Fatal Racing / Whiplash S3 ViRGE OEM Release Finally Found & Preserved

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  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024

ความคิดเห็น • 88

  • @ctrlaltrees
    @ctrlaltrees  2 ปีที่แล้ว +13

    Shoutout to the "what's so legendary about the Voodoo cards?" guy from my last video btw

  • @ilikecakeandbiscuits
    @ilikecakeandbiscuits ปีที่แล้ว +7

    This and Carmageddon are my favourite racing games ever. Nothing has captured the feel of driving and the exhilaration of the tracks the same for me. Also the ai competition was believable. I still play it every year on impossible (works well in steam deck!)

    • @NK-kh5qs
      @NK-kh5qs 11 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      The AI of this game still amazes me 30 years later.

  • @weepingscorpion8739
    @weepingscorpion8739 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    Man, I love Fatal Racing so much. I used to play it with a mate so many times all three cups, and when he moved, I started playing the game with my sister and spent even more hours, days, weeks, months playing it. Always on Impossible too and always on Championship mode. However, I don't remember it being that choppy on my 100 MHz Pentium 1 with 32 MB of RAM and an S3 card (I think it was a Trio though). Also, I did have a Voodoo 1 installed in that machine but I do remember not liking the high resolution version so I always played the low resolution version. Yeah, a bit weird I suppose. Still, I love this game, and I'd love to set up a DOS machine for streaming this game, maybe even playing through the full game with my sister in split screen mode.
    As for the other robots in the European version: Robby and Gort are from Forbidden Planet and The Day The Earth Stood Still respectively. Eddie and Marvin are from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Bob and Vincent are from The Black Hole, and finally Slave and Zen are from Blake's 7.

  • @cmdrarcturus8197
    @cmdrarcturus8197 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    At 3:17, some names that stand out:
    Reise Wagon 2: Robby (most likely Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet)
    Reise Wagon 1: Gort (certainly the robot from the original The Day the Earth Stood Still)
    Mission1: Marvin (Either Marvin the Paranoid Android from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or possibly Marvin the Martian)
    Million 2: BOB (AKA old B.O.B., the old beat-up robot from Disney's The Black Hole)
    Million 1: VINCENT (the more modern robot from Disney's The Black Hole)
    Global 2: Voyager (maybe Star Trek: TMP's V'Ger?)
    Global 1: Nomad (MK-15c space probe from Star Trek: TOS, S02E08, The Changeling)

  • @BrassicGamer
    @BrassicGamer 2 ปีที่แล้ว +9

    I did love this game back in the day, even though it ran poorly on my 486DX4. Replaying it recently was great on my Pentium MMX, though sound effects irritate me much more easily these days and that's one of the worst parts of this game. Hugely impressed by your preservation efforts, regardless of the Virge's reputation.

    • @theonlymoo5e
      @theonlymoo5e ปีที่แล้ว

      I started playing Whiplash on a 386 LOL

  • @KomradeMikhail
    @KomradeMikhail 2 ปีที่แล้ว +6

    Did you ever get around to testing the Virge on a Pentium without MMX, or an i486 ?...
    The 3D Accelerator Wars made a much larger impact on those of us without MMX.

    • @ctrlaltrees
      @ctrlaltrees  2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Not yet but it's definitely something I'm very interested in for a future video. My S3 journey isn't over yet!

    • @MarkTheMorose
      @MarkTheMorose 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      @@ctrlaltrees S3 Virge: the 3D accelerator that never starts giving.

  • @Garoninja
    @Garoninja 2 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    You were wrong on the internet AGAIN!? HOW DARE YOU

  • @RinoaL
    @RinoaL 6 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Now that I have one of these cards on a 233mhz system as well so this has become extremely useful to me.

  • @konradkierzkowski1339
    @konradkierzkowski1339 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Dave - probably reference to Hal 9000 from Space Odyssey
    Hal - well... yeah
    Nomad - reference to computer from War Games
    Bishop - reference to android from Aliens
    Marvin - the paranoid android
    Vincent - robot from Black Hole
    SAL - Depressed AI from Red Dwarf
    Mikey - probably reference to Metal Mickey
    Just my guessses ;)

  • @khajiit8221
    @khajiit8221 8 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    Nice vid, loved playing this game back in the day. Still have my original copy bought brand new in 1995 in the UK from a shop called "Game Zone" I think.

  • @VicGreenBitcoin
    @VicGreenBitcoin ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Hi I had the demo version of Fatal Racing, I remember when you jumped on the ramp you could sometimes see another race track just before the flats in the background. Unfortunately, with your version in the video it is green, but it may be visible with a different setting or video card. Even if you drive a really perfect race, the game (the Demo version) will tilt and you can continue racing without the demo always stopping.

  • @LeeMc007
    @LeeMc007 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Noticed one of the names was "Zen", that triggered the memory a bit, it was the name of the ship's computer in Blakes Seven iirc (yes, I'm old, deal with it) 😂😂

  • @MKT_19
    @MKT_19 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Greatest arcade racer of all time

  • @Xoferif
    @Xoferif 2 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    I fancy the "open-wheel thingy" is meant to be a Formula 1 car. 😃

    • @ctrlaltrees
      @ctrlaltrees  2 ปีที่แล้ว +3

      As a Brit I reckon so too, but I didn't want to offend the Indycar fans in the audience. This is the internet after all 😁

  • @JoshRiolu
    @JoshRiolu 9 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    I still have a cue/bin pair for Whiplash laying around...

  • @AvexFuddle
    @AvexFuddle 2 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    I do love the solid graphics of these 90’s era racers. Great stuff 😊👍

  • @paulreese7788
    @paulreese7788 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Hey if it’s any consolation the whole s3 Virgo was a disaster itself but cool to see the Virgo version of another game.

  • @RetrogradeScene
    @RetrogradeScene 2 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    Great job at documenting it all!!

  • @fungo6631
    @fungo6631 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    4:47 That's because even the VGA 320x200 mode is actually output as 640x400 (actually 320x400) on the video output side. I don't think it's upscaled even, but simply that the 320x240 mode uses line doubling to get the 31 KHz horizontal refresh.

  • @GamerGee
    @GamerGee ปีที่แล้ว +1

    5:25 you’re supposed to turn right to stay on track.

  • @ncot_tech
    @ncot_tech 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Not sure why, but there's something I quite like about software rendered 3D. Sure, the 3dfx version of Quake 2 is amazing with its coloured lighting, and I know there's none of that weird texture swimming that happens when hardware calculates 3D... but that short clip of the 3dfx version of this game with its razor sharp polygons covered with the same low-res textures just looks a bit ... naff. It's like the low resolution software rendering hides all that.

    • @ctrlaltrees
      @ctrlaltrees  2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      I know what you mean. Software rendered mode is how I remember playing Quake back in the day and anything else just looks off to me. It's an aesthetic that needs to make a comeback!

  • @pathfindercast
    @pathfindercast 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    I forgot about my S3 virge card. I didn't like that card as it would often crash my games. I was glad to get a voodoo card. After watching this I decided to play Fatal Racing for a bit. Interesting game play. Although it did not age well with the difficulty level settings.

  • @xeroniris
    @xeroniris 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    It's very interesting to see what the S3 Virge was actually like for DOS gamers, since my only experience of the chip was in a Cybervision 64/3D card which I used at various times in an Amiga 1200 tower, an Amiga 2000, and an Amiga 4000 (only briefly in the latter, I soon upgraded the 4000 to a mediator pci tower with voodoo 3, and the cv64/3d went back in the 2000).

  • @lukasjozef1774
    @lukasjozef1774 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    I remember Fatal Racing but I played just the Shareware version. Screamer have had much much better gameplay and graphics.
    Excellent video.

    • @VicGreenBitcoin
      @VicGreenBitcoin ปีที่แล้ว

      Yes, I had the demo/shareware version to! If you managed to make a perfect race, no hits and full speed all the time the demo version did not stop and you could race the whole thing.

  • @jtsiomb
    @jtsiomb ปีที่แล้ว

    One of my favourite games back then. Used to play a lot of split-screen with friends on my 486 (in low-res of course). I thought I remembered being jealous of a friend who bought a Cirrus Logic VLB card for his 486 and was able to run it on 640x480 (I only had an ISA card on the 486), but I conducted a recent experiment a couple of years ago, and it runs like ass even on a pentium with a PCI card in high-res, so I don't know what I remember any more.
    As for the S3 Virge, I had one on my pentium later on, but never even knew it was supposed to be a 3D accelerator. I bought it for its 2D acceleration, and it did that very well, so I have no hard feelings against it. Later on I paired it with a voodoo2 when I wanted 3D acceleration in games.

  • @mybrainisshortcake
    @mybrainisshortcake ปีที่แล้ว

    oooh, I had an S3 Virge in my Compaq Presario (4834?) PII MMX 266mhz. I couldn't play *anything* with it and got a Voodoo III 16mb quickly! I think Midtown Madness and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy were the games I played on the Virge.

  • @djTASS
    @djTASS 2 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    5:25 - What a trip down memory lane! I am 32 years old and I still love this game! I remember you had to switch your camera view to the first person while driving through those "corkscrews" to be able to drive through them.

    • @ctrlaltrees
      @ctrlaltrees  2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Yes! Those corkscrews are impossible! 😆

    • @theonlymoo5e
      @theonlymoo5e ปีที่แล้ว

      @@ctrlaltreesNot if you were going top speed. LOL I wish there was a version remastered for Windows 7 & higher LOL

    • @jtsiomb
      @jtsiomb ปีที่แล้ว +3

      Nah, the trick was following the outside of the corkscrew, and they turn out to be consistently easy even in 3rd person view. Just keep following the outside curb.

    • @MrDreamer60
      @MrDreamer60 9 หลายเดือนก่อน

      ​@@jtsiombi always thought it was random!

  • @memeadam
    @memeadam 5 หลายเดือนก่อน

    My childhood Windows 95 PC from PC world in the UK came with it called Whiplash instead of Fatal Racing.

  • @Caleb-fv5fp
    @Caleb-fv5fp ปีที่แล้ว

    Software should always be in 320x200/240 maybe 300x400 for a faster cpu imo. 480p is only for 3d acceleration

  • @kyrieeleison1905
    @kyrieeleison1905 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    geez the s3 version is running at about half the software versions resolution ... (s3 = 320 x 240, software = 640x480) .. u can roughly see that by getting a ruler and measuring the text and small HUD bars in the bottom left and comparing them... the s3 texts and HUD is twice the size .. ie it is running at half the resolution..
    i would say if u run the software version at 320x240 there would be virtually no difference in frame rate..
    is there a option in the game menu to just the resolution?
    the comparison needs to be done at the same resolution to see if anything is actually happening..
    from the looks of it HP or s3 or the original game dev has put zero time and money into this s3 version..
    and really this should be done on something like p166 as that was a very decent cpu when the game came out .. .the mmx233 was a year later in mid 97 .. the s3 may have helped more on a weaker cpu

  • @loganjorgensen
    @loganjorgensen 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    That is a gap I've heard about in software archiving, certain bespoke versions of games lost to all until they are filed. Nice Dwarf reference, I always kind of hoped for more merchandise or a computer game of Red Dwarf.
    I'll follow up my comments on ViRGE too heh. In hindsight I think their accelerators should have been like a hybrid SS/PS1/N64 graphics renderer in terms of screen resolution and turning effects on & off for different results. Like if you turned off all the filtering and such you'd get higher frame rates in software style rendered visual quality, if you turned everything on you'd drop screen resolution with a myriad of VESA like modes until the frame rate was where you wanted it Egs. 640x480 down to 256x192.
    Since it didn't have that type of control many simply fought with it, trying to make it accelerate something, anything. Same could be said of the rather low amounts of video memory many of the early 3D cards had too, where later games simply wouldn't run on them because there wasn't settings optimal to their limit.

  • @AndrewHelgeCox
    @AndrewHelgeCox 24 วันที่ผ่านมา

    S3 Savage line had some chops for the low end, caveat driver quality.

  • @theonlymoo5e
    @theonlymoo5e ปีที่แล้ว

    I fondly remember playing Whiplash. My friend & I got very good at all the tracks in the game (including the cheat mode circuit.

  • @msigamingz4184
    @msigamingz4184 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    Bro your driving is awful, tracks are perfect specially after you hear That is a Lap Recooooooooooorrrrrdddddd 🎉🎉🎉

  • @eobet
    @eobet 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    This was a lot of fun on LAN! I (unfortunately) went with the Creative 3D Blaster so this was one of the few games which supported that…

  • @AndrewHelgeCox
    @AndrewHelgeCox 24 วันที่ผ่านมา

    Have you tried the software renderer on a modern multigHz PC?

  • @mousqy
    @mousqy 10 หลายเดือนก่อน

    i had this graphic card ...i even upgraded it by buying additional 2MB vram

  • @pacshb
    @pacshb 7 หลายเดือนก่อน

    You have to drive some of the tracks in first-person mode rather than chase cam mode, otherwise it's too hard to position the car correctly for jumps and loops

  • @cd-lf8xm
    @cd-lf8xm 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Thank you for putting this video up. These early 3d patches and implementations were often random and incomplete but preserving them is very important. Cheers!

  • @EasyMac308
    @EasyMac308 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Bishop was Robert Redford's character in Sneakers.

  • @trash_miner
    @trash_miner 11 หลายเดือนก่อน

    I got one of these recently i did not realize they were 3d cards! Time to try these games out!

  • @death2all79zx
    @death2all79zx 22 วันที่ผ่านมา

    They should have kept girly.

  • @luispereztasso
    @luispereztasso 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Just discovered your channel after having a glimpse of memories about all the afternoons after middle school playing whiplash in my old lovely Compaq Presario, and, after almost 20 years, I didn't know about the cheat code until now.
    Subscribed.

    • @ctrlaltrees
      @ctrlaltrees  2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Thanks for the kind comment and the subscription! Glad to have you here 🙂

  • @nicolasdecicilia9195
    @nicolasdecicilia9195 8 หลายเดือนก่อน

    GREAT GAME!!! GREAT!

  • @RetroSegaDev
    @RetroSegaDev 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    This does remind me of Screamer but I seem to remember Screamer being more pleasant on the eye!

    • @ctrlaltrees
      @ctrlaltrees  2 ปีที่แล้ว

      Screamer was definitely the better game!

    • @theonlymoo5e
      @theonlymoo5e ปีที่แล้ว

      @@ctrlaltrees, give me the graphics of screamer, but the tracks of Whiplash 😁

  • @CinePhil101
    @CinePhil101 4 หลายเดือนก่อน

    ❤❤❤

  • @MexLuthor1970
    @MexLuthor1970 2 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    SLAVE and ZEN are ship computers from cult British sci-fi Blakes 7 :)

  • @custardo
    @custardo 2 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    SAL is HAL 9000's twin "sister" in 2010: odyssey 2. Bob and Vincent are the two robots from Disney's The Black Hole.

    • @ctrlaltrees
      @ctrlaltrees  2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Thanks! I've never seen The Black Hole, very interesting 🙂

    • @Xoferif
      @Xoferif 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      @@ctrlaltrees Give it a look, there's nothing quite like it! I can't quite believe it's a product of 70s Disney - it's actually pretty dark for a PG film. 😃

  • @alexwalton9461
    @alexwalton9461 2 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    I must have been the only person in the world stupid enough to buy the more expensive Diamond Stealth 3D 3000 with the Virge VX. I found out later that it was slower than the cheaper model.

    • @ctrlaltrees
      @ctrlaltrees  2 ปีที่แล้ว

      Oh yes! Slower RAM I think?

    • @lmcgregoruk
      @lmcgregoruk ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Well a lot of people bought GeForce 4 MX's which were basically beefed up GeForce 2's thinking they were better than GeForce 3's

  • @SUNSHINE-t-m
    @SUNSHINE-t-m 2 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    yay! preservation!!!

  • @JakeWorrell
    @JakeWorrell 2 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    RE the robots: Marvin will probably be a reference 'the paranoid android' from The Hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy. He has terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side you know

    • @ctrlaltrees
      @ctrlaltrees  2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Ah yes, I forgot to mention those! Good spot though 🙂

    • @Xoferif
      @Xoferif 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      "Eddie" is the computer on the starship The Heart of Gold, also from Hitch-Hiker's.

  • @Trusteft
    @Trusteft 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    So one would buy this 3D card to get to play the game slightly smoother, but at lower resolution.
    So why not not buy the card and just lower the resolution?
    I wish I could remember if I had this card back then. I think my first 3D card was a Mystique so probably not.
    Anyway, good video, thank you for sharing and well done on the adequate green screen.

    • @ctrlaltrees
      @ctrlaltrees  2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      Certainly explains why this card was nicknamed the "3D Decelerator" at the time. Its rendering still leaned heavily on the CPU and so it didn't really provide any real benefit. Although as I discovered in my previous video, there are a few games that seemed to be marginally better than the software renderer - not enough to justify actually buying one of these though, IMO 😉

  • @custardo
    @custardo 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    It certainly looks like the bilinear filter was the only thing that was added. I'm pretty sure the unaccelerated performance in 320x200 is not that far off of what the Virge brings to the table. Getting all Virge supported games is great though!

    • @SianaGearz
      @SianaGearz 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      I can't even see bilinear. Where?
      I don't suspect the patch is working properly. Virge has "free" bilinear (only slightly slower) but here textures are still nearest; and Virge is easily fast enough, that without transparency and with optimised drawing order, it will spit out decent framerate at 640x480 at best, but with very wavering performance. So you could go from 320x200 software rendered and really smooth to 640x480 Virge accelerated that was maybe faster or comparable on average, but very uneven and feeling worse, at least in games like Terminal Velocity, Actua Soccer, the games i had Virge versions of.
      Just because a release is bundled and maybe even checks for hardware family, doesn't mean it actually runs correctly using the S3D API.
      I'd say the worst thing about most S3D Virge releases is that you get locked into 640x480; but the cards are really not quite there, and 400x300 or 512x384 would make for a splendid compromise.

    • @custardo
      @custardo 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      @@SianaGearz A bilinear filter applied over the output image, not the textures

  • @thepirategamerboy12
    @thepirategamerboy12 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    I've tried the 3Dfx Voodoo patch, and tbh I prefer the look of the software renderer. The texture filtering on the clouds looks pretty awful, for example.

    • @ctrlaltrees
      @ctrlaltrees  2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      I definitely need to give it a try at some point. Some of those early Voodoo games were definitely weird looking!

  • @yuan.pingchen3056
    @yuan.pingchen3056 ปีที่แล้ว

    How to confirm or verify the fatal racing utilize the S3-Virge 3d acceleration? there is no direct3D API in that age....

  • @MarkTheMorose
    @MarkTheMorose 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Robbie is from The Forbidden Planet, featuring Leslie Nielsen before his comic persona; Gort is from The Day The Earth Stood Still; not sure about Voyager, unless they mean V'Ger, from the first Star Trek film (perhaps Gremlin's font didn't have an apostrophe, so they spelled it out in full).

    • @Xoferif
      @Xoferif 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      "Nomad" was a robot probe from an episode the original series of Star Trek which they kind of copied the plot from for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, so "Voyager" fits as well.

    • @decidedly_retro
      @decidedly_retro 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      I don’t know about Bob but Vincent is from “The Black Hole”. Bishop rings a bell but I can’t place it. Slave and Zen are from “Blake’s 7”, SAL and HAL are from 2001/2010. Eddie and Marvin are obviously from “The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.

    • @MarkTheMorose
      @MarkTheMorose 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      @@decidedly_retro Easy: Bishop is from Aliens (played by Lance Henriksen), and BOB is actually 'Old B.O.B.', the older version of the Vincent robot also from The Black Hole. Voiced by Slim Pickens, more usually seen in westerns.

  • @a500
    @a500 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Such an exciting and fast moving time. My favourite era of gaming. And really nice to conclude the s3 story.

  • @WhatHoSnorkers
    @WhatHoSnorkers 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Interesting and very thorough! The game looks interesting, a bit like Hard Drivin' but with more crashes!

  • @sirrichardpitchard
    @sirrichardpitchard 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Jesus Christ. I’m in awe of the amount of work that went into this 😂

    • @ctrlaltrees
      @ctrlaltrees  2 ปีที่แล้ว

      That's ADHD for you 😆