Cool Riders
Cool Riders (Japanese: クールライダーズ) is a 1995 racing arcade game by Sega. It is the spiritual sequel to OutRunners and has a similar premise to it, though rather than driving cars, the player rides bikes. It also uses digitized graphics similar to Mortal Kombat.
Cool Riders
- Genre
- racing video game
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Documentary evidence
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wikidata · Q5167329 · wikipedia · Cool Riders
In this article
The object
The object
The Steppenwolf song "Born to Be Wild" is featured as the game's opening theme, as well as one of selectable in-race music. Emulated by the MAME emulator in 2004, but it wasn't working until 2013. This is because it was the only arcade game on the Sega H1 Board hardware, which used a unique graphics compression scheme.
Key facts
Key facts
• Title — Cool Riders • Developer — Sega AM1 • Publisher — Sega • Composer — Hiroshi Kawaguchi • Genre — Racing • Modes — Single player, multiplayer • Arcade System — Sega H1 Board • Platforms — Arcade
Gameplay
Gameplay
The object of Cool Riders is to finish each stage ahead of a computer-controlled rival by the end of a stage's checkpoint and within the allotted time. Whoever finishes first gets to select the next stage. For every rival defeated up to stage four, the player receives a promotion, indicated on the lower left-hand corner of the screen. There are three routes to choose from (westbound and eastbound routes with a middle route that takes the player through the United States.) There are five stages. The fifth stage is an "Extra Stage" where the object is to outrace all seven computer-controlled rival opponents on the streets of New York City to the finish line. Regardless of what happens, the player character's ending will display on a projector if the player had time left over to finish the race, followed by a map containing the route the player took to reach the Extra Stage and the finish line, followed by the word "FINISH" appearing in the center of the screen. Sonic the Hedgehog appears in this game. When the player completes the game, his head and that of Tails are icons for the player's initials in the high score table. The game has failure animations when the player runs out of time during a race and comes to a complete stop. The announcer says the same "game over" message as in OutRunners: "I'm sorry. You didn't make it." When this happens, mini-cutscenes depending on the character the player chose play, ranging from one character throwing a tantrum on a scooter to characters being carried or thrown off the screen, followed by a map showing the route the player took with the word "RETIRE" appearing in the center of the screen.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
- Japan
Named but not plotted · 1
Cool Riders is associated with Japan.
Country
Reception
In Japan, Game Machine listed Cool Riders on their July 15, 1995 issue as being the seventh most-successful dedicated arcade game of the month. A critic for Next Generation panned the game, commenting that "Realism is ridiculously absent, a sense of speed is almost nil, and control is plain sloppy; you practically have three directions, straight, and a left and right turn at 45 degrees. With games like Cyber Cycles eating up players' quarters, Cool Riders is just not up to par." He gave it two out of five stars.
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Cool Riders, revision 1342199045 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Cool Riders. Sega Retro Games.
- 2.Handley, Zoey. Cool Riders for Arcade is just a beautiful, captivating mess. Destructoid. December 12, 2023.
- 3.mamedev.org/releases/whatsnew_086.txt. 22 August 2004.
- 4.Haywood, David. Still Too Cool for Mamedev. 19 February 2013.
- 5.Amusement Press, Inc. Game Machine's Best Hit Games 25 - 完成品夕イプのTVゲーム機 (Dedicated Videos). Game Machine. 499. 25. 15 July 1995.
- 6.Imagine Media. Cool Riders. Next Generation. 10. 128, 130. October 1995.
References
Citations
References
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reference work
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 17 August 2026.
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