It was 1995. I was 13 years old and, besides trying to pop wheelies on my bicycle (usually very badly), I had another serious problem. My frustration at not being able to play Daytona USA on my infamous 486DX4 100 MHz was causing me real psychological distress. I couldn’t even excel at riding on one wheel — all I could manage was a weak little screamer while trying to keep the front wheel in the air!
Then, luckily, Antonio Farina — a person like anyone else, but with a brain at least 100 years ahead of the average human — decided to release a game that would finally solve my psychological problems.
Every time I walked into an arcade, my envy for that racing masterpiece grew stronger. And even the upcoming conversion for the beautiful Sega Saturn couldn’t calm me down. But soon, a miracle appeared: a title that pushed PC hardware to its limits without the need for any 3D accelerator cards.
We’re talking about Screamer! A racing arcade game that revolutionized graphics, squeezing every bit of power out of the hardware — and I repeat, without accelerator cards. You needed a Pentium to run it in SVGA, but even in VGA it already looked like a miracle to our eyes.
The Italian studio behind the game was Graffiti (which later became Milestone). The gameplay was very similar to Ridge Racer, the fantastic PlayStation title. And now you might say: “Wait, weren’t you talking about Daytona USA?” Well… as I mentioned before, I had — and probably still have — some psychological issues.
Anyway, the game featured closed-circuit races (three laps) using cars inspired by Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Porsches, and other supercars. I had an absolute blast drifting through corners, and once I became more experienced I could even spin the car in full 360-degree turns.
It became one of the first major Italian successes in video games and, not surprisingly, it won awards for Best Racing Game of 1995 in several European magazines.
After that, I happily went back to practicing wheelies on my bike — and I improved quite a bit. I went from barely lifting the front wheel for one meter to almost two meters, this time pulling wheelies and letting out a real Screamer!
Jokes aside, for true retro gamers, this game is absolutely worth trying.