Side by Side Special 2000

"The exciting battle with real cars is finally here! All 16 models from 6 manufacturers entered are authentic!! Faithfully reproduced with great attention to power performance and drive system! Which car to attack with depends on your skill."

This is the second release of Side by Side special on the PlayStation labelled as 2000 but probably would have been better named as Hardcore or frustratingly difficult edition as the starting times and leader board track times were massively tightened up for this release.

I wanted to play on Very Hard difficulty but the time was just too limiting leading to frustration so most of the longlay was on Hard difficulty which wasn't exactly a cake walk as I still needed to find the right car for each track. I also wanted 1st place on each track table and getting 1st place on Hard assures 1st place on the leader board for the most part. I had to drop to Normal for Side by Side 1 - Special as I really struggled with this track. I didn't want to use the same car for every track so tried to show as many as I can but the way the game works only cars with a turbo are worth considering as non turbo cars control great but don't have the acceleration to catch up the pack.

There isn't much to the controls. Just acceleration and break with gears if you enable them. Speed is very easily lost on corners so it takes some good management to get the car turning at the right speed to get round with out scraping the walls or other cars. Faster cars will also throw them selves to the outside making them less than ideal for tracks with lots of tight corners. I find turning into the inside corner at just the right angle and speed can be helpful in knocking your speed down just enough to get you round safely whilst leaving you enough speed to power out the corner. Get it wrong though and you'll stop dead.

Along the way, extra bonus tracks are unlocked and winning these unlock special Taito vehicles. All three ae very good especially the Van and would likely help a lot for very hard mode, and I wouldn't have had to drop difficulty setting for sbs1 special. To unlock, you need to get first place in six, eight and ten races. I'm unsure if its race wins or leader board. if it's races, best grab them on easy then switch up the difficulty and make quick work of the races gaining first place on the leader board with the unlocked vehicles.

There are three views to choose from and i try to show a bit of all three although it soon becomes apparent that the zoomed out top down is the best to use to better prepare for the corners ahead and I would have likely done better using that view throughout. As the tracks get more complicated I am almost exclusively in that view. After each race I show a lap or segment of the replay just to show the race in a another interesting perspective.

Overall, there is not much to the game and is probably too close to the arcade in its presentation. You play each race individually in any order you like and winning still results in a game over at the end. There is nothing like a competition or tournament mode. Those going for times on the leader board are probably best playing the time trial mode so that the annoying slow especially at the start cars are not in your way. Completing the final race shows the credit roll. I'm guessing you don't actually need to finish al races to get this.

00:00::00 Intro
00:01:36 Side by Side 1 - Spring
00:07:20 Side by Side 1 - Summer
00:12:19 Side by Side 1 - Autumn
00:18:05 Side by Side 1 - Winter
00:23:43 Side by Side 1 - Special
00:29:58 Side by Side 2 - April
00:34:40 (Unlocked) Original 1 - June
00:40:10 Side by Side 2 - March
00:45:21 (Unlocked) Original 2 - 00.00 (Taito Van)
00:50:08 Side by Side 2 - October (Taito Box Van)
00:56:13 (Unlocked) Original 3 - 2.00
01:00:21 Side by Side 2 - July (Taito Truck)
01:06:34 Side by Side 2 - 22.00
01:10:34 Ending Credits