Top Racer Collection review

Revisiting Gremlin’s acclaimed arcade racers

For many, Top Gear brings to mind the long-running BBC television with an obsession for automobiles. However, if you grew up during the Super Nintendo / Super Famicom’s heyday, the moniker might evoke memories of Gremlin Interactive’s trio of 16-bit racers. Sure, they didn’t boost the sophisticated Mode 7 graphics of F-Zero or Super Mario Kart, but each entry delivered taut competitions that evoked the delight of Out Run and laid the groundwork for contemporary titles like Horizon Chase Turbo.

Since the British Broadcasting Corporation owns the trademark for Top Gear, developer QUByte Interactive was forced to rename their recently released anthology as Top Racer Collection. Given that Top Gear, Top Gear 2, and Top Gear 3000 are roughly 25 years old, this compilation won’t appeal to players accustomed to more modern arcade racers. But since the only other legitimate way to own these titles is by buying an Evercade cartridge, Top Racer Collection fills a niche.

The Pitting Dilemma

Delve into the anthology and you may notice that the oldest entry, 1992’s Top Gear / Top Racer shares some similarities with the Lotus Challenge series. Most notable is the use of horizontal split screen even for single player games. If there’s no other willing participant around, the bottom screen shows the point of view of a rival driver. Unlike your other CPU opponents who mostly drive like it’s a morning commute, your counterpart actively passes other vehicles and even acts a bit defensively. As the original title implies, you can opt for either a manual or automatic transmission, with the former causing races to be bit more involved.

Like the Lotus games, there’s a bit of strategy to be found. Here, each race provides three turbos. There’s no opportunity to earn additional ones, so you’ll need to cautiously determine when to deploy the nitrous oxide. Some of the game’s longer tracks may require players to make a pit stop. Intermittently, you’ll have to determine to refuel and potentially lose your racing position or try to make it to the finish line before your tank grows empty. Although Top Racer Collection’s campaign offers save states (replacing the passwords found in the original carts), the decision to not include a rewind function preserves the trepidation associated with pitting.

Evolution of Form

Top Racer 2 deviates from finding its predecessor’s four car inventory, where your vehicle selection found a balance between maximum speed, acceleration, tire grip, and fuel consumption. From here, the franchise embraces customization, letting you purchase and equip improved engines, gearboxes (which replace the pitting), boosting, armor, as well as dry and wet tires to help contend with the inclusion of weather conditions in Racer 2. In the futuristic Racer 3000, you can even augment your craft’s jumping ability. Expectedly, improving your vehicle to stay competitive adds tension to races, as rival drivers become increasingly competitive. Notably, both Racer 2 and 3000 provide a full screen perspective for all single-player events which helps to showcase the visual improvements and variety of venues.

While 1995’s Top Gear / Racer 3000 adds ‘weapons’ to the formula, don’t expect the exchange of attacks found in most vehicular combat games. Instead, the game’s devices all provide nonconfrontational abilities to the player, from being able to auto-pilot with the ‘warp’ apparatus or providing better visibility during nighttime heats with the infrared tool. In retrospect, the game’s space-age setting isn’t fully realized, since the weaponry is passive, the racing venues look earthly. What is cool in the inclusion of forking tracks, with shrewd players able to shave a second or two from their lap times.

Not Quite a Podium Finish

Rounding out the Top Racer Collection is Top Racer Crossroads, which feels like a rom hack of the original game. While the nods to Brazilian car culture are welcome (the series was a huge hit there), there’s not enough additions and amendments to truly separate Crossroads from the original Top Gear. Ideally, developer QUByte Interactive would have included the quartet of Nintendo 64 Top Gear titles.

When it comes to extras, expect little more than a summary of each game’s mechanics. Given the age of the games found in this collection, the absence of any kind of interviews is understandable, but the scarcity of additional context for the four titles is disappointing. Beyond scans of the original Japanese manuals (with no zoom ability), 25 different in-game achievements, and two-paragraph histories, there’s no mention of the development process or critical reception.

Although each title conveniently permits players to jump into a campaign, local/online competitive race, time attack, or custom cup, there’s a notable visual disagreement between the game’s new menuing and the pixelated look of the SNES-era originals. At least, Barry Leitch (Top Gear), Hiroyuki Masuno (Top Gear and Top Gear 3000), as well as Shaun Southern’s reused tracks for Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge haven’t been meddled with, with the SNES’ SHVC-SOUND chip glowing recreated through emulation.

Conclusion

Beyond bundling a trio of racing titles and a rom hack-style inclusion, don’t expect much from Top Racer Collection. Yes, the individual titles are fairly evergreen, balancing the fundamentals of driving with light racing management duties like determining when to pit. But the general lack of curation is moderately disappointing. When quarter-century old films arrive on physical media, they’re usually accompanied by a host of ancillaries. But here, QUByte Interactive just delivers the basics. At least the games speak for themselves.

Top Racer Collection was played on PC with
review code provided by the publisher.