SAN FRANCISCO RUSH- Extreme RacingSYSTEM: Nintendo 64
DEVELOPER: Midway (Original code by: Atari)
PRODUCER: Midway
PRICE: $59.99
RATED: Kids to Adults
It's Christmas day (1997). Santa Clause once again showed us he's the man, by bringing us San Fransisco Rush. We just love that guy!
Actually, the game was for my six year old son. I had to find a way to pry the game away from him. After careful thought, and me being a concerned parent and all. I have decided to limit my son's game playing to several hours per day. This brilliant idea has given me countless hours to play and test this excellent arcade conversion.
The game is absolutely awesome!! That Santa guy may dress funny, but he sure knows good video games. I am completely in love with this game. It is the best console racing game that I have ever played.
There are 6 selectable tracks, each with the ability to select mirrored or backward racing, or even both at once. This makes the number of selectable tracks to be something like 24. These are high quality tracks too. All are beautiful, and absolutely littered with bumps and jumps (I mean this in a good way). Some tracks are for beginners, and some for experts. This game leaves out nobody.
For your vehicle, you have a total of 8 cars (busses, ect..) to choose from. What makes it cooler is the fact that you can choose to race either manual or automatic transmission for each of these cars. The cars all have different speeds, and capabilities too. You can select beginner cars, till you get the feel of the tracks. Then you can select Extreme cars (Which are almost too fast to control), when you feel confident on the track layout. In addition to the already large amount of selectable cars, you can also get an extra car to choose from in the "Select car screen", if you find enough keys.
If the amount of cars and tracks didn't convince you to buy this game, maybe some of the other options will. This game seems to have everything. Fog, difficulty, wind (your in the air alot), laps, drones, ect.. All are completely configurable. This game was meant to be enjoyed for quite some time.
If your like me, you like to see your cars take damage, and have spectacular crashes. This game definetely won't dissapoint! Get a little sideways in the air, and expect to see an awesome end over end crash. Smack into a wall, and watch your car burst into a mass of flames.
Car physics are near perfect. Remember Sega Rally?! If you do, you know what were talking about here. The car feels real. I just loved it. This game just has it all! It has the realism of Sega Rally, the speed of Daytona, and the crashes of Destruction Derby. It's all your favorite racing games rolled into one.
I only had two minor complaints about it. The first is the Fog. You can limit it in the options menu, but fog is still annoying no matter how much there is. Game programmers use it to hide pop up. I actually perfer to see a late draw in now and then as opposed to fog. To the designers credit, fog and San Francisco do go together, so I can't fault them much here. The second complaint is the braking. The brakes seem almost ineffective. They are actually close to real because at 130 MPH, cars don't stop too quick. I just think for this game they should've been more effective.
All in all, this is an excellent game! I suggest it for anyone. As it stands, this is my favorite racing game, and one of the best Nintendo 64 games available. Go get it!
RATINGS
GRAPHICS 98%
SOUND 93%
GAMEPLAY 98%
ORIGINALITY 98%
REPLAY VALUE 98%
OVERALL 97%
