Dreamcast Game #29: 18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker
エイティーン･ホイーラー
Today’s Dreamcast game on Medium is 18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker, developed by Sega AM2 and published by Sega, but I never owned this video game. The game was originally released for the arcades in 2000 but later ported to the Dreamcast in mid-2001, The PlayStation 2 in late 2001, and the Nintendo GameCube in early-to-mid 2002. Yu Suzuki is the game’s producer, Keisuke Tsukahara and Tomoya Koga are the game’s composers, and Keiichi Matsunami is the game’s director.
Wikipedia describes the gameplay:
The main purpose of the game is to make it to the finish line with the truck’s cargo. Players are given a set amount of time, but can ram into special vans that will add three seconds to the timer. There are several characters to choose from, each with a unique truck and attributes.
The game starts out in New York City, New York and players travel across the United States of America, ending in San Francisco, California. After Stage 1, the game gives the player a choice of trailer. One trailer is harder to haul, but provides a bigger payoff while the other choice is easier to haul but provides a smaller payoff. Money is deducted from the total when the trailer is hit. Players can sound the truck’s horn to make other cars on the road yield and slipstream behind large vehicles to gain a momentary speed boost.
In addition to the time limit, players also compete with the “Lizard Tail”, a rival trucker. Crossing the finish line before the Lizard Tail yields additional money. In between levels, players can park the truck in a minigame to earn more cash and upgrades for their truck, such as an improved horn.
The home versions of the game received “mixed or average reviews” according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Rob Smolka of the now-defunct NextGen said that the Dreamcast version was “definitely worth a weekend rental, but its lack of online play and limited number of stages in the arcade game flatten its tires.” In Japan, Famitsu gave the same console version 29 out of 40.
Again, I never owned the game physically, or have burned it before the ROM sites were shuttered back in September 2018. This was one of the final arcade games to be ported to the Dreamcast after its discontinuation before Sega became a third-party developer.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Always wear a seatbelt, and please don’t drink (or text) and drive. Y’all come back now, ya hear?
