OK, as you can probably tell by now, I've been into an another obscure Sega title. That being Motor Raid for the Model 2 arcade system. After seeing a certain GIF of the game a week ago, I immediately wanted to try this in MAME.
Let's say, I had some fun playing it, but there was a problem, a rather big problem: I couldn't perform the Turbo Dash for crying out loud! Dx
Well, that is because I played it on the keyboard. The game was originally meant to be played on a motorbike with an analog-based accelerator, which you get to quickly twist it twice to boost your way through the race tracks (that's obviously what the game tells you to after all). On the keyboard, I learned that it is clearly impossible to use the Turbo Dash, perhaps the most important mechanic in the game (digital "on'n'off" deadzone when a key is pressed, not inbetween (years ago, I played the PS2 version of HL with the keys as I discovered this, no doubt the stupidest idea ever, moving on :/). As a result, most of (if not all) my playthroughs were unsuccessful with me not reaching 1st place or running out of time (even with Gunz (potential blorbo??🤔), who is arguably the fastest racer, low accel. stat notwithstanding). :( Like, I tried sort of a workaround with seperate keys assigned to Analog values (Inc/Dec) for accelerating to try simulating the twisting, but sadly, it didn't work.
It goes without saying that, I didn't experience the game to the fullest. Also, I just found out that the game was ported years later as part of an Arcade in a Yakuza spinoff Judgement for PS4/PS5. One question to ask is: why hasn't Sega ported the game to the Saturn or the Dreamcast (I think this could work as a DC game imho :P), it perplexes me. :/