A Black Falcon
Member
Street Racer is a game made by Vivid Image and published by Ubisoft in 1994 for the SNES. Other versions of the game came out later on on other platforms (see the bottom for the list), but this is about the first version, the SNES one. I got Street Racer, complete with box and manual, yesterday. I guess it wasn't ENTIRELY complete, technically, though; the front of the box promises a POG offer inside, but no such thing was inside the box. Bah, I was going to redeem that... 
Anyway, Street Racer is a Mode 7 Mario Kart clone for the Super Nintendo. It's a good game, quite fun to play. It didn't take long for me to finish, though -- I beat all three circuits on Medium difficulty earlier today. Still, it was a pretty good game along the way, and there's plenty more for me to do if I want to play it on the higher difficulties. Sure, it's a Super Mario Kart clone, but it's a good one. Also, it isn't exactly like Mario Kart -- it does some things differently. It's got four player splitscreen if you have a multitap, for instance. I have one, I'll definitely need to try it out when I can. Also, there are no ranged weapons and no catchup, so you need to actually race well to stay ahead, but on the converse if you get a lead you will get a real lead. There are attacks, but they are melee range only. Those features definitely make it different from Mario Kart. Also the tracks themselves, while tricky, are never quite as hard as Mario Kart's later tracks. It helps that you can't go out of bounds or fall into a pit and have to be reset onto the track. You can hit walls, get stuck in a corner, go off the track into the much slower "grass" or what have you areas, etc, but you can't fall off the track, apart from in Rumble mode where that's the whole point that is.
This is good, in my opinion. Super Mario Kart's frustrating track designs combined with slippery controls are a big part of why I don't like it nearly as much as some people, and why I never finished the fourth cup in that game. Street Racer's tracks are complex enough to be fun, but not so much as to be really frustrating once you learn them. That's good. It does mean that in the lower difficulty levels it's not that hard (see how fast I beat it), but turn up the difficulty and it gets much harder... and either way, it's fun.
At the end of each race, in addition to getting points based on your finishing position (10 for first down to none for last), several bonus points are also awarded. In every race there's a point for the person with the best lap, one for the person who collects the most stars (they're the small little yellow things you drive over on the course and pick up; there's no onscreen indicator of how many you have, I'm pretty sure), and one for the person who attacked the most. Also you can get 2 points if you drive a perfect race -- that is, take no damage -- and one if you lap someone before the end of the race. Because second place gets 9 points to first's 10, it's easy for the person in second or even third to match or beat the person in first if they get more bonus points.
Other than the stars, there are two other things to pick up on the track. The large blue arrows (these give you one boost each), and the large yellow blocks with hard-to-see wrenches on them (these heal your kart some). You can also run over bombs, which send you flying into the air like a large jump, and do some damage.
Controls -- Left/right to turn. B to accelerate. Y uses a turbo. A for side weapon attack (attack that hits to both sides of the kart). X for front weapon attack (charge-style attack that hits people you run into from behind). Weapon attacks cannot be constantly used -- they've got a delay. There's no meter or something, you just won't be able to use the weapon attacks again for a few seconds after using one. L and R use the Punch attacks, one for each direction. You can hold down L or R to constantly attack to that side (you cannot attack on both sides at the same time, sorry.). Up on the dpad jumps. Down on the dpad brakes and goes into reverse. Weapon and punch attacks are categorized separately, for some reason. I'm not sure why. I find it easier to hit people with Punch... those only hit to the sides, sure, but they have good range. With some characters the Weapon attacks are tough to hit with. Anyway, Start pauses.
Jumping is very useful. You drive much slower over "dirt" (areas that are not the main track) than over the track itself, so jumping, or hitting bombs, is advisable when you want to go over grass or such. Jumping's great.
The main issue I have with the controls really is braking. Really, if you're trying to brake while holding down the accelerator... you won't. You need to let go of B in order for the brake/reverse button to have much impact. If you do do that you can go in reverse no problem by holding down, but still, for getting around corners and such, you need to rely more on letting go of the accelerator or using jump or things like that than braking, I think. At least that's my thought so far.
You do have a damage meter, as you can see on the screen in the videos, but it doesn't seem to me that it makes that big of an impact when it's low... it does affect your stats (speed, turning, acceleration, etc), but you can't blow up or something, and it doesn't make the karts completely uncontrollable. Also healing spaces on the track (the yellow boxes with wrenches in them) are fairly common. Damage doesn't seem to be much of a problem...
In the championship mode, you only have three retries per championship -- fail three times and you start the whole thing over. You don't need to win to progress on, though; all you need to do is finish in the top four of the eight racers in the race. Still, the limit adds some challenge for sure, particularly in the longer championships. Hard has 14+ races, for instance. The game also has good Mode 7 graphics. The upper half of the screen is pretty much empty (just sky), but that's better than SMK's permanent splitscreen. Other than the totally flat nature of everything other than the racers, it looks great. There are 8 somewhat entertainingly designed characters. The music is pretty good, and definitely gets catchy if you play the game for a while. There are 24 tracks (including 4 hidden ones that require beating the whole game in one sitting or a cheatcode to play), plus three different arenas each for Rumble and Soccer modes. That's a pretty good variety. Finally, the game has four player splitscreen multiplayer. In one or two player modes there are eight vehicles on the course in all game types. In three or four player there are just four total vehicles. Common limitation on the N64 too. So yeah, a 4-player splitscreen SNES game... Awesome!
It does use a vertical split, so all four people's screens are stacked on top of eachother instead of using a N64-style quartered screen design, just like Top Gear 3000. I wonder when the quartered-screen design was first seen? Was it really Mario Kart 64 or something? That is better than this... but still, it works.
As for Rumble and Soccer modes, they're the "Battle" modes of the game. Both are for 1-4 players -- yes, they actually have AI, unlike SMK's battle mode! Rumble mode is one where you try to bump the other players out of the arena by ramming their cars and bouncing them back. Fall off and you're out for the round. There are three difficulties, that determine how strong the walls around the arena are -- on hard there are no walls, be careful... Soccer mode is a half-court soccer "match", essentially. There's a goal on one side, with a auto-goalie bar, Pong paddle style I guess, going back and forth across the goal. The soccer ball gets tossed out, and the eight players try to grab it. Use attacks and such to knock it away from the other people, and try to shoot at the goal and score. First to reach the scoring limit wins (the default is 5, but you can set the number of points to win, or play a timed game, etc. if you wish. There are lots of options in this game.)
The game does have a few flaws though. It is still a Mode 7 kart racer, so telling which things are obstacles can be tricky when everything is flat. It took some time memorizing the tracks before I got used to that. Also it doesn't save anything so there isn't much reason to go back unless you like it. Also the reward for winning a championship is underwhelming -- you just see a screen showing the top three finishers with the number of points they got and that's it, no special animation or anything. Oh well. And I did beat it on Medium pretty quickly. There are four difficulty levels though, and while it's kind of easy on Medium (see how fast I beat it), the higher difficulties are definitely harder. The four player multiplayer helps a lot too of course. There's definitely replay value if you have people to play with. There aren't many 4-player SNES racing games. The other major one is Top Gear 3000, which I don't have but really want. Top Gear and Top Gear 2 are both fantastic... but 3000 is futuristic and has 4-player, so really I consider it a must have, once I actually can find a copy.
Anyway, Street Racer is a pretty good game. Try it out if you can find it.
Oh, Ubisoft released other games with the same title on other platforms in the 1994-1996 timeframe. Other than the 1994 SNES game, there's also a completely different, Europe-only Genesis game released in 1995. It's pretty good, but plays like something in between Outrun and Mario Kart thanks to the Genesis not having Mode 7. They tried, and for a Genesis racing game it's impressive looking, but it just isn't the same. At least they tried to do a Mario Kart style game on Genesis, though, which is more than we can say for Sega itself! And it is a decent to good game with good graphics for the system. Just don't expect it to play like the SNES game. It's definitely more Outrunish than the other versions. Like the SNES version, it does also have four player play.
Next was a Game Boy game from 1996. It has all the modes from the other versions (including, yes, Soccer and Rumble modes), except for multiplayer -- yeah, no link cable support here, unfortunately. Other than that it's good. You have to unlock each championship by beating the previous one, and get passwords for that. Graphics are good for an original Game Boy game -- they did a good job with this I think. It's still behind-the-car racing, with fairly good graphics for the system. They fit all of the attacks and turbo and such onto the few buttons the system has. Good stuff for the Game Boy.
Finally there was a game for the PC, Amiga, Playstation, and Saturn also from 1996 on the PSX and Saturn and 1997 on PC and Amiga. The Saturn version was only released in Europe and Japan, but the US did get it on PC and PSX. Amiga I'm not sure, but I'd guess on Europe only. This last version has 8-player splitscreen on both the Saturn and PSX, impressively enough, for anyone with two multitaps and at least eight controllers. I'd like to try that sometime for sure. Looking at videos it looks a lot like the SNES game, but with polygons; it's clearly much more Super Mario Kart than Mario Kart 64, gameplay-wise. The Saturn version has much better graphics than the Playstation one. That's probably the version I'd want... too bad it's import only.
Videos:
Game Boy version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slXqR6qTCk4
As I said nice for the GB.
Genesis (Megadrive) version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ntffRUHvPA
Outrun/Mario Kart hybrid I think...
Saturn version: Gameplay video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZq2PxG2w1c
and a video review from someone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YXxyU7zfzc
Looks like the SNES version but with 3d.
Playstation version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGdHD9G93dM
Note how much worse the graphics are than on Saturn... it'd be easier to tell if there were any good-quality Saturn videos like this PSX one, but oh well, that's about as good as I can find for the Saturn.
SNES: Just gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx9U68HzZGo
Two video reviews with people talking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5IpT_C_Ufo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScfG1YnD0fU
Good graphics, great music, good gameplay... just a very good game.
Anyway, Street Racer is a Mode 7 Mario Kart clone for the Super Nintendo. It's a good game, quite fun to play. It didn't take long for me to finish, though -- I beat all three circuits on Medium difficulty earlier today. Still, it was a pretty good game along the way, and there's plenty more for me to do if I want to play it on the higher difficulties. Sure, it's a Super Mario Kart clone, but it's a good one. Also, it isn't exactly like Mario Kart -- it does some things differently. It's got four player splitscreen if you have a multitap, for instance. I have one, I'll definitely need to try it out when I can. Also, there are no ranged weapons and no catchup, so you need to actually race well to stay ahead, but on the converse if you get a lead you will get a real lead. There are attacks, but they are melee range only. Those features definitely make it different from Mario Kart. Also the tracks themselves, while tricky, are never quite as hard as Mario Kart's later tracks. It helps that you can't go out of bounds or fall into a pit and have to be reset onto the track. You can hit walls, get stuck in a corner, go off the track into the much slower "grass" or what have you areas, etc, but you can't fall off the track, apart from in Rumble mode where that's the whole point that is.
This is good, in my opinion. Super Mario Kart's frustrating track designs combined with slippery controls are a big part of why I don't like it nearly as much as some people, and why I never finished the fourth cup in that game. Street Racer's tracks are complex enough to be fun, but not so much as to be really frustrating once you learn them. That's good. It does mean that in the lower difficulty levels it's not that hard (see how fast I beat it), but turn up the difficulty and it gets much harder... and either way, it's fun.At the end of each race, in addition to getting points based on your finishing position (10 for first down to none for last), several bonus points are also awarded. In every race there's a point for the person with the best lap, one for the person who collects the most stars (they're the small little yellow things you drive over on the course and pick up; there's no onscreen indicator of how many you have, I'm pretty sure), and one for the person who attacked the most. Also you can get 2 points if you drive a perfect race -- that is, take no damage -- and one if you lap someone before the end of the race. Because second place gets 9 points to first's 10, it's easy for the person in second or even third to match or beat the person in first if they get more bonus points.
Other than the stars, there are two other things to pick up on the track. The large blue arrows (these give you one boost each), and the large yellow blocks with hard-to-see wrenches on them (these heal your kart some). You can also run over bombs, which send you flying into the air like a large jump, and do some damage.
Controls -- Left/right to turn. B to accelerate. Y uses a turbo. A for side weapon attack (attack that hits to both sides of the kart). X for front weapon attack (charge-style attack that hits people you run into from behind). Weapon attacks cannot be constantly used -- they've got a delay. There's no meter or something, you just won't be able to use the weapon attacks again for a few seconds after using one. L and R use the Punch attacks, one for each direction. You can hold down L or R to constantly attack to that side (you cannot attack on both sides at the same time, sorry.
). Up on the dpad jumps. Down on the dpad brakes and goes into reverse. Weapon and punch attacks are categorized separately, for some reason. I'm not sure why. I find it easier to hit people with Punch... those only hit to the sides, sure, but they have good range. With some characters the Weapon attacks are tough to hit with. Anyway, Start pauses.Jumping is very useful. You drive much slower over "dirt" (areas that are not the main track) than over the track itself, so jumping, or hitting bombs, is advisable when you want to go over grass or such.
Jumping's great.The main issue I have with the controls really is braking. Really, if you're trying to brake while holding down the accelerator... you won't. You need to let go of B in order for the brake/reverse button to have much impact. If you do do that you can go in reverse no problem by holding down, but still, for getting around corners and such, you need to rely more on letting go of the accelerator or using jump or things like that than braking, I think. At least that's my thought so far.
You do have a damage meter, as you can see on the screen in the videos, but it doesn't seem to me that it makes that big of an impact when it's low... it does affect your stats (speed, turning, acceleration, etc), but you can't blow up or something, and it doesn't make the karts completely uncontrollable. Also healing spaces on the track (the yellow boxes with wrenches in them) are fairly common. Damage doesn't seem to be much of a problem...
In the championship mode, you only have three retries per championship -- fail three times and you start the whole thing over. You don't need to win to progress on, though; all you need to do is finish in the top four of the eight racers in the race. Still, the limit adds some challenge for sure, particularly in the longer championships. Hard has 14+ races, for instance. The game also has good Mode 7 graphics. The upper half of the screen is pretty much empty (just sky), but that's better than SMK's permanent splitscreen. Other than the totally flat nature of everything other than the racers, it looks great. There are 8 somewhat entertainingly designed characters. The music is pretty good, and definitely gets catchy if you play the game for a while. There are 24 tracks (including 4 hidden ones that require beating the whole game in one sitting or a cheatcode to play), plus three different arenas each for Rumble and Soccer modes. That's a pretty good variety. Finally, the game has four player splitscreen multiplayer. In one or two player modes there are eight vehicles on the course in all game types. In three or four player there are just four total vehicles. Common limitation on the N64 too. So yeah, a 4-player splitscreen SNES game... Awesome!
It does use a vertical split, so all four people's screens are stacked on top of eachother instead of using a N64-style quartered screen design, just like Top Gear 3000. I wonder when the quartered-screen design was first seen? Was it really Mario Kart 64 or something? That is better than this... but still, it works.
As for Rumble and Soccer modes, they're the "Battle" modes of the game. Both are for 1-4 players -- yes, they actually have AI, unlike SMK's battle mode! Rumble mode is one where you try to bump the other players out of the arena by ramming their cars and bouncing them back. Fall off and you're out for the round. There are three difficulties, that determine how strong the walls around the arena are -- on hard there are no walls, be careful... Soccer mode is a half-court soccer "match", essentially. There's a goal on one side, with a auto-goalie bar, Pong paddle style I guess, going back and forth across the goal. The soccer ball gets tossed out, and the eight players try to grab it. Use attacks and such to knock it away from the other people, and try to shoot at the goal and score. First to reach the scoring limit wins (the default is 5, but you can set the number of points to win, or play a timed game, etc. if you wish. There are lots of options in this game.)
The game does have a few flaws though. It is still a Mode 7 kart racer, so telling which things are obstacles can be tricky when everything is flat. It took some time memorizing the tracks before I got used to that. Also it doesn't save anything so there isn't much reason to go back unless you like it. Also the reward for winning a championship is underwhelming -- you just see a screen showing the top three finishers with the number of points they got and that's it, no special animation or anything. Oh well. And I did beat it on Medium pretty quickly. There are four difficulty levels though, and while it's kind of easy on Medium (see how fast I beat it), the higher difficulties are definitely harder. The four player multiplayer helps a lot too of course. There's definitely replay value if you have people to play with. There aren't many 4-player SNES racing games. The other major one is Top Gear 3000, which I don't have but really want. Top Gear and Top Gear 2 are both fantastic... but 3000 is futuristic and has 4-player, so really I consider it a must have, once I actually can find a copy.
Anyway, Street Racer is a pretty good game. Try it out if you can find it.
Oh, Ubisoft released other games with the same title on other platforms in the 1994-1996 timeframe. Other than the 1994 SNES game, there's also a completely different, Europe-only Genesis game released in 1995. It's pretty good, but plays like something in between Outrun and Mario Kart thanks to the Genesis not having Mode 7. They tried, and for a Genesis racing game it's impressive looking, but it just isn't the same. At least they tried to do a Mario Kart style game on Genesis, though, which is more than we can say for Sega itself! And it is a decent to good game with good graphics for the system. Just don't expect it to play like the SNES game. It's definitely more Outrunish than the other versions. Like the SNES version, it does also have four player play.
Next was a Game Boy game from 1996. It has all the modes from the other versions (including, yes, Soccer and Rumble modes), except for multiplayer -- yeah, no link cable support here, unfortunately. Other than that it's good. You have to unlock each championship by beating the previous one, and get passwords for that. Graphics are good for an original Game Boy game -- they did a good job with this I think. It's still behind-the-car racing, with fairly good graphics for the system. They fit all of the attacks and turbo and such onto the few buttons the system has. Good stuff for the Game Boy.
Finally there was a game for the PC, Amiga, Playstation, and Saturn also from 1996 on the PSX and Saturn and 1997 on PC and Amiga. The Saturn version was only released in Europe and Japan, but the US did get it on PC and PSX. Amiga I'm not sure, but I'd guess on Europe only. This last version has 8-player splitscreen on both the Saturn and PSX, impressively enough, for anyone with two multitaps and at least eight controllers.
I'd like to try that sometime for sure. Looking at videos it looks a lot like the SNES game, but with polygons; it's clearly much more Super Mario Kart than Mario Kart 64, gameplay-wise. The Saturn version has much better graphics than the Playstation one. That's probably the version I'd want... too bad it's import only.Videos:
Game Boy version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slXqR6qTCk4
As I said nice for the GB.
Genesis (Megadrive) version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ntffRUHvPA
Outrun/Mario Kart hybrid I think...
Saturn version: Gameplay video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZq2PxG2w1c
and a video review from someone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YXxyU7zfzc
Looks like the SNES version but with 3d.
Playstation version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGdHD9G93dM
Note how much worse the graphics are than on Saturn... it'd be easier to tell if there were any good-quality Saturn videos like this PSX one, but oh well, that's about as good as I can find for the Saturn.
SNES: Just gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx9U68HzZGo
Two video reviews with people talking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5IpT_C_Ufo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScfG1YnD0fU
Good graphics, great music, good gameplay... just a very good game.
(Even I don't usually have the patience to read his stuff very often...)