My first time playing Top Racer (Top Gear in the UK) was back in the mid 90’s. Back then I could only afford to rent games by saving pocket money my nan gave me and I played Top Racer and Top Racer 2 that way. In the back of my old maths book I used to rate games with percentages for gameplay, graphics, sound and fun. I rated Top Racer 70% and Top Racer 2 81%. Clearly my future YouTube and website career was beckoning as a child…
Flash forward to 2024 and the fondly remembered series, completed with Top Racer 3000, has been packaged up with a bonus game, online leaderboards and online lobbies. These extra bonuses are largely fantastic additions to pique the interest of anyone who wants to play purely ROMs or keeps all their old games. I do the latter so having an online time trial mode where you can battle for top honours with any car or track across the 4 titles is a huge boon for me.
If you haven’t played this series before, Top Racer is a top tier early to mid 90s arcade racer. You race on the endless motorways of the racing games of that era against 19 other cars to get the win. The original Top Racer and bonus game Top Racer Crossroads come with splitscreen by default to encourage local multiplayer racing. AI take the bottom screen if you don’t have a local (or online) friend and having this set up back again brings me tons of nostalgia of racing my mates back at school. That competitive element is here, perfectly intact. Three of the games can be played in 2 player mode, with Top Racer 3000 allowing 4 player splitscreen for a limited selection of tracks.
When you aren’t playing against your friends, you can take on the campaign mode. All the games follow the same formula, competing to win regional or planetary cups of 4 races before moving to the next if you win. Top Racer 2 and Top Racer 3000 bring an upgrade system into the mix too, using your earnings to improve your car. The upgrades have big set ups in performance such as engine top speed, gearbox acceleration, tyre grip or nitro limits. The AI start to upgrade across the campaign too so if you want to keep up, upgrade your engine for survival.
Each game has between 32 and 47 tracks. They have well themed backgrounds and have weather and day/night themes too. Races get longer over the campaign too so fuel or battery recharging starts to come into play. You ‘ll need to pit to refuel or drive over recharge pads (very Formula E 20 years before the series existed) to make sure you reach the finish. Conking out is a very real risk and sometimes you can cut things so fine that you can coast over the line on fumes. Its risky but if it saves you a couple of seconds in the pitstop, it can grab you the win.
Whilst online lobbies and leaderboards are lovely additional modes placed around the original games like scaffolding, the actual games themselves are barely altered. That means Top Racer 1’s choppy framerate persists. It really struggles with elevation changes and can be quite difficult to land a tight corner when the game is struggling to deal with camel humps in the road. Thankfully this is partly solved with Top Racer Crossroads, the additional 4th title that is basically a reskin and polish of the original game but with some Brazilian cars swapped in. One looks like the Outrun car which raised a smile. Like many other modern releases of older games, you can also save a couple of game states between races rather than relying on passwords after every 4 races per cup. In the main menu is also a sound select option to listen to the excellent soundtrack which has aged like a fine wine.
I had great fun with Top Racer Collection. Its a meaty collection with loads of content and some lovely new additions. All the old trapping of upgrading your engine to blast through the competition still exists. The framerate of the original game is unfortunate too. Those couple of niggles aside, its like slipping on comfy old slippers. I have a personal soft spot for this era of racing games and Top Racer Collection stays very true to the times. I think newer gamers might struggle to really understand what the fuss is all about but for older gamers like me, its nostalgia that doesn’t need any rose tinted glasses.
Review copy provided by publisher. PC version tested.
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