now, at long last, we have the real deal: a laser scanned reproduction of the Snaefell Mountain course, all 37.73 miles and 264 corners of it.
And it is a glorious thing. Set out from Douglas, across Bray Hill and out into the wilds; go forth to conquer corners with such bucolic names as Ballacrye Bend, Kerrowmoar and Brandywell. It’s a country ride that’s been fully weaponised; long and winding canopied roads giving way to small villages with their Spar supermarkets and please drive responsibly signs, all passing at eye-watering speeds. Towards the end of a lap, which takes just under 20 minutes to complete, there’s the Snaefell mountain itself, visible from some miles away and looming ever larger until you’re on its climbs and ascending into the heavens. The sense of place is impeccable.
Laser scanning a 38 mile course across a whole island couldn’t have been a cheap endeavor, and it’s a really niche game and genre. I suspect the only way they thought they could make their money back was to sell it to the hardcore for a really high price.
EDIT: When you google Isle of Man, this is the description that comes up:
The Isle of Man is a self-governing British Crown dependency in the Irish Sea between England and Ireland. It’s known for its rugged coastline, medieval castles and rural landscape, rising to a mountainous center. In the capital, Douglas, the Manx Museum traces the island’s Celtic and Viking heritage. The Isle of Man TT is a major annual cross-country motorcycle race around the island.
If you’re talking about TT Isle of Man, I can confirm it was that price for a long time. But yes, it’s not at that super high price anymore, since the game has been out for a long time now. I kept trying to vote for it for Request Wednesdays for the longest time, but it never won.
That looks amazing, thanks for sharing. He mentioned Freelancer at the beginning (one of my favorites back in the day), but it also reminds me of the OG Xbox Crimson Skies. I’ll be keeping an eye on that.
it looks like the XBox One All Digital edition was specially made for me ;) To have access to all my 360 Arcade games again with my old xbox profile was really great.It looks like filling up 1 TB storage with game pass is no problem at all. It feels like I am locked in a candy store… so much candies everywhere. And finally replaying E4 after so many years, I got tears in my eyes…
Good article about Rare’s more recent history, the perception that “old Rare” died, and so on.
Rare is always the studio on the tip of thousands of tongues, when it comes to trying to claim Microsoft “ruins” studios. This specific example has always bugged me, because it’s historical revisionism that ignores Rare’s complicated past, and the state the studio was already in when Microsoft acquired them.
Even their brief sojourn making Kinect games, was something the studio head of Rare has acknowledged they asked to do - it wasn’t foisted upon them.
Bungie strikes me as a pretty bad example of bad management. Microsoft let them go independent again, and continued to work amicably with them for a few years afterward. They continued to make good games right to the end for Microsoft. It’s a shame they couldn’t “make it work” I guess, but the studio was far from ruined.
If anything, they’ve become worse since leaving, what with the whole terrible saga with Marty O’Donnell getting cheated out of money, the neverending saga of dissatisfaction with Destiny 2’s microtransactions and loot boxes, the rushed last-minute mess that was Destiny 1, and so on. Joe Staten even ended up going back to Microsoft, and is still there. If anything, a “game as a service” like Destiny is exactly the sort of game I could see people ironically fearing Microsoft would force them to make.
Ensemble Studios I still don’t really understand what actually happened there. They closed suddenly after Halo Wars shipped… but then one of the two companies formed in the wake of it’s closure (Robot Entertainment), which was comprised of nearly half of Ensemble’s staff, immediately went on to work with Microsoft on Age of Empires Online, before handing it off to Gas Powered Games and moving on to their own IP.
On my Game Pass app, these are listed under “Leaving Soon”.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Jackbox party pack 2
Pumped BMX Pro
Rage (360)
Epic Mickey 2 (360)
Damn it. I still haven’t finished Rise of the Tomb Raider, so I never got Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Oh well. It’s not like it set my world on fire anyway, otherwise I would have finished it/gotten to it.
Yeah, starting to think Game Pass is not for me. By the time I get to trying out a game, it’s gone. Not that it’s happened often, but I have such s backlog and lack of free time that it’s either play something off GP or dig into something i already own.
Holiday sales really did a number on me last year. Today I saw that I had Gears of War 5 in my collection…I have no recollection buying it! Same with a few other titles (oh, when the hell did I buy that?).
Recently, I almost bought a physical copy of a a game that I already owned. My wife of all people (she’s no gamer) gave me the heads up that I already had it.
