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[stranno]

This game has always surprised me. It was developed by Vivid Image (S.C.A.R.S.) for seven platforms and all the console versions had a very different graphical approach, depending on the platform's strength.

Super Nintendo version (1994) was, of course, a Mode 7 game, pretty much a copy of Super Mario Kart. Tracks design was alright, with colorful but a bit empty levels. It also featured cars soccer ala Rocket League (not the precursor, of course, Wild Wheels was already Rocket League in 1991).

Genesis/Amiga version (1995/1997) had a very basic raster road technique (just a road image linescrolling left and right). To be honest it is really awful. This version also features the soccer mini-game and it makes even less sense than on Super Nintendo, it probably has the worst scrolling I have ever seen on an "sports" game.

Saturn version (1996) uses a rotatable layer similar to the mode 7, but with much higher resolution, farther zoom and 3D elements with a subtle dithered spawning. Some objects are just 2D billboards that always face the camera. I'd say it is the best looking version, by far. It does not feature the soccer mini-game, but a circular battle arena instead, with a tilted view.

Playstation version (1996) is the way to go for the "polygon crew". It features fully polygonal circuits with different heights. Of course objects, vehicles and trees are still 2D billboards. It looks cool and clean, but not as great as Saturn. Also, render view in multi-player is probably the shortest I've ever seen on Playstation, beating even Driver 2. It features the same arena as on Saturn, but this time is fully 3D and it has a few extra-cameras.

Street Racer is also notable for the multiplayer aspect. Both Super Nintendo and Genesis support 4-players split-screen. For some reason, the viewports are stacked onto each other, instead of the classic 4 way split-screen display. It looks highly unplayable. Saturn and Playstation version were probably the only EIGHT-players split-screen games of all time.. at least until very recently with games like Screencheat (2014) and Virtua Racing Switch (2019). I wonder if someone ever played this mess with seven friends back in 1996.

The DOS version was basically the Playstation version with SVGA graphics. GOG's sale includes both DOS and SNES versions.

 

[AJUMP23]

High effort I appreciate it, but I only looked at the pictures. Never played any of these.

 

[ZoukGalaxy]

Nice GIF compilations and nice thread informative efforts for this relatively unknown game, I don't remember it very well tbh, barely the cover, curious game indeed.

But not surprised, the hype was all about Super Mario Kart back in time and every else looked like some bad bootleg and game were so expensive as a child, had to chose wisely each game, nothing like today were gaming is cheap like never.

OH MY TOAD, the split view layout local MP is a terrible mess, I can only imagine all the cables mess with all your 8 friends all around the console playing on a poor tiny CRT.

 

[Georges Chiellins]

Love the Super Nintendo version.
It had a great Royal Rumble mode, best played without any borders on the field/track.

 

[Naked Lunch]

I tried this and all the other Mario Kart clones on the SNES and none come even remotely close to Nintendo's game.
Crazy how Nintendo could just get the game feeling perfect to play and others couldnt.

 

[cireza]

MegaDrive version is excellent and looks fantastic. This version has drifting implemented and the tracks are not ridiculously tiny, unlike other versions.

 

[GigaBowser]

The Saturn version looks the best by far

 

[Bragr]

Never played this, but looks cool, it's on GOG too.

These 2D kart racers became completely outdated after a few years though. I tried to play Wacky Wheels recently and oh boy, best to leave that alone.

 

[nkarafo]

Saturn version looks great but i never liked how this game features tiny tracks where each round lasts what, 10 seconds?

 

[gaming_again]

There was a GameBoy version too.

 

[Esppiral]

The Sega Saturn version is just gorgeous.

 

[Team Andromeda]

The Saturn version kills the PS version it also had an 8-player mode which was nuts for the time.

 

[Knightime_X]

The battle mode for SNES was fucking HILARIOUS.
Watching people go violently flying off-screen had me in tears and can't breathe from LMFAO too hard.

 

[SplunkyMunkey]

I loved street racer! I remember going to my friends house and play split screen or 3 way race. We always seem to battle it out for first place and the 3rd be player can't help but watch the onwards battle

 

[Crayon]

I remember it, never played it. I always thought the stacked four way split screen made sense for a kart racer like that. Looks pretty weird, but you're actually seeing everything you need to see on a full screen.

 

[Soodanim]

I thought Street Racer was the kart racer I had on PS1, but it's weird. I remember the characters but I don't recognise a single track. It was one of the only games I had unboxed when I moved house, so I played it quite a bit so you'd think I'd remember at least some of them.

 

[existensmaximum]

Is that E Honda or just some random sumo wrestler?

 

[SplunkyMunkey]

I guess he took a break from street fighter and went full on throttle instead

Is that E Honda or just some random sumo wrestler?

 

[Trunx81]

Never played it, but saw it hyped in game magazines for its 4 player mode. Reminded me of Whacky Wheels on PC. Wasn’t there even a Jaguar version?

 

[RAIDEN1]

Why even bother porting it to the Gameboy when you know it'll be the worst out of all of them.....

 

[Rocco Schiavone]

Game has also a killer soundtrack.

 

[Three]

I had the SNES version of this game.

Now what was funny about this manual wasn't the fact that it looked like it was typed up in MS Word, or the characters that might be considered stereotyping today, but the credits. The credits for a ubisoft game that could fit on an A6 piece of paper. I do sometimes wonder how they support so many devs now.

Brings back memories of me and my brothers sitting around a multitap with wires everywhere playing.

 

[Fat Frog]

Super Nintendo version (1994) was, of course, a Mode 7 game, pretty much a copy of Super Mario Kart. Tracks design was alright, with colorful but a bit empty levels. It also featured cars soccer ala Rocket League (not the precursor, of course, Wild Wheels was already Rocket League in 1991).








.

Thanks 1988 Yu Suzuki's wacky kart racer for inspiring Nintendo and Ubi.

 

[Gudji]

I remember playing this game a lot on my cousins commodore amiga had a lot of fun at the time.

 

[stranno]

There was a GameBoy version too.

Yes, but it is nothing special. It features the same raster roads as on Genesis, but instead of clean roads, it tries to do a ground pattern which ruins the clarity. I'd say it is partially unplayable due to this.

They should have hired Velez and Dubail (who else). Their V-Rally raster roads engine for Game Boy was unbeatable. And the game was crazy smooth running on the real hardware.

Thanks 1988 Yu Suzuki's wacky kart racer for inspiring Nintendo and Ubi.

Power Drift is nothing like any of these, it uses a VERY VERY obscure and weird rendering technique, with is actually a 3D game (in a sense). The game places "chunks" of the tracks and objects in a 3D space and goes throw them rapidly, instead of the bitmap linescrolling of Out Run, two years before. When the game does the initial travelling, you can see the magic behind this rendering approach. RadMobile also do this, but there must be two or three more games that ever have used this kind of graphics. I'd say GI Joe also uses this in some parts of the levels.

 

[Fat Frog]

Yes, but it is nothing special. It features the same raster roads as on Genesis, but instead of clean roads, it tries to do a ground pattern which ruins the clarity. I'd say it is partially unplayable due to this.

They should have hired Velez and Dubail (who else). Their V-Rally raster roads engine for Game Boy was unbeatable. And the game was crazy smooth running on the real hardware.

Power Drift is nothing like any of these, it uses a VERY VERY obscure and weird rendering

I'm more talking about funny kart racer with crazy people (it's the first game i thought about when i saw Street Racer's covers).

I wasn't talking about rendering at all

 

[CamHostage]

I always wanted to try that 4P split-screen mode (and wasn't there like a 6P racer on maybe Saturn with that same horizontal splitscreen?)

I actually really liked the idea of stacked viewscreens, it made sense what you would be looking at. (It's a flat game by nature on SNES with Mode 7, and the vertical space is generally wasted in gameplay anyway. It's all just background beyond the Mode 7 floor, and here even in single-player the track is more flat and compressed and limited in horizon distance than something like F-Zero.)



(shows a few seconds of the SNES 4P mode on different tracks and in Battle)

 

[CamHostage]

That 8P division looks insane on PS1, but if you stare at just what your screen is, you can almost keep it straight... not worth playing though, since the track layout and draw distance are so hacked-down that you're basically just steering where you think you see things going and avoiding or picking things up on rare occasions.

As mentioned, the Sega Ages Virtua Racing on Switch has 6-player or 8-player mode, and it actually looks playable if you have a big-enough TV. I kind of wish more games would throw in high-count splitscreen (or really any splitscreen,) I don't know how many kids actually like to play this way but it's a great feature for parties or kids if you have lots of people and enough controllers. (Supposedly modern game engines are unkind on supporting split-screen, but it's certainly doable, even with advanced effects and "open worlds", and Epic even did a tutorial on splitscreen projects in UE.)

 

[stranno]

I always wanted to try that 4P split-screen mode (and wasn't there like a 6P racer on maybe Saturn with that same horizontal splitscreen?)

Playstation and Saturn versions also support the vertical stacked viewports. It's regular split-screen by default, but there's a switch in the options menu. Not sure how many players can be displayed using that scheme tho.

AFAIK there's no other racing game on Saturn with more than 4 players. All 6+ players games are sports or board games.

Edit: Well, Vatlva actually supports 6-players and it features vehicles. But it is a vehicular combat game and of course not in split-screen.

 

[Fuz]

Played my share on the Amiga at the time. IIRC hard as fuck, but tons of fun and with a great, quirky cast and art direction.

 

[SegaManAU]

I remember first playing this game on a demo disk from PlayStation magazine. Was instantly hooked. I still play this once a year and it's great fun.

 

[Dirk Benedict]

Is that E Honda or just some random sumo wrestler?

I don't care what anyone says. That is now E. Honda.

 

[cireza]

but instead of clean roads, it tries to do a ground pattern

This is false.

MegaDrive has fully textures roads, the resolution is high (not much pixelation), it uses 320x224 mode and the scrolling is unbelievably smooth. Best looking roads of any game in the genre on the console. Perfect use of color.



Easily one of the prettiest games of the console.

Also for information SNES does not use any chip so the tracks are smaller than Mario Kart and you don't get any scrolling background detail, only the racers. Still looks very good.

 

[drotahorror]

Interesting thread!

 

[stranno]

This is false.

MegaDrive has fully textures roads, the resolution is high (not much pixelation), it uses 320x224 mode and the scrolling is unbelievably smooth. Best looking roads of any game in the genre on the console. Perfect use of color.



Easily one of the prettiest games of the console.

Also for information SNES does not use any chip so the tracks are smaller than Mario Kart and you don't get any scrolling background detail, only the racers. Still looks very good.

I'm not talking about Genesis, but Game Boy. Of course the Genesis pattern looks fine with colors, but working with such low resolution monochrome display you don't want to mess with that kind of complex pattern, since it is borderline unwatchable. Pretty much the same issue as the Donkey Kong Land series.

Genesis does not use textures. As I said, it is a bitmap, split in a few distance chunks, that just line-scrolls left and right. It is smooth, indeed, but the console is basically doing nothing interesting.

When you see this.

VDP is actually doing this, all the time.

This is what the VDP holds for an entire track.

 

[SirTerry-T]

This is false.

MegaDrive has fully textures roads, the resolution is high (not much pixelation), it uses 320x224 mode and the scrolling is unbelievably smooth. Best looking roads of any game in the genre on the console. Perfect use of color.



Easily one of the prettiest games of the console.

Also for information SNES does not use any chip so the tracks are smaller than Mario Kart and you don't get any scrolling background detail, only the racers. Still looks very good.

Mev Dinc, the head guy at Vivid Image was one of those "quiet genius" types of the 8 and 16-bit era. His career is full of great titles that were technically and artistically up there with the best of them for that time period.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

To this day some people maintain it was better than Super Mario Kart. I wouldn’t know, never played Street Racer, but I remember the reviews were good.

Why even bother porting it to the Gameboy when you know it'll be the worst out of all of them.....

Street fucking Fighter II and effin’ Mortal Kombat were ported to the GB. The system was insanely popular and anything that had the slightest chance to sell a few thousand copies got ported to it, limitations be damned.

 

[Akuza89]

Own/played only the mega drive version personally.

Certainly cool the amount of work gone into each version of the game.

 

[existensmaximum]

I don't care what anyone says. That is now E. Honda.

Street Fighter, Street Racer.. What's the difference? Who cares!

 

[SantaC]

Wacky Wheels was better

 

[stranno]

Wacky Wheels was better

Not really. It is slow, choppy and does nothing special. Of course it has it's merit, considering it was created by two developers and PCs back then were not suitable for any kind of graphical tasks, like this software Mode 7 (Andy Edwardson studied the Super Mario Kart engine). It also had a few advantages over Super Mario Kart, like more tracks (much more tracks in the expansion) or online multiplayer (as well as the split-screen). It's a interesting game if you are a fan of Apogee, but, other than that, there are much better "mode 7 kart games".

In fact, Game Boy Advance could do affine transformations to not only backgrounds (like Super Nintendo), but sprites as well, and there are lots of "Mode 7" racing games on the console, much better than any of the games mentioned in this thread. Like Konami Krazy Racers, F-Zero series, GT Advance series, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, etc. Game Boy Advace also nailed the raster roads racing games, Moto Racer Advance or Road Rash Jailbreak are among the most impressive examples I have ever seen.

 

[NeonDelta]

as i had a megadrive and not a snes this was my mario kart. used to play it all the time. loved it

 

[cireza]

I'm not talking about Genesis, but Game Boy. Of course the Genesis pattern looks fine with colors,

You actually said this :

Yes, but it is nothing special. It features the same raster roads as on Genesis, but instead of clean roads, it tries to do a ground pattern

Which implies, if my understanding of English is correct, that the roads on Genesis are clean by opposition of having ground patterns. Which is false, thus the fact that I corrected you.

Genesis does not use textures. As I said, it is a bitmap, split in a few distance chunks, that just line-scrolls left and right. It is smooth, indeed, but the console is basically doing nothing interesting.

Texture was a way to say it was not empty, but with patterns. The notion of texture is not applied to 16 bits consoles, even though it basically is a 2D picture.

"Doing nothing interesting" is your opinion about it, which I disagree with. It is actually updating a large chunk of the screen at each frame and this is super smooth.

 

[Deft Beck]

Great post, good technical breakdown and clean looking GIFs.

 

[stranno]

You actually said this :

Which implies, if my understanding of English is correct, that the roads on Genesis are clean by opposition of having ground patterns. Which is false, thus the fact that I corrected you.

Texture was a way to say it was not empty, but with patterns. The notion of texture is not applied to 16 bits consoles, even though it basically is a 2D picture.

"Doing nothing interesting" is your opinion about it, which I disagree with. It is actually updating a large chunk of the screen at each frame and this is super smooth.

No. It implies that monochrome graphics + complex pattern scrolling = really bad idea. Nothing else. Other Game Boy games with raster roads did it better with clean (solid color) roads like, again, VD's V-Rally.

Every game with raster effects has a large graphic to scroll, that is how it works. Even Street Fighter 2 uses raster effects for the ground.

 

[cireza]

Even Street Fighter 2 uses raster effects for the ground.

But there is no forward scrolling. It is only scrolling lines horizontally.

In Street Racer on MD, you also have to update a pretty big tilemap, and of course calculate how it should be updated. As well as doing the correct line scroll. At each frame. On top of everything else. This is why racing games on these older consoles never have patterns, it is more costly to do. And Street Racer on Genesis pulled it perfectly.