Re-Volt – One of my all-time favorite games has reappeared on Steam

Before Forza Horizon and even Need for Speed, Re-Volt sparked Peter’s passion for fast frenzy. The game, which has been missing for years, is now available on Steam and GOG.com.

The older I get, the more I come to realize that it’s not the big things in life that most affect how content we are, how fulfilled we feel, how happy. Anyone who allows themselves a little joy every day, in my opinion, is ultimately better off than someone who treats themselves to an all-inclusive holiday in the Maldives once a year but grumbles grumpily to themselves the rest of the time.

I feel the same about PC games now. And so, looking back, it’s not so much the huge open-world chunks that give me the most joy when I think back on them, but rather the quirky sweet gems, the insider tips and underdogs, which I remember most fondly. Games like Re-Volt.

Awesome arcade fun

For me, Re-Volt is a game of generations. In the early 2000s, it was myself who took 1st place with the keyboard (!) in all championships in the game, while doing the 13 racetracks included learned by heart. The fact that the courses were used more often in a mirrored version over time didn’t bother me one bit, because the course design was as imaginative as the whole idea behind the arcade racer.

In Re-Volt you (remotely) control toy cars, whizzing through supermarkets, racing head-to-head on the deck of a tourist steamer or, quite naturally, roaring over brightly lit, jingling toy piano keys in a child’s room. It got a well-deserved 83 in the Geekerline test, because, accompanied by a hip soundtrack, cravings for Micro Machines and Hot Wheels were satisfied here, completely without a license.

With power-ups I blow competitors off the track, firecrackers for example serve as homing missiles. Everything fits into the toy setting, when choosing a vehicle, my car is taken out of the box in proper style.

Later I played Re-Volt first with the neighborhood kids and then with my nephews – and I was always amazed that the little ones couldn’t press more than two direction keys at the same time to move on the mirror-smooth floors (including the chic reflections!) to chase through the curves.

Well, on the higher levels of the four-tier difficulty, Re-Volt wasn’t all that easy either, the toy cars tend to spin under fire and valuable seconds are lost. What have I cursed!

Can this still be played today?

Publisher H2 Interactive relaunched Acclaim’s Re-Volt in July 2022, previously there was no online version available. Re-Volt now costs just six euros and can be downloaded from both Steam and GOG.com.

Class: In the menu you can modern widescreen resolutions and when the graphics are then extrapolated, Re-Volt still looks pretty chic today. Only the old bitmap background objects are not updated and therefore appear blurry, see screenshot:

It races much better against AI enemies like Pest Control or Genghis Kar. Great even then: the real-time reflections on the ground.

thanks one simple but powerful track editor and full of mod support, for example for your own car skins, Re-Volt still enjoys great popularity among its most loyal followers. At Re-Volt Race you will find a multiplayer community, there are also numerous user tracks to download. The Steam Workshop can’t keep up with that at the moment.

For me, this re-release of Re-Volt was a wonderful nostalgia trip – and for you who might not have been there at the time, this article will hopefully give you an incentive to follow the game over 20 years late to give a chance.

Maybe one day it is my own children, who let their model runabouts chase through the virtual living room under my keen eyes and tie their fingers in knots. I think that would make me happy.