''Cool Riders'' is a

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is O. J. Simpson murder case, acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the 1994, year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The ...

racing

arcade game An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily games of skill and include arcade v ...

. It is the spiritual sequel to

Sega is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...

's ''

OutRunners is a racing video game developed by Sega and AM1 and released in Japan, Europe, and North America in 1992. It constitutes the third release in the arcade ''OutRun'' series and was ported to the Mega Drive in 1994. Description ''OutRunners'' ...

''. It has a similar premise to ''OutRunners'', though rather than driving cars, the player rides bikes. It also uses digitized graphics similar to ''

Mortal Kombat ''Mortal Kombat'' is an American media franchise centered on a series of video games originally developed by Midway Games in 1992. The development of the first game was originally based on an idea that Ed Boon and John Tobias had of making a v ...

''. Cool Riders has only recently been emulated in the MAME emulator. This is because it was the only arcade game on the Sega H1 Board hardware, which used a unique graphics compression scheme.

Gameplay

The object of ''Cool Riders'' is to finish each stage ahead of a computer-controlled rival by the end of a stage's checkpoint and within the allotted time. Whoever finishes first gets to select the next stage. For every rival defeated up to stage four, the player receives a promotion, indicated on the lower left-hand corner of the screen. There are three routes to choose from (westbound and eastbound routes with a middle route that takes the player through the United States.) There are five stages. The fifth stage is an "Extra Stage" where the object is to outrace all seven computer-controlled rival opponents on the streets of New York City to the finish line. Regardless of what happens, the player character's ending will display on a projector if the player had time left over to finish the race, followed by a map containing the route the player took to reach the Extra Stage and the finish line, followed by the word "FINISH" appearing in the center of the screen.

Sonic the Hedgehog is a Japanese video game series and media franchise created by Sega. The franchise follows Sonic, an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog who battles the evil Doctor Eggman, a mad scientist. The main ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' games are platformers mo ...

appears in this game. When the player completes the game, his head and that of Tails are icons for the player's initials in the high score table. The game has

failure Failure is the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective (goal), objective, and may be viewed as the opposite of Success (concept), success. The criteria for failure depends on context, and may be relative to a parti ...

animations when the player runs out of time during a race and comes to a complete stop. The announcer says the same "game over" message as in ''

'': "I'm sorry. You didn't make it." When this happens, mini-cutscenes depending on the character the player chose play, ranging from one character throwing a tantrum on a scooter to characters being carried or thrown off the screen, followed by a map showing the route the player took with the word "RETIRE" appearing in the center of the screen.

Reception

In Japan, ''Game Machine'' listed ''Cool Riders'' on their July 15, 1995 issue as being the seventh most-successful dedicated arcade game of the month. A critic for ''

Next Generation Next Generation or Next-Generation may refer to: Publications and literature * ''Next Generation'' (magazine), video game magazine that was made by the now defunct Imagine Media publishing company * Next Generation poets (2004), list of young ...

'' panned the game, commenting that "Realism is ridiculously absent, a sense of speed is almost nil, and control is plain sloppy; you practically have three directions, straight, and a left and right turn at 45 degrees. With games like '' Cyber Cycles'' eating up players' quarters, ''Cool Riders'' is just not up to par." He gave it two out of five stars.

References

External links

* {{KLOV game, id=7393 1995 video games Racing video games Motorcycle video games Sega arcade games Arcade video games Arcade-only video games Video games developed in Japan Video games scored by Hiroshi Kawaguchi Multiplayer and single-player video games