World Rally Fever: Born on the Road

Shockingly nice looking MS-DOS take on Powerdrift with decent music. The game suffers from major flaws though: First, player acceleration is unbelievably slow no matter which character you pick; the computer racers accelerate exponentially faster. Bumping anything zeroes out your speed. The game sort of auto-steers for you on corners which makes dodging obstacles in or just after corners on certain tracks extremely difficult, it feels like the game is trying to pull you back into them. Your steering seems to get worse the slower you get so it's basically impossible to correct a turn where you're headed for a wall. Runs smooth, looks great, just feels like it wasn't tested in the slightest. Really like zero fun to play.

You will find an arcade game that pays tribute to Sega Power Drift and Nintendo Super Mario Kart. Hard and enjoyable!

I'm not wrong in that there's a certain "style" to DOS games, right? They don't feel like console games, they don't feel like arcade games, they have their own way of doing things, ways that are usually more complex and more detailed than other games of that era. World Rally Fever does not feel like a DOS game. This feels like a early-to-mid-90's Japanese arcade racer, rubbing elbows with the likes of Outrunners, Galaxy Force 2, and anything else from Sega's "Super Scaler" era. And yet: I see Microprose, Team17, and logos for a Belgian developer called "Split." Europeans are the LAST people I'd think to put a game like this out on DOS, especially nailing this kind of style so perfectly. But, here we are. Unfortunately, World Rally Fever isn't the best-playing game. It may emulate the style, but the actual mechanics leave a lot to be desired. Your vehicle kind of auto-steers itself a little bit around the track, and while you do have SOME control, it's incredibly slippery feeling. It makes for a cool visual when you come drifting around a long corner, but driving with precision is incredibly difficult. I've played hundreds of racing games in my time, it's one of my favorite genres, and in World Rally Fever I find myself slamming in to walls a lot because I can't get a handle on my car. Avoiding obstacles means you really have to oversteer like crazy otherwise your slippery little car will drift its way right in to sheep, or a fence, or whatever. And trying to steer in to weapon pickups? Forget it. Which is the other main problem: this is a four button game, and if you want to use a controller (given its arcade look, you'll want to) then you need to think hard about how gas, brake, jump and weapon will work with how your thumb must move across the controller. Rolling your thumb across three buttons is fine, but you'll have to let go of something to hit that fourth, or suffer the dreaded "claw" configuration. It's not much more than a curiosity, really.

At first, I thought this is a native Windows 9x game - that's how good the graphics are, the controls are very responsive and the game physics are fluid and feel very good (just 'right'). The game gives a lot of satisfaction. Then, I noticed that this is a DOS game... WOW! I did not know, that DOS games could look and feel this good, but now I know thanks to GOG, and I'm going to be on the lookout for such great titles. This game runs fine on my Android phone and tablet! Just place the WRF.DAT and WRF.GOG files in you C drive folder and use 'imgmount d WRF.DAT -t iso', then run RALLY.EXE. I have particular success with aFreebox by Fishstix and in particular Magic DosBox by bruenor - where you can create game profiles to run the whole procedure automatically - just rename WRF.DAT to WRF.CUE and WRF.GOG to WRF.BIN for the app to recognize and use them. Full blown gamepad support any way I want. And you also can use touch control - good setup already provided. (Magic DosBox also provides save states, but they don't work for me.) Only sound effects don't work, but it's a minor issue, music runs fine, graphics run good, and the gamepad support is better than on Windows - you can use HAT, left and right analog sticks and all buttons and triggers - also analog triggers, which don't work on Windows. So, if I understand correctly, we buy here the full, original DOS game - which are provided as the files WRF.DAT and WRF.GOG, of which you can change the extensions to .CUE and .BIN, respectively, to get a CD-ROM rip that can be mounted and recognized appropriately. Wonderful game. Some comments are incorrect: some weapons do fire forwards, like the bomb (and home-in on target). When you push gas at the right moment on the start line, you get extra boost and overtake opponents. And you don't always stop and reposition when hitting obstacles, often they just slow you down nicely, bump you, and you can drive on, if you are skilled enough. And opponents are good.

Man, this game is frustrating as hell. No acceleration, so you always start last. Steereing is awful. Jumping would be OK, but it is broken (try wall in France to get what I'm talking about). Arcade racers should be fun. This game isn't. You cannot select a track, so the only way to play is championship. Some tracks are easy (I've won in Rio on my first go), some are very hard. Music is meh. Skip WRF and try some other racer. Don't pick Screamer though as it crashes. Speaking of arcade, when will GOG add Destruction Derby?