Little-Known or Forgotten Racing/Driving Games

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JohnBM01

JohnBM01

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GTPlanet, this thread concerns little-known racing games. They may either be little-known to your area, or little-known games from just about anywhere. In an effort to try to chat about such games, I want to offer this thread to talk about little-known racing games from the past and perhaps now. Perhaps since there's very little info on such games, I want to try to get discussions going on exactly what these games had to offer and maybe why they were so unknown to most people. The criteria for what's acceptable is that the game has to have been released. Racing games that were cancelled and was never released don't count.

My inspiration for this thread involves one game and one series. First, the game.

I had "Le Mans 24" in mind for this thread. I want to advise something. I am NOT talking about the classic "Le Mans 24 Hours" game on the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. But I'm talking about Sega's arcade game, Le Mans 24. Released in about 1997 (a year after my all-time favorite arcade racer- Super GT (or SCUD (Super Car Ultimate Drive) Race)), this game featured a dumbed-down and arcadish version of le Circuit de la Sarthe. You could take on the 24-hour challenge (which lasts more than five minutes) in which you actually note times changing. There were six cars you could choose from:
* Mercedes-Sauber C9
* Mobil 1 Porsche 911 GT1
* Gulf McLaren F1 GTR (kind of like the one in Super GT/SCUD Race)
* Clarion Nissan Skyline LM
* Ferrari F40
* Mazda 787B

There were three tracks. Two of them were Le Mans, while the other track is an expert-level street course. What concerns me so much was that this game hasn't had anything in the way of pictures or videos or anything. I have never been able to find a Le Mans 24 unit at any arcade area. It's just so forgotten to me. I think it's sad to me. Sad that a game like this has very little information on it and very little in the way of any real experience. Don't really care if it was a good or a bad game. It just saddens me that this game never really had a lot of attention to it or hype. Sega Super GT and Daytona USA are NOT forgotten games. More people like Daytona USA more than Super GT (though I tend to differ), but at least people recall these games and know what the experience is like. I SURELY do, especially with Sega Super GT.



Now for the series. Ultim@te Race Pro is a series I've seen in pictures, but know very little about. There was an odd demo of this game I downloaded once, but it never loaded. So I'm left with a game that I have no idea as to how good it is or how it plays. Truly qualifies as a forgotten racing game for me.



Anyone else care to share any little-known/forgotten racing games? Maybe you played a racing game few people know about. Maybe you played a racing game that was never available for home, but was an arcade title. Maybe a racing game was so forgotten because it wasn't very good or didn't sell well. I'd appreciate you offer some background and insight on what some of these forgotten games had to offer and what they were like for those who never got to play these games. Maybe a forgotten racing game is completely underrated. So feel free to offer any racing games you think are little-known or forgotten.
 
I remember the original Grand Prix by Geoff Crammond; my dad brought it home after his boss had upgraded to Grand Prix 2. It came on four floppy disks, and you used to have to put a password in to play the game by going back through the manual. There wasn't much in the way of graphics; I think the most colours one car carried was three, and given that the game used 256-colours, not a few teams looked nothing like their 1991 counterparts. But there was quite a lot of stuff going on in there, with the ability to have a race of whatever length you wished - between 10% distance and 100% - as well as a TV-style camera and the ability to accelerate race and qualifying times. No only that, but there were a whole host of functions you could apply to your car, like automated gears, brakes, a racing line, invincibility; plenty of stuff. I was about seven or eight when I was playing it, so I had all of them on, and the one thing I remember was that I couldn't win at Spa, Hockenheim or the Hungaroring, no matter how hard I tried ...
 
By the way, here are two YouTube videos you can view to learn more about "Le Mans 24." Check these out:

*
* (not in English)



The first one doesn't give you a very good view of what the game looks like, but you get to hear the nice soundtrack to "Le Mans 24." The second one lasts three minutes longer than the first one, but you don't get to hear anything other than the camera person and the driver. You also get a better look at how the game looks from the non-English video. A thing to note is that when you run out of time doing the 24 Hours of Le Mans in this game, you can buy more credits to continue your race.



Ultim@te Race Pro has only one YouTube video I was able to find. Check this out:
*



Hope these contributions help shed some light.
 
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JohnBM01
By the way, here are two YouTube videos you can view to learn more about "Le Mans 24." Check these out:

* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMOsx8DNXM0
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtH_u8sG9as (not in English)



The first one doesn't give you a very good view of what the game looks like, but you get to hear the nice soundtrack to "Le Mans 24." The second one lasts three minutes longer than the first one, but you don't get to hear anything other than the camera person and the driver. You also get a better look at how the game looks from the non-English video. A thing to note is that when you run out of time doing the 24 Hours of Le Mans in this game, you can buy more credits to continue your race.



Ultim@te Race Pro has only one YouTube video I was able to find. Check this out:
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eFkLEbxX6A



Hope these contributions help shed some light.
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Looks like you missed a car out because unless I'm very much mistaken, the car in the second Le Mans video is a Porsche 917.
 
Wangan Midnight on PS3. Mainly because it only got released in Asia. We did have a thread here on GTP about it, but if I asked any normal PS3 owner, the like response I'd get is 'what midnight??'
 
Do you race?
I remember the original Grand Prix by Geoff Crammond;
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That's not little known or forgotten. It's just old.

-------

nigel_mansells_grand_prix.png


I loved playing Nigel Mansell's Grand Prix on my Amstrad CPC464.

CPC Game reviews
Nigel Mansell was the best known British Formula 1 driver of the 1980s, and this game lets you drive his famous 'red 5' Williams car in the sixteen races of the 1987 season. The emphasis is on realism here, as a wealth of data is displayed on the bottom half of the screen. A turbo booster is available to increase your speed, but don't overuse it, otherwise you'll run out of fuel - and in 1987, refuelling wasn't allowed during a race! You will also need to be careful not to over-rev the engine, otherwise the gearbox will break down. The graphics are impressive and really convey a sense of speed as you blast around each track at over 200mph. It will require a lot of practice to become World Champion, but this is definitely one of the best Formula 1 games for the CPC.
Click to expand...
http://www.cpcgamereviews.com/n/index2.html

I loved doing races using as little turbo boost as possible. I would try to leave it 1 (out of 4) for the whole race, but sometimes 2 was required for a few laps, and I would still win more often than not.

Youtube video of the Spectrum version.
 
Ayrton Senna's Super Monaco GP II on the Sega MasterSystem II!

Though very much like daan's game above to view, I was way too young to remember the details of it.
 


Super Hang-On was my favourite racing game for the Atari ST... my first racing game was Pit Stop II for the C64, but Super Hang-On was the first game that had decent graphics, great music and also felt reasonably realistic. It would stay as my favourite racing game until I got Formula One for the PS1...
 
Chequered Flag for the ZX Spectrum - who wouldn't enjoy racing a McFaster Special, Psion Pegasus or Ferreti Turbo at some of the world's greatest circuits?

 
There's a game I've seen before, played before, but really think it's pretty forgotten. Check it out:


Great 1000 Miles Rally (1994, Arcade)
YouTube:
* <<< video skips; just listen to the Ferrari 250 GTO in this video for a game in its time! Followed by a Mercedes-Benz 55KL

Released in about 1994, this game has you competing on the streets of the Mille Miglia in the basically the heyday of sportscar racing. I've seen the attract mode to this game as well as do a little racing (even though someone must have messed up the accelerator for the unit I've seen it on at a Kroger store way back). A crazy set of turns come your way with certain indicators. There are even some weather effects as you traverse through the stages. It's all about making that sixty second time limit.


Here's the sequel in two parts, called Mille Miglia 2:
* (Part 1 of 2)
* (Part 2 of 2)



Any of you played this before or seen it?
 
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Not seen it before John but it looks pretty good 👍

I wonder if it's available on MAME?
 
WEC Le Mans was a brilliant arcade game from the mid 80's.



I can remember playing it when I was on holiday in France. I then got it for my Amstrad CPC 464 too.

 
I spent far too much of my pocket money on Super Sprint and the latter Championship Sprint. The Super Sprint arcade machine had three steering wheels so three people could play at the same time and Champion had just the two. I also bought the ZX Spectrum version where you could design your own tracks! - something that even Gran Turismo doesn't let you do. I think you can buy a port of Super Sprint to download for the PS3 - but i've heard it's not up to much ;(

 


Formula 1: Beyond The Limit!

This game was way ahead of it's time. Not graphically, but in terms of gameplay. What makes this game unique is the 1993 mode, which gives you scenarios from the real 1993 F1 season and asks you to recreate them as best as possible and therefore beat them.

Plus each car has different engine notes and there's reverberation if you go into a tunnel. If anything, Codemasters could learn a thing or two from this ;)
 
My favorite old driving game was Street rod 1 & 2, I must have put hundreds of hours into that game over the years and I still play it from time to time.
 
Super Monaco GP does seem pretty forgotten. And while that's a cool video in Post #15, I'll do you one better! Check this out... this is the arcade version. I'll give this a chance to try to do the Youtube code thing better I can assure you that if you like the Geneis/Megadrive version of "Super Monaco GP," I almost guarantee you'll love the arcade version:



I'll be working on a thread and will include this video as part of the new thread. That "Formula 1: Beyond the Limit"... is that Sega CD? Or a damn-good quality Genesis game?

[UPDATE] Yes! I finally got one YouTube to work! Just put in the ID of the video rather than the whole URL. I may start utilizing YouTube videos better on GTP.
 
Super Hang-On is good, though I'm not sure it's "little-known" or "forgotten." :) I thought World Racing was quite underrated -- despite the autocountersteer, the "sim" physics weren't too shabby, and the game allowed you to trek nearly anywhere offroad (climbing mountains in the Geländewagen was fun 👍 ), not to mention drive M-B's rotary-engined concept. Cool game. I've briefly played a few of the others here.

JohnBM01
Great 1000 Miles Rally (1994, Arcade)
YouTube:
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-OCyKeGrX8 <<< video skips; just listen to the Ferrari 250 GTO in this video for a game in its time! Followed by a Mercedes-Benz 55KL...

...Any of you played this before or seen it?
Click to expand...
If you take a peek at the video uploader you could answer your own question. ;)
 
I'm probably going to get some disagreements as far as this game being forgotten and/or little known. However, very few people may know what you're talking about if you give them an in-depth discussion about Metropolis Street Racer. I have to warn you that this video skips often.



This is a video of about 9:31 in length showcasing some of the tracks and action of MSR. What I've found to be very fun about this game is the actual time differences. For example, a race in Tokyo could happen at 9:30 PM there... or maybe 1:00 AM... even as late as 4:30 AM (why the hell would you have any racing at THIS time of morning unless in an endurance race? Races could even take place with different weather conditions. It reminds me of that one-off rFactor race I did when I set the time to random and raced at 5:30 AM game time!) This game would be succeeded by the Project Gotham Racing series. You think the wait for GT games were bad? This game (from one other similar YouTube video) was delayed three times in two years. All you race on are city streets closed off to traffic. Enjoy sliding around like you're Keiichi Tsuchiya's drifting student or son. At least when you slid like crazy, the game noted it and gave you a little love for your drift. PGR made drifting and stuff more enjoyable. You be the judge on the music.

The Project Gotham Racing series is my favorite XBOX racer other than the Forza Motorsport series. But before PGR, there was this. In my view, Metropolis Street Racer is a forgotten title. I do fear that it may not be a true or little-known racing title to most of you. So there you have it.
 
Metropolis Street Racer is one of my all-time faves. I liked the feature where you could program your own message to come up when you drift and crash into walls. My crashing one was "You're A Skank.". One of the interesting features is that it was the first game to feature the Vauxhall VX220/Opel Speedster if I'm correct.

Anyone remember Vanishing Point?


I like the way the introduction movie features a classic Mini Cooper easily keeping up with a Dodge Viper GTS and a Lotus Elise.

Another game is Ford Racing on the PS1:



Sorta like a cheapo version of GT1.
 
Get ready for an all-rally version of little-known or forgotten games.

It used to be that I had no experience of Sega Rally Championship. Well, there are some more that are little-known to us.


"World Rally" by Gaelco

This game takes you on a rally racing tour on various surfaces. The time limit is usually sixty seconds and takes place across a number of different courses. Hard hits either mean spinouts or rollovers. This is not really an evolution from the Kaneko games except for the viscious rollovers. The car sounds great. You can only race the Toyota Celica that has been such a lovely rally racing car in the mid-1990s. Not the Castrol Celica I'm so used to, but a different Celica. You may need to turn up the sound to hear the video properly.




Driftout '94: The Hard Order

What makes Driftout '94: The Hard Order" different is a few things. For one, there are multiple routes to take as well as plenty more hazards on the road. This game took the concepts of the "Great 1000 Miles Rally" game and added more twists (no pun intended) to the formula. For one, you have to dodge other cars including some cars parked on the road! You race a number of real rally cars. A few special entries were added including the almighty Lancia Stratos rally car. There is even a Subaru Impreza rally car you can race. So maybe you want to be like the late great Colin McRae and try to get the blue Subaru in a great finishing position like Colin McRae did. You need only see this almost ten-minute long video to see what this game has to offer. There are even roll-over crashes, incorrect routes, and more. This will really test your driving skills and your concentration! Don't ask me why the cars have green headlights. I didn't make the game.



These were two games that basically continue what "Great 1000 Miles Rally" started. One was not much of an evolution while the other game is very crazy of a rally experience. They both share one likeness- both are little-known to most of us... until now!
 
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I played RR64 as a rental once. It was basically classic Ridge Racer with a few exclusive tracks. It was relaunched (I believe) as "Ridge Racer DS" or something like that.
 
Way, way back in the early days of the SNES my Dad bought me this little game called Top Gear...



I spent hours, and hours and hours playing this game and would always come so close to beating the whole thing and lose in one of the final races. Its still one of my favorite theme songs ever in any game, and I still love finding it around the internet to replay again. Plus, the car knock-offs were always worth a laugh.
 

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