Publisher: D3 Publisher
Developer: Vingt et un Systems
Release Date: 5/2/2001
Date Played: 10/29/2019
Region: Japan
Time Played: 22 minutes
What’d you think?: I really appreciate the Simple 1500 Jitsuyou Series. Educational games (sometimes using that term very loosely) made for the Playstation and sold for 1500 yen (roughly $15 both now and in the console’s heyday). The gameplay aspects tend to be sparse, usually no more engaging than a quiz, and this entry in the series being driver’s ed software, I feared the disc would be nothing but long boring quizzes. There were long boring quizzes! But some of those quizzes took a slightly deceptive form, as they were meant to emulate a live driving test, and had multiple driving actions (some of the ones I could understand were like “brake”, “accel”, and “left handle”) assigned to buttons and it presents you with a Driving Situation. It was this presentation that I adored. It’s all 3d models in short looping animations, the colors are all washed out and saturated, and the music is all synthesized electric piano and shit. Very pure example of the kind of aesthetic all those lo-fi hip-hop beats to relax/study to are nostalgic for. Vibes for days, badge of honor on that merit alone. I’m going back to this one to brute force my way through the driving school driving test so I can unlock the city driving test and get some nice footage to loop behind a chillwave citypop retrofusion mix and finally get some YouTube views.
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGv8gdnuUeY
