I never had a Dreamcast growing up – I was strictly a Nintendo kid – but like any good millennial gamer, I've grown obsessed with a nebulous style of game with a "Dreamcast vibe." Think Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, or Space Channel 5, with a nebulous combination of colorful graphics, a bangin' soundtrack, and a spirit of experimentation. That spirit isn't dead, either, as the Steam Next Fest demo for Denshattack! has offered the most distilled Dreamcast vibe experience I've had in ages.
The name of Denshattack! evokes the popular Japanese train series Densha de Go!, exclamation point and all, but this isn't a simcade experience that has you roleplaying as a train conductor. Instead, you drive a train like Tony Hawk rides a skateboard, jumping off ramps, pulling off tricks, and trying to build a high score out of increasingly intricate combos.
You're bound by the constraints of the track, but it works like rail-grinding in a 3D Sonic the Hedgehog game. Tracks weave in and out, offering options for which path to follow. Sometimes, three tracks side by side will give you a chance to dodge obstacles, and in other cases, you'll need to pick a lane to follow to see a different portion of the course.
The game has you constantly moving forward at breakneck speed, so all you really need to worry about is braking around corners, choosing your rail, and jumping over obstacles, but there's a tremendous amount of depth in each of those systems. Curved portions of the track pop up a little balance meter which challenges you to apply just the right amount of brakes around the corner, with perfect applications offering a boost of speed like a Mario Kart drift. Dodging obstacles rewards you for memorizing each of the courses – you can simply switch rails to get past most roadblocks, but a well-timed jump could open more scoring opportunities if it doesn't send you careening off the track.
Just completing a level is no hassle thanks to generous checkpoints, but the real fun lies in beating the stage quickly while meeting certain score thresholds. When you're mid-air, you can flick the right stick and draw little half and quarter circles to pull off tricks, which naturally combo together for massive points potential.
All that would be enough for me to like the time I spent with Denshattack, but it's the vibes that have me loving it. It's an anime world where train conductors battle to see who can pull the most outrageous tricks, and it all moves at a breakneck pace with unbridled possibilities. One stage has you escaping an erupting volcano. Another sees you riding a runaway ferris wheel as it rolls across the countryside. It's got a bit of Katamari Damacy in the sense that you'll never quite be able to predict what ridiculous thing will happen next.
And yeah, the soundtrack is great. Arguably the most important thing for capturing those nebulous vibes I mentioned earlier, this music would be perfectly at home pumping out of a 2001-ish Japanese arcade, and there's not really any higher compliment I could pay to a game's audio.
You can try the demo for yourself on Steam, and be assured that I'm not alone in thinking this is an incredibly promising taste. The nearly 500 user reviews for the demo are sitting at 97% positive, so clearly I'm not alone in needing a little of that Dreamcast spirit in my life.
