World Driver Championship

"Develop a racing career as you compete for job offers with each of the 15 World Driver Teams. 10 tracks located throughout the world: Hawaii, Black Forest, Las Vegas, Kyoto, New Zealand, Les Gets, Sydney, Zurich, Lisbon and Rome. 20 challenging events spread across two different levels of competition. Over 30 highly detailed, exotic cars with realistic physics and handling! Race head-to-head in two player split screen mode! Save replay on the Controller Pak® to analyse your driving skills from multiple camera angles."

An Arcade style GT racer similar to SEGA's GT24 or SEGA Touring Car or perhaps more Like Gran Turismo with the event system of Asphalt The game is broken down into events which you need to play through to earn points towards ranking up from level thirty to number one. To help you along the way a number of car teams are available starting with just two with more opening up along the way as you rank up. Once you have cleared all the GT2 events, Gt1 opens up and you go through a whole new list of events with some new tracks to play on. You also get a new series of GT1 teams to work with. The end goal is to reach rank one. Events can be replayed if more points are needed to unlock specific cars.

Each event is made up of a number of tracks and these get progressively bigger as you progress as well as more laps per race so you will be spending a good chunk of time with the game. GT2 for instance closes out with a single race consisting of 15 laps which takes about 30 mins to complete. before each race you can choose to practice a track as well as qualifying which may give you a better starting position and addition reward points. I skip qualifying to keep the game moving along although I have to replay the final race at the end, an additional 20 laps in order to reach rank one.

The team system adds a slight story element to the game. Each team has a series of cars requiring a specific rank to be reached before you can select them. Some cars are locked and depend on you being loyal to a team and joining some teams can even lock you out of future teams so yeah, that's fun . In this playthrough I jump teams between events in order to drive the highest rank car available to me at the time and is usually the best choice. I say usually as each car has different handling characteristics and some are easier to work with than others.

Control can take some getting used to. Most of the cars feel like you are driving on ice and as you spend most of the time trying to find the right speed to maintain grip and not slide out to far. That sounds pretty normal for any racing game right, but the way this game works takes some getting used to like it wants to be ridge racer yet maintain some kind of believe of realism. For the more slippy cars I find driver view easier to control and correct against any over/understeer.

Overall, its a well presented arcade racing game on the N64 and looks great when comparing to arcade racers of the time on PlayStation or Saturn. However the game does get quite monotonous with long 8-10 minute 5 lap races as the opposition doesnt really challenge you much unless you make a mistake. That said it gets tough near the end of the game as I don't think I was at the intended rank to tackle the event and the only way to do so would be to have earned more points through qualifying laps. The game operates in both hi-res and normal modes with menus and replays being in hi-res and the racing in normal res but during the race you can enable hi-res mode which operates in the same half screen mode that replays use. The longplay shows going through all events and tracks showing as many of the cars as I can. After completing the game and reaching rank one I show of one last car after wining a final one on one dual.

--- GT2 ---
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:28 Novice Cup
00:12:38 Spider Cup
00:21:39 Emperor Challenge
00:42:16 Seasons Cup
01:02:47 Drivers Challenge
01:21:37 Orca Cup
01:37:55 Endurance Cup
02:10:36 Ring of Fire Cup
02:52:25 Ultimate Cup
03:31:47 Invitational Cup
--- GT1 ---
04:05:02 Super Series
04:33:52 Spider Cup
04:57:05 Endurance Cup
05:36:06 Ring of Fire Cup
06:12:16 BGS Challenge
07:00:58 Drivers Challenge
07:48:46 Touring Cup
08:33:10 Grand Challenge
09:29:42 World Cup
10:26:10 Invitational Cup
---------------------------------
11:01:08 Invitational Cup replay for points
11:31:13 WDC Ending
11:37:30 GT2 Novice Cup (Unlock Falcon Interceptor car)
11:46:07 Arcade mode, Show Falcon Interceptor car
11:49:30 GT Ending / Credits