This pseudo-3D sports car driving game has you racing the clock to complete 4 laps around each track. Like OutRun and other classics that inspired it, you just have a basic accelerator, brake, and low-to-high shifting at your disposal. Round those corners fast! Polestar offers 2 courses, each with 4 stages. There's also a time attack mode for playing each stage individually, so that you can practice one at a time or simply go for the fastest times.
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Gotta see some games to believe 'em, and this might well be the most pop art looking-ass OutRun clone in existence. It's the spitting image of what an indie take on AM2's classic with Atari 2600 graphics could resemble today. Bio_100% (programmer "metys" specifically) first distributed this in 1994 across various Japanese BBS networks before the final version arrived a year later, both online and via shareware collections. Playing any racer this fast, arcade-y, and devil-may-care on an aging PC-98 platform must have been a revelation.
No one's gonna fool themselves into deeming this a realistic driving sim(-cade) experience, and it's better off for that. Polestar's got the kind of DIY spirit and a style all its own that newer takes on classic Super Scaler racers could learn from. You've got two sets of increasingly complex circuits to lap, a sleek sports car to learn the handling of, and the most uncanny, smoothly performing arts-and-crafts visual style I've seen in this genre. It's all clearly working within the boundaries of what a primarily text & static graphics-focused system can do best. And I love that kind of platform-pushing pride which acknowledges the limits of the PC-98 (let alone other home computers back then) but leads to seemingly impossible achievements anyway.
This short but sweet game runs best at on 486 chips running 20 MHz or more, a rather low figure which many users reached or exceeded, so it managed all its feats without becoming the Crysis of its community. Controls are the standard but responsive pedal, brake, and low-to-high shifter seen in OutRun and countless titles like it. What's nice is the detailed options/configuration screen Bio_100% provides, letting you change everything from the measurement system to in-game FOV! There's just enough customization here to compensate for a lack of extra vehicles, plus the low amount of content and novel replayability. It's also a rare later game to only use PSG or MIDI music, forgoing the PC-98's usual FM-synth sound chip even at the expense of some players. (Then again, never a better time to slap Tatsuro Yamashita in your Walkman.)
Simple keyboard & gamepad commands, plus ways to achieve a solid 60 FPS feeling even on 25 KHz refresh monitors, all fortify Polestar's gamefeel. Getting used to the game's sometimes slipper road physics can take a couple tries, but comes naturally over time. You're sharing lanes with hazards like errant trucks and breaks in the pavement; avoiding any off-roading when crossing water or passing by a big creepy clown animatronic (among other things) gives you plenty of challenge. But like any arcade auto-sseys worth a damn, you're mostly racing the time limit and your past records, zipping around with glee as the numbers tick up. There's not a whole lot for me to say here except that metys and his Bio_100% collaborators loved their classic racers and effortlessly brought the genre's strengths to an unlikely venue.
At this point in the PC-98's lifecycle, Windows 95 was beginning its reign of terror upon the once relatively isolated Japanese PC market. Commercial game makers either tried to work with Microsoft's initial, admittedly shoddy development tools for the new OS, or they bailed on their PC strongholds to find success on consoles instead. This left a big variety gap for doujin creators like metys, a coder accustomed to working remotely over BBS and now the Internet. Whether creating for the whole online country or just Comiket runs, Japan's changing PC gaming landscape behooved smaller, less financially bound game makers to pick up where studios like Telenet and Micro Cabin left off. Bio_100%'s renown in the doujin freeware space reached its peak at the middle of the decade, and Polestar represents this in so many ways.
Above all, it's rare to play an arcade-style racer this imbued with a bubble-era ethos and optimism, yet staunchly opposed to commercialization and any related baggage. So many players invested in the PC-98 could dial up their local ASCII net, pay much less to download this than even a Takeru vending-machine floppy game, and have a nightly favorite running on their turn-of-the-'90s PC within a day. The slow but sure democratization of online networking and doujin free-/shareware in mid-'90s Japan did wonders to buoy an ecosystem transitioning from one dominant power, NEC, to another under Windows. Polestar may not have a hydraulic taikan cabinet with cool gizmos, nor a bevy of extra tracks like you'd expect from the hot new racers on PS1 & Saturn. But with all else it offers at such high quality, it filled a niche in that special way only Bio_100% and a few other doujin creators could at the time. Perhaps a certain Team Shanghai Alice learned a thing or two from this group's smart decisions.
Like with most Bio_100% releases from '90-'96, Polestar's easily accessible via PC-98 emulator running either the floppies or a multi-game compilation. Jumping between this and the group's earlier, rougher but similarly joyful titles makes it even easier to appreciate what the '94 racer accomplished. It's a shame how the group basically died down and soon disbanded as Windows really took over, with Bio_100% creators moving further into their careers away from doujin development. But if that meant ending on such a high note between this and Sengoku TURB for Dreamcast, then I can't complain much. Polestar's a sporty circuit racer for the people, and one of the best PC-98 games you can just jump into right now, no extra work or mental prep required.
No one's gonna fool themselves into deeming this a realistic driving sim(-cade) experience, and it's better off for that. Polestar's got the kind of DIY spirit and a style all its own that newer takes on classic Super Scaler racers could learn from. You've got two sets of increasingly complex circuits to lap, a sleek sports car to learn the handling of, and the most uncanny, smoothly performing arts-and-crafts visual style I've seen in this genre. It's all clearly working within the boundaries of what a primarily text & static graphics-focused system can do best. And I love that kind of platform-pushing pride which acknowledges the limits of the PC-98 (let alone other home computers back then) but leads to seemingly impossible achievements anyway.
This short but sweet game runs best at on 486 chips running 20 MHz or more, a rather low figure which many users reached or exceeded, so it managed all its feats without becoming the Crysis of its community. Controls are the standard but responsive pedal, brake, and low-to-high shifter seen in OutRun and countless titles like it. What's nice is the detailed options/configuration screen Bio_100% provides, letting you change everything from the measurement system to in-game FOV! There's just enough customization here to compensate for a lack of extra vehicles, plus the low amount of content and novel replayability. It's also a rare later game to only use PSG or MIDI music, forgoing the PC-98's usual FM-synth sound chip even at the expense of some players. (Then again, never a better time to slap Tatsuro Yamashita in your Walkman.)
Simple keyboard & gamepad commands, plus ways to achieve a solid 60 FPS feeling even on 25 KHz refresh monitors, all fortify Polestar's gamefeel. Getting used to the game's sometimes slipper road physics can take a couple tries, but comes naturally over time. You're sharing lanes with hazards like errant trucks and breaks in the pavement; avoiding any off-roading when crossing water or passing by a big creepy clown animatronic (among other things) gives you plenty of challenge. But like any arcade auto-sseys worth a damn, you're mostly racing the time limit and your past records, zipping around with glee as the numbers tick up. There's not a whole lot for me to say here except that metys and his Bio_100% collaborators loved their classic racers and effortlessly brought the genre's strengths to an unlikely venue.
At this point in the PC-98's lifecycle, Windows 95 was beginning its reign of terror upon the once relatively isolated Japanese PC market. Commercial game makers either tried to work with Microsoft's initial, admittedly shoddy development tools for the new OS, or they bailed on their PC strongholds to find success on consoles instead. This left a big variety gap for doujin creators like metys, a coder accustomed to working remotely over BBS and now the Internet. Whether creating for the whole online country or just Comiket runs, Japan's changing PC gaming landscape behooved smaller, less financially bound game makers to pick up where studios like Telenet and Micro Cabin left off. Bio_100%'s renown in the doujin freeware space reached its peak at the middle of the decade, and Polestar represents this in so many ways.
Above all, it's rare to play an arcade-style racer this imbued with a bubble-era ethos and optimism, yet staunchly opposed to commercialization and any related baggage. So many players invested in the PC-98 could dial up their local ASCII net, pay much less to download this than even a Takeru vending-machine floppy game, and have a nightly favorite running on their turn-of-the-'90s PC within a day. The slow but sure democratization of online networking and doujin free-/shareware in mid-'90s Japan did wonders to buoy an ecosystem transitioning from one dominant power, NEC, to another under Windows. Polestar may not have a hydraulic taikan cabinet with cool gizmos, nor a bevy of extra tracks like you'd expect from the hot new racers on PS1 & Saturn. But with all else it offers at such high quality, it filled a niche in that special way only Bio_100% and a few other doujin creators could at the time. Perhaps a certain Team Shanghai Alice learned a thing or two from this group's smart decisions.
Like with most Bio_100% releases from '90-'96, Polestar's easily accessible via PC-98 emulator running either the floppies or a multi-game compilation. Jumping between this and the group's earlier, rougher but similarly joyful titles makes it even easier to appreciate what the '94 racer accomplished. It's a shame how the group basically died down and soon disbanded as Windows really took over, with Bio_100% creators moving further into their careers away from doujin development. But if that meant ending on such a high note between this and Sengoku TURB for Dreamcast, then I can't complain much. Polestar's a sporty circuit racer for the people, and one of the best PC-98 games you can just jump into right now, no extra work or mental prep required.