The Road Course

This past weekend marked an interesting turn in the NASCAR racing season, by which I mean a right turn. Both the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Tour visited road courses, a rare departure for a racing brand built on ovals. The weight, center of gravity, and wheelbase of a stock car can make even the ovals difficult to drive at racing speeds, so even though the road courses make use of the same basic skills, they pose a unique and difficult challenge, so much so that it was once typical to see "ringers" with road racing expertise make an appearance at the two annual road races. The change-up can result in some uniquely exciting racing, or, as happened this weekend in both races, bruising wrecks. Video games that try to change up their gameplay midstream face similar risks. To understand this, we need look no further than the shmups appearing in Goichi Suda's third-person action games No More Heroes and Shadows of the Damned.

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Why I used to love Santa Destroy

In Suda 51's No More Heroes, I loved the city of Santa Destroy. That's a controversial position, because Santa Destroy bored almost everyone else to tears — the excision of the city from the sequel, Desperate Struggle, was met with almost unanimous praise. Judged strictly by its impact on the gameplay, the town had few redeeming features, and there's not much point in disputing that. But Santa Destroy had value to No More Heroes in other ways. In excising it, the sequel lost something.

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