Star Wars: Racer Arcade - DEMUL (New and improved SEGA Hikaru Board Emulation)
DEMUL, the Sega Dreamcast, Naomi, Atomiswave and Hikaru emulator has had an update, with a focus on improving the emulation of the Sega Hikaru games. I'm genuinely amazed by this, I thought updates on DEMUL had finished years back, but apparently things have still been going on behind the scenes with some non-public builds.
So anyway, here's some gameplay on Star Wars: Racer Arcade a 2000 arcade racing game developed by AM5 and LucasArts, and the final Star Wars game released by Sega, based on the Podrace from Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. I never saw this game in the arcade, much to my regret, as it had a huge sit in Podracer cabinet that looked pretty awesome in the photos I saw of it in games mags at the time. This game has no connection with the home Star Wars Podracer games that came out and, much like a lot of Sega arcade output of this time, never got a home release.
My ancient PC has always struggled a bit with the demands of the Hikaru emulation in the past, but performance seems much better now, and the in-game graphics seem greatly improved. In the previous version of DEMUL I'd used, the skybox was entirely absent in this game and the boost button had no visual effect to show anything was happening. Previously as well, the game was running around 50 fps, which looked OK speed-wise, but it made the audio sound like someone strangling Jar Jar Binks. In windowed form here, the game is telling me it's managing a fairly consistent 60fps. There is still a bit of garbled music going on, but it doesn't sound nearly as bad. As I never saw this in the arcade, I'm not sure if visually anything still needs improving now...?
Thanks to @EnzoTestarossa740 for letting me know about this new DEMUL version.
#Sega #DEMUL #StarWarsRacerArcade
Oh, and this is what Planet Harriers (Hikaru board spiritual sequel to Space Harrier) looks like now if you're interested:
https://x.com/MThunderwing/status/199...