Top Gear

"One of the best titles of the Super Nintendo's early days..."

Top Gear is one of those games where you just can't quite decide whether you like it, love it, don't like it, or hate it. It took me a while myself, a few years ago, when I first found this game at a sale in the mall. Anyway, upon looking at the back of the box, I decided that, for $10.00, what've I got to lose? Apparently, not much.

Considering the fact that Top Gear was released when the Super Nintendo was but an infant, this racing game sure as heck laid down the bricks that built the walls to the house of racers. However, the graphics slightly falter. Though there is no slowdown, or any such graphical glitch-like problems, the visuals are, themselves, rather simple. There's barely anything to them. The environments are grainy, however smooth the road may be, but I guess that's just due to hardware limitations and whatnot.

And sound... well, the sound EFFECTS aren't all that good, mainly because all you hear are tires screeching, or the engines, or the ignition of a nitro. Yep... that's it for sound effects, and all of them sound like something you'd experience on the NES. But the music is a whole different story. See, though there are only 4 music tracks, you'll find yourself absentmindedly either humming or tapping to the beat of them all at one point or another, within 72 hours of playing the game. No kidding. Those 4 tunes are amongst the top 20 on the Super Nintendo - they're that catchy, and that good.

You weren't expecting a story, were you? Goody. 'Cause there ain't one.

There are a lot of tracks to visit... 32, to be exact. There are 8 different countries for you to race around, and if you do the math, there are 4 race-tracks in each of the various locales. It's possible to race, though you cannot choose for yourself, in the morning, afternoon, evening, and night. The courses are sometimes rather tricky to navigate, just like any other racing game, but on straightaways, you should take the opportunity to use your ever-useful nitro's. These helpful temporary speed-boosters are available thrice per race. When you gotta pass someone at the end, a nitro-finish is the exciting way to do it. Every time you hit the nitro button, a little bubble-window will pop up, and a comment such as ''Let's GO!'' will be ''said'' by ''you.''

And no, you don't need 2 Players to play Top Gear. That's just how the game works - split-screen, no matter what kind of race you're in. It's fairly annoying... I couldn't care less about what some computerized character is doing - could you? No, probably not. Thus, the developers shouldn't have bothered with it, and kept it to full screen unless a 2-Player game was going on. But whatever... this was, after all, 10 years ago.

4 seems to be the magic number in Top Gear - 4 different cars are available to you, each with a distinct advantage over the others in some way. They are the Sidewinder, Razor, Cannibal, and Weasel. In my opinion, the best of all these is the Sidewinder, and works good for both advanced Top Gear players and beginners.

Top Gear is where, really, the genre was revolutionized. Any racing fan should should pay their respects to the original all-out, sports-car speed-fest.

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Gameplay: 8/10.
Graphics: 7/10.
Sound: 9/10.
Value: 8/10 (casual gamer), 10/10 (racing fan).
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OVERALL: 8/10.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/29/02, Updated 12/29/02