right about it. Also looks like it will be fun for 7 minutes and... that likely it.

Wow love this type of game on the Wiiu if the controls are as an arcade then they should have a winner

Hmmm, not really interested...but I think I'll listen to some ♪DAYYTONNNNNNA♪

Blue, blue, skies. Blue, blue, skies, I see!

Maybe they should have called it 80's Arcade Racer.

On first glance when I looked on the front page of the site, I thought finally some more information on 90's Arcade Racer at long last. Alas, it wasn't to be.

Retro style again used as an excuse to look terrible.

Though I enjoy this kind of game, the 32-Bit polygonal graphics never did grew on me so I may take a passed on this.

Well as a huge fan of Virtual Racing,this is rather exciting.I still think VR looks great today and considering it was one of the first true 3D games,that's an impressive feat.But as @IAmDeclanJay said above,there's something not right about this one,it does look off.Hopefully that'll improve with time and more funding.We've been waiting for 90's Arcade Racer for 2 years now,I doubt that'll ever arrive on Wii U.Hopefully we wont be waiting as long for this one to arrive.

@Simbabbad
Looks good to me

This looks totally on point right down to the awkward pronunciation of apex lmao!

@IAmDeclanJay I think if it had the pop-up then it would be retro perfection (but who intentionally wants pop-up in this day and age!)

I'm digging this and I like the look of it

Meh...
Boring. Mario Kart 8 still my favorite.

Despite being ripped off by '90s Arcade Racer (how many months have we been without an update now?) I'll definitely back this when it hits Kickstarter. I don't have Daytona and Sega Rally cabinets in the garage for nothing!

I remember seeing this game last year, it was already looking promising but this new trailer shows they have been working on it in order to surpass everything else out there. Amazing, really hope this does land on Wii U.

@TossedLlama Ooh I remember that game. Was two undercover cops. Driver had to, both, drive and shoot, and player 2 had to just shoot right?

EDIT: LOL Found it: Lucky & Wild. Was crazy fun.

Just under 5000?! Nonono. It was just under 4300.

This is actually the kind of game that I think would be perfectly suited to VR, set inside a virtual arcade and in a sit-down cabinet, or just in a virtual room with a huge TV. I say this mainly because the flat-shaded polygon nature of the visuals would look great in proper 3D, which VR does with aplomb.

The game is looking real sweet. And the developers appear to have made every single right decision they could around all the modes, options, settings, cars and tracks, and whatever else. It basically looks like the perfect example of a racing game from that era—even more so than most of the real and awesome racing games from that era.

PS. I don't have any money at all to spend on anything other than rent, bills, and food—genuinely—but I'd back it on Kickstarter for a dollar and show my full support. I've already posted about it on my blog and Facebook and Twitter channels (a couple of times).

I actually think these guys should go directly to Oculus and talk about getting financial support to put this game on the Rift. I believe they might get the funding from Oculus (not a certainty, since it probably doesn't really show off VR in any major way, but it's still worth I try)—I mean, the game really does look awesome imo.

@IAmDeclanJay Everything about it looks totally spot-on (other than having that one blond, female, elf character for some reason); I can't imagine what looks "off" to you. And, there's 30 cars to choose from, which you can also upgrade; 18 tracks (with apparently more to come); battle race mode (with weapons) and normal race mode (without weapons); single-player and multi-player (both online and 4 player local split-screen too). It's about as feature complete as I could ever want or imagine from a game like this*. If this had actually been released back in the '90s, I imagine it would now be regarded as one of the very best racing games of that era (as long as the racing feel is spot-on, which I expect it does)—that's how good I personally think it looks.

*Just look at the various modes you can play: https://youtu.be/naPAgAxA1Ms?t=209 (watch from 3:29)

Looks interesting to me. Wait-and-see approach as per usual for me.

@Simbabbad I'd suggest that you genuinely do not understand what "looks terrible" means. If you understand that this is using a retro flat-shaded style, which you clearly do because you literally mentioned its "retro style", then you should be able to differentiate between looking graphically cutting edge (with HD texture map, modern shader effects, and whatever else) and simply looking very stylised (like cubism* as opposed to neoclassicism**). And, in regards to the very deliberate style it's going for, it looks brilliant. Almost every single polygon is perfectly placed and used to make everything just look about as good as it can look in this type of flat-shaded style, from what I can see. Don't confuse simple and clean retro-inspired visuals with automatically being terrible because they're aren't like the vast majority of modern games in 2016—that just makes you look ignorant and possibly about 13 years old or something like that.

*Cubism:
**Neoclassicism

Looks good to me. I'll pick it up if the price is right

Hmmmmmmm.... Nope; I'd rather pay Nintendo for more Mario Kart 8 DLC they seemingly trolled in Europe but never filled in with context. This game looks like mehhhhh.

@Kirk I know Art perfectly well, thank you very much. Amusingly, I actually saw "Le Radeau de la Méduse" in person recently.

This game still looks terrible, and uses retro as an excuse to look terrible. Many games of that area looked much better (the animation in particular is atrocious here), just like most pixel art games of the 8-bit area looked much better than current "retro" games. Say, Aban Hawkins looks great, but most other "retro" games look like trash.

Retro is used to avoid hiring a competent graphic designer, especially here, and that's all there is to it. REZ or Virtua Fighter this isn't. Trash is trash is trash.

Might seem silly to some, but I think it has too many polygons to look authentic. It just looks like a tech demo from the late 1990's/very early 2000's. And why isn't it a straight up racer? It seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity to do something really special.

Looks Wacky, and i love Games that have Wacky in it. interested in it.

I'm a big fan of Sega racers and I like the art style, so I'd definitely pick this one up. Why haven't more faux-retro games use that 90s arcade/N64/PS1 low-poly style?

Onboard. Bring it out.

starfox and sega mega cd like polygons look oddly compelling in HD.
At least the character design.
Low poly is its own art when done right.

Yes, please! That sounds awesome

It's a nice game. Reminds me of Sega Dreamcast.
The Wii U can use as many racing games it can get for the system.
PS4 does'nt have very many racing games yet so I continue using PS3 as my Racing Game platform.
On the Wii U Mario Kart is nice but the Wii U needs more Arcade or Simulated racing.

Certainly not something I would prefer to the glorious Mario Kart 8 and I was never a big fan of the ugly, blocky polygon graphics in the 90s... It does look like it could be pretty fun to play online though. If it's decently priced I would probably get it.

@Simbabbad I'll say it again; you clearly don't know what terrible is.

And the animation . . . What, the tiny bit you see on the characters. lol

Go and check out all those old flat-shaded polygon driving games from the '80s-'90s, particularly the driving games that had any animated characters in them, and actually see if they had some kind of superior animation compared to what we're seeing in Racing Apex. . . .

I mean, let's just compare Virtua Racing's character animations for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js8tZhKcfWc

Even Virtua Fighter, which was basically all characters and character animation, wasn't anything special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-9TUlCcib0

I think you overestimate how difficult it is to make such low-poly characters animate with any kind of real flow and subtlety.

All things being relative, the devs of Racing Apex haven't fallen short of the standards of animation expected in these types of games.

The graphic design in this games is also stellar; from the styling of the particular flat-shaded models in the actual races to the menus and even the likes of the GUI/HUD. It's all totally as you would expect from the era, and it's all very clean, clear, non-intrusive, bold and colourful, and easily readable. It is the epitome of strong, bold, and simple graphic design. Any given screen on this game could be an art print on your wall.

Bam!

Stick it on your wall and you have a great little piece of graphic art there.

I will definitely be getting this for WiiU. The split screen multiplayer looks great! These kind of graphics look great in HD. Less visual clutter, keeps things clean and simple for fast paced games.

Looks pretty good. I was just playing Virtua Racer the other day as a matter of fact.

I'll back this- but only if Wii U is a guaranteed platform. None of this Project Cars/Hyper Light Drifter nonsense.

Looking good. Very probably, I will buy if it came to Wii-U.

Just makes me want 90's Arcade Racer that much more...

Looks really, really good. Definitely going to pick this up somewhere around it's release; I like this style of graphics, so, for me, this seems intriguing (in a good way, of course).

i like the graphics

Not an fan of the art-style, nor am I a fan of Arcade Racers, but this doesn't look bad. Could be fun in short bursts.

This game is drawing inspiration from Sega's Virtua Racing game. I like that. I'd buy this if it was any way right.

The first time I seen Virtua Racing in the flesh was in an arcade in Galway around 1994. My jaw had to be peeled off the floor. I was stunned at the technology. I don't remember any video game having this impact on me, before or since.

You have to remember this was during the SNES era. I'd never seen anything like it.

what happened to 90s arcade racer? did it get canned?

I would have preferred just pure racing without the Mario kart style combat, but other than that, looks looks like and insta-buy for me.