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Review: The Italian Job (2001)

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 14:00:00 +0000

You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

The Italian Job is based on the 1969 cult classic movie of the same name, and released very late into the life of PlayStation in fact over a year into the life of PlayStation 2. It reviewed well and charted at number one for a good amount of time, even winning a “Best PlayStation Game of 2002” award from the Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of it let alone played it.

It was one of those games I picked up along the way, long after release, probably at a car boot sale or charity shop or bargain bin. I distinctly remember booting it up for the first time and feeling the vibe of the movie instantly despite only having seen it once when I was a teen. It retains all the comedy, action, and British irreverance. The thought of racing cars around busy city streets with reckless abandon is as intoxicating now as it was then.

So, with that in mind we should look at The Italian Job through that sort of period lens. PlayStation was on its way out and the wobbly polygons were par for the course, no worries. It released after the hugely successful Driver (1999) and its slightly less successful sequel Driver 2 (2000) and is obviously inspired by those games. It features pretty much the same game modes, and the same gameplay. One could be forgiven for thinking The Italian Job was Driver: 1969, which is no bad thing. Graphically it’s very strong, gameplay wise it ticks all the boxes, and most imporantly it drives very well. You control a range of vehicles throughout the game and they all handle differently in terms of speed and control which makes the game all the more rewarding.

The main game follows the plot of the movie quite faithfully and turns the heist planning and preparation into missions mostly around London, then on to Turin and finally to the Alps for the finale. If you don’t know the movie, it’s the story of a heist where $4 million in gold bullion is stolen from Turin on the day of a football match and the robbers escape through grodlock traffic in Austin Mini cars coloured red, white, and blue. Rule Brittania, eh!? The music at the end of every mission never fails to raise a smile, and the sound effects in Turin really put you in the moment.

What I love most about the game is that even though it is sticking to the plot of the movie, it never feels linear. You’re free to take whatever route you want. Naturally, there are more optimal routes for certain things, and familarity of the cities comes over the course of the missions. You might want to drive on the wrong side of the road, or take a slightly longer route to avoid police cars or roadblocks. The developers did something wonderful when they stiched together all the disparate stunts and scenes from the movie into something far more grand than it has any right to be: a seven minute escape route across Turin—through city streets, across rooftops, shopping arcades, on top of the roof of the Palavela, around the test track at the FIAT factory, down church steps, through a Palazzo, across a river, into sewers, and foiling the police to potential freedom. It’s difficult to recall a finer set piece. By the time you get to this mission the game is quite demanding in terms of difficulty, but never feels unfair. Of course these days it useful to play with save states to avoid any frustration. Load times are probably the only real issue with the game, but you can use emulator fast forward to speed those up. No better time to play the game!

Today we’re spoiled by open world games. We’ve seen it all before from the likes of Grand Theft Auto and many more. It’s comforting to think that the lowly PlayStation was powerful enough in the right hands to pull of streaming of “whole” cities and allow a game like this to exist in 2001. It is undoubtedly one of best arcade driving games on PS1.

It’s worth noting there was a later movie also called The Italian Job from 2003 which received a video game on GameCube and PS2 that same year. It’s similar in scope, though perhaps less daring in scale, and also very highly recommended and well worth playing. See posts from 2022 and 2021.

Review: GTi Club Supermini Festa!

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 12:00:00 +0000

The ultimate hot hatch.

Most people are familiar with the first game in the GTi Club series due to its prevalence in arcades throughout the later half of the 1990s. The second game in the series is very hard to find in the wild, whilst the third is perhaps least known but a little easier to find and play today.

The PlayStation 3 received a loose port of the first arcade game, as GTi Club+, though it takes a lot of liberties. You may not notice if you’re going from 20-something year old memories of the original arcade game, but to me it feels more Western than Japanese and the classic GTi Club handling is largely missing. It’s very much a “blue sky” reinterpretation of the original arcade game running in the Sumo Digital racing game engine. It’s OK, but that’s all.

And that brings us to the home ports of GTi Club: Supermini Festa! The third game in Konami’s arcade series added extra locations, cars, and game modes to the original recipe whilst keeping the much loved controls including the handbrake. For this home port developer Genki built on the base of the arcade game and added even more, including online multi-player, game progression, and unlockable cars, modifications, liveries. And you can still play it online today with a modded Wii!

Released amongst the aftermath of the Icelandic ash cloud and greeted with physical delays before its arrival in retail stores, and perhaps even onto digital store fronts. The game finally released in Spring 2010, a mere two years after its release in arcades. The choice of Nintendo Wii and Sony PSP is a curious one, explained in part by the Wii being a huge seller but the PSP remains an odd choice. Maybe it was easy to target both these 480p platforms with one codebase or maybe it made more sense from a Japanese perspective? Regardless, due to the capabilities of the target home platforms the HD graphics of the arcade game are downscaled in resolution and complexity to 480p and, at least on Wii, the frame rate is kept high at 60fps.

Your first few games with GTi Club: Supermini Festa! might have you feeling a little nonplussed, and that was my experience when I received it in the post in March 2010. I played it for a bit and put it to one side. It was over a decade later that I returned to play it again—with a more open mind—and it really sunk its teeth into me.

The game starts off very easy, almost too easy, as you set about unlocking cars and game modes. You might think that there is no challenge, but before long you’ll notice that difficulty begins to ramp up and you have to be a little more selective with your car choice and how you choose to level-up your car stats. By about half way through the game, and perhaps earlier if you’re going for gold medals, you’ll need to figure out that to remaining competitive means figuring out the correct car to use for each challenge and failure to do so will result in you hitting an impasse. It’s a very Japanese level of difficulty, one could describe it as the Dark Souls of driving games. I’ve seen many people hit this wall and abandon the game just as it is about to show them what it really has up its sleeve. Nintendo do the same thing in many of their games, where you play through it once and only then are the most dedicated players greeted with the main event.

One final point is about control. In the early days of playing the game I was using motion control, which is well-implemented and very enjoyable. Later in the game, I found that I needed a control method with more reaction speed. I tried Wii SNES Controller, which helped but the digital nature of the controls felt very jarring on-screen. So I switched to analog stick control on a Wii Classic Controller Pro, which gives quicker turns and reactions in general. I later spoke with 赤しおん/Aka_sion—a Japanese player with whom I race online—who confirmed that all serious Japanese players who were playing online back in the day had made the same discovery.

At this point in time GTi Club: Supermini Festa! is one of a select few hard-to-find Wii games, so it commands a high price. If you’re not a collector it’s an easier choice, as you could essentially rent the game by buying it, playing it and selling it on. Or you might have other options depending on your propensity to sail the high seas. Come on in, the water’s lovely.

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Review: The Italian Job (2001)

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Review: GTi Club Supermini Festa!

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