Neon Rider Classic gave me a bit of a philosophical moment. For one, its Steam description admits that it’s under thirty minutes of gameplay. In fact, once you get the hang of it, you can probably beat it in fifteen. It’s priced at about £2.50, which raised the question of how much you should expect from a game you’ve paid for. I feel like there are certain expectations generated when a game crosses the gap from free to paid. Though that might just be me.
The other factor is that Neon Rider Classic is a remake of a flash game. That strikes me as a bit weird and made me think about the death of Flash. Flash was a big part of my early gaming life, so I feel a little strange about games being remade and thrown up on Steam. But I’ll save the philosophising for a little later. First, I should probably talk about Neon Rider Classic itself. What little there is of it, anyway.
Insert Tron Reference Here
Neon Rider Classic is a mixture of two classic flash games, Neon Rider and Neon Rider World. The concept is nice and simple. You are the world’s least stable motorbike and you have to ride along a line to the goal. A large part of the challenge is keeping your bike level as you land jumps. The other challenge comes from the colour mechanic. You change the colour of your bike to ride on correspondingly coloured surfaces. Memorising what button corresponds to what colour is crucial as you navigate the thirty-one levels on offer.
That’s it. That’s the entirety of the game, unless you’re obssesed with beating your best time. There isn’t even a level editor, which I’m pretty sure was in Neon Rider World. It’s slightly baffling. You could beat this in the time it takes to eat dinner. It looks nice, at least, having shiny graphics and an alright soundtrack. Once you figure out to stop accelerating during jumps, though, you’ve checked off the only difficult part. Apart from the wonky physics that’ll send your bike randomly spinning out, I guess. Hard to say much about it. It’s not even a snack. It’s a vol-au-vent that you paid £2.50 for.
Loving Memories Of Flash
If I sound like I’m being harsh, it’s because I am. If you put Neon Rider into Google, you’ll find both the original and Neon Rider World available for free. The latter even comes with that level editor. The question that kept popping into my mind was: why bother paying for this version? It looks a little better and that’s it. That turned me on to thinking about Flash in general. See, back in the day, all I had to game on were handhelds and a creaky old Windows 98 computer. Thus came a saviour: Miniclip. It allowed me to experience bitesized games at no cost. Unless you count my parents not being able to use the phone.
You may remember that back in 2020, Flash was discontinued. Countless Flash games – and animations like Homestar Runner along with countless stick figure battles – were put in jeopardy. Free Flash games were an institution. A core, unrefined pool of creativity where people could release whatever they wanted. Thank the Lord for projects like Ruffle that emulate Flash. Gaming in general is in dire need of backwards compability right now. Erasing Flash games from existence just isn’t right. That said, while I approve preservation of older games, I’m less keen on remakes – which brings Neon Rider Classic into jeopardy.
Neon Rider Classic – Okay, But Unnecessary?
While Neon Rider Classic itself may be alright as a game – abrupt length aside – the score below indicates that I’m not sold on it. I don’t understand remaking an already available pair of games and not exploring the concept. Steam has an inbuilt workshop feature for crying out loud. Let people go crazy with it. Instead, we have a fairly routine replication of levels that you can play for free. It looks nicer, true, but so what? Chances are, if you’re interested in Neon Rider, then you’re already wearing rose-tinted glasses.
I’m sure the developers meant no harm by it. I don’t begrudge them wanting to earn a paycheque – nor wanting to revitalise a game from the past. I’m just grumpy. I just don’t like the idea of old, free games being preserved by being thrown onto Steam for a couple of pounds without taking the time to evolve the concept. The past should be preserved entirely as is – at the same price point. Otherwise, completely retool things for the modern age. Neon Rider Classic does neither and so I can’t help but get grumpy. Sorry, I’ll go back to Kongregate now.
