My Diaries

A Lurid Tale of Obsession, Depravity, Wits and Attempted Wit

Tue Mar 9, 1999

Manipulating Temporary Ghost Replays Without Saving

Last night, apart from correcting some mistakes I'd made in the day 30 Nissan data (consistency checks revealed it), all I did was go back and do lots of Arcade mode time trials.

I broke several of my records with ease, and demolished others. I'm probably still about 5 to 10 seconds per lap off world class, however. Gee, I hate the big bump at the end of the first long straight, the one after the hairpin, with the kink in it, in the the Arcade version of Grand Valley East.

I had previously discovered that the time trial "ghost" gets remembered from one race to the next. But I've made more detailed observations now.

In Arcade Mode, even though exiting from a particular time trial sends you to the main Arcade Mode menu, if you go right back and start another time trial at the same track the "ghost" will still be there. In fact, even if you reload the game from saved data, the ghost will be remembered. This is useful to allow you to set a nice fastest time with, say, the Viper, without wiping out slower records for, say, the Honda Civic. You can erase the most recent record attempt, but keep its ghost replay to beat.

Of course, once I do the next round of record-beating, the Civic is going to drop off the bottom. The game really should only record one value per car, or let you remove arbitrary records, or something.

Conversely, if you've managed to create a ghost replay which is too fast to be of use with the cars you are racing, you could race another track to wipe that ghost out. But you don't actually have to run the time trial; just get to the first screen after your car and track selection, and then exit. This will cause the ghost replay for the first track to have been forgotten.