Top Gear Rally
Encyclopedia
Top Gear Rally is a rally game for the Nintendo 64
Nintendo 64
The , often referred to as N64, was Nintendo′s third home video game console for the international market. Named for its 64-bit CPU, it was released in June 1996 in Japan, September 1996 in North America, March 1997 in Europe and Australia, September 1997 in France and December 1997 in Brazil...

, Game Boy Color
Game Boy Color
The is Nintendo's successor to the 8-bit Game Boy handheld game console, and was released on October 21, 1998 in Japan, November 19, 1998 in North America, November 23, 1998 in Europe and November 27, 1998 in the United Kingdom. It features a color screen and is slightly thicker and taller than...

 and Game Boy Advance
Game Boy Advance
The is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured, and marketed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China...

. The Game Boy Color version was released under the name Top Gear Pocket, although the European release uses the original name. It features five tracks. It has a feature that allows the user to give their virtual cars custom paint jobs. Although the name stayed the same, the developers changed between consoles. As a result, the games are very different depending on the platform, but they often have similar features such as the paint shop.

Nintendo 64

On the Nintendo 64, Top Gear Rally features a realistic physics model with functioning suspension. At the time, this was an impressive new gameplay development. Road surfaces, including their imperfections, were accurately modeled to give the player the feeling of actually driving a car.

The performance of each vehicle in the game was unique. Not only with respect to engine power, but also areas such as tire grip, suspension stiffness, steering tightness, and between different drive-trains such as front-wheel drive
Front-wheel drive
Front-wheel drive is a form of engine/transmission layout used in motor vehicles, where the engine drives the front wheels only. Most modern front-wheel drive vehicles feature a transverse engine, rather than the conventional longitudinal engine arrangement generally found in rear-wheel drive and...

, rear-wheel drive, and four-wheel drive
Four-wheel drive
Four-wheel drive, 4WD, or 4×4 is a four-wheeled vehicle with a drivetrain that allows all four wheels to receive torque from the engine simultaneously...

. The game also features the possibility of damaging the vehicles, although the damage does not affect performance.

The game's graphics were considered quite advanced for a home console system, being better than the PlayStation
PlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...

's then-available offerings. Smooth, non-pixelated, texture-mapped surfaces, high-detail cars, and complex environments were displaying at a generally smooth frame rate. However, the number of on-screen vehicles couldn't exceed three without game speed being impaired.

Because neither Kemco or Boss Games Studios had licenses to use the real car names, the car names are somewhat disguised within the game. One can identify the cars by either looks or by the fact that the disguised names are often almost acronyms of the real names.

The game features a soundtrack consisting of tunes with a sort of trance
Trance music
Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed in the 1990s.:251 It is generally characterized by a tempo of between 125 and 150 bpm,:252 repeating melodic synthesizer phrases, and a musical form that builds up and breaks down throughout a track...

-style. The electronic XM
XM (file format)
XM, standing for "extended module", is an audio file type introduced by Triton's Fast Tracker 2. XM introduced multisampling-capable instruments with volume and panning envelopes, and basic pattern compression...

 music was composed by Barry Leitch
Barry Leitch
Barry Leitch is a video game music composer, responsible for the music in a large number of games spanning multiple consoles and personal computers. Most notable is his work from the Lotus Turbo Challenge, Top Gear, and Rush video game series....

, who also worked on Super Nintendo
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...

 Top Gear releases.

This version of Top Gear Rally was also released as a PC title called Boss Rally
Boss Rally
Boss Rally is a rally game for the PC. It is essentially a modified port of the Nintendo 64 game, Top Gear Rally.- Tracks :In the game there are six tracks, all of which are entirely different. There is Desert, Coastline, Jungle, Strip Mine, Mountain, and Raceway...

.

A noted gameplay flaw with the Nintendo 64 version of the game is that it is possible for the player to gain an immense advantage over the computer players by riding the rails on the sides of the road in most tracks. The rails don't slow the car down nearly as much as normal cornering or drifting, allowing the player to maintain top speed even through very sharp turns. Boss Games' later N64 title, World Driver Championship
World Driver Championship
World Driver Championship is an automobile racing video game. It was developed by Boss Game Studios and published for the Nintendo 64 by Midway Games....

, did not have this oversight.

Music

The Japanese and European releases of Top Gear Rally had a different title tune than the North American version. The Japanese and European releases used hardcore dance music while the North American version was more mild and dramatic, produced by Barry Leitch.

Game Boy Advance

The Game Boy Advance
Game Boy Advance
The is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured, and marketed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China...

version has 3D graphics considered impressive for the system. It was released on October 31, 2003.

Reception

The game scored considerably high with critics. Then-popular website Nintendojo gave the game a 9 out of 10, while IGN scored it 8.4 out of 10
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