Great arcade games do not always make for great console games. I’m often apt to drop a couple of dollers into an arcade cabinet in the theater lobby while waiting for my movie to start, but there’s a big difference between doing that and plunking down $40-50 to own the game forever and ever. SEGA seems to understand this, and after the royal treatment that they gave to the home port of Crazy Taxi, I was hoping for the best with 18-Wheeler American Pro Trucker. I don’t know that I would consider 18-Wheeler a great arcade game, but I’m still rather fond of the experience, and I was curious to see what we were going to get for the home version. Would there be mini-games? Would there be some kind of online play element? Whatever the case, the Dreamcast version would surely need some extra oompf to make it worthwhile as a home purchase. And with the game delayed several times, it seemed like SEGA was taking the time to craft the game into a well-rounded package. Sadly, what we wound up with was little more than a bare-bones port and it was over before I knew it.
If you haven’t had the opportunity to play 18-Wheeler in its native form, it’s basically a racing game that requires you to drive a big honkin’ rig through traffic to the finish line before the timer runs out, and if possible beat your rival trucker as well. It’s an interesting spin on the arcade racing experience and if anyone could take an idea like this nad turn it into something unique, it had to be SEGA. The courses take the player across great distances, like from Florida to New York, but the abridged trip will only take a handful of minutes thanks to the miracle of truncated courses. The tracks are packed with personality and it all makes for a really fun time.
The Dreamcast version is a faithful port of the coin-op, but that’s to be expected. And when compared to other Dreamcast offerings, it’s really not saying a whole lot. The game looks decent, but not great, and most of the appeal for me comes more in the design elements and colors than from the game being technically impressive. And if you’ve played the original, than you can well imagine that the game loses a good bit of its charm when not being played in the big cabinet that houses the arcade version. At least the first-person view does a fair job of recreating a little bit of that experience. The interior of the cab features swinging decorations on the mirror and items that slide across the dashboard when you take turns. It’s about as emersive as it can be, and that goes back to what I was saying about the game having lots of personality.
Unfortunately the game suffers from an extremely limited replay value. It took me no time at all to beat the game, and while I admittedly had a great time doing it, there isn’t much here to make me want to keep playing. 18-Wheeler lacks that certain finesse found in other arcade racers that makes me want to get better and improve my times. And so, while I’ll likely be apt to toss this disk in the console every now and again to relive the fun, it’s not going to consume hours of my time. SEGA tried to add a little bit of replay value by adding some parking mini-games between the courses, and there are a few extra tracks in a Score Attack mode, but I don’t think these are enough to kick-start the game into a worthy purchase. The one thing that might have done that, Online play through SEGANET was nixed at the last minute, which makes me wonder what the hell SEGA was doing during all those delays.
Perhaps, I’m spoiled by recent offerings, so let me say that 18-Wheeler is exactly what it sets out to be. It’s a faithful port of an arcade game that is by its very nature lots of fun, but very short-lived. It’s not a game that was meant to be played in hour long sessions, but rather in quick doses. I think this game would have been a lot more welcome as a $20 budget title, especially since SEGA didn’t want to put in the extra work needed to flesh it out into something more substantial.
GameFan Zero 