Nigel Mansell's World Championship (Race 'N' Chase)

"BECOME A GRAND PRIX LEGEND IN A RACE FOR THE TITLE OF WORLD CHAMPION. The most exciting racing driver in the world has teamed up with the greatest racing game producers to bring you the definitive Grand Prix experience. Race the full 1992 season in the superb Canon Williams Renault F1 car. Real time coaching from Nigel Mansell himself. Experiment with the cars set up to achieve maximum performance for each of the 16 race circuits. Fast and furious race action with actual Renault F1 engine sound FX and superb detailed graphics. THE REALISM OF THE RACETRACK.... THE POWER AND THE GLORY!"

This was released in multiple versions for the A500, A1200 and CD32 and there is also an A1200 'Race n Chase' Pack-In version played here. The version being played here is the A1200 Enhanced version with no copy protection (code wheel). The ReadMe document on the disc states Latest Version working on A4000 but I have noted that the game does not like fastram enabled (messed up music on race finish). The A1200 game is enhanced with faster loading, more sfx and supposedly smoother racing but I'm not seeing it and it runs just as choppy as the a500 game.

Nigel Mansell's World Championship is a racing game as you might have guessed but its no simulator. Much like the lotus games from gremlin you race through a series of tracks (16) and aim to be at the top of the league table by the end. The driving feels terrible and its all too easy to oversteer into roadside objects. The brakes are very responsive though and it takes a lot of start stopping to stay on track. Opposing racers constantly get in your way in a very deliberate fashion. It's not all bad though as they are quite slow and once you are past them can race off into the distance making the game overall quite easy on the normal difficulty. The cars spread out a bit more on pro a champ difficulties. There is a tyre ware system but with only three laps it doesnt ever really come into play so no need to worry unless playing on champ difficulty where you will have to change tyres at least once. The pits can be useful if you need to change tyre type mid race though if weather conditions change.

The Longplay starts out with a very quick look at Nigel Mansell's training mode which is supposed to get you familiar with the track. Nigel is super helpful with comments like , 'go faster', 'don't hit things'. Afterwards, I dive into the full season mode at Championship level consisting of 16 tracks of 6/7/8 laps each. At the end I show a single race in Arcade mode which removes all the hud elements presenting a smoother running speed.

Overall an average racing game. Whilst not overly difficult the way the track swings left/right can be annoying to handle especially with its janky framerate. For all the work put in, the ending is very disappointing as I was expecting something at least on the level of Lotus Two's ending with pumping music. I did try the change driver option for using own name and car colour but the game would not acknowledge the selection resetting to Nigel. This style of game was done better in F1/Vroom and maybe team 17s F17 Challenge. Finally the game has some lengthily disc loading but it's most annoying when loading podium between races although the game does offer to disable the podium to speed things up but that is the thing you are working towards keeping you motivated for the next race.

00:00:00 Title Music
00:03:11 Improve with Mansell
00:06:00 South Africa
00:16:04 Mexico
00:24:38 Brazil
00:33:16 Spain
00:42:08 San Marino
00:50:26 Monaco
00:59:40 Canada
01:07:55 France
01:17:26 Britain
01:25:45 Germany
01:34:35 Hungary
01:44:50 Belgium
01:53:15 Italy
01:59:42 Portugal
02:09:12 Japan
02:19:53 Australia
02:29:15 Win Screen
02:31:25 Single Race - Arcade Mode