Street Legal Racing: Redline

Street Legal Racing Redline is a racing game developed by Invictus and published by Activision Value. The game was released for Windows in July 2003.

On September 9, 2014, Invictus announced via their Facebook page that the Street Legal franchise, as well as every other game Invictus developed using that game engine was now abandonware, and the engine, along with all the art assets were for sale.^[1]

Plot

The plot of the game is to beat every single club and accomplish the requirements to enter the Race of Champions, where you can win a bonus car. Players have to race others on the streets during the daylight for some prestige (respect) or money to modify your car. These daylight races are similar to Outrun races in Need For Speed: Underground 2. During the night, players can either participate in a drag race against one other driver or watch a race.

One feature of this game is the way damage is handled. Damage can be done to many individual parts of the car, including the engine, bumpers, doors, windows, and hood. This damage must be repaired Unlike other games, the car is not returned to pristine condition after racing—instead, any damage sustained during driving will be permanent until repaired.

Patches

Currently there are 3 patches for the game. There are 2.2.1 MWM(by Miran & Wichur), 2.3.0 Live Edition(by Raxat) and SLRR2015(by Bigg Boss93, available on Vstanced.com). Latest version is currently released on Steam and being gradually improved by ImageCode company.

Mods

There are thousands of mods for this game. Such mods include new cars, new engines, new rims/tires, new suspension, new tracks (only for 2.2.1 MWM), new sounds, new menus, and new textures. However it is recommended to act cautiously while modding the game, because the game is very unstable and likely to crash when too many mods are installed that could conflict with each other.

Cars

Cars in the game look very similar to their real-life counterparts, but with given fictitious names. For example: Mitsubishi is called Shimutsibu, Subaru is called Ishima, Chevrolet Camaro is called MC, Volkswagen is called Einvagen, Honda is called Duhen, BMW is called Baiern, Nissan is called Emer and Dodge is called Hauler's. Depending on the version of the game, there are 2 prize cars: Prime DLH 500 (based on a Shelby GT500) or if 2.3.0 Live! Edition is installed, the "Furrano GTS" from its prequel. Players can buy cars from the Used Car Dealer or the New Car Dealer. Initially, players are only given enough money to buy a used car and repair it if it was inexpensive enough.

In addition, players can modify any part of their vehicle using a dynamic garage system. Like the cars, the parts are fictional, and are "supplied" by the game's fictional parts developer SL Tuners. In particular, the many engine components are highly modifiable, including intake, exhausts, camshafts, crankshafts, engine blocks, intake manifolds, cylinder heads, turbochargers, etc. Parts can be mixed and matched to create unique engines. Also, when cheat codes are put into the game, the player will hear a car horn on the regular version of the game, the phrase "You lose!" if the 2.2.1 MWM patch is installed, and "Holy Shit!" in the 2.3.0 Live! Edition.

Reboot

The game has relaunched with a new release on May 7th, 2016 by RAXAT that brings commercial early access to 2.3.1 version of the game with more cars, racing tracks and gamemodes, keeping modding support. Thanks to public funding, the game has been improved and even got a greenlight from Valve corporation to get to Steam store. Steam release is still very unstable and has a lot of bugs, but it keeps improving and is expected to get much better and more stable in the future.

Possible sequel

Dave Singh, the owner of streetlegalmods.com, made a deal with Invictus Games, Ltd. stating that if the Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign reaches a minimum of $150,000, the development of the sequel to SLRR, Street Tuning Evolution, would officially begin, as long as the game was playable and the community would be allowed to add content. $500,000 were demanded to make a complete game.

After having a bad launch with the Kickstarter, and due to the popular demand of a PayPal option, Invictus Games, Ltd. and Dave Singh decided to move the campaign to IndieGogo to solve the many problems they had and also, to extend the deadline. Backers could then use PayPal to make a pledge. The campaign would have been funded only if it had reached $150,000. The IndieGogo campaign had a significantly better launch than the Kickstarter campaign which raised around $24,000 after a little bit more than 40 days after its launch in December 18, 2014. The IndieGogo campaign raised near $10,000 in just 1 day after its launch. Unfortunately the campaign has failed, reaching just over $30,000.

Despite the failure, there's an another person Bartosz "Wichur" Bieszka, who plans to make a sequel to this game under their "CarTune" title. Also, ImageCode LLC plans to make similar project or join an existing one.

References