Tag: rockstar

Retro Rogue – Midnight Club

Since I can remember, I’ve always loved cars. As a child, I had a huge Hot Wheels collection. Anytime I would go to a toy store, I would leave with at least one new car. I was also obsessed with car wash sets, especially the ones that allowed you to actually wash the cars with soap and water (I also had an obsession with watching clothes in the washer… though never the dryer, but I digress…)

I also felt safest in a car. When I was a kid, my mom would take my sisters and me on mini-road trips on the weekends. We’d usually stop at a toy store on the way out of town (on these trips, I’d get an action figure, rather than a new car), get some snacks for the road, and be on our way. I LOVED being in a car, driving somewhere, and listening to music.

My love of cars naturally made its way to my love of video games. For the most part, these games were more traditional racing, like Gran Turismo 3. Somehow I got a code or something that unlocked all the cars and gave me a bunch of money. It was SO much fun (I was a kid and didn’t want to invest the time to unlock everything.) Sometimes I would race around, but sometimes, it was just a place of pretend of me. I’d pick a place on the track and pretend it was a house, and just pretend there were places for me to drive.

After watching The Fast and the Furious, my love of cars shifted to street racing cars… and my video game preference shifted as well… Enter Midnight Club. I don’t remember how I discovered the game, but I remember loving that it was an open world. It made it easier to play pretend. Now I could actually pick a building to be my “home” and I could drive around “running errands” and whatnot. I had an entire imaginary life. Don’t get me wrong, I played the game as intended too… but once I unlocked everything, I needed something to do. I remember unlocking this car that was like a spaceship. It went SO fast. I loved it.

When the 2nd entry in the series came out, it was a no-brainer that I would buy it. I don’t remember much about the second game though. The first one I remember vividly. It’s weird, but there are some songs I associate with games, despite having nothing to do with the game. Example being Hottie by Ashley Ballard. It is from the Spyder Games soundtrack (a story for another time…), and I remember listening to it while playing the game. I can’t think of one without thinking of the other.

Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition came out sometime when I was in high school. The game is BY FAR my favorite racing game. Not only did I get to race around in an even BIGGER environment, but I got to customize the cars like never before. If you wanted your car to look like something out of The Fast and the Furious, you could absolutely do that. I spent so many hours customizing cars and even more hours just driving around. The soundtrack was INCREDIBLE too! My introduction to M.I.A was via this game. I wish there was a remaster of this for the current gen consoles.

Midnight Club 4: Los Angeles was, unfortunately, the last game in the series. I haven’t played it in a while, but I do remember playing it shortly after moving to Los Angeles. It was interesting to see how the city was translated into the game. I love it for its depiction of Los Angeles, and because I was loyal to the series… but 3 was better.

I’m not sure why there hasn’t been another Midnight Club. Rockstar, also the company behind Grand Theft Auto, has made references to Midnight Club via Grand Theft Auto Online. I hope that means it will someday make a return… but I’m not holding my breath. It is interesting to me though that Grand Theft Auto Online now has more street racing elements. There is even an event, or maybe a trophy called Midnight Club.

There have been a few mumbles of a revival of the series. My fingers are crossed.

Grand Theft Auto III

Sometimes, despite my ever growing list of current games I need to play (and finish), I like to revisit games from my past. Despite my cold and distant persona, I’m quite the sentimental person. The past week or so, I decided to play through GTA III (I purchased the trilogy for PS4 and figured, let’s burn through them, then GTA IV, and finally start to work on GTA V … and GTA Online doesn’t count).

Starting the game hit me with a rush of memories. The first time I played the game, I was in eighth grade, so I was maybe 13. My cousin Stacy (not by blood, but we called each other cousin nonetheless) owed the game, and one time during one of my sleepovers at his house, he let me start a game. It’s interesting how my taste in videos games was influenced by him. Before him, my taste was more or less, fighting and racing games, maybe an action-adventure game every now and again.

He introduced me to FF VII, which changed my life. I played it right before FF X came out, and somehow didn’t discover Aerith dies until she actually died in my game.

When I started GTA III, I hadn’t played anything like it. It was strange and exciting to have this open world and to be able to cause mass destruction within it. I borrowed it from him and I remember my sisters and I spending a good bit of the summer taking turns ruining the city. It was great.

Though I enjoyed causing chaos and mayhem, my favorite part of the game was the radio. I would listen to Lips 106, Flashback Radio, Head Radio and Chatterbox. Sometimes, more so with Vice City than III, I would just drive around listening to the music on the radio. I still knew the words to my favorite songs, and I could remember when X song played that meant to change to Y station to listen to Z song. It made me feel like a kid again. And it made me a diehard fan of the series and open world games.