Previously, on adventures in bloviating:
ESRB Ratings
Pitfall!
Pong
Now for today’s feature
Hidden RPGs of the TurboGrafx 16
At first glance, Final Lap Twin and World Court Tennis both appear to be aggressively ordinary takes on their respective genres’ most common tropes. Safely sitting beside all the other racing and sports games in the flyover territory of the TurboGrafx-16 games library.
Turbo games are universally strange. There’s an otherworldly feeling to playing them, like an alternative universe where we got Bonk the caveman instead of Mario Bros. Plumbing. Capcom Disney games are now janky, barely playable slogs and there’s no cultural reference points between gaming and blistered thumbs.
The bread and butter of its library consists of vertical and horizontal shoot-em-up games. These “shmups” are joined by a few terrific arcade ports, a handful of incredible pinball games and a surprisingly addicting military grand strategy game where you fight moon Nazis.
World Court Tennis’ tennis mode is a tennis game where you play tennis. Final Lap Twin is a racing game in the vein of Pole Position. The one-on-one and circuit racing modes are entertaining for around fifteen minutes before you’ve seen all it has to offer.
But, innocuously tucked in as the last menu option, each game lists respective ‘Quest’ modes. Selecting it transports you to strange and fantastical worlds where one specific hobby has become the universal all-engrossing recreational occupation.
Final Lap Twin’s Quest game mode is all about your burly dad trying to make you become the World Champion of street racing. You travel on foot, then instead of random battles you get in your car for one-on-one racing. Instead of experience points, you beat them at racing then yell at the sky about your dad while they count up your winnings.
You’re not going to be poisoned but your car is guaranteed to be cursed. You’re going to be alone on this adventure, but you can make friends with the upgraded wing tips and special tires you’ll pick up to make sure your opponents choke on whatever the strange practice track man puts in to make your car go faster. Probably best not to ask him.
World Court Tennis has the King of Tennis summoning you to defeat the Evil Tennis Kings who are hogging all of the good tennis courts. It’s a farcical storyline that has an approximate equivalent to the comedy value to Final Lap Twin’s grease monkey sugar daddy situation.
Final Lap Twin is the type of RPG you can breeze through, due to the purchasing of new parts instantly making your car capable of outclassing any other in the game fairly quickly if you know what you’re doing, or some of the good cheat codes.
World Court Tennis is a touch trickier, it takes a lot more skill to be good at 2D video tennis than 2D video racing. This can make the matchups quite a chore if you’re tired of going back and forth. But if you’re not the sort of person who would get tired of tennis will find a game that plays well and that doesn’t cut corners. I particularly enjoyed the whacking-a-tennis-ball sound effect.
Both games were made by Namco, and I can’t think of an earlier example for this type of hybrid RPG. It’s fascinating to see these games, even considering their somewhat simplistic presentation, make the combination look seamless. Neither title is a perfect game, but the problems do not arise from where the RPG and sports/racing gameplay blend together. Those moments are where the games shine brightest.
Final Lap Twin is currently a little more expensive than I’d be willing to pay for it, I wouldn’t spend more than twenty USD. World Court Tennis can be had for a little under that, and neither are in extremely high demand. Even now, they languish in obscurity, relegated to eternal underestimation by reputation. There’s nothing else like them in the TG16 library and they come highly recommended.
Written by Harmony B
Licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0
Originally written for RJB Report
ESRB Ratings
Pitfall!
Pong
Now for today’s feature
Hidden RPGs of the TurboGrafx 16
At first glance, Final Lap Twin and World Court Tennis both appear to be aggressively ordinary takes on their respective genres’ most common tropes. Safely sitting beside all the other racing and sports games in the flyover territory of the TurboGrafx-16 games library.
Turbo games are universally strange. There’s an otherworldly feeling to playing them, like an alternative universe where we got Bonk the caveman instead of Mario Bros. Plumbing. Capcom Disney games are now janky, barely playable slogs and there’s no cultural reference points between gaming and blistered thumbs.
The bread and butter of its library consists of vertical and horizontal shoot-em-up games. These “shmups” are joined by a few terrific arcade ports, a handful of incredible pinball games and a surprisingly addicting military grand strategy game where you fight moon Nazis.
World Court Tennis’ tennis mode is a tennis game where you play tennis. Final Lap Twin is a racing game in the vein of Pole Position. The one-on-one and circuit racing modes are entertaining for around fifteen minutes before you’ve seen all it has to offer.
But, innocuously tucked in as the last menu option, each game lists respective ‘Quest’ modes. Selecting it transports you to strange and fantastical worlds where one specific hobby has become the universal all-engrossing recreational occupation.
Final Lap Twin’s Quest game mode is all about your burly dad trying to make you become the World Champion of street racing. You travel on foot, then instead of random battles you get in your car for one-on-one racing. Instead of experience points, you beat them at racing then yell at the sky about your dad while they count up your winnings.
You’re not going to be poisoned but your car is guaranteed to be cursed. You’re going to be alone on this adventure, but you can make friends with the upgraded wing tips and special tires you’ll pick up to make sure your opponents choke on whatever the strange practice track man puts in to make your car go faster. Probably best not to ask him.
World Court Tennis has the King of Tennis summoning you to defeat the Evil Tennis Kings who are hogging all of the good tennis courts. It’s a farcical storyline that has an approximate equivalent to the comedy value to Final Lap Twin’s grease monkey sugar daddy situation.
Final Lap Twin is the type of RPG you can breeze through, due to the purchasing of new parts instantly making your car capable of outclassing any other in the game fairly quickly if you know what you’re doing, or some of the good cheat codes.
World Court Tennis is a touch trickier, it takes a lot more skill to be good at 2D video tennis than 2D video racing. This can make the matchups quite a chore if you’re tired of going back and forth. But if you’re not the sort of person who would get tired of tennis will find a game that plays well and that doesn’t cut corners. I particularly enjoyed the whacking-a-tennis-ball sound effect.
Both games were made by Namco, and I can’t think of an earlier example for this type of hybrid RPG. It’s fascinating to see these games, even considering their somewhat simplistic presentation, make the combination look seamless. Neither title is a perfect game, but the problems do not arise from where the RPG and sports/racing gameplay blend together. Those moments are where the games shine brightest.
Final Lap Twin is currently a little more expensive than I’d be willing to pay for it, I wouldn’t spend more than twenty USD. World Court Tennis can be had for a little under that, and neither are in extremely high demand. Even now, they languish in obscurity, relegated to eternal underestimation by reputation. There’s nothing else like them in the TG16 library and they come highly recommended.
Written by Harmony B
Licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike 3.0
Originally written for RJB Report
