This was the first car racing game I bought – this was back in 1995/96. At the time, the graphics for this game were unique because the game used a lot of photo-realistic textures to create crisper looking graphics and smooth animation.
The game is a standard Rally racing game in which one can select from a number of cars to race (with Subaru Impreza being the top performer and Malaysian Proton being the worst performer). You can then select to either race an individual track or to play the entire tournament compromising of some 30 odd races.
There is realism to the game in the sense that if you decide to play the tournament, after every couple of races, you will be presented with the options to perform repairs on your vehicle or to upgrade it further. However, the catch is that there is instead of money, you have a time limit. Each fix or upgrade takes a certain amount of time so you have to carefully budget your time (or you end up like me with a broken gear/clutch system). Also, if you don’t repair some of the more important things, like clutch, it can get damaged beyond repair and will hamper your performance for the remainder of the tournament.
With regards to the game play, as mentioned, the execution is pretty smooth
and with the modern, fast computers, the frame rates should be very high producing good animation rates. Each race starts with a countdown after which your car starts. If you start before the go signal, you get time penalty. There is the standard road types found in any rally game – concrete, mud, snow, etc. To add to the fun, there are also some river crossings (however they slow down your car a lot). Additional features like radio (with a selection of music) and visible car damage are found. If you are playing on a track which has mud, your car becomes dirty. There are also day/night times and obviously for night time, you have your car lights however it can get pretty dark and thus harder to navigate.
In terms of the weather, you have three weathers – normal, rain, and snow. You can actually see the rain droplets and snow falling – a rarity among the games from 90s.
Other features which add to the fun of playing this game include the ranking of racers after each race, the best time rankings for each track, and the fact that you create your profile before your start racing.
