Road Rash 2 Overclocked

I've always wondered what it would be like to overclock a Sega Genesis to fix the horrible framerate issues in Road Rash 2 and 3. With the power of emulation, I've succeeded.

Setup: The Wild Thing 2000 super bike from Road Rash 2 is notoriously hard to control. Insane speeds, twitchy handling, not to mention going 200+mph will make you wreck if you hit nearly anything. An extremely low framerate make things even worse.

I start the race playing with the emulator set to normal settings. After one wreck, I pause the game, overclock the genesis's cpu by a factor of 8, then resume.

Results: The framerate is no longer an issue. The engine seems to top out somewhere between 30 and 60 frames per second. However there are adverse side effects. It's interesting to note that the rendering aspect of the engine was held back by the limitations of the genesis cpu.

While the game runs smoothly, the game doesn't play the same. The bikes don't handle as quickly as they normally would, usually taking 3-4 times as long to turn. This is not a result of control lag either (most of the controls are actually more responsive since the results are drawn quicker) but instead the game physics get messed up. The Wild Thing suddenly becomes a much easier bike to control yet still feels sluggish when turning.

Unfortunately it's the way the game was programmed, so unless the engine is re-written to take advantage of a higher framerate while keeping the same feel there's no way to smooth the game out without completely breaking it. Road Rash 3 is even worse (to the point where the bike is almost glued to the road) and the biggest difference is the insane sharp turn in Germany (near the end of the track in Level 1) where you can take the turn at full speed and stay in the center of the road.

**Note**
Hopefully the video framerate isn't completely decimated by youtube so the difference in smoothness can be seen. If it does get messed up I'll upload the original video somewhere else. Also, the speedup in the music track is a result of the emulator itself, NOT the overclock (speedup is present even with standard genesis cpu speeds)

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• sega
• genesis
• overclock
• road
• rash
• wild
• thing
• 2000

[Jadervason]

one thing I don't understand is why you're so critical of the original framerate, it never seemed like such a glaring issue to me. maybe you have bionic eyes

[honorablejay]

@Jadervason While I do love Road Rash 3, I never liked how low the framerate is (I'd have to guess it's about 15fps). To me, a framerate that low just needlessly increases the already high difficulty.

[ApachaiHapachai]

I use Gens 10a with 100MHz processor and 2Mb Ram. And I don't have such problems as you (exept shitty sky).

[honorablejay]

@ApachaiHapachai Now that I will have to check out, didn't know gens could simulate an overclock.

[TheMVRules]

Actually you can overclock a real Sega to 13 MHz pretty easy...

[honorablejay]

@TheMVRules Yeah I've seen articles on how to do it, I just don't have the skill/hardware to accomplish an actual overclock.

[Centurin]

Nice ending. hahaha

[MrMikehunt87]

i tried this with 3, the difference is amazing

[Jadervason]

@weds9994 here's an amusing thought...I own a motorcycle now. remind me to ask where Viper's little punk ass gets his chains

[weds9994]

@Jadervason Kind of yes and no from me... look at the original, its playable yes, and looks great - but this overclocked one looks better :)

[Tiamat583]

its much better to play in 60 fps now! slow framerates get kinda boring.

[PDzero]

Wow! The smooth frame rate really makes a difference. makes the game feel way more 3 demential

[rchrdcrg]

Just tried again... you're totally right... it does control a lot slower. Damn shame!!

[rchrdcrg]

Oh, and in regards to Hard Drivin' (and Race Drivin'), both are locked to the standard clock speed, which means upping the clock will just keep making the game run faster and faster, but that includes time, so it'll just run be all sped up and eventually unplayable as you go. It does help Sonic Spinball run at its proper speed, and Blood Shot/Battle Frenzy, an obscure FPS, runs amazing overclocked. I've always wondered how you could overclock Virtua Racing ;)

[rchrdcrg]

I tried this, and from my experience it felt like the bikes handled exactly the same. It just feels so different because your brain really has to fill in a lot of gaps in a game that runs at around 12 frames per sec... you have to anticipate more at such a low frame rate, but with the game running smoother you can feel the true physics of the game. I found it made it far more playable. I'll try RR3, though, and make sure since you said that one was worse... I could be wrong as I only tried RR2.