Metropolis Street Racer: The Dreamcast Game With Kudos, Three Cities and 262 Tracks

Metropolis Street Racer is a Dreamcast driving game that scores players on how they drive as well as how fast they go. Bizarre Creations developed it for Sega, and its Kudos scoring, three recreated cities and 262 tracks made it stand out among street racers of 2000 and 2001. Reviews were generally favourable, but weak sales followed after Sega stopped supporting the console.

What is Metropolis Street Racer?

Metropolis Street Racer, usually shortened to MSR, is a racing game developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Sega exclusively for the Dreamcast. It was planned as a launch title, but European players did not get it until November 2000. North American buyers received it in January 2001.

The project started in 1997, when Sega Europe approached Bizarre Creations for a street racer. Bizarre had already built Formula 1 and Formula 1 97 for Sony's PlayStation, and Sega's Kats Sato tracked the studio down at the ECTS trade show that year. A meeting with Sega Europe's chief executive, Kazutoshi Miyake, sealed the agreement.

Martyn Chudley, managing director of Bizarre Creations, said the offer gave the studio an opening to branch out, since Sega had learned it was already lined up for more Formula 1 titles.

A street racer that scores style as well as speed, built around three recreated cities.

How does the Kudos system work?

Kudos is the in-game currency and score, earned through both skill and style. Skill Kudos reward finishing challenges well, while Style Kudos come from drifting. Collisions and failed challenges reduce the total, so a clean and controlled run earns the most.

The name comes from a Greek word meaning praise or glory. Difficulty can be adjusted, so a shorter time limit or a larger head start for opponents raises the reward for a successful attempt. Harder setups therefore pay more when completed.

Drifting uses the handbrake to skid through a turn. A K symbol appears during the slide and grows brighter the longer and more pronounced the drift becomes. The more opaque the symbol, the more Kudos the drift is worth.

Losses are steep. Hitting a wall, an obstacle or another vehicle costs Kudos, and a failed challenge leaves a total of -25 K. Cancelling a challenge incurs a penalty of -50 K. Finishing a race without any collisions adds to the total, so caution counts alongside speed.

Each challenge keeps only its most recent attempt, so a strong result can be replaced by a weaker run. Joker cards, earned through play, double the Kudos gained or lost in one attempt when they are used before the challenge starts.

How were London, Tokyo and San Francisco recreated?

The developers visited London, Tokyo and San Francisco to capture the streets in person, then built the city models from maps, aerial photographs and reference shots. The game is known for detailed and accurate recreations of all three cities, and its clock follows the real time of day in each one.

The team took what it describes as tens of thousands of photographs and hours of video footage. Detailed maps and aerial photographs supplemented that work. Each building was studied through a general reference photo and several close-ups, which meant up to 20 reference photos for a single building.

Mark Sharratt, the lead artist on the San Francisco map, began by scanning district council land-use contour maps into Softimage and drawing over them to get the scale right. He then matched the shapes using photographs and video. The photographs were straightened in Photoshop and cleared of people, trees, wires and other distractions, so they could serve as building textures.

The team repeated this process for each city. The tracks are formed by blocking off areas of these real streets, which is how the game turns a city into a racing circuit.

How were the challenges, chapters and cars organised?

The single-player game groups its challenges into 25 chapters of ten, and finishing every challenge in a chapter unlocks the next chapter and a new car, provided the player has enough Kudos. The challenges come in five formats, ranging from solo hotlaps to four-race championships. Each challenge takes place on its own track.

Unlocking a challenge also opens its track for the time-attack and multiplayer modes. A single city therefore supplies many different routes, each with a challenge attached.

• Hotlap: a solo run against a target time, with an alternative version that records the average time across all laps.
• One-on-One: a race against a single opponent, usually three laps, with a head start of up to 60 seconds available to either side.
• Street Race: a single race against several opponents.
• Championship: four races against three opponents, with points awarded by finishing position. It is usually the last challenge in a chapter.
• Challenge: a race with custom rules, such as passing a set number of cars within a time limit.

Some challenges, mainly within the Challenge category, use a time-based unlock. Finishing inside the window reveals secret cars or cheats. A late finish still counts as completing the challenge, but it does not produce those rewards.

The garage holds up to six cars, although there are only three spaces at the start. A new car is earned by completing a challenge with it, typically a short lap within a time limit, and the player has unlimited time to finish. Once earned, the car can be customised, with colour, window opacity and number plate all adjustable.

Players can also switch ABS on or off, and set convertibles to hard-top, soft-top or open-top for the weather. Because the garage is small, a player sometimes needs to dispose of a car to make room. Doing so costs 10% of the Kudos earned while driving it, which encourages players to stay with a favourite vehicle.

Which online features did the game include?

Metropolis Street Racer did not support network racing. Its online features were reached through the Internet option, with time trials, speed challenges and rankings hosted on the Dreamarena and SegaNet services. Those services and the rankings closed in March 2002.

Time Trial mode let players set a specific car, course and weather condition, then save their best laps as ghost cars. The resulting file could be shared, so other drivers could race against the same ghost.

Speed Challenges ran on three courses, one for each city: Market West II in San Francisco, Parliament Street South II in London and Higashi-Dori Kita II in Tokyo. Only the VX220 and the Opel Speedster could be used, with automatic transmission and ABS switched on. Times could be uploaded to an online ranking until March 2002.

A dedicated microsite, open to registered Dreamarena and SegaNet users through the built-in browser, held Speed Challenge rankings. It also showed a World Time Trial ranking of the top ten lap records for each course, a World Kudos ranking, a Ghost Attack feature and driving tips. The Kudos ranking was activated on 5 January 2001 because the initial PAL editions had score bugs.

Sega also billed nine New Time Trials as races created on an exclusive circuit. In practice these were the Challenge tracks already in the game, such as Shibuya Challenge and Westminster Challenge. The top ten ranking for that feature was never implemented.

Why was the replay feature removed?

A replay feature was advertised and appeared in review copies, but it was removed from every retail version. Testers found problems with the replays near the end of development, and the team spent about two weeks trying to fix them before time ran out. The team concluded that removal was the only option left.

Only pre-recorded demo races can be watched now, and they offer replay angles but no further replay controls. The US instruction manual still suggested that the feature was present.

Martyn Chudley explained the decision to Official Dreamcast Magazine. He said the team regretted removing the feature, but the schedule left no alternative.

Bugs in the first PAL release

The first PAL release had several major bugs. Unsold discs were recalled and replaced with a second PAL version that eliminated most significant problems, though not all of them. Sega Europe also supplied a final PAL version free of charge to anyone who had bought a faulty copy.

The US release and the final PAL version were free of major bugs, although minor ones persisted. Chudley said Bizarre had fixed every bug reported to it by Sega, which handled quality assurance. Even so, the sheer size of the game meant some bugs slipped through Sega's testing plan.

How did critics and buyers respond?

Reviews were generally favourable, according to the aggregator Metacritic, and the game was a runner-up for Graphical Achievement at the Edge Magazine Awards 2001. Sales were disappointing, with roughly 120,000 units sold, and most of them in the United States.

NextGen said the game was full of good ideas, with great graphics and expert driving. IGN described the progression, difficulty and refinement as some of the most rewarding in the genre, while warning that players with little patience might struggle. GameSpot admired the accurate physics and tight control but felt the Kudos system made the game harder than it needed to be.

Chudley described the sales as poor and blamed the decline of the Dreamcast, the late release and high-profile bugs found after launch. The United States accounted for 101,757 units. In Europe, 13,297 copies sold in the first two days, and fewer than 5,000 sold there afterwards.

Bizarre Creations had invested around 1 million pounds sterling of its own money in the project. The studio asked Sega whether the game could appear on Sony's PlayStation 2, but Sega declined, which kept the Dreamcast as the only platform.

Key specifications at a glance

What was the game's legacy?

The clearest legacy is Project Gotham Racing. After the Dreamcast title had struggled commercially, Bizarre Creations took its concept and developed that Xbox game, which became a best-seller and launched a series under the same name, a line of games that followed on from this Dreamcast original.

The most distinctive features of Metropolis Street Racer were its Kudos scoring, its recreated cities and its radio stations with DJs between tracks. Its weak commercial results on the Dreamcast meant those ideas reached a far larger audience through the Xbox title. Edge later compared the decision to keep the game exclusive to a famous album being sold only on Mars.

Readers who want similar games can start with Driving Emotion Type-S, F355 Challenge, Ridge Racer V and Sega GT, the titles grouped with it in reference listings.