This video was an EGG CONTROLLER video request from Patreon supporter Holden Moffat. If you enjoyed this topic, say "Thank you, Holden!". If you want to request your own video topic, consider joining my Patreon at the EGG CONTROLLER tier, which gives you the power to request a video for me to make. www.patreon.com/any_austin Sorry it's nighttime instead of daytime when I published this. Just trying to catch up a little bit. :)
the level design for this game is unparalleled at points. Most of the tracks that share planets all overlap with each other, seperated by barriers so youre able to combine them to get the full tracks. So much care went into making every detail I still find stuff to this day
I deeply appreciate the transitions between locations where you took off driving before the fadeout to imply that you physically drove to the next spot before continuing to speak. Thank you.
8:42 This big circular room could be a Panopticon. A circular room from which all prisoners can be observed at the same time. A few old prisons have them. Fun fact. The Panopticon was an idea of English Utilitarian philosopher Jeremey Bentham, who is also famous for having his body embalmed and permanently displayed at the university of London. 5:52 My god you are right! Tattoine was a small and pretty boring planet, you can bet most of them would remember and still discuss podracing history like we still talk about football history. A little slave boy winning the grand prix would have been big news! Luke definitely knew about Anikins win that day! He probably watched repeats of it on TV a few times. Please make more N64 videos! Thank you Austin!
I haven’t thought of it played this game in over 20 years but as soon as you said “new lap record” that goofy ass voice summoned itself from the depths of my subconscious memory
I just love how you break each game's own concept of time and how it passes. Exploring and looking around spaces not designed to be looked around in "in real time" brings a different level of life to every single game you do this.
That's one of my favourite aspects of these videos. What happens when you stop? What elements of the world continue, and what comes to a complete halt.
Wow man this episode is very special to me... This game in particular i played a lot in my childhood with my uncle, dad, friends and even friends who are not here anymore... The Zelda videos and this one are very nostalgic... Please keep doing these videos its an amazing work! By the way the sky and beach races were super hard for me damn.... Oh and your original music is amazing man! Saludos desde Colombia! 🇨🇴
I just can’t stop watching these. I used to do this constantly as a kid. I still do sometimes, but the nostalgia of finding a place in a video game and just thinking about… what does that place mean to the fictional people who inhabit that world? God, I just LOVE this
This game was always super weird to me with the areas. It makes me think of the game Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. That game is extremely weird and has a lot of weird vibes and vague sort of areas. Plus that game has a fully effective debug code that you can use to get anywhere. Hint hint. Also, nice shirt.
Star Wars Explained (incredible YT channel) did a Let's Play Series of Shadows of the Empire. And even he had to stop a few many times and say "...why is this here?". There are so many odd choices with designing that game that I feel it's worth an entire session of odd and unremarkableness.
3:28 I find it pretty funny, complaining about the audience in the stands being poorly represented when the audience filmed in wide shots in the actual movie Phantom Menace was just a collection of painted Q-Tips lol. This is a real piece of filmmaking trivia btw, if you didn't know about it I recommend you look it up, you can see pictures of the model of the stands that was used, lined with Q-Tips of various colours. If you can't find it, add Michael Lynch to your search, he was the model maker for that scene.
I love this series. Racing games seem perfectly suited to creating these spaces, since you're pretty much never expected to stop and look too closely at anything. I'd love to see you show Diddy Kong Racing, as most of the courses have lots of areas that open up in ways that are never explored by most players and give off some odd vibes.
Absolutely. The Gamecube NFS games and Mario Kart were where I discovered my appreciation of this Hot Pursuit 2 had some weird spots where certain sounds played over and over, like residential or bird noises. Usually, you'd only passingly hear them
Hi, Austin. I do indeed know that you're a sucker for shorelines, skyboxes, and tree walls-- what a lovely surprise to find such a beautiful and cozy(-liminal) space in such an obscure game. Great vid, really enjoying this kind of stuff-- your personality is your strength in your videos I think and I'm really enjoying your creativity recently.
This video and the RE4 employment rate video have been the first thing to make me smile during a bad depressive episode. Love the videos and I thank you so much
There’s a level with a huge excavator or some big vehicle where you can crash into the treads or even get run over. It actually moves back and forth in a little route. I stopped racing once and watched it to see where it would go. It was like stepping back and realizing how messy and disproportionate your chalkboard drawing is haha. Great video
Came down to the comments to find this comment or make it myself. Reminded me of an old Slylock Fox cartoon where the solution involved the fact that you could see stars like this where they should have been blocked by the moon, proving that the photo (or whatever) was a fake. I couldn't stop looking at this the whole time the moon was on screen. I was trying to convince myself that maybe the light dots in the dark portion of the moon could maybe be sources of light on the moon, but that doesn't seem to fit with the multiple shots we see!
What a cool choice for this series. Played this game a TON as a kid on the N64, and you mentioned the cut scenes―when I got the Switch version, that was the first time I'd ever seen them! The tie-in games Lucas Arts used to do were pretty amazing, especially compared to other film tie-in games. Their choice to make so many different games in totally different genres based on the prequels made for some really interesting experiences across every console on the market at the time
When I was a very young kid I played this game all the time. I didn't know anything about star wars and didn't care about winning races but I liked to crash the pods in fun ways and explore the areas. This video feels oddly therapeutic
you sonuvabich, i was watching your SWBF2 Skybox video today and lamenting the two week passing since your last video you take all the time you need King, always hyped to see you upload.
It's so funny that this such a weird concept for content, yet people love it so much. Thank you to you and your dad for taking us to the races, what a wonderful time we had.
My favourite unremarkable place in this game is Ando Prime, the Expert Track where you race in what it looks like a frozen stadium. It's so eery because you actually hear some cracks in the ice. And if you think Oovo IV's open spaces are too open an un-detailed (just detailed enough to make you wonder "where the hell am I? What do they use this for?"), then that Ando Prime's stadium is super remarkably unremarkable.
I love these videos. I literally have this game in the next room sittting on my n64, with the CRT. I think this game looks better on a CRT just because it kind of blends the scenery in a less HD more Happ-Y way. Keep making these, make more, and keep reminding me why I kept my n64!
The beach location with the foggy volcano, stone head and four frame shore has major vaporwave vibes. Personally I always liked the level with the lava and the crossing metal bars that you race through.
I was actually going to make a comment saying that the only flaw with this video is that you didn't use Neva Kee to showcase these worlds, and then you gave him his own little section. As someone that put hundreds of hours as a child into this game I can say this video is a masterpiece 👌
I can't tell if "ando preem" is your joke, or george lucas's joke. I adore the way you mimic "new lap record!", that triggered the memory of the announcer voice instantly! more of these n64 vids please :D
Something about the N64 era of games really does lend itself to "unremarkable and odd places" series. It seemed to have enough horsepower to have large spaces but not enough to have objects/npcs/decals in all of those spaces. Only exception would be banjo kazooie. I remember in that game every inch of the map was put to use for game design.
Another game with some weird areas: Cruis'n World on N64. So many weird little details you can miss as you blaze by them, and completely unremarkable because they're almost all 2-D paper cutout looking sprites that are decorating the environment - but still enough to have a weird little flavor all its own.
oh my GOD you have no idea what weird stuff you can find in oldschool racing games. Wipeout XL, or 2097 in PAL regions? check out the forest track, or the space track. The world outside the fence is so enticing. There's also Killer Loop and Rollcage which both have extremely uncanny tracks. Hell even the rally games and stuff feel extremely lonely and weird. It's a goldmine for this stuff.
I never scroll past one of these videos when I see them. The moment it comes across my recommended, I click. Please make this series forever. I adore it.
I played this game a lot when I was like 10 or something, if I got it to work. I'm glad I'm not the only one with a soft spot for it. The vibes I got from circuits like Scrapper's Run or the Spice Mine Run feel palpable to this day. Growing up playing this game for me was realizing that Anakin had the best pod all along. There was just no point in trying to get Boles Roor's boar ass around a corner, even though he was faster. And no, I will not stand for any Neva Kee slander; that little man was zippy as shit. Regardless, I don't think I'll ever grow tired of the liminal quality of video games that came with the limitations of 90s hardware. It's kind of like dreaming; you recognize people and environments but your brain kind of 'imagines' the details. Like a flat texture that's supposed to represent a roaring crowd.
I'm so glad you did a video on this game, the entire thing is so memorably "off." I just replayed it last year and what struck me was the massive scale of all of the courses. They feel huge, and also because of the strange difficulty curve, you will spend a LOT of time in the races without seeing a single other pod, so they feel very lonely. It's like the dreams where you're running and keep going faster and faster.
It's impossible not to look the direction of the green race direction windows xp arrows, as if they point at what Austin describes. Also, about the seashore animation; i find that it's pretty rare,in all its crudeness, that the wet sand is colored differently than the dry. And the colors of the sand and water shades are the kind you'd want to pipette into a palette to use on your self-hosted tumblr
Never thought I would be all about a series of "Guided Tours Of the Most Mundane Places Imaginable" But the internet has this way about changing your mind
7:51 The space stage with the tubes was my favorite stage in the game. My and my brother would fly through them on Coop and then turn around and we found a way to glitch outside of the level to fall into an ebyss and restart on the track. I vividly remember seeing the tubes snaking from under the map! Also always found the N64's low poly-ness to be interesting, for example with this game's garage having low poly models of things. Love your videos man!
I love this. As big N64 and Star Wars fans, my friends and I used to like sometimes abandoning our races just so we could look around. One time we really scared ourselves when we mistook one of the rock pinnacles on Tattooine for a huge, wampa-like monster. That dragonfly beast on Malastare scared us too!
I never got to the Baroonda levels when i played it as a kid but reading the description of it in the manual fascinated me. When i finally completed the game on Switch, it didn't disappoint. Beautiful
Thank you for doing this one. This game is really important to me, as one of my firsts, and I used to just go exploring because of all the strange areas in 3D.
In the invitational races there's another race on the asteroid called the gauntlet that actually has a very prominent area that takes place on the surface of the asteroid with exposed rock. It even gets bombarded by meteors and you have to avoid the explosions or get engine fires.
4:35 kinda doesn't lining up like that is a small, odd, and unremarkable example of why your channel is such a wonderful one. The care you show to each piece of the process shines through like the stars behind the moon a few minutes later
They still exist, but graphics makes them look a bit less 'unremarkable'. Halo is still pretty good for them though because the game has such a gigantic sense of scale.
There's something that feels particularly isolating about racing games, and I think it's even more noticeable in the strange, otherworldly, and outer space locations in Star Wars episode I: Racer.
I LOVE this video concept. Exactly the type of obscure gaming content that somehow is able to give me a lot of comfort. Just discovered these videos, thanks for this!
I watched (and loved) egg busters like a billion years ago when I was 2 years old and now I am 21 and I see this guy back in my recommended and I fell to my knees in a Walmart. Love ya Austin, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.
Good choice tackling this game. It features such huge, vast landscapes that you blow by, there's probably a treasure trove of cool stuff to find hidden in it's maps.
the first spot actually triggered a memory of my father and i doing this exact activity at an indy car race. i then took a picture with a lady in a car who did not end up becoming my wife.
A good game for this type of stuff is Monster Truck Madness 1 and 2. I enjoyed roaming around the tracks in MTM2 and, because there's no fences or barriers, you can drive in a direction until you loop back around to the track again. Quite a few of the tracks have hidden things scattered around like dinosaur skeletons, sunken ships, statues, train tracks and roads.
That large blue room reminds me of a panopticon! The style of prison arrangement where the guard towers are in the middle and can view any cell at any moment! Might just work since it’s you mentioned it as a jail planet.
3:42 Surprisingly, Tatooine is the only planet to have only 2 courses on it, making it the least raced world in the game! Aquilaris, Oovo IV, Ord Ibanna, and Malastare have 3 tracks each, and Ando Prime and Baroonda have a whopping 4!
i love it when you cover racing games on this series, it reminds me of when i was a kid and would take my time and look around the tracks of mario kart double dash instead of actually racing lol
Great episode, looooove this series, was so happy when this popped up in my feed. I will say I missed the cozy CRT filter in this episode, not sure if it’s something that requires you to play on specific hardware (in which case don’t worry about it), but if it’s just a filter/effect that you add in post-pro, I would say you should bring it back for this series, as I think it added a lot in previous episodes. Anyways great work I’ve been loving all your recent vids! 🫡
I remember playing this back in the 90s. One of the few games I owned on N64. It looked great for its time and the sound was intense! We had some large speakers and the sound of the pod engines was crazy, at least to my little kid brain. No idea how that would hold up today. Guess I gotta find out!
6:11 fun fact: Oovo IV would later appear again in the game Star Wars: Bounty Hunter where Jango Fett would get his signature ship that Boba Fett would later inherit after his death.
Amazing video, all of these locations by the way are 100% canon. The game is canon as it was playing on a screen in Episode II on coruscant in the club.
Just discovered this channel today and I've watched I think six of them now. Love this series, and this game is perfect for it! You could probably have found a dozen more odd spots in Episode 1 Racer and still not covered everything. Also, lol at the Neva Kee demonstration.
This was probably my first videogame ever along Toy Story 2, and man this episode was special to me I loved looking at the corners of the levels and just look around the background for all kinds of cool landmarks, I hope you can make more of these with this game Btw: the prison level in the 4 champion stages has actually a whole zone on the asteroid field part, this game was always interesting since the racetracks in different planets all change layouts while keeping some assets closeby, it's neat Btw: the credits in the n64 version say Princess Zelda under special thanks lol
I’ve never seen this game before, and I think you’re the only person that could get me to watch 15 minutes of just looking at random stuff in this game I’ve never seen before. Top quality content right here
I Speedrun this game! It's nice to see it get recognition. I know a few things which are a lot of fun about it: - Traction and Framerate are linked, which is why the ports (which run at 60) feel so much stiffer than people might remember - The fastest pod in the game is Ben Quadinaros, but not because of his max speed stat. With the maximum upgrade level on speed, all pods max out at the same speed value, making boost speed the only defining factor. Ben, while boosting, exceeds 1000 - Neva Kee is one of the highest acceleration pods in the game, so good instincts on that. I believe he's tied with Ark "Bumpy" Roose in that regard - Just about every track has a skip at this point in the game's life cycle. The shorter list is probably places with no skips, and we keep trying to make that list even shorter! - Those asteroids speeding up on Oovo IV is a known graphical glitch, and it's one of the funniest - Our fastest player right now is one DomiraeSSB, who just won our annual tournament a few days ago. Known him since he started running the game, he's incredibly dedicated to his craft - We've just begun to scratch the surface of modding this game, having successfully reverse engineered the texture and model blocks. We're still working on figuring out how to repack model block with fully altered model data so we can add custom vehicles and tracks. I say we, but it's really one very dedicated guy who's made massive strides in the last couple months. The rest of us don't know how to do half the stuff he's pulled off - That track everybody remembers and hates, Abyss? World record is like 15 seconds or less. There's a braindead easy lap skip involving wan Sandage and driving up a wall. A quick search for "Abyss Skips Star wars Racer" should bring it up
@@any_austin my lad, we'd be happy to have ya! I forget if RUclips has a DM system, but I can send you our discord link on a social media platform of your choosing if you so desire. We're a decently active community
6:22 if you drive into the corner there you can slide up along that seam where the fence meets the slanted wall and go out of bounds. I would just hang out there all the time as a kid
I love how the game basically forgets how big its own vehicles are. They're huge. The shoreline in the last location already makes you feel like a miniature, but when you think about how big the pod racer really is, you realize that the waves must be moving like half a mile up and down the beach. And the tent at the start must be as big as the biggest circus tents in history even though they're designed to resemble one of those stereotypical little shop tents from (insert the title of a movie that takes place in the middle east). I know they had to make parts of the environment huge because you're screaming past everything at mach 2 so you wouldn't be able to see things if they were too small, but it's still funny.
This video was an EGG CONTROLLER video request from Patreon supporter Holden Moffat. If you enjoyed this topic, say "Thank you, Holden!". If you want to request your own video topic, consider joining my Patreon at the EGG CONTROLLER tier, which gives you the power to request a video for me to make. www.patreon.com/any_austin
Sorry it's nighttime instead of daytime when I published this. Just trying to catch up a little bit. :)
Next video idea: Diddy Kong Racing
Thank you, Holden!
Thank you, Holden!
Thank you, Holden!
Thank you, Holden!
the level design for this game is unparalleled at points. Most of the tracks that share planets all overlap with each other, seperated by barriers so youre able to combine them to get the full tracks. So much care went into making every detail I still find stuff to this day
Hi goof, fancy seeing you here
Imagination Prison is the most accurate term for canon universes I’ve ever heard of lmao
I love this series. When I saw this video, I said, out loud, to myself, 'Hell yes, Austin."
Yeah it’s a cool series
I JUST THOUGHT-SAID THE SAME THINGGG. Played this game so much as a kid.
LITERALLY SAME!!!!
All here, Hey Austin
And then everyone on the bus stood up and clapped 👏👏
Imagine betting everything on a pod race, just to have your racer sit in a tent
I deeply appreciate the transitions between locations where you took off driving before the fadeout to imply that you physically drove to the next spot before continuing to speak. Thank you.
8:42 This big circular room could be a Panopticon. A circular room from which all prisoners can be observed at the same time. A few old prisons have them. Fun fact. The Panopticon was an idea of English Utilitarian philosopher Jeremey Bentham, who is also famous for having his body embalmed and permanently displayed at the university of London.
5:52 My god you are right! Tattoine was a small and pretty boring planet, you can bet most of them would remember and still discuss podracing history like we still talk about football history. A little slave boy winning the grand prix would have been big news! Luke definitely knew about Anikins win that day! He probably watched repeats of it on TV a few times.
Please make more N64 videos! Thank you Austin!
I haven’t thought of it played this game in over 20 years but as soon as you said “new lap record” that goofy ass voice summoned itself from the depths of my subconscious memory
I just love how you break each game's own concept of time and how it passes. Exploring and looking around spaces not designed to be looked around in "in real time" brings a different level of life to every single game you do this.
That's one of my favourite aspects of these videos. What happens when you stop? What elements of the world continue, and what comes to a complete halt.
Wow man this episode is very special to me... This game in particular i played a lot in my childhood with my uncle, dad, friends and even friends who are not here anymore... The Zelda videos and this one are very nostalgic... Please keep doing these videos its an amazing work! By the way the sky and beach races were super hard for me damn....
Oh and your original music is amazing man!
Saludos desde Colombia! 🇨🇴
I just can’t stop watching these. I used to do this constantly as a kid. I still do sometimes, but the nostalgia of finding a place in a video game and just thinking about… what does that place mean to the fictional people who inhabit that world? God, I just LOVE this
Your unremarkable content is the best! I only wish it was longer form! ✌🏼🔥
What the actual drink? Yellow comment with Monterrey surrendering
go outside nerd
@@cythereanangel typically to support the channel, to help them make more of it
This game was always super weird to me with the areas. It makes me think of the game Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. That game is extremely weird and has a lot of weird vibes and vague sort of areas. Plus that game has a fully effective debug code that you can use to get anywhere. Hint hint.
Also, nice shirt.
Star Wars Explained (incredible YT channel) did a Let's Play Series of Shadows of the Empire. And even he had to stop a few many times and say "...why is this here?". There are so many odd choices with designing that game that I feel it's worth an entire session of odd and unremarkableness.
3:28 I find it pretty funny, complaining about the audience in the stands being poorly represented when the audience filmed in wide shots in the actual movie Phantom Menace was just a collection of painted Q-Tips lol. This is a real piece of filmmaking trivia btw, if you didn't know about it I recommend you look it up, you can see pictures of the model of the stands that was used, lined with Q-Tips of various colours. If you can't find it, add Michael Lynch to your search, he was the model maker for that scene.
I love that you just referred to Star Wars as
_George Lucas's imagination prison_
I love this series. Racing games seem perfectly suited to creating these spaces, since you're pretty much never expected to stop and look too closely at anything.
I'd love to see you show Diddy Kong Racing, as most of the courses have lots of areas that open up in ways that are never explored by most players and give off some odd vibes.
Absolutely. The Gamecube NFS games and Mario Kart were where I discovered my appreciation of this
Hot Pursuit 2 had some weird spots where certain sounds played over and over, like residential or bird noises. Usually, you'd only passingly hear them
Hi, Austin. I do indeed know that you're a sucker for shorelines, skyboxes, and tree walls-- what a lovely surprise to find such a beautiful and cozy(-liminal) space in such an obscure game. Great vid, really enjoying this kind of stuff-- your personality is your strength in your videos I think and I'm really enjoying your creativity recently.
This video and the RE4 employment rate video have been the first thing to make me smile during a bad depressive episode. Love the videos and I thank you so much
There’s a level with a huge excavator or some big vehicle where you can crash into the treads or even get run over. It actually moves back and forth in a little route. I stopped racing once and watched it to see where it would go. It was like stepping back and realizing how messy and disproportionate your chalkboard drawing is haha.
Great video
I once got stuck in it for about an hour and I just stood there looking at the tv screen waiting for the pod to blow anytime haha
@@EddieEddieEddie90 Haha stuck in the big dump truck thing?
The salt mine track, I got stuck there too
This is my favorite series on the internet right now. Your commentary is lovely and your taste in games is impeccable
8:07 Notice how the moon is cut in half (not just eclipsed by the asteroid) because you can see the stars behind it lol
Was looking for this comment. Odd but actually a little remarkable
Came down to the comments to find this comment or make it myself. Reminded me of an old Slylock Fox cartoon where the solution involved the fact that you could see stars like this where they should have been blocked by the moon, proving that the photo (or whatever) was a fake. I couldn't stop looking at this the whole time the moon was on screen. I was trying to convince myself that maybe the light dots in the dark portion of the moon could maybe be sources of light on the moon, but that doesn't seem to fit with the multiple shots we see!
What a cool choice for this series. Played this game a TON as a kid on the N64, and you mentioned the cut scenes―when I got the Switch version, that was the first time I'd ever seen them! The tie-in games Lucas Arts used to do were pretty amazing, especially compared to other film tie-in games. Their choice to make so many different games in totally different genres based on the prequels made for some really interesting experiences across every console on the market at the time
When I was a very young kid I played this game all the time. I didn't know anything about star wars and didn't care about winning races but I liked to crash the pods in fun ways and explore the areas. This video feels oddly therapeutic
such an aesthetically unique game
The higher resolution definitely amplifies it.
you sonuvabich, i was watching your SWBF2 Skybox video today and lamenting the two week passing since your last video
you take all the time you need King, always hyped to see you upload.
It's so funny that this such a weird concept for content, yet people love it so much. Thank you to you and your dad for taking us to the races, what a wonderful time we had.
This was the first n64 game I beat as a kid, soo much nostalgia thanks I love these series, keep it up
This is the first video of yours I’m seeing and I love the Joe Pera energy of the whole experience
It's crazy that this game isn't actually called "Star Wars Pod Racer" cause that's what we all called it
My favourite unremarkable place in this game is Ando Prime, the Expert Track where you race in what it looks like a frozen stadium. It's so eery because you actually hear some cracks in the ice. And if you think Oovo IV's open spaces are too open an un-detailed (just detailed enough to make you wonder "where the hell am I? What do they use this for?"), then that Ando Prime's stadium is super remarkably unremarkable.
I love these videos. I literally have this game in the next room sittting on my n64, with the CRT. I think this game looks better on a CRT just because it kind of blends the scenery in a less HD more Happ-Y way. Keep making these, make more, and keep reminding me why I kept my n64!
talented devs like these used the characteristics of CRTs to make better-looking imagery. Anything from that era is best enjoyed on a CRT for sure!
Fun fact, devs from this era used the squares in a CRT screen as an early form of anti-aliasing
7:35 just realized theres a star inside the shadow of the moon
The beach location with the foggy volcano, stone head and four frame shore has major vaporwave vibes.
Personally I always liked the level with the lava and the crossing metal bars that you race through.
I audibly inhaled in excitement when I saw this! I don't know how I got by without these uploads, honestly. You're a lovelyman, Austin.
I was actually going to make a comment saying that the only flaw with this video is that you didn't use Neva Kee to showcase these worlds, and then you gave him his own little section. As someone that put hundreds of hours as a child into this game I can say this video is a masterpiece 👌
I really hated how the sequel dropped Neva Kee for some reason.
I can't tell if "ando preem" is your joke, or george lucas's joke.
I adore the way you mimic "new lap record!", that triggered the memory of the announcer voice instantly!
more of these n64 vids please :D
Something about the N64 era of games really does lend itself to "unremarkable and odd places" series. It seemed to have enough horsepower to have large spaces but not enough to have objects/npcs/decals in all of those spaces.
Only exception would be banjo kazooie. I remember in that game every inch of the map was put to use for game design.
More of these and skyboxes please, cant get enough of these n64 era vids.
ur making me realize how many of my life-altering early-childhood experiences were creepy and weird
This unlocked yet another childhood memory I forgot I had
"Everyone knows I'm a sucker for a big tree wall" is a good shirt idea. Have like a tree wall beneath the text or something
You’re right
Another game with some weird areas: Cruis'n World on N64. So many weird little details you can miss as you blaze by them, and completely unremarkable because they're almost all 2-D paper cutout looking sprites that are decorating the environment - but still enough to have a weird little flavor all its own.
My goodness, this hits me deep with nostalgia. This is one of the games I grew up on. I loved taking the shortcut tent.
This one speaks to me because there was a period where this was one of the only 3D games I owned and I’d explore every inch of each map.
Loved when I had this game as a child. My favorite part when Sebulba says it’s episode one racin time and then episode one racin’d all over the screen
"This is where they would put El Chapo if he was in Staw Wars" is a very funny sentence to hear with or without context
oh my GOD you have no idea what weird stuff you can find in oldschool racing games. Wipeout XL, or 2097 in PAL regions? check out the forest track, or the space track. The world outside the fence is so enticing. There's also Killer Loop and Rollcage which both have extremely uncanny tracks. Hell even the rally games and stuff feel extremely lonely and weird. It's a goldmine for this stuff.
I never scroll past one of these videos when I see them. The moment it comes across my recommended, I click. Please make this series forever. I adore it.
I played this game a lot when I was like 10 or something, if I got it to work. I'm glad I'm not the only one with a soft spot for it. The vibes I got from circuits like Scrapper's Run or the Spice Mine Run feel palpable to this day. Growing up playing this game for me was realizing that Anakin had the best pod all along. There was just no point in trying to get Boles Roor's boar ass around a corner, even though he was faster. And no, I will not stand for any Neva Kee slander; that little man was zippy as shit. Regardless, I don't think I'll ever grow tired of the liminal quality of video games that came with the limitations of 90s hardware. It's kind of like dreaming; you recognize people and environments but your brain kind of 'imagines' the details. Like a flat texture that's supposed to represent a roaring crowd.
Wow his hair is actually amazing when he doesn't have a bunch of metal clips in it
I'm so glad you did a video on this game, the entire thing is so memorably "off." I just replayed it last year and what struck me was the massive scale of all of the courses. They feel huge, and also because of the strange difficulty curve, you will spend a LOT of time in the races without seeing a single other pod, so they feel very lonely. It's like the dreams where you're running and keep going faster and faster.
I really like the idea of watching a podrace from a tent on the track in the Star Wars universe
It's impossible not to look the direction of the green race direction windows xp arrows, as if they point at what Austin describes. Also, about the seashore animation; i find that it's pretty rare,in all its crudeness, that the wet sand is colored differently than the dry. And the colors of the sand and water shades are the kind you'd want to pipette into a palette to use on your self-hosted tumblr
Never thought I would be all about a series of "Guided Tours Of the Most Mundane Places Imaginable"
But the internet has this way about changing your mind
These are easily my favorite videos on RUclips
I spent SO much time in this game as a kid. It really does feel like an amusement park or something once you stop.
I always love stopping and looking into the crowds in sports and racing games.
7:51 The space stage with the tubes was my favorite stage in the game. My and my brother would fly through them on Coop and then turn around and we found a way to glitch outside of the level to fall into an ebyss and restart on the track. I vividly remember seeing the tubes snaking from under the map! Also always found the N64's low poly-ness to be interesting, for example with this game's garage having low poly models of things. Love your videos man!
I love this. As big N64 and Star Wars fans, my friends and I used to like sometimes abandoning our races just so we could look around. One time we really scared ourselves when we mistook one of the rock pinnacles on Tattooine for a huge, wampa-like monster. That dragonfly beast on Malastare scared us too!
This series has immaculate vibes
I never got to the Baroonda levels when i played it as a kid but reading the description of it in the manual fascinated me. When i finally completed the game on Switch, it didn't disappoint. Beautiful
Thank you for doing this one. This game is really important to me, as one of my firsts, and I used to just go exploring because of all the strange areas in 3D.
In the invitational races there's another race on the asteroid called the gauntlet that actually has a very prominent area that takes place on the surface of the asteroid with exposed rock. It even gets bombarded by meteors and you have to avoid the explosions or get engine fires.
4:35 kinda doesn't lining up like that is a small, odd, and unremarkable example of why your channel is such a wonderful one. The care you show to each piece of the process shines through like the stars behind the moon a few minutes later
Do you find this process of finding unremarkable and odd places harder in newer games?
They still exist, but graphics makes them look a bit less 'unremarkable'. Halo is still pretty good for them though because the game has such a gigantic sense of scale.
GTA IV has a lot of them. They're all quite realistic and sensible, but not quite developed enough to count as intended play.
There's something that feels particularly isolating about racing games, and I think it's even more noticeable in the strange, otherworldly, and outer space locations in Star Wars episode I: Racer.
I LOVE this video concept. Exactly the type of obscure gaming content that somehow is able to give me a lot of comfort. Just discovered these videos, thanks for this!
I like how you can see the volcano in the Neva Kee race, but you go through it in a different race (the one against Ebee Endocott).
I watched (and loved) egg busters like a billion years ago when I was 2 years old and now I am 21 and I see this guy back in my recommended and I fell to my knees in a Walmart. Love ya Austin, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.
I loved this game so much as a kid, my brother and I would play it for hours! The set design for an N64 game was incredible!
I love your videos and coverage of N64 man.
You know those black void ceilings, common in Banjo Kazooie?
Good choice tackling this game. It features such huge, vast landscapes that you blow by, there's probably a treasure trove of cool stuff to find hidden in it's maps.
the first spot actually triggered a memory of my father and i doing this exact activity at an indy car race. i then took a picture with a lady in a car who did not end up becoming my wife.
I enjoy your odd places videos. I myself enjoy finding them when I'm playing!
Love these style of videos, this one was especially fun for me. Thank you for continuing to upload.
A good game for this type of stuff is Monster Truck Madness 1 and 2. I enjoyed roaming around the tracks in MTM2 and, because there's no fences or barriers, you can drive in a direction until you loop back around to the track again. Quite a few of the tracks have hidden things scattered around like dinosaur skeletons, sunken ships, statues, train tracks and roads.
That large blue room reminds me of a panopticon! The style of prison arrangement where the guard towers are in the middle and can view any cell at any moment! Might just work since it’s you mentioned it as a jail planet.
3:42 Surprisingly, Tatooine is the only planet to have only 2 courses on it, making it the least raced world in the game!
Aquilaris, Oovo IV, Ord Ibanna, and Malastare have 3 tracks each, and Ando Prime and Baroonda have a whopping 4!
i love it when you cover racing games on this series, it reminds me of when i was a kid and would take my time and look around the tracks of mario kart double dash instead of actually racing lol
Great episode, looooove this series, was so happy when this popped up in my feed.
I will say I missed the cozy CRT filter in this episode, not sure if it’s something that requires you to play on specific hardware (in which case don’t worry about it), but if it’s just a filter/effect that you add in post-pro, I would say you should bring it back for this series, as I think it added a lot in previous episodes.
Anyways great work I’ve been loving all your recent vids! 🫡
This was an awesome video! I'd love to see more like it, I didn't expect this many unremarkable and odd places in Episode 1 Racer
I remember playing this back in the 90s. One of the few games I owned on N64. It looked great for its time and the sound was intense! We had some large speakers and the sound of the pod engines was crazy, at least to my little kid brain. No idea how that would hold up today. Guess I gotta find out!
6:11 fun fact: Oovo IV would later appear again in the game Star Wars: Bounty Hunter where Jango Fett would get his signature ship that Boba Fett would later inherit after his death.
I find it amusing that there are stars in front of the moon at 7:05. Texture was obviously just the lit portion of the moon lol
Amazing video, all of these locations by the way are 100% canon. The game is canon as it was playing on a screen in Episode II on coruscant in the club.
Just discovered this channel today and I've watched I think six of them now. Love this series, and this game is perfect for it! You could probably have found a dozen more odd spots in Episode 1 Racer and still not covered everything. Also, lol at the Neva Kee demonstration.
I cant tell you how excited I was for this! Not only do I love your videos, I have been playing this game again recently. Perfection. 👌🏼
Egg Controller you are a legend for the request and thank you Any Austin for the great video, Keep up the good work!
The more I think about this game and subject, the more I think that it really is just Uncanny: The Movie: The Video Game... and I love it.
This was probably my first videogame ever along Toy Story 2, and man this episode was special to me
I loved looking at the corners of the levels and just look around the background for all kinds of cool landmarks, I hope you can make more of these with this game
Btw: the prison level in the 4 champion stages has actually a whole zone on the asteroid field part, this game was always interesting since the racetracks in different planets all change layouts while keeping some assets closeby, it's neat
Btw: the credits in the n64 version say Princess Zelda under special thanks lol
I’ve never seen this game before, and I think you’re the only person that could get me to watch 15 minutes of just looking at random stuff in this game I’ve never seen before. Top quality content right here
Yessss I loved every inch of Oovo IV when I was a kid, it's great. I raced on that map so many times.
This is how ive always felt about N64 games, without having the words to express it. You have hit such a profound and niche vibe.
Moooorrree!!
aaaaah that "getting away from it all" feeling. that shit is the good stuff
I Speedrun this game! It's nice to see it get recognition. I know a few things which are a lot of fun about it:
- Traction and Framerate are linked, which is why the ports (which run at 60) feel so much stiffer than people might remember
- The fastest pod in the game is Ben Quadinaros, but not because of his max speed stat. With the maximum upgrade level on speed, all pods max out at the same speed value, making boost speed the only defining factor. Ben, while boosting, exceeds 1000
- Neva Kee is one of the highest acceleration pods in the game, so good instincts on that. I believe he's tied with Ark "Bumpy" Roose in that regard
- Just about every track has a skip at this point in the game's life cycle. The shorter list is probably places with no skips, and we keep trying to make that list even shorter!
- Those asteroids speeding up on Oovo IV is a known graphical glitch, and it's one of the funniest
- Our fastest player right now is one DomiraeSSB, who just won our annual tournament a few days ago. Known him since he started running the game, he's incredibly dedicated to his craft
- We've just begun to scratch the surface of modding this game, having successfully reverse engineered the texture and model blocks. We're still working on figuring out how to repack model block with fully altered model data so we can add custom vehicles and tracks. I say we, but it's really one very dedicated guy who's made massive strides in the last couple months. The rest of us don't know how to do half the stuff he's pulled off
- That track everybody remembers and hates, Abyss? World record is like 15 seconds or less. There's a braindead easy lap skip involving wan Sandage and driving up a wall. A quick search for "Abyss Skips Star wars Racer" should bring it up
This makes me want to get into the episode 1 racer scene dang
@@any_austin my lad, we'd be happy to have ya! I forget if RUclips has a DM system, but I can send you our discord link on a social media platform of your choosing if you so desire. We're a decently active community
@@digitalunity we got em boys
@@goofbrush I swear I know you from somewhere
Thanks for the mention Digital lol, advertising us like a good lad
this was one of my favorite n65 games as a kid. so many fun short cuts and secrets to find
I really love the aesthetic of all the late 90s/early 00s Star Wars games
6:22 if you drive into the corner there you can slide up along that seam where the fence meets the slanted wall and go out of bounds. I would just hang out there all the time as a kid
I love how the game basically forgets how big its own vehicles are. They're huge. The shoreline in the last location already makes you feel like a miniature, but when you think about how big the pod racer really is, you realize that the waves must be moving like half a mile up and down the beach. And the tent at the start must be as big as the biggest circus tents in history even though they're designed to resemble one of those stereotypical little shop tents from (insert the title of a movie that takes place in the middle east). I know they had to make parts of the environment huge because you're screaming past everything at mach 2 so you wouldn't be able to see things if they were too small, but it's still funny.
that intro with the reverb had me checking my tabs thinking i had several playing lol