The lost 90s Arcade Racer is finally playable inside Takeover 2

Pelican13 has hidden a playable remake of the canceled 90s Arcade Racer inside their new beat-em-up, Takeover 2. The mini-game, titled Overtake, uses the original development assets with the blessing of publisher Nicalis.

ARC Arcade Racing YT just dropped a massive June news roundup, and it is packed. Beyond Takeover 2 bringing back a legendary lost racer, we just got huge news on Clutch, Stuntman Hollywood, Hot Wheels Infinite Rush, Star Wars Galactic Racer, and Crazy Taxi World Tour. Seeing so many high-profile arcade racing projects active at the same time feels like stepping into a time machine.

A ten-year detour

The story behind Overtake is a long one. Back in 2013, developer Pelican13 launched a Kickstarter for The 90s Arcade Racer. The pitch promised a perfect homage to Sega's Model 2 and Model 3 arcade boards, complete with bright blue skies, aggressive drifting, and saturated colors. Nicalis eventually stepped in to publish the game, but it slowly vanished into development purgatory and effectively became lost media.

Now, Pelican13 has salvaged the first track from that original pitch and baked it into Takeover 2 as an unlockable extra. It is a surreal way to finally play a game people backed over a decade ago.

Daytona USA gets a native PC port

The video also highlights a major breakthrough for Sega's Daytona USA. The 1994 arcade classic practically defined 3D texture-mapped graphics in arcades, but its home console history is complicated. The Sega Saturn port was notoriously rushed, and the Dreamcast version had twitchy controls. Sega finally nailed it in 2011 with a brilliant, definitive port for the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade.

That specific XBLA version is now getting a static recompilation project for PC. Static recompilation translates the original game's machine code into native PC code ahead of time. This bypasses the heavy CPU requirements of standard emulation and allows the game to run flawlessly on modern hardware. It is the same technology that recently brought The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Perfect Dark natively to PC.

Harpoons and movie stunts

The rest of the June roundup covers a slate of new announcements. Maverick Games, a studio formed by ex-Forza developers, revealed Clutch. It is an open-world arcade racer with a heavy story focus. The game mixes circuit racing, street racing, and a harpoon mechanic.

Saber Interactive is reviving the PS2-era Stuntman franchise with Stuntman: Hollywood. The original games were notorious for demanding absolute precision to nail movie stunts.

Finally, the emulation community released the PCSX2 X6 fork. This is a dedicated branch of the PlayStation 2 emulator built to handle Namco System 246 and 256 arcade boards. That hardware architecture is very similar to the PS2, but standard emulators always struggled with the arcade I/O boards. This fork solves those issues, making arcade exclusives like Ridge Racer V Arcade Battle and Ace Driver 3 fully playable at home.