Forgotten Gems: Top Racer Back In Top Gear

04.03.2024 - 15:41 / ign.com

If you’ve read the last 10 issues of my Forgotten Gems column, you’ve probably noticed a pattern. I pick a game that may either spark some recognition and you’ll go “oh, yeah – what happened to it?” – or you’ve never heard of the game I’m profiling and you google what year I was born so that you can rest easy that it’s not you, it’s me. Inevitably, the column turns gloomy. An awesome-sounding sequel was planned, but never made. Or, somehow, an entire series of games is no longer accessible to play.

Not today, friends! Today’s Forgotten Gems has a happy ending. As of March 7, 2024, three classic SNES racers are back on the track, broadly available to play on Xbox One, Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Courtesy of Brazilian studio QUByte and retro experts Piko, of Evercade fame, the Top Racer Collection includes the original trio of Top Racer games – Top Racer, Top Racer 2, Top Racer 3000, and an original title featuring four new rides that recall other classic racing games, called Top Racer: Crossroads.

If you’re an old-school SNES fan and you’re scratching your head right now because you’ve never heard the name Top Racer before, once again, it’s not you. In 1992, Japanese publisher Kemco -- sometimes referred to by its less sexy corporate name, Kotobuki System -- launched a game with two names: Top Racer, in Japan, and Top Gear in the US and Europe.

Developed by Gremlin Graphics, the team behind the Lotus Turbo Challenge racing games, Top Gear became a surprise hit, selling more than a quarter million units in the west alone (as disclosed by court documents that I’ll get to in a minute). Top Gear predates Nintendo’s own Mario Kart by a few months, but like the SNES mega-hit, it hooked players with impressive Mode 7 graphics and a focus on split-screen multiplayer.

Whether you’re playing alone, with (this is the way), or against a friend, Top Gear – er, Top Racer, let’s just stick with that – displays a horizontally split screen by default. The idea is that you’ll always be able to keep an eye on your biggest rival, but the default setup was no doubt also a way to simplify the overall design and keep technical ambitions in check. Unlike the admittedly smoother-running Mario Kart and F-Zero, Top Racer actually simulates verticality and adds quite a bit of excitement by obscuring the path ahead when you drive up and down hills.

Most of Top Racer is a test of your reflexes. Scan ahead or look at the track mini-map and start turning early or easing up on the gas pedal, all by using the SNES controller’s exclusively digital controls, of course. But the designers added a few more strategic elements that ensured players would remember Top Racer for many years to come. For one,