[guest253]

since we had that "gba racing games" topic a while ago, i thought this might interest someone.

back in 2004 i read a E3-preview of Trick Star by Tantalus. it got me curious enough to google it every once in a while to see if there was any news on it. after a year or so of complete silence i figured it just wasn't gonna happen anymore. until some 3 weeks ago, when i suddenly saw it sitting on a shelf in a local gameshop for a cheap budget price.

then i searched the interwebs extensively to try and find a review. or a rom. but nothing. the interwebs have forgotten all about Trick Star. noone wrote a word about it after it's release and noone dumped the rom, and my curiosity burned on. so today i caved in, and bought it. even finding out that it sucked would have been worth the price tag by now. and now i'm gonna tell you about it. because noone else will. because i'm the only person on the interweb playing this. because everyone has forgotten about Trick Star.


mode-7 times 2


it's a racing game. the tracks float in the air. they're made with cool mode-7 trickery, just like Tantalus's previous gba racer Top Gear Rally, with large hills and jumps. and unlike all those fully 3D gba racers with their choppy framerates and shit collision detection, it moves silky smooth. however, the racers and their one-wheeled motor-bikes are fully polygonal and texture-mapped. now these are small racers on a small screen with a low resolution, and they look pretty shite in still-screens, but they're animated remarkably smoothly and do feel more "substantial" then the sprite models used in most gba racers. you'd almost think they forgot to tell the guy modeling these what system the game was gonna be running on. the technical achievements really show that this title was supposed to be a high-profile release instead of a budget title. and in 2004 or 2005, this could have been big, but supposedly Tantalus had a lot of trouble finding a publisher back then. it's not like they've been working a huge lot on between then and now, cause the preview footage from 2004 looks exactly like the final game.


sharp bend coming up, but where did i put my steering wheel?


now i'm just guessing, but i get the impression that Tantalus halted development when they couldn't find a publisher, eventually settled for a budget release with Liquid games, and then rushed it out. there's a lot of potential, but also a lot to fuck it up. cool mod-tunes in the menus, but no in-game music. succesful stunts sometimes yield a cheerful sound-effect, and sometimes they don't. loading the game takes very long for a gba game. how often do you see "please wait" while a gba game loads its demo-mode? sometimes there's weird pops and clicks when the game opens or closes a sound channel. in-game commands (in "challenge" courses) are vague and glitchy. when you start a new save-file you select your driver, and after that you can only use that particular driver when using that file. there's 3 files and 4 drivers. great. there is no time trial mode. if you want to race alone, you'll need to use 2 player mode. the link-play Tantalus planned for is nowhere to be found, and instead in multiplayer-mode players take turns on one system trying to get the fastest time or highest score. etc. etc...

probably for the better that they didn't waste their time on link-play, cause it's not like anyone else is playing this.


and that's a pity! cause besides the messy rush-job interface it's good fun! there's an elaborate trick-combo-system, and while i don't have enough experience with "trick-based" racing games to say if it's anything special, speeding over a turbo-booster right in front of a giant hill to launch yourself high up in the air while standing on your head wiggling your toes for bonus-points is really quite amusing if you're me.


wiggle wiggle


competing racers aren't totally stupid, some actively try to block you, occasionally they crash into eachother, and you see them pull the same freaky stunts you do (PROTIP: crash into them while they're pulling off a trick and they'll crash while you won't!). i was also quite charmed by a weird power-up floating in mid-air, which when you touch it freezes all opponents in place and gives you chance to make a trick-combo while hanging in the sky stationary for a few seconds.


manually increasing score?


the courses aren't immensely varied, but there's a whole lot of them, in a bunch of different settings. different setting don't seem to affect the gameplay much, but do add some more identity to the tracks, as do occasional show and rain effects. sometimes when you're going up-hill you can't see the track ahead of you, which is pretty annoying, but fortunately not very common. and seeing these curvey mode-7 tracks zoom by at such a smooth framerate is just downright beautiful. there's no trackside scenery, since the courses float in the air, so at times the screen is a bit empty but the backgrounds are nice enough to make up for that.


this guy could use a front-view mirror.


controls are tight, and you can turn extra sharp by pressing up in addition to left or right, or less sharp using down, so steeringis fairly precise and refined. wouldn't mind if the difficulty ramps up a bit still cause so far it's fairly easy, but i'm only just starting. the "challenge" races are obnoxious. here you have to perform a predefined string of stunts between 2 points of the track. they're way too short and break up the action. also, since they only tell you the names of the stunts you're supposed to perform and not the button combinations to pull them off, you're pretty much fucked in your first try (after which you can look up the buttons in the menu and try again...).


pretty much fucked.


a lot more love and care went into this game then the budget price-tag suggests. i'd just wish they had finished it off properly. (but thank god they didn't scrap the save-function for a password system...). it has been canned for way too long to drop any jaws, and hey who's buying gba games in this day and age, but it's a fun and quirky game.


happy game


here's some vids (ign). it's smooth.

[luvcraft]

wow, that IS pretty impressive. From the videos it looks like it has the potential to be a really great game, but isn't quite there yet.
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[stotelheim]

Do you think you could dump it, or send it to someone else who could? Something like this deserves to be saved from bit-rot.
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go away extralife

[guest253]

[Felix]

dumping GBA roms is exceeding easy if you are a person who has an old-style flashcart and accompanying writer (also reader).

i am one of these people, should it come to that.

[v84j3gs2uc7ns4]

[Marshmallow]

This game was made by an Australian company and I actually know one of the guys who works there.

http://www.tantalus.com.au/

[EU03]

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

I, uh, think that it's probably best to hold off on dumping the rom until the game is, you know, out of stores. Unless you believe that the "try it 'n' buy it" philosophy is held by a notable amount of people who use GBA ROMS.
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[v84j3gs2uc7ns4]

[schild]

Results of googling for less than 30 seconds:

Buy Trick Star for 14.99POUNDSYMBOLHERE.

I'm sure there's many more.

[guest253]

so this thread is about rom-dumping now? -_-;;



it happens! Cinnamoroll Fuwa Fuwa Daisakusen never got dumped either. i looked for that rom for like ever! some just slip underneath the radar i guess...



i don't understand anything of this, but "buttermonster" sounds like the stuff nightmares are made of, and i'm not exactly dying to dump this, but thanks anyway. ^_^

[JamesE]

Have it dumped and backed up now, then don't release the ROM publicly for a few months. That way the integrity of the data is preserved for sure (because accidents happen, etc). I know a lot of stuff stays in private dumps for years.

If all else fails hit up the Lost Levels board to find a dumper.

[guest253]

reviving dead thread to say that the rom of this got dumped! not by me!
but if anyone's still curious, well, go for it. it's worth it, k?

[shnozlak]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq8s8YdNQfw

looks like F-Zero + road rash with mono bikes



anyone know where this can be found?
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Mixtapes galore ~ VG MUSIC
ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ http://phantom-photon.tumblr.com/

[The Blueberry Hill]

I'm really curious about what music would have played during races.

Any chance of you asking about that cycle? Maybe getting us some .mp3s?
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MYSTERY ADVENTURE START..

[Felix]

i actually made a thread linking to the rom a couple months ago in king of posters saying "trickstar rom dumped! didn't you guys want this?" because i couldn't find this thread; toups moved it to the axe because apparently roms in public forums are a no-no, even if it is trickstar.

[Marshmallow]

I finally mentioned this to the guy who works over there, who had this to say:

[guest253]

[eretsua]

[wpham]

[kerobaros]

That's a mighty-impressive looking game, right there. I'll have to look for a copy!

[Pijaibros]

I was browsing Gamestop's website and I stumbled upon a release I thought would be interesting to share.

Could this game be the last official title for the system?

Looks like Tantalus went ahead and decided to publish the game themselves.
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[eretsua]

today i picked up a copy in the same shop where glitch bought hers. at first they didn't have it anymore but after a phone call she arranged to have the last copy of a different store be brought to my store where i picked it up. :insert a kirby-happy-dance-on-a-motorcycle-while-flying-through-the-air-to-celebrate-emoticon here:

according to their database trickstar has now disappeared from their wholesale supplier's database as well... so if you ever come across a legal/real/non-fake copy be sure to pick it up cause you might not get that chance again (and considering it's a budget title it doesn't cost serious amount of money anyway but it's quite an enjoyable game).
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[Marshmallow]

So, did you all see this? The companies official site:

http://www.tantalus.com.au/

They actually have a few interesting projects (and some less interesting ones). The guy I talked to has been working on Payload, which he always mentions. I watched some videos and it looked like one of the most interesting n-gage games I've seen. Of course... It's the n-gage, but even so.

Trick-star also has it's own site:

http://www.trick-star.com/

Has a bunch of movies, plus the site seems to be an alternate reality type thing, saying that a company has made a game based on the sport, and includes fictional sponser ads and such.