Well, here’s a blast from the past. Thanks to Game Informer for featuring Felony 11-79 in February 24th’s Replay. I hold fond memories of this PlayStation racing title as it was one I was lucky enough to have named in the days when I was working for ASCII. It’s a treat to see this game in action once again. It came from a great Japanese developer, Climax, and at the time, looked pretty good. The game was called Runabout in Japan, but we were localizing it for the states. It was an easy localization as there wasn’t too much that needed editing.
But on top of all that, it was a lot of fun to play! It was mayhem, destruction and racing all rolled into one package. The main objective of the game was to retrieve three keys that could be used to open a casket filled with riches. The game featured three separate environments (Downtown, Sea Side, and Metro City) and 22 vehicles. Each vehicle had its own unique characteristics and stats, and better vehicles were unlocked by racing through missions. I remember coming up with a list of about 25 names that I thought would be a good fit for a criminal heist game, and Felony 11-79 was best liked by the team. I believe it actually was a callback to a real life Felony police call out, but I can’t find it now. In hindsight, I probably should have just gone with something simple like, Driver. 😊- rob
