Rad Racer II

"Nintendo even does a great job cloning games"

OPENING STATEMENT
Once upon a time, in the mid 1980s, Sega was creating a bit of a stir in the arcades, with their popular racing game Sega Outrun. So, Nintendo did their best to answer this craze on their Nintendo Entertainment System. Of course, Sega would not develop their Outrun game for it, since they were competing with Nintendo, using their ill-fated Sega Master System. Therefore, Nintendo enlisted the partnership of one of their most trusted outside developers; Square Soft. Nintendo and Square Soft teamed up to create this racing masterpiece on the original Nintendo, and together they really neglected Sega Outrun’s impact on Nintendo’s hardware sales. Oh, what good times those were.

GAMEPLAY--8
Nintendo did not use a new gameplay idea for Rad Racer II. Instead, they merely improved an idea created by their fiercest competitor. The object of the title is to finish the race course within the allotted time limit. You do not have to worry about placing first, the time limit is your only competition. Of course, there are other vehicles on the road to get in your way and hamper you, a la Crus’n USA. While these cars will not attempt to knock you off of the road, quite often the end up forcing you to get off the road to avoid a collision.

Of course, whenever you get off of the road in Rad Racer II you are bound to get in a collision anyway. There are signs, lamp posts, and many different kinds of plants to cause you to flip multiple times and instantly reappear on the track again. Also, there are checkpoints along the way to replenish your time, so if you seem to have no chance of finishing, do not panic and reset the system. There could be a checkpoint right around the corner. And that should replenish your time limit enough to get to the next checkpoint if you are good at what you do.

GRAPHICS--8
Rad Racer II does not use the typical overhead racing view that nearly all original Nintendo racing games use. Instead, you drive forward, like you are actually behind the car, chasing it. This adds to the game, and creates a more realistic experience. It also makes the game slightly harder, because it is not as easy to see what is in front of you when you are driving forward while looking forward, as it is when you are driving forward, looking down from up above.

The cars are the best aspect of Rad Racer II graphically. Square clearly put the most amount of detail into them, over everything else in the game. Each car has plenty of features that you would see in real life. In fact, your car looks quite similar to a certain Ferrari. I am actually very sure that Square got the motivation for this car from the Ferrari, and it is only not called a Ferrari to prevent those blasted licensing fees.

The environments in Rad Racer II present to us the most primitive graphics in the game. While you can tell the different plants and flora along the highways are different types, it is just really hard to tell how different they are. The signs could have also been touched up a little bit, but you can tell the difference between the different signs much more easily. The lamp posts do not seem to do a lot either, in the night races. I would have liked to see a few graphical touches to do with them, but in the late eighties, things like that really did not matter.

MUSIC--6
SOUND--7
The music in Rad Racer II is very well done. There are just only two or three songs to choose from. Before you start your race, you are able to choose which of these couple of songs you would like to listen to during the race, or you can choose to listen to no music as well. I really wish more games would include a song select feature like this one, as it prevents you from being forced to listen to a song you absolutely hate. The songs all dramatically vary in style too, so if you really, really hate one of the two songs, you are bound to like the other one.

The sound effects are not quite as well done, but there are more of them, so that rating gets a higher score. No, I do not usually rate sound effects based off of their quantity instead of quality, but the sound effects in Rad Racer II are quite well done. I just thought that only having two or three songs was a little bit uncalled for. Anyway, the most common sounds in the game are the screech of brakes, and the rumbling of your poor car crashing into other cars, plants, signs, or lights. It is really unavoidable, those crashes will always happen. To judge your skill in Rad Racer II you do not judge how many crashes you have, but how well you recover from them.

CONTROL--7
Rad Racer II would have been a great arcade game, because the pedals and steering wheel that worked so well for Sega Outrun would have made Rad Racer II’s control absolutely spectacular. But, it is not, so I cannot complain. Square did their best to make the Nintendo Entertainment System’s controller to work, and they carried it out well, for the most part. ‘A’ works well for acceleration, and ‘B’ suffices for braking. The problem, though, is that a digital pad does not work as well as a steering wheel, or even an analog stick, for steering. So, occasionally, steering is not as tight as you would wish it to be, and you will run into an unavoidable crash. The Rad Racer II experts will simply learn to brace themselves for these crashes, and recover as best as they can, and use the original Nintendo’s controller to its fullest.

FUN--9
Rad Racer II is one of the more fun NES games. Eight tracks is a very large number for a racing game of this age, and Square did a great job making each of these tracks worthwhile to play and different. They are all differently shaped, which is very good, and that requires you to be able to anticipate in what direction to turn, even when you have not played a race before. The time limits are too close, too tight, for any real margin of error. I am not saying you have to run the perfect race, but I am saying that you need to know what you are doing in the race.

The fact that you get to choose which song to listen to is also quite entertaining. As I said in the music section, this really prevents torturous listening to songs that you absolutely detest, and it makes your Rad Racer II experience much more enjoyable. Moreover, it gives you a feeling of empowerment, a knowledge that you helped make Rad Racer II better for you, far earlier than things like Create-a-Player Modes were common, or even existed. I truly believe that if it were not for Square including that music select way back in the late eighties, you would not be able to create your own wrestler in WWF: Smackdown! 2, or be able to make a skate park in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. Someone had to start those customization ideas, and I give all due credit to Square Soft.

CHALLENGE--HIGH
Rad Racer II is one of the most challenging games on the original Nintendo. As I said before, the time limits are very tight, and usually I found myself rolling into the checkpoint areas after time had run out, and I was just using inertia to move. I still got the time, though, and that is what counts. I am actually thinking that the rolling stop was included to make the game slightly easier, and I suppose that it does. That hardly changes the fact that it is still an immensely difficult game. Dodging the passenger cars everywhere is enough to make a person give up driving in real life and take up biking everywhere that they want to go. And, once you go off of the road, it is almost a certainty that you will crash into something along side of it.

REPLAY VALUE--HIGH
Even with no multiplayer capabilities whatsoever, I still play Rad Racer II more than basically any other original Nintendo game that I own, and that says a lot. Rad Racer II beats out classics like Guerrilla War and Super Mario Brothers 3, both with cooperative play of sorts. I also play it far more than the other racing games that I own, Micro Machines and Super Cars. Square did an excellent job making Rad Racer II a blast to simply pick up and start playing, be it with, or without, friends. When you have people over, it is a great strategy to simply alternate races, so you all get some time to play. You may think you would get bored, but Rad Racer II is a fairly fun game to watch other people drive in as well.

PROS
*One of the games with the highest replay value on the original Nintendo.
*Very good graphics for the NES.
*Gameplay is cloned, mastered, and improved from another outright classic.

CONS
*Only two songs are included.
*The sound effects could have been improved.
*No multiplayer capabilities at all.

CLOSING STATEMENT
There are plenty of people in the world who simply think they have to have every single Square Soft game on the face of the earth. Rad Racer II would be one of those multitude of Square games that you would play more often, especially because it is on a system that Square’s success really did not become evident with. The game provides the best racing experience on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and it should be played by everyone that has the ability to play it at all costs. A true gem.

OVERALL--8

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/05/01, Updated 07/18/01