"Hold the wheel and drive..."

Most of the racing games currently out have some sort of special features or gimmicks to make seem more appealing. Mario Kart allows you to sling objects at your foes. The F-Zero series is character-driven. The Burnout series allows you to smash your competition into scrap metal. The Project Gotham Racing series features some of the best visuals to date. But once all of these awesome extras are stripped away, you're left with a game that is ruled by the concepts and limitations of all other racing games before it. Sure, there may be a few obstacles in your way, or the course may be designed to put your driving abilities to the test, but it's still nothing more than a beaten path to follow. Fancy graphics and sound effects aside, your goal is still to make it from Point A to Point B in the least amount of time. How you travel between those two points is entirely up to you.

But in the world of Grand Prix, things aren't quite as simple. Before you lay a wide expanse of asphalt, a straight road from the starting line to the finish. Unlike the characters of more recent games, you lack personality, attitude, and even a name. However, you do have one thing in common with all other racing participants: an unquenchable thirst for victory. There's fame and glory waiting for you at the end of this track, and you'd better step up if you want a piece of them. As soon as the race starts, your engine revs into a fury, launching you into the thick of the competition. There's mere seconds between you and victory, so you've got to act fast. Using nothing but pure skill, ability, and spunk, you've got to figure out how to get past the competition. Should you beat out your foes, you'll be justly rewarded with a record time and the chance to do it all over again, only better.

Such concepts are the fundamental aspects of any racing game; your job is to go faster than the others, thus allowing you to claim first place. However, it's this difference in speed that will make the most impact on your race for glory. While you may be the fastest thing on four pixilated wheels, your opponents aren't quite up to par. They'll merely lumber forward at an turtle's pace, blocking your path and forcing you to weave your way through traffic. You'll have to use your mighty Atari joystick-wielding capabilities to their fullest extent, let you accidentally ram into one of your foes. Unlike in many games of this generation, your competition can't be destroyed, wiped out, or blown up; instead, the impact of the crash will slow you to a near halt, adding precious seconds to your overall time record. Also, the track is laden with oil slicks that will force your vehicle to swerve erratically, creating the potential for even more accidents. While the difficulty of the initial track doesn't pose much of a threat, the harder courses will be a true force to be reckoned with.

Considering how much time you'll be spending to constantly survey your surroundings, you'll probably learn to appreciate the simple beauty of this old game. While real racing takes place across wide, circular expanses, the Grand Prix competition takes place on a long stretch of road marked with bushes on either side to indicate length. While these bushes are nothing more than mere blobs of guacamole green coloring, they do offer a primitive background that some of the harder tracks lack. The real beauty lies with the racers themselves, which are nothing more than big blocks of colors and stripes with four blocks of black tacked on for a tiny bit of realistic rendering. These racers come in a variety of colors, creating a colorful whirl of colors as you speed past on your fancy red and blue driving machine. However, getting distracted by these colors and shapes may lead to your downfall; a collision will result in a flashing screen and a loud, sickening crunch as metal meets pixilated metal. Indeed, the race is lively, wonderful, and nerve-wracking all at the same time.

When you think of the racing games of today, you'll probably think of realistic sports cars, vivid environments, loads of options, customization, and extra features. However, Grand Prix proves that you don't need any of that stuff to have an awesome racing experience; all you need is a responsive car, a finish line, and some truly nasty obstacles standing between the two. At first glance, one wouldn't expect such an experience from a game on a seemingly primitive system like the Atari 2600. But once that engine starts revving and that car starts careening toward its slower-paced foes, you'll get the same rush from this game as any other racing game out today. Few older games can wield that kind of draw and power of a gamer, the kind of quality that makes this old racer an instant classic.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/20/06