Screamer

[Neon Ignition]

A reboot of the 90's story led racer is coming in 2026

[MartyG]

Screamer was a good title back in the day, shame it's Milestone doing it :/

[Neon Ignition]

I don't hold much hope but these days getting any kind of non-sim racer feels like a cause worth supporting

[wakka]

Never even heard of Screamer (the original) but it looks like a cool game.

This is really intriguing. I like the inclusion of the anime-style art and the implication that there will be a story component.

I don't hold much hope but these days getting any kind of non-sim racer feels like a cause worth supporting

I agree, there are so few decently budgeted racing games nowadays and even fewer that try new ideas. There used to be such a variety but nowadays we've really narrowed down to just a few sim or sim-ish franchises (I put Horizon in the latter category, the idea that's it's remotely 'arcade style' is just, no).

It's lovely that there are so many options for people who want simulators, but what about the rest of us who want powerslides and time extensions? What about us, I ask?!

[Neon Ignition]

Even with Sims I struggle with how little fans expect of the new entries. GT7 is a good example, (2024 patches aside as I haven't played it this year) the game was a step back in many ways and to be honest isn't actually very good looking. I'm amazed sims still hold the genre ransom given how stagnant they've become.

[wakka]

IMO it's the dadification of a lot of triple A. The percentage of income that now comes from middle aged people, many of them men, is significant in the games industry. Which is why we see a lot of relatively linear third person action adventures and car simulators. They're pretty safe bets for this audience. Sony in particular have been geniuses at locking this part of the market down.

Gaming's big enough and broad enough that there's still lots of variety beyond this kind of fare of course, but racing games in particular don't seem to have benefitted from it. I think they feel risky to develop now in a way that they didn't twenty to thirty years ago.

[charlesr]

Wow. Absolutely loved Screamer back in the day.

[CMcK]

Didn’t expect to see a sequel to Screamer after all these years. Really enjoyed the PC original BITD.

[Asura]

The original series was weird, though.

Screamer IMO has very little brand value because it has no consistency.

The first game was a PC game that tried to imitate gameplay elements of Ridge Racer with a visual style that mashed up Daytona & Need for Speed. I had this at the time and I loved it, it was probably the best game (of its type) on the PC at that time.

The second was a PC game which tried to imitate Sega Rally. The third one I think was even more of a Rally game, which kinda failed to make a splash amid the Colin McRae games.

This doesn't seem to be like any of them. I can only assume they're using it for the name.

[Wools]

I feel the same as Asura. Screamer was a poor racing game in my eyes, made for MS-DOS where PC players were starved of good racing games.

I have a slight soft spot for Screamer Rally as it looked great on a good PC (My old Pentium PC just about cut it!) but the control was pretty awful, in an era where PC controllers wasn't standardised. And the Saturn port of Sega Rally and the PS1 Colin McRae Rally left Screamer Rally in the shade.

However, this game is clearly a new title, and looking forward to seeing how it fares. There's so few racing games of any kind made nowadays, a new racing title is now something to be excited about! A new FPS? Not so much.