COOL RIDERS
DEVELOPER: SEGA YEAR: 1994 GENRE: RACING
■ While Sega’s arcade racing pedigree ensured that many of its games did come home, the company was prolific enough that some games were bound to slip through the cracks, like this motorbike racer. The goal is simple – make sure you get to the checkpoints before your time runs out, choose your route at the fork in the road that accompanies each
checkpoint, and try to reach the finish line. It feels rather like an evolution of Outrunners thanks to the choice of vehicles and multiple routes, though in Cool Riders you have three choices at each checkpoint rather than two.
What makes Cool Riders so distinctive is its unique aesthetic. There are quite a few locations where it feels more or less like a standard sprite-scaling racer, but when the magic carpet riders show up in Egypt, or when you realise that you’re an old man riding a pushbike through a shark-infested ocean, it feels wild. Maybe even “Born To Be Wild” as the licensed title theme suggests. Unfortunately, Cool Riders was too much for 16-bit systems and not impressive enough next to the 3D racers on 32-bit consoles, which could explain why it never got converted.