Top Gear Rally

N64, Top Gear Rally (1997) game

This would have been the first 3D 'realistic' racing game I played on the N64, and in some ways, I ever played. I'd grown up with 'Lotus Turbo Challenge 2' and 'Lotus III' on the Amiga, and even 'Hard Drivin' on the humble Game Boy, which, incredibly was a 3D, first-person racer from the early '90s, but this was my first racing game that was in proper 3D, with solid backgrounds (sometimes too solid when it came to crunching into jungle creepers on the side of the road that were made of reinforced concrete despite their two-dimensional appearance!), and undulating terrain, and banks you could launch up and fly through the air thanks to the 'realistic' physics. It was one of a number of games I got with my secondhand N64 and I still remember the pure joy of riding around and not even racing, just bumping up those banks and swerving about, experiencing the Moon-like lack of gravity that exaggerated real world car physics. I genuinely did spend time purely haring about without even trying to race because it was just such fun and so different from the rigid, glued to the track style of the 'Lotus' games, and the graphics were gorgeous. Even now, though they are basic, I can see the detail that so impressed me at the time (and it helps that this is one of the few games with high enough native resolution that it doesn't need a VGA adaptor to work on my monitor). I might even say it looked better in terms of solidity and reality than its sequel, because, I suppose, it was the almost photographic textures that made it work so well from a visual standpoint.

Even the music wasn't bad, so if you've got graphics, sound and physics down pat what else could you want? Well, to some degree it was too easy, but only on certain tracks. The opposing cars gave some semblance of AI variety in that they could overtake each other, didn't just all rattle along on the same racing line, but they were really just trackside obstacles that were actually on the track rather than genuine racing opponents. To counteract this you're placed right at the back of every race, no matter how well you finished previous races, but it's not a problem because there's an exhilaration in passing each car, and I was soon pacing myself to try and get up to 14th position by the end of the first lap, 7th by the second, and obviously take first place before the race ended with the third lap. The quality of the racing enjoyment comes with the fact that there are wildly differing difficulty levels with each track. So the Beach track is by far the easiest: you could allow the walls and barriers to guide you and just slam accelerate for practically the whole race, and once you'd mastered the shortcuts (outside the tunnel right at the start; across the sand through the break in the barriers; and across the field with the lighthouse through a break in the wall), it was even easier to come first every time, no matter the weather. And there were various weather conditions, from rain, to fog, to snow, to clear sunshine or night, and these did have an effect on the road surface or visibility.

This is where the game eked out its longevity from a very small number of tracks. I don't know if it was tough to design and build tracks at this time in the gaming medium's life, but a lot of racing games had so few tracks. Weather effects and mirroring the same tracks, gave a bit more variety to the passing seasons. The format was between two and four tracks for each Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter Season with a points requirement to meet if you were to progress to the next section. This is where tactics came in as you didn't have to win every race, but you had to do well enough in the easier courses to make the tougher ones less important to progress. So Beach was easiest, then I'd say Desert, though it required intense concentration, and the slightest nudge by certain areas of the track could send you spinning all over the place and always facing the wrong way. Jungle was the next one up as, though it had wide tracks where it was easy to avoid other cars, it also took a lot of sliding round corners, which, if you miscalculated, would set back your time. It also had some good little shortcuts (the tunnel off to the side at a right angle to the track just along from the start; the launch ramp across the greenery of the trackside on one corner; and driving right across the frozen swampy area, though only in wintry conditions as the water would slow you down any other time), and was ideal for playing around if you just wanted to experience the physics.

The last and toughest track was a real toughie and I don't think I ever came first in that: Mountain. This was the complete opposite of both Beach and Jungle with tight roads and a need to try and keep away from the steep edges of the track in a lot of areas, otherwise you'd find your car tipping and sometimes even landing on its bonnet or boot and getting permanently stuck! Like Desert before it, it was full of trackside protrusions, and though it did feature shortcuts (driving down the muddy gully rather than the road), they didn't make a lot of difference. I found myself learning where to hug the barriers and where to stay on the road, but even then it was difficult to place, whatever the conditions. Adding to the mix were a variety of cars with different properties, such as front-, mid- or rear-engine placements, top speeds and acceleration. There were the options to choose from three different types of tyre, three different types of suspension, and the usual automatic or manual gears (I always go for automatic, can't be bothered with gears!). I never really found tyres and suspension to be that important, though in more extreme weather or track quality it did have some effect and tinkering around to find the best combination added a layer of depth.

What I really found most impressive about the racing experience itself, though, was how the roads ebbed and flowed just like the water in 'Wave Race' or the snow in '1080° Snowboarding' - you felt yourself being pushed and pulled this way and that, so that braking and handling were about wrestling your car's controls, not just hitting the accelerator and moving left or right. I'm not sure I've ever played another car racing game like that, and I don't know whether it's right to call it realistic, but it was certainly compelling and the kind of thing you'd expect to be doing in rallying as opposed to more street or road based car racing like 'Burnout' or 'Need For Speed' on 'Cube. Battling the drag and slide of the road, as well as your own car, avoiding the other cars and the sides of the track, it all added up to a ferociously gripping race experience. I like my games hard but fair for the skilled player, and this certainly fitted that bill. If I was going to criticise, and the reason I can only give it three stars, is because, for all its positives, it is still basic in terms of number of tracks and comprehensiveness. There were parts of the package I never even bothered with: the garage where you can paint your car and save to a memory card was never on my agenda because memory card space is just too valuable to waste on frivolity, so it's a shame such a thing couldn't have been saved to the cartridge, but these were the times of companies still getting to grips with the machine and its limitations.

Then there's the fact that you can only play two-player - back in the day 'TGR2' was used much more than this for multiplayer, and that wasn't the best game of its kind, but it did allow four players. That sequel was also far more comprehensive (though, unfortunately all needing to be saved to memory card), and a much longer single player, too, so I'll always favour it as one of, if not the, best serious racer on N64. 'TGR' was better in some ways and I do wish they'd kept the physics and 'road flow' as I would call the push and pull of the surface, intact for the sequel, and just used the original game engine to expand upon rather than seeming to redesign it all. I think the graphics were somehow beefier on this original. I also have to thank 'TGR' for helping me win my copy of 'Perfect Dark': I sent in a Top 5 to N64 Magazine, my subject matter being top 5 windmills in games. I believe 'TGR2' also helped with that! (I think it was 'TGR,' 'TGR2,' 'Ocarina of Time,' 'Diddy Kong Racing,' and 'Snowboard Kids'). So I'll always feel nostalgically attracted to this game, but where I've gone back to 'TGR2' over the years, this was the first time I had played 'TGR' since moving on from it to other games. Partly it's the lack of save files, so you can't compare previous attempts to a new file, but also without the motivation of going through the whole Championship there isn't anything to bring you back when you want a blast. There is the option for Time Trials (never something I was interested in on any game), practice on any of the tracks, and of course the two-player, but none of these are reasons to return.

One of the biggest disappointments of the game, and this was so even back at the time I first completed it, was that the special track you unlock can't be played in any other way than in two-player. You can't practice, time trial or race other cars in the single player on it, and I can see that's probably because it was a big track, too big for just two cars perhaps, and I'd much rather they'd included a less dramatic addition (it looks like something out of 'Star Wars Racer'!), and expanded the Championship a little more, than have this very specific bonus that isn't much of a bonus unless you have two dedicated players. Even then, because multiplayer is the only way to race it, no one really knew what they were doing on it, and so it was a bit of a waste. I like that there were bonus items to unlock, like this track and the novelty vehicles, but there isn't really anything to keep you coming back as a good racer should. Still, it was a lovely experience to revisit what is a good game, a formative experience for my journey into three-dimensional gaming. It took only a few sessions to beat because I'd already made headway over Christmas as my go-to game when not on 'Majora's Mask,' and it had taken me so long to get back to it because my gaming time had dropped off. But I was glad to come back and finish it. Simple on the outside, deeper on the inside, and a challenge, which is just what I like.

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