i just happened to be cruising at hawaii kai town center this past sunday waiting for my new 205/55-15 bfg kdw2's to be mounted and balanced at costco for the grand total of $400.

anyways, while killing time i stopped by the new game stop store to check out what's new in video games, specifically for my ps2. just to let you all know, the last game i got was "kelly slater's surfing", which i still haven't played yet. and my poor brother paid near $50 for it brand new a few years back, when he coulda waited a few years and got it 2nd hand for like $10-20. and i still would be just as stoked to get it now used as 2 years ago brand new.

now i love car/driving games, but not necessarily all the highly technical stuff, more just to drive and crash and check out the scenery kind stuff. but of course, having some mods to do is always cool. so while i'm paying for my 2nd hand game "burnout revenge", i ask the salesguys if there are any good fun driving games out there; you know, not quite like gran turismo, but just drive and crash and rip it up kind stuff.

they both reply, "you gotta try 'test drive unlimited', which is entirely based on oahu!"

"only thing is it's not out yet, but will be coming out in september. $5 down guarantees you a copy in september!"

bam! my $5 was down!

an entire video racing game based solely on oahu roads...of course, there's other stuff to do like buy houses and build a garage to house your fleet of autos or bikes. but that's just icing on the ice cream cake.

check out the website
http://www.testdriveunlimited.com/
then click on one of those 3 square blocks on the oahu map, each of which downloads a sample clip. specifically, try clicking on the block of kailua. that one shows racing by aloha tower, downtown chinatown, curvy road up in waialua, h-3 tunnel, and thru the country roads, all to the most amping song ever by blur (i believe it's called "song two"), what i call the "woo-hoo" song. if watching that doesn't get you psyched for this game, forget i ever mentioned this.

oh yeah, any opinions if this game is gonna be good or bad for us on oahu? i guess as long as the roads by my surfspots and house don't become part of the racing game, it's ok.

 

Can't speak for the console games.. but I played the alphabet game on the big island when driving around it with wife and son several years ago... it was made for Hawaii!

We were stuck on the letter 'B' for quite a while... As I recall it took 1.5 hours to get thru the silly game.

 

That game looks pretty cool. Thanks for the post.
It would be cool if there was a mini

 

To bad this doesnt come out earlier...I could get to know the roads of Oahu before moving there

 

yeah, i got so excited about the game being based on oahu roads, that i forgot to check if it includes the mini cooper as one of their test cars. i'd assume it would since it has all those exotic sports cars, ie. masarati, ferrari, aston martin, etc.

anyone know?

 

Erm... as cool as the MINI is, it's not exactly a Masarati, Ferrari, Aston Marton, or otherwise. From what I recall of the demo though there was at least one old Mustang in it, so there's hope that it's not just the usual Ferrari / Lambo parade!

As for Minis / MINIs... Gran Turismo 2 had the classic Mini (did 3? I can't remember)... or maybe it was 3 and not 4. Anyway - Forza Motorsports has the new MINI in it and you can tune the snot out of it. Wheelspin heaven.