Top Gear Rally

"Jump in, buckle up and drive yourself insane! Top Gear Rally will have your engines revving! no options on this baby - it comes fully equipped: 9 polygon cars, 5 intense tracks (desert, jungle, mountain, coastline and strip mine), 4 high-performance game modes and multiple camera views! want more? How about eye-bugging 3d & super-real effects! customize your car's graphics in the paint shop. Then, tweak the tranny, tires and steering! You ready? Shift it into high gear and run on and off road through snow, rain, fog, dirt, gravel and mud. Watch out for those rumble pak compatible wrecks. You don't walk away from 'em! Top Gear Rally. it's one cool ride!"

Before World Driver Championship there was Top Gear Rally. Having played both games right after each other the similarities stand out. Top Gear Rally is quite a small game with only a small amount of content that you need to play over and over and over again which soon gets repetitive. The music is kind of interesting sounding very Amiga like which may be of no surprise with Barry Leitch at the helm as with the previous SNES Top gear Games.

The main championship is played over six seasons each consisting of up to the four tracks the game provides. To shake things up different weather conditions will be added which also affect how you car handles on the track. later mirror modes will be added. Completing the sixth season entirely in first place will award you with a fifth Strip mine track only for use in Arcade mode. Each track has a short cut or two to find to aid in getting to first place and these can either help or hinder depending on how you approach them. as they can be tricky to line up. After completing the championship you move on to the second year which has you playing mostly in mirror mode and the end reward being the mirror strip mine track. You are also awarded an extra car which whilst fast takes up a bit to much screen space to be practical.

The biggest hurdle to the game is the controls. Before each race you can configure you car with different options that will affect the cars handling. There is no perfect setup other than what allows you to best control the cars. The Handling option is the most important. I play setting 3 most of the way through the game which allows instant turning of the car but the controls are hyper sensitive with more than a slight flick of the analogue stick spinning the car round. At setting two, you need to brake before you can turn the car and i didn't care to try setting one. The roads are full of bumps which can send the car flying with some crazy in game physics.

The Longplay goes through championship mode, all six seasons to unlock the Milk Truck and Strip Mine arcade level. Then we go through Year Two mirror mode to unlock the Helmet Car and Mirror Strip mine Arcade level. I couldn't bare to play much more at this point so no going through year 3 to see what happens. So onto Arcade mode to show the unlocked Strip Mine Track. After showing each of the unlocked cars I enable some cheats for two more bonus cars to show (i don't know how they unlock normally) as well as enabling PlayStation mode gfx on the final lap.

00:00:00 Intro
00:01:32 Championship Season 1 Year 1
00:13:20 Championship Season 2 Year 1
00:35:12 Championship Season 3 Year 1
01:02:48 Championship Season 4 Year 1
01:30:08 Championship Season 5 Year 1
01:57:40 Championship Season 6 Year 1
02:22:50 Credits
------ Milk Van / Strip Mine Track unlocked ------
02:25:45 Championship Season 1 Year 2
02:38:00 Championship Season 2 Year 2
02:56:30 Championship Season 3 Year 2
03:22:18 Championship Season 4 Year 2
03:48:10 Championship Season 5 Year 2
04:14:28 Championship Season 6 Year 2
04:39:40 Credits
------ Helmet Car / Mirror Strip Mine Track unlocked ------
04:42:42 Arcade Mode / Strip Mine / Milk Truck
04:47:32 Arcade Mode / Mirror Strip Mine / Helmet Car
04:52:15 Arcade Mode / Mirror Strip Mine / Cupra (Cheat)
04:54:40 Arcade Mode / Mirror Strip Mine / Beach Ball (Cheat)
04:59:18 Alt Credits