Hit and run, baby! Thrash beach-front property, police cars, glass fronted mini-malls and billboards -- essentially, any and everything goes for the greatest joyride of your life! The mission is grab the goods, destroy what you can and get the heck outta town...fast!
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It’s over in like 20 minutes, three tracks with a few objectives but nothing really matters except a timer. There is some destruction that is kept track of but I does next to nothing really. No incentives to try more or harder stuff. It controls fine for the time, the breaking through glass and objects is cool but again doesn’t lead to much of anything. Seems like a concept demo.
Score :3.5
Score :3.5
This is the first time in a really long time I've played something that absolutely counts as a hidden gem. It's got some flaws and it's way too short for the price it would have been around its release, but boy is it such good fun.
Akin to something like "Stuntman, but as a heist film", Felony is an interesting approach to an arcade-like racer. It feels like a wild take on driving in the same way Outrun felt for its time. I loved the theming, the distinct setpieces and car choices and I think the car handling is actually pretty good too! The handbrake in particular felt great to use while driving the Mini Cooper. However, 3 levels that take around ~5 minutes each is criminal, especially when the replay value hinges less on making split-second driving decisions and more on route memorization.
Absolutely a game everyone should give a shot if they find themselves able to, and a gameplay style and theme I wish another game tackles better.
Akin to something like "Stuntman, but as a heist film", Felony is an interesting approach to an arcade-like racer. It feels like a wild take on driving in the same way Outrun felt for its time. I loved the theming, the distinct setpieces and car choices and I think the car handling is actually pretty good too! The handbrake in particular felt great to use while driving the Mini Cooper. However, 3 levels that take around ~5 minutes each is criminal, especially when the replay value hinges less on making split-second driving decisions and more on route memorization.
Absolutely a game everyone should give a shot if they find themselves able to, and a gameplay style and theme I wish another game tackles better.
A cool concept that I think would have been a hit in the arcade where it could have benefited from the better technology. Extremely short and lacking in content, but has a nice surf rock soundtrack.
The Myth of "Consensual" Destruction Racers Canon
Carmageddon & Grand Theft Auto: "I consent!"
Gaming press & media controversy: "I consent!"
Runabout/Felony series: "I don't!"
Isn't there somebody you forgot to ask?!
Ex-Dragon Quest and Landstalker programmer Kan Naito, head of Climax Entertainment as it entered the mid-'90s era, just had to push the 3D tech of the day. He and his co-developers had by now released Dark Savior, their Saturn-exclusive, 360-degrees isometric action-RPG opus which undoubtedly took a toll on the studio. Any project they'd do for PlayStation would be much easier, as he admitted in the May '97 issue of Next Generation magazine. Their previous SEGA works featured detailed, sumptuous 2D art for their platforms, which this new title would contrast with the kind of moldable polygonal brawn Sony's machine could provide. Most of all, Dark Savior was a beast of an adventure, with multiple endings, numerous levels to design, and a relatively low return due to the Saturn's stagnating market share. Whatever this master coder and his crew did on PS1, it had to cost less and gain a lot more.
So they settled on a much quainter idea, both an arcade throwback and a more flexible design concept in turn. The original Runabout may well have been born from Climax's programmers and modelers toying with vehicle deformation, a defining part of the game's identity when it released on May 23, 1997 in Japan. The only thing that won't damage and crunch your car, truck, bus, tank, or whatever into mush are the course walls and barriers. Meanwhile, just about every NPC vehicle or stage prop you see in Felony 11-79 can become a victim of your reckless driving. And with said destruction comes a cash payout, ranging in magnitude from a few hundred bucks to potentially a million! Based on this system, you'd think the game's goals revolve more around traversing open areas, smashing everyone and everything in your path. But Naito's team had a different idea: combine this car-pocalypse with a rally racing structure.
Felony 11-79 has the player driving from point A to point B across three unique tracks, each with secrets, objectives, and a whole lot of hazards. It's as much an evolution of Chase H.Q. and similar racers as it is a looser, more chaotic mashup of SEGA Rally and Destruction Derby. There's not a lot of original ideas here, nor the kind of spit-polish expected for mid-'90s 3D arcade-y faire. Still, it's hard to not have a shit-ton of fun ramming your reinforced pickup truck through a congested coastal Japanese highway, or launching a Formula 1 racecar into a Paris subway only to collide with a train! If you've ever wondered where the sheer hilarious stunt carnage of something like Burnout first graced home consoles, this might be the candidate.
Sadly, though, there isn't anywhere near enough to do here once you complete your first run of the game's tracks. Unless we count the optional test track meant for learning controls and tuning your vehicle, that's all the road you're gonna get, no mirror mode provided. Most of the game's progression instead comes from unlocking hidden rides, from exotic supercars to a mothafuckin' TANK (which can even fire its cannon and destroy all in its wake!). Doing this entails completing optional goals on each course. One example involves drastically outspeeding a police radar benchmark on the highway. Another involves smashing a vending machine to unlock the diminutive RC car. Now you've got some unconventional new toys to play around with in and out of the garage. Just make sure to save all this progress in that separate menu, though, since there's no auto-save or post-race equivalent to speak of.
Climax wants players to enjoy the mere act of piloting these machines, so the controls are simple but responsive. This predates the DualShock, so there's unfortunately no analog controls aside from using a racing wheel, but the handling model's built with D-pad turning in mind. I wish the tire physics and reverse motion was better polish, as it can be a bit too easy to spin out with all those fast but light cars. Still, that's why tinkering in the Settings menu can alleviate, giving you a basic way to set suspension strength, loosen or tighten brakes, and other technical aspects. This can add a lot of playtime if you're gunning for fast times, or if a particular unlockable's giving you trouble. I certainly don't mind the customization, slight as it is, given the content shortage elsewhere.
The main missions themselves are damn fun, though I encountered a few annoying quirks of the engine and developers' design choices. You mainly need to race for the finish while picking up objects in-between, either by hitting checkpoints or hitting things. I learned that, while dueling AI racers isn't a thing here, Felony 11-79 still expects the kind of practice and routing demanded in contemporary circuit or rally games. Your vehicle's damage meter complicates this by enforcing consequences for your collateral; hit too many things and you're done for. So learning which objects yield the highest "felony" rewards matters too, as is weaving between passenger cars and not blowing up entire civilian spaces for meager return vs. damage. All the courses are well-designed, with plenty of cool set-pieces, landmarks, and shortcuts to marvel at and use for your runs. Managing your worsening cornering and spinouts as you get bruised adds some simcade depth to the proceedings, too.
All this works great until you literally get stuck on a vehicle you've just crippled, its hitbox snagging yours while you try to escape. Reversing usually works fine, but the moments when it doesn't got on my nerves. It also doesn't help that the game's draw distance and level-of-detail scaling, though damn good for its time and hardware, isn't really good enough for the game loop. Moving fast on a narrow stretch can lead to disaster if the time limit's bearing down and you hit a random sedan or something. Frustration is an inevitable part of playing most behind-the-wheel media from this era, mostly the arcade-style stuff, but this kind of jank isn't endearing.
What is endearing are all the cheesy, over-the-top flourishes the Runabout series indulges right from the start. Little else in the arcade racer pantheon combines '60s surfer buttrock with vibrant environments, an utter disregard for anyone's well-being, and one-liners that would make Duke Nukem proud. I also have to chuckle at the game's framing story, where your driver's client has requested the forceful recovery of three key parts needed to unlock an Egyptian sarcophagus full of "treasure". Well, it doesn't go so well for this greedy mogul in the end, but we're getting paid to retrieve the McGuffins at all costs, so what does it matter? There's maybe not the same kind or intensity of punk energy here that SEGA's Hitmaker team would realized in Crazy Taxi a couple years later, but Climax sure was on to something.
Felony 11-79 had distant progenitors over in the arcades, but there wasn't much like this available at home, except maybe on predominantly European micro-computers. The PlayStation had a preview of this kind of destruction racer with the latter third of Die Hard Trilogy, as well as Reflection's Destruction Derby defining part of the system's early ranks. It's just that Naito & co. had found a new, straightforward formula to exploit which would echo into the coming decade, from 1999's Driver to the iconic Burnout 3: Takedown among others. This initial series entry may not amount to more than a prototype, but its immediate PS1 sequel and the beefier Super Runabout on Dreamcast deliver on the original's promises. I can't think of a better single-A comedy driving franchise from this period, not even among the ranks of similarly scrappy budget releases from D3 Publishing's Simple lines. These games would do for the arcade racer what Earth Defense Force later accomplished for musou-style action, and I'm itching to try some more.
Carmageddon & Grand Theft Auto: "I consent!"
Gaming press & media controversy: "I consent!"
Runabout/Felony series: "I don't!"
Isn't there somebody you forgot to ask?!
Ex-Dragon Quest and Landstalker programmer Kan Naito, head of Climax Entertainment as it entered the mid-'90s era, just had to push the 3D tech of the day. He and his co-developers had by now released Dark Savior, their Saturn-exclusive, 360-degrees isometric action-RPG opus which undoubtedly took a toll on the studio. Any project they'd do for PlayStation would be much easier, as he admitted in the May '97 issue of Next Generation magazine. Their previous SEGA works featured detailed, sumptuous 2D art for their platforms, which this new title would contrast with the kind of moldable polygonal brawn Sony's machine could provide. Most of all, Dark Savior was a beast of an adventure, with multiple endings, numerous levels to design, and a relatively low return due to the Saturn's stagnating market share. Whatever this master coder and his crew did on PS1, it had to cost less and gain a lot more.
So they settled on a much quainter idea, both an arcade throwback and a more flexible design concept in turn. The original Runabout may well have been born from Climax's programmers and modelers toying with vehicle deformation, a defining part of the game's identity when it released on May 23, 1997 in Japan. The only thing that won't damage and crunch your car, truck, bus, tank, or whatever into mush are the course walls and barriers. Meanwhile, just about every NPC vehicle or stage prop you see in Felony 11-79 can become a victim of your reckless driving. And with said destruction comes a cash payout, ranging in magnitude from a few hundred bucks to potentially a million! Based on this system, you'd think the game's goals revolve more around traversing open areas, smashing everyone and everything in your path. But Naito's team had a different idea: combine this car-pocalypse with a rally racing structure.
Felony 11-79 has the player driving from point A to point B across three unique tracks, each with secrets, objectives, and a whole lot of hazards. It's as much an evolution of Chase H.Q. and similar racers as it is a looser, more chaotic mashup of SEGA Rally and Destruction Derby. There's not a lot of original ideas here, nor the kind of spit-polish expected for mid-'90s 3D arcade-y faire. Still, it's hard to not have a shit-ton of fun ramming your reinforced pickup truck through a congested coastal Japanese highway, or launching a Formula 1 racecar into a Paris subway only to collide with a train! If you've ever wondered where the sheer hilarious stunt carnage of something like Burnout first graced home consoles, this might be the candidate.
Sadly, though, there isn't anywhere near enough to do here once you complete your first run of the game's tracks. Unless we count the optional test track meant for learning controls and tuning your vehicle, that's all the road you're gonna get, no mirror mode provided. Most of the game's progression instead comes from unlocking hidden rides, from exotic supercars to a mothafuckin' TANK (which can even fire its cannon and destroy all in its wake!). Doing this entails completing optional goals on each course. One example involves drastically outspeeding a police radar benchmark on the highway. Another involves smashing a vending machine to unlock the diminutive RC car. Now you've got some unconventional new toys to play around with in and out of the garage. Just make sure to save all this progress in that separate menu, though, since there's no auto-save or post-race equivalent to speak of.
Climax wants players to enjoy the mere act of piloting these machines, so the controls are simple but responsive. This predates the DualShock, so there's unfortunately no analog controls aside from using a racing wheel, but the handling model's built with D-pad turning in mind. I wish the tire physics and reverse motion was better polish, as it can be a bit too easy to spin out with all those fast but light cars. Still, that's why tinkering in the Settings menu can alleviate, giving you a basic way to set suspension strength, loosen or tighten brakes, and other technical aspects. This can add a lot of playtime if you're gunning for fast times, or if a particular unlockable's giving you trouble. I certainly don't mind the customization, slight as it is, given the content shortage elsewhere.
The main missions themselves are damn fun, though I encountered a few annoying quirks of the engine and developers' design choices. You mainly need to race for the finish while picking up objects in-between, either by hitting checkpoints or hitting things. I learned that, while dueling AI racers isn't a thing here, Felony 11-79 still expects the kind of practice and routing demanded in contemporary circuit or rally games. Your vehicle's damage meter complicates this by enforcing consequences for your collateral; hit too many things and you're done for. So learning which objects yield the highest "felony" rewards matters too, as is weaving between passenger cars and not blowing up entire civilian spaces for meager return vs. damage. All the courses are well-designed, with plenty of cool set-pieces, landmarks, and shortcuts to marvel at and use for your runs. Managing your worsening cornering and spinouts as you get bruised adds some simcade depth to the proceedings, too.
All this works great until you literally get stuck on a vehicle you've just crippled, its hitbox snagging yours while you try to escape. Reversing usually works fine, but the moments when it doesn't got on my nerves. It also doesn't help that the game's draw distance and level-of-detail scaling, though damn good for its time and hardware, isn't really good enough for the game loop. Moving fast on a narrow stretch can lead to disaster if the time limit's bearing down and you hit a random sedan or something. Frustration is an inevitable part of playing most behind-the-wheel media from this era, mostly the arcade-style stuff, but this kind of jank isn't endearing.
What is endearing are all the cheesy, over-the-top flourishes the Runabout series indulges right from the start. Little else in the arcade racer pantheon combines '60s surfer buttrock with vibrant environments, an utter disregard for anyone's well-being, and one-liners that would make Duke Nukem proud. I also have to chuckle at the game's framing story, where your driver's client has requested the forceful recovery of three key parts needed to unlock an Egyptian sarcophagus full of "treasure". Well, it doesn't go so well for this greedy mogul in the end, but we're getting paid to retrieve the McGuffins at all costs, so what does it matter? There's maybe not the same kind or intensity of punk energy here that SEGA's Hitmaker team would realized in Crazy Taxi a couple years later, but Climax sure was on to something.
Felony 11-79 had distant progenitors over in the arcades, but there wasn't much like this available at home, except maybe on predominantly European micro-computers. The PlayStation had a preview of this kind of destruction racer with the latter third of Die Hard Trilogy, as well as Reflection's Destruction Derby defining part of the system's early ranks. It's just that Naito & co. had found a new, straightforward formula to exploit which would echo into the coming decade, from 1999's Driver to the iconic Burnout 3: Takedown among others. This initial series entry may not amount to more than a prototype, but its immediate PS1 sequel and the beefier Super Runabout on Dreamcast deliver on the original's promises. I can't think of a better single-A comedy driving franchise from this period, not even among the ranks of similarly scrappy budget releases from D3 Publishing's Simple lines. These games would do for the arcade racer what Earth Defense Force later accomplished for musou-style action, and I'm itching to try some more.
Too simplistic, too forgettable. Fun only in a short span of time
The main menu for this game has options and settings which is insane. They do different things, but it still made me laugh at first before I realized that.