Rush 2049 Preview

San Francisco Rush 2049 is Midway's latest arcade-to-Dreamcast conversion. The arcade game took the popular SF Rush driving formula - that is, shortcut-heavy racing with an eye toward blazing speed - and moved it into the future. The change isn't as drastic as you might think - the future mostly consists of pointier-looking cars and cool-looking buildings.

The home versions of Rush 2049 (Dreamcast, N64) adds quite a bit to the arcade formula. The most drastic change is the addition of wings on all the cars. A quick press of the B button on the Dreamcast controller while you're in the air extends a small set of wings that let you control your descent. This helps prevent a lot of crashes and really adds a new dimension to the gameplay. The wings are also heavily used in the stunt mode, which features three tracks. You'll race up the sides of walls to catch big air then spin as many times as you can. The only problem is that you'll actually have to land on your wheels if you want the stunts to count toward your trick score. Besides the stunt mode, there's also an obstacle course, but that mode wasn't too playable in the version we saw. The game will also contain a battle mode, where up to four players can drive around an obstacle-filled area, pick up various weapons, and blow each other up.

The graphics in the Dreamcast version are downright amazing, even at this early stage. The frame rate is extremely fluid, the one exception being some small choppy portions when you are going around turns, but this shouldn't be too much of a problem to fix. The four-player split-screen mode is a bit choppy when compared with the single-player experience, but there's plenty of time to work on that between now and the game's September release.

Midway already has a hot game on its hands even at this early stage. With a lot of polish and the potential addition of an online mode of some kind, this could easily be the arcade racer to beat when it's released on the Dreamcast this September.