Auto Modellista: Surface Beauty

"Why are you so bad?"

Alright Auto Modellista, calm down. I'm not here to be insulted by your excitable in-race announcer.

"Don't be silly!"

Look, I didn't mean to smash into that wall, spin 180 degrees and then start driving in the wrong direction. I know that's not how you win races. Honestly though, this wouldn't be happening if the cars didn't handle so appallingly. 

It's 2024 and I'm being slagged off by a PS2 game. Fucking state of this. 

Auto Modellista is very pretty though, so I've been happy to put up with the abuse over the last week, as I played it for the first time. The distinctive cel-shaded graphics make it far more palatable than most other racing games of that era. More than twenty years removed from release, it looks beautiful, a feast for the eyes regardless of whether you're playing it through original RGB or scart, an HDMI solution, or running it through some expensive magic box. It is strikingly attractive, on the track and in the menus. A true delight.

Auto Modellista launched on PS2 in 2002, and came to GameCube and Xbox over the following two years. Capcom was on a mission to establish a network-focused, million-seller series, and that desire led to the development of Auto Modellista, Monster Hunter and Resident Evil Outbreak. AM was the least well-received of that trio, critically and commercially, largely due to its atrocious handling and physics. Still, were I to play the original Monster Hunter or Resident Evil Outbreak now, I doubt I'd enjoy them anywhere near as much as I've enjoyed Auto Modellista over the last week. 

As we've established, while it might be a timeless looker, it handles like a shit-bastard. Breaking is an art that I have not mastered, and I regularly spin off the track when attempting to get around a tricky corner. To be fair, the other cars seem to struggle with it just as much as I do, regularly spinning out of control, clipping barriers or each other. When even the computer can't get to grips with the controls, you know you've got issues! Online races must've been utter mayhem.

It also has a touch of the haunted about it, which I consider a positive. It was online focused, featuring 8-player races, but the servers have long since been switched off. The online options are still everywhere in the menus, greyed-out selections and dead-ends that were once portals to a new and exciting world of online play. A social game rendered antisocial by the cessation of its online infrastructure.

I don't mind though, as I love to play alone. 

While many of its features may have expired, its visual impact endures. And that's the very reason why I picked up a copy last month, and why it had remained on my radar over the years. I've dabbled with the car customisation, added go-faster stripes and made my car as gaudy as possible, but I've mostly just been ogling the colourful cars and tracks, especially the slick Shinjuku freeways and their call-backs to early-2000s Tokyo.

Auto Modellista is the first thing that I've played as part of my retro-catch-up January. Being that we are now a third of the way through the month, I really should've made more progress, but Alan Wake 2 is taking up a little more time than I'd expected. Despite being behind schedule, I've already had my fair share of issues with old hardware, and I wish that I were more clued-up on how to maintain ageing consoles. My PS2 slim has a new issue where it will no longer read discs unless it has a little weight piled on top - a PS2 game box and a pack of Final Fantasy Tactics playing cards seems to do the trick. 

With my PS2 plugged in and weighed down, I took the opportunity to dip into a handful of other games, including Total NBA '97, which I thoroughly enjoyed, being that I'm a 90s-NBA sicko. I spent ten solid minutes with The Bouncer, picking up where I left off in 2019, and I couldn't resist having a few sessions of NBA Street Vol.2. I finished up with an aimless return to Final Fantasy X, where I enjoyed the theme tune, played for around fifteen minutes, and allowed the nostalgia to wash over me. It's the only PS1/PS2-era FF that I haven't revisited over the last decade, which is something I would fix if I hadn't heard so many negative things about the HD remaster.

I'm pretty much done with Auto Modellista now. I've enjoyed gawking at it, but I've hit a wall in the Garage career mode where I'm struggling to win races, largely because I keep hitting walls. And grass verges, other cars, bollards and so forth. It's definitely time to move on. I think I'll tackle some Series X back-compatible 360 games next, perhaps Prince of Persia 2008?

From one pretty game to another.