It's been real, thanks Blogger! Hey thanks for checking out this page! After 10 years of posting here and over 600 posts, it's time to try something new at over possibly greener pastures. Which means you can now find me and all my random adventuring ways over at One Man Many Plans .
Blame it on a lack of sleep after struggling with an on and off again cold, blame it on the traces of cold and flu medication I’m on that gives me very strange dreams and make me forget when I went to bed, blame it on the moon’s alignment – whatever the culprit is, it’s causing me to have some strange thoughts while trying to wake up in my 5am shower.
And this morning I pondered the very important question in the hot water: How come I’ve never heard of the Italdesign Scighera car outside of the notoriously awesome Need for Speed 3 on PC?...
I still play this today. Because it's brilliant.
A LITTLE BACKGROUND IF I PLEASE
In a mystery still yet to be solved, somehow years ago my brother Guy came home with a copy of Need For Speed 3: Hot Pursuit - which was kind of like Lily Allen rocking up your house completely naked with a slab of your favorite brew under each arm. You see way back when before the series got silly with Porsche specials, boost, ugly body kits, neon lights and pimped out VW Sirocco’s ala Fast N Furious (and the truly god awful Need For Speed: Shift), it was a smashing game of sinking the boots into exotic cars in exotic locations in races to prove how big your wang is and trying not to be caught speeding by the local constabulary – a pretty simple formula that worked so well due the combination of great looking graphics, an entertaining exotic car list, decent responsive controls and fun tracks to hurl yourself around while avoiding spike strips.
Couple that with its unprecedented scope for modification (the NFS3 community were very busy beavers churning out every other car that wasn’t in the original game and making them available for download – including Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters, The Supra from TFNTF 1 and vehicles from Star Wars to name a few) and you ended up with a game that I still enjoying playing to this day (having turned my copy of Need For Speed: Shift into an ashtray) – apologies to it’s original owner (whoever you were) because you’re not getting it back. Ever.
AND IT HAD LOTS OF SHINY SHINY CARS TO FANG AROUND IN (AT THE TIME).
Lots at the time (remember this was before the glory days of the Gran Turismo series and PGR).
Street-legal models
Chevrolet Corvette (C5)
El Niño (bonus car)
Ferrari 355 F1 Spider
Ferrari 550 Maranello
Ferrari 456M GT
Jaguar XJR-15
Jaguar XK8
Jaguar XKR
Jaguar Sports XJR-15 (bonus car)
Lister Storm
Lamborghini Diablo SV
Lamborghini Countach
Mercedes Benz CLK GTR (bonus car)
Spectre R42
Spectre R42
Exclusive Models
Aston Martin DB7 (PC version only)
Ford GT Falcon (PC, Australian version only)
HSV VT GTS (PC, Australian version only)
Italdesign Scighera
Mercedes Benz SL 600
Police Models
Pursuit Chevorlet Corvette
Pursuit Lamborghini Diablo SV (bonus car)
Pursuit El Niño (bonus car)
The made up El Nino had the best handling (unless you tweaked the
cars with an editor of course) but as kids, we were more than happy to
put every one of those cars normally out of reach (for those earning 10
bucks a week at the time) through its paces.
The police hated me
when I raced past in the Diablo SV. They didn’t stand a chance. The
Corvette caused a lot of dust off road and the XK8 didn’t like sharp
turns as much as I did.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SCIGHERA?
Good
question. It’s the only car in the list (the El Nino being made up of
course) that I never saw ever again, anywhere. Not on TV, in gaming, in a
newspaper or car mag, even on Top Gear being raced by Richard Hammond.
Even the Lister Storm turned up in GTR2…which begged the question: Did
it die a horrible death? Or to put it better ‘What the hell was it and
what happened?’
Wait...
TURNS OUT…IT WAS AN ALFA
Well an Alfa Romeo
concept car pretty much, bolted together by the wiz kids at
Italdesign-Giugiaro S.p.A back in 1997. Mid mounted 4WD twin turboed V6 6
speed two seater fun that weighs about the same as my RX7 and looks
like Robocop was wired into it.
Still not that pretty though..
And because it’s a concept car, you’ll have as much chance of seeing
one in action as you do of everybody in the financial riots peacefully
meeting for tea and crumpets to settle things.
As for what
happened to it? Only Italdesign knows. They did plan to release it in
very small numbers, but it never got off the ground. The original is
probably in a garage in Italy somewhere, brought out once in a blue moon
in a game of ‘Need for speed: Real life’ where if you get caught by the
cops, you do actually go to jail.
SO THERE YOU GO
Pity Youtube wasn't around in this game's heyday as it would have saved me years of head scratching - someone's uploaded it's original presentation video! (And it's in English!)
I’m
glad to hear that I wasn’t going crazy and it does exist – I can enjoy
my showers in peace before my next stupid question pops up. I’ll never
see one in the flesh in my lifetime…but at least with the CD ROM at
home, I can still outrun the cops in the safety of my spare room…
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