My Diaries

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

Monday January 07, 2002

A Few Ducati World Racing Challenge Hints

Well, it really does seem that Ducati World Racing Challenge is becoming an alternate addiction.

I've been playing quite a lot in the past couple of weeks.

Here's a few hints I've learned.

The easiest way to make lots of money is almost a cheat. First get to where there's enough money for a semi-decent bike and then you can keep repeatedly winning it from yourself until you can afford a 150,000 superbike and get money in 75,000 chunks. (save over the "loser" game with the winner game, and you can boost your cash since both memory cards then have the same value).

If you don't like the idea of using 2 player mode to boost your cash (or to get you to the stage where you can) then to make money racing, try the Monster Cityfun race early on. Later try the TT1 F1 and TT2 F1 races.

I just finally got my Advanced License on the weekend. Then a 20-lap Sports Touring race at Northstar (?) seems to be a shoe-in. (The 20-lap Supermono on the reverse of the same track is a bit of challenge, but I finally beat it too). Still only 20,000 for winning. So I made most of my 1,000,000+ by "cheating" in 2-player mode. The game did strange things on the weekend though. Thought it was from sharking the first time, but later, yes, in the TT2 F1 race at the tricky, bumpy, Borealis II circuit there was definitely an AI TT1 F1 (which is a bit faster). No sharking involved that time. (No semi-illicit Fogarty 996 had been bought either).

The most frustrating thing is learning the bumps. You learn to take one corner faster, and then you're over the threshold for the bump in the next straight, and it starts dumping you. Some bumps work if you just let up, but not if you're heading downhill (e.g. at Borealis II in the TT2 F1 race). For that one you have to slow, and then be accelerating slightly over the bump in order to have the right stability. Eventually learn how to use the rear brake to help stabilize yourself, too.

I really should get into the habit of book-marking pages on the Web more often. I know I found a really in-depth discussion of Ducati World Racing Challenge somewhere which mentioned things like how weird it is to have one license test where you go crazy trying to cross the rumble-strip on each corner while another test fails you if you touch the inside. And it discussed how to make money, how you can't set up reasonable handicaps in two-player QuickRace mode because both bikes must come from the same category, how weird AI bikes sometimes seem to enter the races, how race difficulty isn't strictly related to level (perhaps because the AI never does upgrades, e.g. for an Advanced Sports Touring race). Etc. Etc. Etc.

But I can't find it now. Nope. Just can't guess the right combo of keywords, or follow the right link, or something.