Cruis'n: Arcade Racing ft. Doom and Fast & Furious

What's this? An arcade racing series that made its way to handhelds using the DOOM Engine? Welcome back to THE SITH ARCHIVES OF DARTH FANDOM, and today's topic is Cruis'n, a good old arcade racing series consisting of six games and a whole lot of fun. This post will span the Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Wii, Switch and of course, arcade, all in the lead up to another special arcade racing post in the future. Without further ado, let's get cruis'n.

Cruiiiiiisiiiiin, yeah, Cruis'n USAAAAAA
Image credit: Arcade History

Cruis'n started back in September 1994, first appearing on Midway's V Unit arcade system, an arcade system consisting of only four games. Cruis'n USA, the first title in the series, is quite a simple game: pick a car, pick a track, drive. The game takes place across the USA, with you starting off in San Francisco and finishing the game in Washington, D.C. Cruis'n USA was one of two games, alongside Killer Instinct's original arcade version, to be part of Nintendo's "Ultra 64" lineup of arcade systems. Ultra 64 was eventually renamed "Nintendo 64" (the console we know today), and Nintendo ceased development for arcades. In December of 1996, Cruis'n USA was ported to Nintendo 64, albeit in a slightly different form, with a few differences: the woman who awards a trophy at the end of a race is wearing more clothes, some billboards were removed, killable animals were removed and Bill Clinton is no longer bathing with bikini girls in the back of a car. In March, 2008, Cruis'n USA was rereleased for the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console, but before this comes the second installment in the original arcade trilogy.

Bye bye, Bill.
Image credit: Atlas Obscura

Cruis'n WOOO-OOOO-OOOOOOOOORLD!
Image credit: GameFabrique

November 1996's Cruis'n World is a vast improvement when compared to USA. While keeping the same overall style of gameplay, World is, as the title suggests, not just based in the USA. You get to race in 14 different countries (you even get to race on the Moon in the N64 version!), you have more cars to race in, up to four players can play in multiplayer and this game introduced stunts. World's June 1998 Nintendo 64 port was also more successful when compared to Cruis'n USA, and is widely regarded as the best of the N64 ports. World was the third of four games to run on Midway's V Unit system, after Cruis'n USA and War Gods, with the fourth and final title on the system being Off Road Challenge, the fourth title in Midway's Off Road series. Cruis'n World is the second game in the original trilogy of Cruis'n games, so let's talk about the third one.

War Gods has a playable character called Kabuki Jo. Awesome.
Image credit: VicioJuegos / YouTube

Just look at this flyer.
Image credit: Jtalledo / Wikimedia Commons

Cruis'n Exotica, released for arcades in 1999, is a strange game. As you can imagine, Exotica is an exotic game, and certainly changed the tone from relatively normal to all-out funky. No longer are you playing as an unseen driver hidden behind a black window in a 1963 Chevrolette Corvette, because you are now a Martian driving in some strange car with rocket boosters! Is driving on the Moon too silly for you? Well, you can drive in Atlantis, the dinosaur-infested Amazon and Mars! This third entry ran on Midway's Zeus II hardware, which was only use in one other game: The Grid, a 2000 arcade third-person shooter featuring some characters from the Mortal Kombat franchise. Exotica was also Cruis'n's debut title on handhelds, receiving a Game Boy Color on November 6, 2000. Developed by Crawfish Interactive, creators of some of my favourite Game Boy games (Street Fighter Alpha 3, Ecks vs. Sever and Ballistic: Ecks. vs Sever), Exotica on the GBC offers a similar experience to its N64 and arcade counterparts, albeit in a much more simplified and slightly less enjoyable way. Cruis'n Exotica marked the end of the Cruis'n series on Nintendo 64, but not the series as a whole.

It's not the worst, but there are certainly better GBC games and ports.
Image credit: GameFabrique

We got this...

...from this.
Image credits: World of Longplays / YouTube
Lee's Outlook / WordPress 

The Game Boy Advance saw the release of Cruis'n Velocity in November, 2001, which has quite an interesting story behind it. Velocity was developed by Graphic State, an English company who started off their business on the Game Boy Color with LEGO Stunt Rally. Their second released game, Cruis'n Velocity, ran on the engine being used for the then-in-development first-person shooter Dark Arena. Dark Arena's engine is a modified version of DOOM's Jaguar engine for GBA, which in itself is a modified version of the id Tech 1 engine. So, Cruis'n Velocity runs on the DOOM engine. Wow. If you've played Dark Arena, or even DOOM II on GBA, you may recognise some of the visual style and texture quality. In terms of gameplay, Velocity is better than Exotica's Game Boy Color port but still not quite as fun as the original N64 games. It's still quite strange why they would use a first-person shooter engine for a racing game when plenty of other racing games had come out perfectly on the GBA (V-Rally 3 is an excellent example), and the limitations of the DOOM engine do sometimes act as a detriment to Velocity as a whole. Well, that's DOOM covered. So how does Fast & Furious fit into the grand scheme of things?

Raw Thrills was formed in 2001 as an arcade game company, consisting of former Midway employees and starting off making gambling games. Raw Thrills' first title was Target: Terror, a 2004 light gun shooter for arcade systems that eventually saw release on the Nintendo Wii, published by Konami. Their second game was The Fast and The Furious, released in July, 2004, that sported oddly similar gameplay to the Cruis'n series. Like the film it is based off of, The Fast and The Furious received many sequels: The Fast and The Furious: Super Bikes, a bike-based game released in 2006; The Fast and The Furious: Drift, a game based off of the third film in the Fast & Furious franchise, released in 2007; and The Fast and The Furious: SuperCars, a spin-off released in 2010. SuperCars received a revision after the Fast & Furious license expired, and Super Bikes received two non-F&F sequels in 2010 and 2019, respectively. However, the original F&F game from 2004 received a Wii port in the form of Cruis'n in November, 2007. Cruis'n is essentially F&F 2004 but it's even worse and it's on the Wii. Well, that's Cruis'n on the Wii in a nutshell. Until 2017, it seemed like the Cruis'n series was over, but one more game was yet to be released.

Spot the difference.
Image credit: The Gaming and Hobby Channel / YouTube

Cruis'n's back.
Image credit: Best Buy

Cruis'n Blast is the latest game in the Cruis'n series, released in 2017 as Raw Thrills' 31st game. Being the first true Cruis'n game since 2001 (name changes don't count), Blast was quite exciting for Cruis'n fans. It added tons of new maps, tons of new cars, looks great graphically, the visual aesthetic is beautiful and it takes the silly factor of Exotica to a whole new level. Blast's 2017 version was good enough to receive a Nintendo Switch port, published by GameMill Entertainment (most well known for Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing) in September, 2021, almost 20 years since Velocity appeared on the GBA. Unlike previous arcade to Nintendo ports of the Cruis'n series, Blast adds in tons of new content, including 24 new maps. Never before have you been able to cruise (pun intended) through the streets of alien-invaded London as a Triceratops alongside a fire engine and a Pegasus. I'm not making that up. Cruis'n is truly at its peak with Blast, and it may be difficult to top it.

So that's the Cruis'n series, the first in a collection of blog posts on arcade racing series. I'm still divided on what I'm going to blog about next (trust me, there's a lot of stuff), but I hope that you enjoyed this blast, or should I say cruise, through the past. Well, that's a wrap on THE SITH ARCHIVES OF DARTH FANDOM!

**Cruis'n Blast is available on Nintendo eShop**

From the Creators of Tomb Raider Comes... Streets of Rage?

You read the title. So... how exactly did Core Design, the developers of the original Tomb Raider games, make a Streets of Rage game? Welcome back to THE SITH ARCHIVES OF DARTH FANDOM, and today I'm going to be covering Fighting Force, a two-game series originally conceived as a 3D version of the Streets of Rage series that received one sequel that changed everything about the first game and caused a second sequel to be scrapped.

This in 3D.
Image credit: NME

Fighting Force was released back in October, 1997, a year after Core Design's hot new game Tomb Raider. Now, I will make a BIG confession here. I've never played ANY Tomb Raider games. I know, I'm a disappointment, but I will play the games some day. Anyways, Fighting Force was not always Fighting Force. As you can see in the title, Fighting Force was originally pitched to SEGA by Core Design as a Streets of Rage game and back then was intended as the fourth entry in the series (Streets of Rage 4 only came out in 2020, remember?), with a working title of "Streets of Rage 3D". However, SEGA declined the offer, saying that they were planning their own continuation of the SoR series (look how long it took for that to happen). No longer being constrained to the SEGA Saturn, Core Design rather moved to create a multi-platform title, which is where Fighting Force begins.

Turns out "3D Streets of Rage" WAS released... but it's just Streets of Rage on 3DS and still in 2D.
Image credit: Nintendo World Report

Core Design had Eidos back as their publisher, as they had with the original Tomb Raider the year before. This is where the final version of Fighting Force began production. The game was being developed for the original PlayStation, eventually to be ported to Windows, Nintendo 64 and SEGA Saturn, its originally intended platform. This was not how the chain of events played out, as the PlayStation (known in Japan as "Metal Fist", unrelated to Vivid Games' mobile game of the same name) and Windows versions were released, the Nintendo 64 and SEGA Saturn versions were nowhere to be seen.

Metal Fist!
Image credit: Retroplace

Fighting Force's Nintendo 64 version, entitled Fighting Force 64 like many N64 ports of the time, was originally shown off at E3 1998, though the game was cancelled by Eidos for unknown reasons. Los Angeles-based company Crave Entertainment bought the rights to Fighting Force 64 and released it in June 1999. The N64 has some differences to the main version, mainly graphical. As mentioned before, a SEGA Saturn version was also in production but was also cancelled, despite being completed. Eidos, like with the N64 port, dropped out of the Saturn port for unknown reasons, and SEGA Europe offered to publish the port but also dropped the idea in 1997. Luckily, in 2008, Hidden Palace contributor drx released a playable prototype of Fighting Force's SEGA Saturn port, entitled "Judgement Force". This was not the end of Fighting Force, though. The game was successful enough to be granted a sequel, and December 1999 saw the release of Fighting Force 2.

Hawk's final PSX rendition.
Image credit: Darius320 / YouTube

Hawk's original Saturn rendition.
Image credit: Hidden Palace

Fighting Force 2 is a drastically different game. Where-as the first game was a storyless, street beat-em-up, single-player and multiplayer game, Fighting Force 2 is a more grounded action-adventure game that follows a clearer story and, for some reason, removed the multiplayer. The sequel also only features one playable character, whereas the original featured four. Fighting Force 2 was only released on the original PlayStation and SEGA Dreamcast to rather negative reviews, killing the planned sequel. However, there is still enough information to piece together what could have been Fighting Force 3, so let's dive into it.

Doesn't look like Streets of Rage anymore.
Image credit: IGN

Fighting Force 3 began development in 2002, which saw the release of Core Design's PS2 platformer Herdy Gerdy and their GBA game Tomb Raider: The Prophecy. Planned to be released on PS2, Xbox and possibly the Nintendo GameCube, Fighting Force 3 returned to the first game's 3D beat-em-up style, while bringing back all characters back from the original and adding in Jill, a new playable character. It also would have features multiplayer again, something missing from the second game. Sadly, Core Design's June 2003 game Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness was unsuccessful and caused Fighting Force 3 to halt development and eventually be cancelled, eventually leading to Core Design's shut down a few years later. Unseen64 has quite a few screenshots and clips on Fighting Force 3, which you can find here.

That's more like it.
Image credit: Monokama / Unseen64

So that's Fighting Force, a failed 3D version of Streets of Rage that became an unsuccessful franchise, cancelled after its second game. I've got tons of upcoming posts planned, so keep watching this space. Well, that's a wrap on THE SITH ARCHIVES OF DARTH FANDOM!

How to Play in English - Earth Defense Forces 2 Portable: A PSP Must Play

What's this? One of my favourite PSP games that is sadly only available in Japanese, finally playable in the English language? Welcome back to THE SITH ARCHIVES OF DARTH FANDOM, and today I will be discussing how to play Earth Defense Forces 2 Portable's English version. I would just like to thank Zenade, creator of the Tech Demo site and blog. He really was a massive help with this translation, but other than that, I have no idea what to right for an intro, so let's get right into it.

Step 1. Make sure you have an EDF2 Portable ROM

I'm not going to show you how to get an EDF2 Portable ROM. Go find out yourself.

Step 2. Download PPSSPP emulator for PC

Pretty simple, just click this link, extract to a folder of your choice and boom, you have the emulator.

Step 3. Set up PPSSPP

Once you've extracted the emulator, open PPSSPPWindows64.exe and this will install any last necessary files or folders. If you want, you can play around with some of the other settings as well, but only if you know what you're doing.

Step 4. Download HxD Hex Editor

Click this link, install and you've got your own hex editor up and running.

Step 5. Find your US EDF2.DAT file

Open your EDF2 ISO file (I would recommend using 7Zip), enter "PSP_GAME" folder, then "USRDIR", then "data" and finally "usa" folder. Here you should find a file "EDF2.DAT". Extract it and move on to the next step.

Step 6. Download VFS extractor and extract the .DAT

Click this link and extract its files to "C:\VFS". Rename "VFSôWèJ" to "VFS" and move your extracted "EDF2.DAT" file to "C:\VFS". Drap and drop "EDF2.DAT" onto "VFS.bat" and you should see a cmd window pop up. After a few seconds, a folder should have appeared in "C:\VFS" called "EDF2".

Step 7. Sort the folders

In your EDF2 folder, find "MISSION016", "MISSION053" and "MISSION055" folders and delete them. Rename "_MISSION16", "_MISSION053" and "_MISSION055" to "MISSION016", "MISSION053" and "MISSION055", respectively. Delete the "MISSION044B" folder. Go back to where you extracted PPSSPP, enter the "memstick" folder and create a new folder called "EDF2 PORTABLE". Move the "GAMESEQUENCE" folder from "EDF2" into the "EDF2 PORTABLE" folder, and then create a new folder in "EDF2 PORTABLE" called "MISSION". From here, move all the "MISSION001"-"MISSION999" folders into "MISSION". Also create a folder called "WEAPON" in "EDF2 PORTABLE" and copy the "WEAPONCOMMENTLIST.VFS" file from "C:\VFS\EDF2\WEAPON" to "[PPSSPP folder]\memstick\EDF2 PORTABLE\WEAPON".

Step 8. Sort the last few files

Open HxD, select "File" and then "New". Make sure the box on the left of "Windows (ANSI)" reads "8". If not, select "8" from the dropdown list. Type in the number "0" until there are 8 dots (........) under "Decoded text". Save this file to "[PPSSPP folder]\memstick\EDF2 PORTABLE\GAMESEQUENCE" as "MissionCommentList0.Vfs". Go back to the "[PPSSPP folder]\memstick\EDF2 PORTABLE\GAMESEQUENCE" and copy the "MissionCommentList0.Vfs" file 5 times, renaming the copies to "MissionCommentList1.Vfs", "MissionCommentList2.Vfs", "MissionCommentList3.Vfs", "MissionCommentList4.Vfs" and "MissionCommentListText.Vfs", respectively.

Step 9. Final setup

Open PPSSPPWindows64.exe and press "Load...". From here, find your EDF2 Portable ROM and open it. As the game is opening, press the Esc key and select "Cheats". Click on "Edit cheat file" and copy and paste the following text:

_C0 ENGLISH MISSION TEXT CODE

_L 0x20141B24 0x27A4FE00

_L 0x20141B40 0x0A200400

_L 0x20141B4C 0x8E040004

_L 0x20141DC0 0x34020000

_L 0x20001000 0x27BDFE00

_L 0x20001004 0x3C050880

_L 0x20001008 0x34A51038

_L 0x2000100C 0x0E24516C

_L 0x20001010 0x02203025

_L 0x20001014 0x02002025

_L 0x20001018 0x0E250730

_L 0x2000101C 0x27A50000

_L 0x20001020 0x10400003

_L 0x20001024 0x27BD0200

_L 0x20001028 0x0A250728

_L 0x2000102C 0x34020001

_L 0x20001030 0x0A2506D2

_L 0x20001038 0x6D746166

_L 0x2000103C 0x2F3A3073

_L 0x20001040 0x32464445

_L 0x20001044 0x524F5020

_L 0x20001048 0x4C424154

_L 0x2000104C 0x73252F45

_L 0x20001050 0x00000000

Save the file, press "Back" and then "Continue". After the "NOW LOADING" text disappears, press these keys using your preferred controller/keyboard: Circle, type in your name, START, Circle, DPAD-Left, Circle, Circle, Circle and then START. You should be at the main menu. Press the Esc key, select "Cheats", tick the "ENGLISH MISSION TEXT CODE" box, press "Back", press "Continue", press Circle, Circle, Circle, START, START, DPAD-Down, DPAD-Left, Circle. Press Circle again and your briefing should be English!

This was a bit of a rushed post, but I hope it's useful, and again, great thanks to Zenade. Well, that's a wrap on THE SITH ARCHIVES OF DARTH FANDOM!