Top Racer Collection Review

Get transported to the past with the Top Racer Collection. You may be thinking, “Hmm, I’ve never heard of Top Racer before.” That would be because the games were under the name Top Gear, but the BBC has the rights to the Top Gear name because of the show, so they went with the original name in Japan, Top Racer. This collection is made up of three classic ‘90s games: Top Gear, Top Gear 2, Top Gear 3000, and one new title called Top Racer Crossroads. This new title is essentially a modification of the original Top Gear game and features cars based on ones that are in the Horizon Chase game.

Each of the games has the same menu and the option to play these modes: Campaign, play through a racing career; quick race, where you pick only one track to race; time attack, beat your high score or try to get on the leaderboard against other players from around the world; custom cup, where you select all the tracks in the cup. Once you get to Top Racer 3000, there is one other choice for versus that allows you to race with up to four vehicles. For each game, you can check out the manual to get some history on that title or to learn the controls for accelerating, nitro, and how to switch gears if you are playing with a standard car.

In each of the titles, you select if you are playing single or multiplayer, the difficulty between Amateur; Professional; or Champion, and the speed type between kilometres per hour or miles per hour. In the first game, even if you select that you are playing single-player, you will be sharing the screen with a computer player. I would have rather had the full screen to myself, but what can you do? Next, we get to select our ride. I think the bot really likes red because they were “The Cannibal” for every race we did.

The original Top Racer features four vehicles to select from, each with a different max speed, acceleration speed, tyre grip, and fuel consumption. The Cannibal, a red sports car with a black top with the fastest max speed of 240 kph, 4.5 acceleration, low tyre grip, and high fuel consumption; The Sidewinder, a silver car with high tyre grip and low fuel consumption but tops out at 210 kph with 3.6 acceleration; The Razor, a purple car/truck hybrid with a speed of 220, 5.2 acceleration, low tyre grip, and mid fuel consumption; last is The Weasel, a massive blue car truck thing with a max speed of 220, 4.5 acceleration, mid fuel consumption and tyre grip ratings. You will have to figure out what is more important to you: driving fast and having it harder to control your vehicle, or a slightly slower speed but better grip and gas consumption.

When it comes time to pick your car in Top Racer 2, instead of selecting a pre-built vehicle, you will be customising it yourself: choose the engine, wet tyres, dry tyres, gearbox, nitro, side armour, rear armour, front armour, and paint shop. These same options are in Top Racer 3000, but there is a new jump selection added. All the vehicles are controlled the same way in all the titles. I was playing on the PlayStation, so accelerate was the triangle button — the top button; nitro was the circle — to the right, and you used the left thumbstick or directional buttons to control the car.

No matter which of the games you are playing, the final thing you get to select is if you want an automatic transmission or if you want a standard or manual vehicle and change the gears yourself. Fortunately, switching gears is quite easy to do and is done with the shoulder buttons. During the race, no matter which car you select, you have three nitro boosts to use whenever you want. I suggest waiting for a straighter section of the track and not hitting it on corners, or you will crash into signs or fly off the track.

Now that we have a vehicle, we have to pick which track to race on, unless you are in campaign mode, where the track is chosen for you. We can select from the USA, South America, Japan, Germany, Scandinavia, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom; each has four different tracks, or you can do random/mirror mode to switch it up. Everything, including your speedometer, will be flipped. When you get to Top Racer 2, a few new locations are added, like Australia, Britain, Canada, Egypt, Greece, India, Ireland, Spain, and Switzerland. The third game has you racing on different planets instead of different countries, so this makes it very different as you will race on extra challenging tracks, like the ones on the ice planet. They are icy, making the course slippery and making it harder to stay on the course.

In the first two titles, if you run low on gas, you will have to pull over for a pit stop to get your gas tank filled. However, you don't have to wait until the tank is totally full; if you only have a lap or two left, you can leave earlier. As long as you have enough to get you to the end of the race, that is, if you happen to run out again later, you will have to stop again, which is sure to let a lot of your opponents pass you! Or, if you totally run out, you get to sit there and watch everyone else finish the race. In the third game, you will have to drive on rebuild panels, like the ones in F-Zero, to fix up your vehicle so you can continue to race.

If you crash into the vehicle in front of you, they will get a nice little push, and you will slow down. Hitting the signs along the road, construction barriers, or oil drums on the track will slow you down as well, letting the other cars speed past you. Your driver will have a speech bubble saying things like “What the hell?” when someone passes you or “Let’s GO!” when you use a nitro. If you finish in the top three, you see your racer at the winner's ceremony. This screen is exactly the same in all the games; the only difference is whether one or two racers are shown depending on the mode you selected.

The visuals and music in all the games are great. With vibrant, crisp pixel graphics, the cars and tracks look better than ever. To accompany this is a soundtrack that is upbeat, full of bass to give your speakers a workout, and fits in perfectly with the high-speed racing games in this collection. You have the option to turn on scanlines to make the games feel just like they did in the past, or you can update for a more modern, crisp look; either way, the titles in the collection were nice to look at.

Top Racer Collection brings back the ‘90s, and if you were a fan of the Top Gear games in the past, you will love this collection. My favourite was Top Racer 2. Having the screen to yourself was great and helped prevent the slight feeling of motion sickness you can feel when you have to share the screen or burning eyes with the crazy fast speeds in Top Racer 3000; it’s so fast you are scared to blink!

Will you race past your opponents, or will you be stuck in the pixel dust?