SHIRO! waved the checkered flag on its inaugural Monthly Community Challenge for February with nearly 300 SEGA Touring Car Championship times submitted.
Four different community members took the top spots in the four NTSC region categories, while community member vbt dominated the PAL side.
vbt submitted the lowest times for the Arcade Championship of 2 minutes, 51.183 seconds; the Country track of 1:52.499; the Grunwald track of 2:29.778; and the Brickwall Town track of 2:32.203.
On the NTSC side, community member QBerT submitted the best Arcade Championship time, clocking in at 2:47.699. Community member SegaSteve completed the Country track with the low time of 1:50.485. Sega RPG Fan paced the Grunwald track with a time of 2:25.1. And Double Dime took the top spot at the Brickwall Town track with a time of 2:27.145.
More than 30 people submitted times throughout the month.
“I was VERY impressed with participation!” challenge co-organizer Rasputin said in an interview over Discord. “We are likely going to pass 275 total submissions before the event is over. Had ~30 people participate and nearly nonstop STCC related conversation the last 4 weeks. This SHIRO! Community Challenge has broken every single world record on speedrun.com for the game. It has been an absolute blast to witness and be part of.”
He credited the SHIRO! crew for their willingness to embrace the new monthly event.
“This far exceeded my expectations, and that is almost certainly thanks to the full embrace of this little idea by the SHIRO! bros.,” Rasputin said. “The community contribution really made this possible.”
He cited fellow community members MooseTracks and Xiden, who donated the prizes for the winners, as well as SEGA RPG Fan and Random for helping to run the challenge and track submissions.
Competitors kept the Monthly Community Challenge channel on the SHIRO! Discord server ablaze with near continuous discussions of the 1997 SEGA Saturn racing game, harkening back to those pre-Internet schoolyard days.
“I was very much hoping that this community would come together and do just that,” Rasputin said. “We helped each other get better, but never shied away from a bit of competitive banter. Nearly everyone was looking to win, and it showed. The SHIRO! community really showed up for this challenge.”
Saturn Dave, a SHIRO! co-founder, said in a Discord interview that the new event went “as well as one could hope for.”
“Community really is the most important aspect of these events, and I love the fact that folks got so involved,” Dave said.
As part of the event, additional bonus challenges unlocked mid-February on the Urban Masters and Boomtown tracks.
SegaSteve posted a sub-28 second time on the Urban Masters track, and Retro Games Boy 78 clocked in at 31.5 seconds on the Boomtown track.
The PAL side was again claimed by vbt, who posted a 31.6 second time on the Boomtown track.
vbt said in an interview they began playing the game steadily upon release up until about 2000 and has periodically returned to it ever since.
They said they used digital controls where many participants used the Saturn’s analog 3D control pad.
At least on the first track, vbt said the strategy was “never brake.”
“You learn and find the right gear to use, the right speed for corners (I watched speed and not the track),” vbt said. “Then, when there was no way to improve the best lap, I tested all the (car) tuning features.”
SEGA Touring Car Championship, based largely on the Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft series popular in Europe in the ’90s, long suffered from a reputation of having unintuitive controls.
“I just hope that we can begin to reverse the narrative that has prevailed for over two decades regarding this game,” Dave said. “STCC is a very good game that was way ahead of its time, and the fine folks who formed AM Annex should be commended for what they achieved, before other games like Gran Turismo helped change audience expectations for how a racing game should handle.”
vbt agreed, offering advice for those interested in taking the game for a test drive.
“Don’t give up because it’s hard to handle,” vbt said. “Play more until you manage to master the cars. The more you play, the more you’ll enjoy the game.”
Results from the February 2024 SHIRO! Community Challenge
“I think a lot of people are Sega Touring Car fans now,” Rasputin said.
March’s Community Challenge, featuring the arcade-style snowboarding game Steep Slope Sliders, is already underway with community member PandaMonium reportedly setting a new Alpine world record day one.
Join the SHIRO! Discord server and head to the SHIRO! Community Challenge channel for more information on March’s event.
Cecil H4rvey is a contributor to SHIRO! Media Group, writing stories for the website on NetLink League events. H4rvey cut his teeth on Sega Genesis games as a kid in the ’90s, and his love Sega was reignited like many during the 2020 pandemic, when he discovered the massive amount of innovation in the retro scene. He purchased a model one Japanese Saturn and installed a Fenrir ODE in 2022 and never looked back. H4rvey joined SHIRO! on the heels of a career as a newspaper reporter in the Rocky Mountain West.
Be the first to comment