Dying Dream Semi-Pro Car Saturday, 13th April 2024

This is my favorite car from the LYE. I love how much it captures Paul Phippen's penchant for fenders, wings, and abstractions of aerodynamic shapes. Heck, even it's imperfect controls are reminiscent of some of the jankier stock cars. I reckon it'll stay in my installed cars collection permanently.

Forest Mansion 2 (Redux) Standard Track Sunday, 17th March 2024

The glow-up on display here is nothing short of mind-blowing. This track has gone from merely just "passable" to downright exemplary. Give yourself a pat on the back, you've more than earned it.

Evil Evil Weasel Skin Saturday, 16th March 2024

Updated with Burner's suggestion and an added nod towards the yellow ring on stock Weasel's wheels; replaced (most of) the preview pictures with screenshots of the updated skin; truncated the skin's description. Tune in next week for Rotating Rotor and Purple PurpXL (not really).

Arcade Skins Redux Modification Friday, 15th March 2024

Just pushed update 1.2, featuring aliasing fixes, oversight corrections, and general polish for eleven cars. I've included a changelog.txt in the download for those curious about the specifics. RC Bandit in particular got a big overhaul! The preview screenshots will be updated to reflect these changes within 12 hours of this comment being posted.

Car Advanced Car Thursday, 29th February 2024

I would have expected the joke with a car named Car to be that driving it would be the most generic experience ever. Imagine my surprise when I took Car for a test run and figured out that Car actually handles a bit like a real car. No, seriously. It normally has understeer, but if Car starts oversteering, it's not going to stop. And because of how top-heavy Car is, it's very easy to roll Car over while going over basically any sufficiently uneven terrain. It's actually a lot of fun trying to wrangle Car into winning races. Basically, imagine a version of RV Loco that's actually fun to drive, and you get Car.

Downtown 1 Standard Track Monday, 26th February 2024

I like to think I'm a snob. I have unreasonably high standards and I'm needlessly hard to impress. I've seen the words "stock-like" thrown around for tracks that completely fail to capture the Re-Volt fantasy of taking mundane environments you'd see every day and making them extraordinary by re-imagining them from the perspective of a six-inch-tall toy car. This probably makes me a hypocrite. All of that being said, I hope my words carry more weight when I turn around and say that this track genuinely feels like it could have been a part of the original 1999 lineup. I don't just mean a racing line that's (mostly) intuitive where each turn makes sense as an extension of what direction you're already traveling in; I don't just mean the excellent texture work and world design that capture's Re-Volt's balance of realistic detail with surreal stylization; I don't just mean the lighting and shadows that give the environment a sense of actually existing in a physical space; I don't just mean the on-point sound design that seamlessly implies the existence of a world beyond the level's boundaries; and I don't just mean the full-sized cars driving down the street acting as a logical extension of Toy World's trains. I'm talking about the *vibes*. This track encapsulates the same fantasy of mundane locations becoming extraordinary through the lens of R/C cars so perfectly that it even puts some stock tracks (like the aforementioned Toy Worlds) to shame. This is the kind of track that little babbey Shred would have spent dozens upon dozens of hours just aimlessly exploring back in 2001-2002. If that's not the highest compliment I can pay, then I don't know what is.

High Voltage Semi-Pro Car Monday, 6th March 2023

Now THIS is how you use A.I. generated art: as concept art for an actual artist to extrapolate from. And what an abstract piece Burner's churned out here, with reverse piranha fins, spoiler supports without an actual spoiler, and a rear axle that can only be described as a cross-beam. It's absurd, and I love it. It's a fun drive, too; quick off the grid and with tight but touchy handling. It'll navigate corners like they aren't even there, yet it tends to overcompensate whenever you need to make a minor correction. And you will definitely feel its low weight in a heated race, as an errant bump in the road or a light nudge from another car can send this thing clean off the side of the road.

SS Highway Re-Volt Standard Track Saturday, 3rd September 2022

Man, this track. I must've played this track a hundred times in a row back when it first released. It's a shame that the comments from the original RVZ upload have been lost to time, because I still have fond memories of the community collectively losing their minds over how ambitious this track was back when it first released. Has it seriously already been over 10 years since then? Now, let's be honest here: by today's standards, this track is no longer a technical marvel. After all, we've been doing file replacement for over a decade. But even then, the atmosphere that this track creates is still extremely impressive and very immersive; in the heat of the moment, with the crowds at the side of the road, construction barriers blocking off civilian cars, neon searchlights circling in the distance, and electronic music blaring outside of the theater, it can really feel like thousands of people are watching you race up and down the otherwise-simple highway. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that this layout is relatively simple; there are still some pretty sharp corners at the ends of the highway that will keep you on your toes — and even a small head-to-head section after the roundabout — but overall, the track layout is forgiving enough that even someone as mid at this game as me can floor it with Super Pro cars and have a mostly comfortable ride. This might seem like a downside to some, but when this layout is combined with the immersive atmosphere, any shortcomings that the track might have just sort of fade away. In other words, while this track may no longer be the technical marvel that it used to be back in 2012, nor is it a challenging track like many of the immaculately-crafted masterpieces that have been making it into the I/O packs as of late... SS Highway Re-Volt is still nonetheless a surprisingly thrilling joyride that's rightfully earned a place in the history of Re-Volt, and if you've never experienced this track or simply haven't played it in a while, I enthusiastically recommend giving it a few runs.

Track Editor (Unity Edition) Tool Monday, 16th May 2022

This is easily one of the most exciting releases to hit the Re-Volt scene in quite a long time, at least from my admittedly casual perspective. Knowing that we now have a built-from-scratch rewrite of the original Track Editor makes one's mind run wild with pie-in-the-sky ideas about potential community-made upgrades (such as adding the new features from Kenny's Track Editor 1.1 update from back in 2013). Of course, I'm just a casual observer, so I can't even begin to imagine how much of a pain it must have been to make this application in the first place — you cannot tell me that getting Unity to play nice with Re-Volt's old file formats was easy in any way — so I'll be content just to have a functional Track Editor that works with modern operating systems regardless of additional bells and whistles. The fact that I could stick this in an RVGL Pack folder, boot it up without having to run it in a compatibility mode or with a -windowed command line, and just be able to build and export a track in the year 2022 is nothing short of miraculous. If that isn't worth applause in itself, then I don't know what is.

MAKEITSCARY Lego Track Tuesday, 7th September 2021

Of all the tracks I expected to get a sequel, I never would have put my shitpost tracks from 2011 on that list. It's pretty surreal to see tributes to track design choices I made ten years ago. In some respects, this track far surpasses my own work; the lack of heavily edited track textures is supplanted by extremely liberal and effective use of objects and instances which take the boring straightaways of my own tracks and turns them into tests of deft dodging. It's a genuinely fun time pulling 180's around alligators and shooting for the open space between palm trees. Hell, there's even a respawn teleport, something that my younger self would never have been able to figure out. Unfortunately, I have to level a few criticisms towards the base track layout. Pipes are used a little too liberally throughout the track — pipes which are rife with bumps due to the intricacies of how the Track Editor handles pipes that aren't connected to the start line. The track also suffers from the problem of having jumps immediately before sharp turns; one can argue that these can be circumvented by braking before the jumps, but this compromises the nuances of accelerating and decelerating in the middle of the turn — not to mention they're just plain unavoidable if you don't memorize their locations. Still, there's genuine potential on display here. I think that by doubling down on the use of objects and instances as clearly identifiable obstacles, softening the harsh 90-degree turns, and using pipes more sparingly, you might just be on your way to creating the next genuine LEGO Track classic — a rare feat.