It's new to me: Top Gear

The start of a long-running racing franchise began all the way back on the SNES

This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before — of which there are still many despite my habits — and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

The spring of 1992 was probably an awkward time to release a racing game on the Super Nintendo. F-Zero was a launch title for the Super Famicom in November of 1990, and then abroad in the late-summer of ‘91: it was praised for its use of the graphical technique known as “Mode 7,” a mode of sprite scaling and rotation that allowed for what felt like a 3D experience in a racing game utilizing it. While scaling technology for pseudo-3D environments had been utilized in arcade games by companies like Sega (OutRun, Super Hang-on, Space Harrier) and Taito (Night Striker), home conversions were nowhere near as impressive, as the platforms of the day couldn’t handle the action on screen nor the backgrounds and super scaler tricks with the same level of effectiveness as the arcade editions. Even when the ports were impressive relative to the tech, they were still lacking something that made the arcade originals stand out and work as well as they did.

So, Mode 7 was something of a revelation: Nintendo used F-Zero and Pilotwings to show off what was possible on the Super Famicom/SNES that hadn’t been possible on previous home consoles, and also not on the rival Sega Genesis. The Genesis had plenty of its own tricks going for it, as developers familiar with both platforms could attest to, but Mode 7 was a win for video games in the living room that the Genesis couldn’t replicate, and was also capable of some different things than that same super scaling tech everyone was acclimated to: F-Zero’s emphasis was on rotating the entire screen around the car, allowing for some wild turns in a “3D” space, where as Sega had used their super scaling more to create a realistic, living horizon to drive or fly toward and into.

It took time for Mode 7’s use to become something of a norm, though. In the late-summer of ‘92, Nintendo would release Super Mario Kart, which pushed kart-racing forward in a way it hadn’t been before, started the whole “Mario in other genres” thing with massive success, and also deployed Mode 7 in some incredible ways that made the tech feel like a must for a proper racer on the system. In between F-Zero and Super Mario Kart, there was Top Gear.

Image credit: MobyGames

Top Gear is a fine racing game in its own right, and responsible for launching a series with a whole bunch of entries in it, but if you were looking for the next generation of console racers, this isn’t it — that’s what F-Zero and Super Mario Kart were building toward, while Sega focused heavily on advancing their own racing games in the arcades for eventual console ports with the likes of Virtua Racing (the arcade edition of which also released in 1992). What Top Gear is, though, is a 16-bit refinement of the existing formula that brought us titles like Rad Racer on the NES or Victory Run on the Turbografx-16. Rad Racer was fast, in the same vein as OutRun design-wise but without the technological flash that the super scaling tech of the arcade version allowed for. Turns were a matter of changing the angle of your car left and right, and quick reactions to changes in where the road you were on was pointing.

Top Gear is that, but with far more horsepower behind it than this kind of racer could manage on the 8-bit NES or Sega Master System, which means that not only is the speed at a ridiculous level, but each track is loaded with other cars, and the room to fit them in. There is almost always at least one other car on the road with you, and unlike in Rad Racer or OutRun, these other vehicles are active participants in the race you’re in, that you’re competing against. Top Gear’s races feature 20 cars in them. The first F-Zero title had just the four cars, and Super Mario Kart had eight racers. As first entries with a whole lot else going on, they weren’t focused on sheer volume at this point. But Top Gear was building on established gameplay and a specific style of preexisting racers, and that’s where the developers, Gremlin Graphics, put their emphasis: speed and quantity.

The background graphics suffered for it, as everything feels somewhat generic and samey — city, desert, forest, etc. — but if you’re spending any time looking at anything beside the road that’s whipping by you at 220 kilometers per hour, well, you’re going to end up paying for that. The roads aren’t just full of 19 other cars that you’re trying to best and also not crash into, but various obstacles, too: there’s the usual side-of-the-road stuff you don’t want to crash into on tight, lengthy turns, but also the occasional obstacle right in the road itself. Cones, rocks, bushes, barrels, dirt on the side of the road you didn’t turn early enough to avoid skidding into — they’ll all slow you down, and you can’t afford to slow down on the game’s tougher difficulties.

Especially not since Top Gear is a racer that utilizes pit stops to refill your car’s gas tank. It’s not a matter of repairing damage, like in a Daytona USA, but just to refuel: some of these courses go on for quite a few laps, with even some early ones bumping you up to six laps over five minutes or so, and you’re going to run out of gas at some point during those laps if you don’t make a pit stop. The timing of the pit stop — both in terms of when you actually make the trip down that lane and how long you stay within it — are points of strategy. Can you push it just one more lap before having to stop? Will that leave you with enough race left to make up whatever ground was lost by making the stop? If you bail on the refueling stop well before your tank is full in order to avoid losing another few precious seconds, will you still have enough to complete the race? It’s exhilarating, to have to worry about all of this while you’re also dodging obstacles, trying to weave your way in and out of the 19 other racers you’re facing off against, and figuring out the opportune time to deploy one of your three nitro boosts on courses with far more laps than you’ve got boosts.

To also keep you busy, you have a rival racer on the bottom half of your screen. They’ll exist near you basically throughout: if you’re somewhere in the middle, they’ll be there as a short-term goal to push you forward, and if you’re near the front of the pack, they will be, too. The rubberbanding works in your favor a bit if they’re in first place and it’s late in the race, as they do end up slowing down a little bit, giving you a chance to catch up. That’s a little easier to take advantage of on the lowest difficulty, however: everything is earned a lot more the old-fashioned way on the other two settings.

You’ll know which one is your rival for more reasons than just their presence on the bottom half of the screen: they select their car from one of the four available, just like you, and those colors are distinct from the rest of the pack. These four cars all have their pros and cons: faster cars tend to have worse grip and also burn their gas faster, some cars accelerate faster even if their top speed is lower, but if you’re a pro at Top Gear, the extra 15 kph of speed you can get from the fastest vehicle can be worth the other trade offs. Or, if you want to emphasize pushing your gas to its limit and making minimal refuel stops, then maybe the one that goes 220 kph with medium grip is the way to go, since its fuel consumption is also fairly efficient: the difference in top speed might be made up by being able to spend less time in the pit, or by being able to accelerate again rather quickly even if your top speed is lower. These are all personal preferences to consider based on your play style, and while you can’t modify cars, the four presets are at least varied enough to suit very different kinds of players.

It should be noted, too, that the rival car is there if you aren’t facing off against a second human opponent. Which you can do instead, and then it’s a true rivalry where you’re both gunning for first while also trying not to have a situation where neither of you manages to advance and unlock additional regions.

The goal of Top Gear, whether playing solo or with a friend, is to become the top racer in the world, which you will do by traveling around it. You start in the United States with some pretty basic tracks — you don’t even see one where you need to make a pit stop until the last of that collection — and if you score enough points in the standings to qualify, you can unlock the next region, which in this case is South America. There are eight regions total, each with four tracks, so, no shortage of tracks to race on despite this being a game from ‘92. At the end of each region, your score must have landed you in the top three to advance, or else it’s game over. If you are in the top three, however, you get a password so you can open up the next set of tracks.

No information is stored in Top Gear, with all of your progress being password-based. So every time you want to open up one of the later regions, you’ll have to remember that it’s MOONBATH for South America or whatever. It’s pretty annoying that no records are kept of your progress, but easy enough to navigate in this day and age, at least. Either write down the passwords as you unlock regions, or open up one of the 4,000 websites that has a page showing the game’s 31-year-old passwords. Whenever you do play, you can change your name, select manual or auto transmission — there are five gears, if you were wondering — and then pick the car you’ll race with. Again, a little annoying to do it every time, but it’s easy enough, and it at least does save this information while you’ve got the game powered on, so you don’t have to enter it all again for the next region.

While Top Gear is the start of a franchise that would release 15 entries between 1992 and 2006, it’s actually very close to another racing series that was published by Gremlin Graphics, the developer of Top Gear. The Lotus series of racing games, developed by another UK studio, Magnetic Fields, included Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, and Lotus III: The Ultimate Challenge, all of which released for home computers like the Amiga. They’re incredibly similar to Top Gear, both in style and modes and the need to refuel, and various Lotus tracks — the musical kind — even ended up remixed for the SNES and Top Gear. The final Lotus title released in 1992, right as Top Gear was getting going and becoming the focus, while the Lotus developer Magnetic Fields moved on to make Rally Championship computer racers.

Top Gear isn’t currently available for purchase on the primary modern consoles, nor is it included with Nintendo Switch Online, but it did end up released on an Evercade cartridge, Piko Interactive Collection 1, using its Japanese name, Top Racer (and Top Racer 2 is included in the sequel to this first collection, as well.) It’s worth checking out, just for its awkward place on the timeline of racers, if nothing else. Top Gear would expand in a hurry, with Top Gear 2 introducing customizable cars, weather, tougher opponents, car damage, and more difficult gameplay to master, but if you’re a fan of the more plug-and-play 8-bit-style racers that preceded Top Gear, well, the first entry in this series retains a lot of that no-fuss play, and does so at the blazing speed afforded it by a 16-bit machine.

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