Thanks for the kind words Everett, Just to make sure it is clear, Rail Racer itself isn't on hold, only future expansion and development of it, such as more online chat features and additional upgrades to the Racer. As far as the online track uploads and sharing, and the tournaments, they will go on. For me, the sales were dissapointing, I was hoping to move at least 200 units, but it turns out I overdeveloped the game and deep and complex isn't neccessarily what the blind gaming community wants unfortunately. I did everything I could to make Rail Racer the most replayable blind game available, including free online play, an extensive career mode, a track editor with an online track upload system, online posting of results, and the first web based tournament system for the blind. There simply is no accessible game out there with the amount of features Rail Racer offers for replayability. Despite all that, only around 120 copies of RR have been sold, and this is very unfortunate, as it doesn't encourage developers such as myself to put the kind of time and energy into a project that leads to immerssive and involving game play. At any rate, my plans for some more involved games, such as an Apache helicopter simulation have pretty much been canned, as it just isn't worth the large amount of time it would take, when I could do 4 simpler games in the same amount of time. Some of the problem with Rail Racer is due to the fact a lot of blind gamers just aren't into racing, and I have to wonder how this is going to affect the success of USA Raceway when it comes out. I think probably Raceway will be more well received, as it is easier to relate to todays Nascar racing than a futuristic environment such as Rail Racer is set in. Additionally, I think RR is probably a more challenging racer to get used to than Raceway will be, this is something I thought would be a selling point, but I am afraid the opposite has turned out to be the case. Blind gamers don't seem to want a game with a steep learning curve by and large, they just want to be able to start a game, jump right in and get cracking without having to practice and get used to the nuances of a high speed vehicle on complex tracks. Anyhow, I have learned an incredible amount by developing and releasing rail racer, and the things I have learned will help tremendously in my future titles, though I will probably not create something as feature rich as RR again, at least not in the near future. Finally, regarding Raceway, I hope no one takes what I have stated here as any kind of slam towards that title, I assure you I will be buying it myself at the first chance, and I would hope Thomas would include me on his beta team for the game, as i did with him for RR. I am confident Thomas will give us a great game we can all have a lot of fun playing, I think his work on Final Conflict and Monty shows that he is one of the top developers we have. And if you haven't given RR a fair chance, I urge you to give the demo another try. Ask anyone that has played in the Rail Racer tournament and they will happily tell you what a great time we have all had competing online with it, it has truly been a killer gaming experience. Later all, Che Blind Adrenaline Simulations Games by one of us, for all of us www.blindAdrenaline.com email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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