Yves, my Belgian friend, what a beautiful thing you have created! BRAVO! Astonishing!
I saw a YouTube video, came here, tried the web version, immediately bought it.. recommended it to my friends...
Time from first sight to purchase <5 mins.
I am addicted at the moment. I have been playing it all night. Surprised at how few comments you have here...
You have solved SO MANY of the very obvious problems with an already superb original game.
You asked for suggestions :
The analog stick should be usable on the car select and car upgrade/repair sections, user should not have to move to the d-pad.
I selected three repairs and it said I had selected 0 upgrades. Repairs and Upgrades are a little confusing. Repairs x/x Upgrades x/x ??
Grab the music from as many versions as you can, they are all different and they are all great! Master System, Arcade, Xbox 360 etc etc...
World, Europe, Local (All time, This Month and Today) High Score tables.
Retain settings between games.
Should be able to enter my name with the joystick..
Distance to RIVAL.
Big Chase HQ style RIVAL arrow (Criminals Here!) (optional).
The mechanic is too realistic - is this you? Someone you know? :) Needs to be more 8-bit - like the "Nancy" in the Mega-Drive Chase HQ 2 -
Steering wheel support would be cool but that is always going to be a small sub-set of your customer base.
You should have a "Chill-Out Drive" option, where you are not racing, but driving fast through a randomly generated environment... slowly increase the max speed... up to the user if they want to just drive and chill or keep pushing themselves.
Get user submitted cars.. Lots of them. Let people rank them and auto add the recent top 10 - note, not everyone has PhotoShop...
Most car games fail because of obvious and repeated problems...
Crash too much - No-one WANTS to crash.
Too realistic - I am playing a game not WORKING...
Not realistic enough : Your car is 2x faster than all other cars you are racing against. Except for one which is always faster than you...
Boring challenges - Yes that's you Horizon Chase - A game should be fun to play and fun to come back to - not a punishment to come back to.
Drifting is too challenging - Get drifting right and you will have an awesome game.. it is not hard.. brake whilst accelerating and turning, then control the drift.. maybe have a Tony Hawks style arc and arrow.. push it too hard and you spin, too little and your drift ends.
Thoughts for your future (car) games...
Multiple rivals: Like 30 or 40! Loricel had a game on the Amiga/Atari ST which had a lot of rivals that you had to pass, the passing was slow but very realistic. The car in the game was a child's Matchbox Porsche which they photographed then digitized (including with its rear hatch and doors opened during crashes - this would be an interesting option for you, could be a super quick way to add a lot of cars). Overtaking was challenging but fun... JUMP TO 7m 16s
Need for Speed had an ok rubber banding system for two player games if you go that way. Whatever you do, do not make it like recent Mario Karts where the person at the back can win!!
Next Car Game : Remake Chase HQ and then Need for Speed (PS1). :)
General advice...
At some point Sega and Copyright will come knocking, probably a good idea to be bringing this to a close and to use your new found connections to get your own (similar but way better) game up and running.
Porsche Challenge on the PS1 and San Francisco Rush 2049 on the Dreamcast built in lots of shortcuts. On the SFR game they were there all the time, the harder ones gave you more rewards. On the Porsche Challenge game they turned on and off on a looped track and were often signified by a sound effect (cut through the churchyard when you heard the bell toll). These were great features, especially for a two player game. JUMP TO 2m 20s
Get a graphics artist.. all those cars do look like they are pulling wheelies and that would be easy for a graphics artist to fix.
GET YOUR USERS EMAIL ADDRESSES!!! If you make a good product once, people will buy from you again, but only if they know you have a new product.
Do you get to see the email addresses of people who have bought??
Finally... in your own games.. JUICE JUICE JUICE...
My background : Been playing video games since PONG!! I have played A LOT OF GAMES! Owned my own video game store in England. Now live in Texas.