Thrill Drive

Thrill Drive is a street racing sim arcade game released by Konami in 1998. And it was titled in the Arcade Flyer of this game: FAST-PACED ACTION!, in the front of the foreign flyer accidentally. It is closely similar to Racing Jam Chapters 1 and 2, in the Arcades and this game is a prequel to those 2 NWK-TR Games. Unlike many driving games, this was the unique game that it was to be the controlled-driving skill game to be much careful of driving while you hit the stand-out performance.
Taking place in either the U.S.A., Japan, or Europe, the player must race three other opponents to the finish line without crashing into objects such as pedestrians that suddenly appear or causing accidents as well as avoid police cars along the way. Also, like various Sega driving games such as Hang-On and OutRun, the scenery can change at any time. The player has an assortment of vehicles to choose from, such as a sports car, a sedan, a station wagon, an SUV, a convertible, a bus, and a truck.
The game is notable for the special effects when a player crashes. This is signified by the sound of a loud crash, police sirens wailing and then a screaming woman + 2 shocking images with a violet-colored effect followed by the game screen showing a broken windshield as if you had crashed into something—as this would become a theme in later games in the series—and show a violent image before resetting you at the place where you made the mistake. As you crash and reset, the weather and sky will dramatically change from a clear day to dark clouds as if it were to rain and then a thunderstorm if you crash later in the game and reset.
Upon crossing checkpoints, the music will change to something different, or positive. However, if a player crashes and resets, the music will change to a negative, dramatic piece. Also notable is when a player finishes a race depending on how much time was left on the clock. When this happens, the computer will rate your driving technique as well as add up how many accidents the player had and how much money in damage the player has caused—and assigns a final rating, which can suffer badly if too many objects are hit or accidents are caused.
Since this was, a very rare game, it was been likely to be forever lost; but fortunately, other players would like to play in MAME, than instead of playing in a real arcade machine of this game, because it was only found out that it was very popular in Japan elsewhere, also outside of Japan to play this game. Plus, other reasons to be rare is, having very damaged board of this game or having several failures of this game, including the Analog Devices, ROM, RAM, SDRAM, NVRAM and more. The real system reqirements of this game for MAME is unknown yet, by reaching it from MAME Ver. 0.147, but it needs Nvidia and AMD powerful GPU Cards, also Intel with the help of the CPU like Intel i3, AMD Sempron, AMD Athlon XP or better.
( NOTE: For some dedications and speciality in MAME, this game would have 50/50 chance, it's either would be FULLY PLAYABLE or LAGGING PLAYABLE. And sometimes, you'd got NETWORK ERROR while playing the game in Modern MAME Versions, because of having SPEEDY network trouble to Intel i7 or other variations. Also, it's not playable on Older MAME Versions because of the NETWORK ERROR again.)
History

After the successful attempt of KONAMI COBRA for the past years, whenever Racing Jam and Racing Jam Chapter II are released the same year ( Autumn 1997 to 1998 ), KONAMI continues creating games that it woun't be the same thing as of today. This was called THRILL DRIVE, an arcade game. This was established or published last 1998, Autumn; November 25 and Shigenobu Matsuyama, the head of the game development of KONAMI; as of today, creating Metal Gear series and other memorable games like GTI Club, was the director and producer of this game alive, within his several colleagues to create this game. Well, why this game is called THRILL DRIVE? Because, according to the story of S. Matsumyama, before planning this game much, within his thinking of a blinking eye that surrounds his own visualization that he can actually seen on the news about the crashes, accidents and more tradegy events, like the 10-Wheeler Truck that crashes the small vehicles. Not only that, but he can have some actual movements that he creates his own management through streaming. And that's called THRILL DRIVE! ( Journal of KONAMI, September 8, 1998.) And within the later months and days, Mr. Matsuyama had a critical thinking about this game that it would be like a real-life simulation in driving. ( This was later adopted through many driving simulation games by the next years.) Through his own visualization, several KONAMI game creators are gonna use KONAMI COBRA's GAME ENGINE that it was like to re-use 3DFX Graphics Chip + Customized Game Engine + Updated Game Physics that was used in Racing Jam Chapters I and II + New Sound Customization Engine + NETWORK CONNECTIVITY UPDATE. Again, it was attempted to join the joint-venture IBM Japan to create another games to be produced by 64-bit Graphics Engine. However, this seems to slow down a bit, that is to be 30 Frames, not for 60 Frames, due to over-speeding of frames from Fighting Bujutsu last 1997 to solve this case along the crackdown of decreasing frames. Another years past, this game's needed to be the Top 30 Arcade Racing Games of all time; but for the unknown seeing or trouble, it was rare atleast, only in Japan ( But for some reasons, it had been released in Europe and USA, however, this game's much having minimum order or release ). And again through later years, this game's memorable and much fun to play each other for 4 players, meaning nostalgia, also, it didn't released to any straight-to-game consoles; as Mr. Matsuyama said that he didn't have plans for releasing consoles of this game, through and since he didn't have some updates later on. And the rest is in history.

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