What I remember about this game is that the steering wheel had no limits (like the helm on a boat) so you could spin it like crazy and still take the turns perfectly. It felt really good.
Yeah, as much as I enjoyed playing the game, that is what I remember about the arcade cabinet the most. You could spin the steering wheel violently left or right almost indefinitely because it had no locking mechanism or stopper to limit its movements. Which made the game extra satisfying when nailing a corner correctly and pulling your hands off the wheel temporarily and watching it spin.
The first World Rally was always one of my go-to racers in the arcade, whenever the Daytona machine's were full..
There's a very similar game for the Mega Drive and SNES (PAL only and the MD version is better actually). It also has a sort of upgraded and prettier version for the Atari Jaguar). Quite a meaty singleplayer, just remember to switch the sound from music to effects (yes, you have to fucking choose either) to get some cool car sounds.
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Plus, there's a similar game on the Neo Geo called DriftOut, which by the look of Youtube vids, seems even more awesome than Power Drive!
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I've played Power Drive on the Mega Drive and the Jaguar (through emulation) and it is pretty fun, but the handling for the cars are a-little too frigidity in both of those versions. The Jaguar game is still a particularly nice version of Power Drift, though.
Same with Neo Drift Out (I've seen one before in a real arcade), Neo Drift Out is an awesome isometric rally styled game in itself. It comes close to World Rally in fun-factor (for me), but it does a few neat things of its own. Like the hardware zooming effects that pull the screen back at times. It made brilliant use of the Neo-Geo hardware and did some things differently gameplay wise.
The only thing it lacked in the arcade was a proper steering wheel, like World Rally. But that was forgivable given it's on the MVS.
Neo Drift Out is the Neo Geo sequel to Drift Out '94, which itself was the sequel to Drift Out, which was pure top down as opposed to isometric, with the track rotating around you. Ported to SNES as Super Drift Out.
Oh interesting, I didn't know it was part of a series. Looking up videos of the original Drift Out, I think I have seen this one in a real arcade before. I remember the interesting way that the track rotates around the car. But it was an arcade game that I could never remember the name to.
Radmobile/Gale Racer on the Saturn weirdly enough replaces all the sprite scaled cars with polygon ones, I guess it was to offload the game to both processors or something!
Yeah they made some things different for the Saturn game. The Saturn was a beast when it came to handling sprite scaling and rotation, but maybe they went for polygon cars instead because they were running into limitations when trying to fit all of the "car-frame view angle" images into the system's memory?
But yeah, the Saturn port is not arcade perfect either, it changes some things and even alters the track design. Graphics and sprites also have a bigger boost in colour in the Saturn version.
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