Rolling Start has launched

[Ghegs]

Hey there, folks.

Some of you might recognize me from the Shmups Forum, where I've been an admin for quite a few years now. Other than shmups, I love arcade-style racing games. From Outrun to Sega Rally, from Ridge to Racer to Need for Speed and everything in between. But I've noticed there really isn't a place online to talk about them, like the Shmups Forum is for shmups, Shoryuken is for fighters and so on.

With that in mind I have launched Rolling Start, a forum dedicated to the genre. The plan is to have a meeting place where discussions about the games, strategies, optimal driving lines and friendly competition through sharing times and online multiplayer can happen.

The forum is still young and the schema will change according to what people want to talk about, so dedicated subforums for different series or even individual games will be created if they get enough love. If all this sounds appealing to you, come on over to kick the tires. And then go drifting.

(Disclaimer: I did get racketboy's approval to post this.)

[Ghegs]

It's time for the first official Rolling Start, competition and the game in question is...Nitronic Rush! Register for the competition, get the best times and win actual, honest-to-good prizes. Regstration's open now, the action starts on April 16th.

[Ghegs]

The registration ends in 24 hours and after that the competition starts. First prize reward is Nitronic Rush's recently Kickstarted sequel Distance!

[Erik_Twice]

Cool to see you doing this

[GSZX1337]

Looks promising, I think I might lurk some.

[Ghegs]

This weekend I rolled up my sleeves and whipped together a database and means to search it. I call it the RGDB - Racing Game Database.

The idea is that it will eventually house every racing game ever made so it will be easy to find more games you're likely to enjoy. For example, finding all the rally games made by Codemasters in the year 2002 that were released in Japan, if you're really, really picky about your games.

It's functionally complete but the database currently holds only a bit over 300 titles, so it's still in the testing phase. But you can play around with it, and if you see some glaring errors, mistakes or have some ideas on how to improve it (I'm not a database expert by any means), I'd gladly hear them.

Also, we got a bitchin' new banner a while ago. It's gorgeous.

[Ghegs]

We're doing another competition, this time with Little Racers STREET. Prizes include the game's full version and other games as well.

The site itself has been building up as well since I last mentioned it. RGDB has over 1200 titles listed now and there are new articles/guides/whatnot with more on the way.

[fastbilly1]

Your site looks great Ghegs, good work.

[Ghegs]

Thanks, that means a lot. I try to add something to the site every week, even if it's just another system's racing games covered in the RGDB. I'm also working on another Developer Showcase article about a well-known developer that isn't commonly associated with racers, but they've made quite a few excellent ones.

There's still time to register for the Little Racers STREET competition. Big Money! Big Prizes! I love it!*



*Disclaimer: No money, the prizes aren't humongous, and love is a really strong word. It's still a pretty cool game.

[Ghegs]

I thought it be noteworthy to mention this, since there's been quite big changes to the RGDB in the past few months.

• Easier searching for multiple keywords at once, since they're now selected at the main page instead of having to type them out.
  
• Possible to search by multiplayer features.
  
• Every game now has its own (dynamically created) page, which tells more information about the game, such as the max. amount of participants in multiplayer, and whether the game has ghost support. This page also contains screenshots of the game, if they are available. Some examples:
  
  F-1 Hero
  Side By Side Special 2000
  Hydro Thunder Hurricane

And of course, a lot of data entry has been done so there's now well over 2000 games listed.

The new search features and the support for screenshots were coded in just in the last few weeks, so many games don't yet have their multiplayer capabilities listed or screenshots available. Hopefully, people will help out and submit information and screenshots, that way this can become an even greater resource.

We're also running our The First Annual Top 5 Racing Games of All Time voting until Dec. 15th, if somebody wants to partake in that.