Yu Suzuki‘s 1986 arcade game, Enduro Racer, is seen by many as the dirt bike equivalent of Hang-On, because it uses similar technology and graphical techniques.
The Enduro Racer arcade cabinet came in two variations. One was a stand-up cabinet , with motorbike handlebars, and the other was a full-size dirt bike that you could sit on.
Mario Kart 64 is the successor to the brilliant Super Mario Kart on the SNES and the second game in the famous Mario Kart series. It was first published by Nintendo for the N64 console in 1996.
The Sprint series began in 1976 with Sprint 1 and Sprint 2 – not, as you may think, a first game and a sequel, but the “1” and “2” denotes the number of players who can play the game.
Sprint 1 had a single steering wheel, and Sprint 2 had a pair of steering wheels, and in each game players control their vehicles through a variety of overhead, black and white race tracks.
Released into arcades in 1987, RoadBlasters is a legendary driving/shooting game from Atari Games. It is, however, a little tricky to control…
The third Micro Machines was released in 1997 for the Sony PlayStation. In V3 the environments and vehicles are all 3D-modelled, and the action is displayed at a slightly tilted angle, rather than directly overhead.
The same excellent gameplay mechanics of the previous games have been retained though. Mostly revolving around getting ahead of your opponents in order to push them off-screen.
Out Run Europa is an interesting game in that it was designed and written by British developer Probe Software in 1991. Sega simply provided a license and Probe made the game. And: this wasn’t a conversion of an arcade game – it was a spin-off from Out Run, produced only for home computers at the time.
This 1991 release from Codemasters is the first game in the award-winning Micro Machines video game series and – boy – does it kick-start the series in style!
In fact: it established the staples that make the series so good, like the themed tracks, and the ‘race-to-the-edge-of-the-screen’ style racing.
This handheld version of Mario Kart was developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo on the Game Boy Advance in 2001, and it is quite wonderful to play! Like pretty much every Mario Kart game ever made… What’s not to like about them?
Continue reading Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Game Boy Advance
Power Drift is a superfast racing game designed by Yu Suzuki and first released into arcades by Sega in 1988.
The game uses high speed scaling effects (similar to After Burner and Out Run) to generate the tracks and the cars on the road, and the speed at which you race is pretty startling.
The 2009 PSP version of Polyphony Digital‘s classic Gran Turismo is arguably even better than the original PlayStation version, and that is saying something.
