San Francisco Rush 2049

Note: This review and rating reflects my feelings on the arcade releases of San Francisco Rush 2049.

San Francisco Rush 2049 is a game I hold in higher regard than I (or anyone) probably should. It's somewhat of a relic at this point. Being released in various incarnations between 1999 and 2003, a time when arcade death was visible, it can be a pain to find. Worse, there is no support for the game in MAME or any other arcade emulator, due to its relatively complex arcade setup with a 3dfx Voodoo3 graphics accelerator as its centerpiece. I'm writing this review merely an hour after returning to my hotel room from an arcade where I obsessively and giddily played the first Rush 2049 machine I've seen in well over a decade.

Like the original San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing, Rush 2049 is a 3dfx-powered, hard disk-based machine with a 200-degree force-feedback steering wheel, three pedals (gas, brake, and clutch), a four-speed H-shifter for manual players, and several buttons for functions like changing the camera, changing the music, resetting your vehicle's position, and driving in the reverse gear.

Mechanically, Rush 2049 is not unlike its predecessors. The handling model strikes a balance between high grip and high-speed cornering that defies description possibly more than any driving model in any other racer I've played. This isn't a drift racing game like Daytona USA or Initial D Arcade Stage Version 3. Attempts to whip around the tracks like Takumi Fujiwara will likely be met with a complete loss of control, followed by an explosive trip into a wall and a huge loss of time. Subtle gas-pedal finesse is preferred over drifting, as letting off the gas at tight corners provides the best balance between creating a decent turning radius and maintaining grip. Staying entirely on the gas at some curves will lead to what may be the most palpable understeer in an arcade racer. In addition, there are three driving difficulty settings, each increasing your car's top speed and acceleration while dramatically reducing its level of grip. Even the standard difficulty has a learning curve, but playing on the Advanced and Extreme levels is a special breed that offers up some of the most technical and satisfying driving you'll have in an arcade.

Being one of the last few of its kind, San Francisco Rush 2049 has one of the better audiovisual packages in the arcade racing landscape. The game presents a somewhat bizarre late-nineties vision of the near future, complete with a cheesy yet endearing breakbeat soundtrack, boldly colored cityscapes with glass bullet railways and all sorts of unnecessary dumb-future decor, and cars so utterly ridiculous-looking that they more closely resemble the Hot Wheels models and outlandish concept cars of the era than any production cars we're likely to ever see. It's all stupid, but it's a charming kind of stupid. From a technical standpoint, the game looks fine, with decently detailed cars and tracks and a fairly long draw distance, at the expense of occasional frame drops in some of the tracks' busier sections.

As for the track designs, they're some of the most complex and intricate in an arcade racing game. The game's five (seven in the updated editions) tracks are full of fast corners, tight chicanes, massive jumps, and so many shortcuts and hidden areas that some of the tracks feel like they have entire "alternate" tracks running parallel to them. Exploration is risky but usually rewarding, with the exception of deceptive sections that look like shortcuts but instead lead you directly into a wall. Overall, the game's selection of tracks includes some of the genre's best to race and explore on.

In short, San Francisco Rush 2049 is both a great arcade racing game and a fitting swan song for the Atari Games racing lineup. Good luck finding somewhere to play it.