Hardware Heaven: Xbox
YES, STREET RACER EVEN MADE IT ONTO THE AMIGA, BELIEVE IT OR NOT
We take a brief look at Microsoft’s very first entry into the console market
SNES 1994
The original – and, in our opinion, best – version of Street Racer on the Super Nintendo featured 24 tracks and a four-player split-screen mode, a first for a racing game on the system.
It all flew along at a tidy 60 frames per second, too, despite coming on a tiny eight-megabit cart with no enhancement chips.
MEGA DRIVE 1995
The Mega Drive version has notably worse sound and music than the SNES original, and the lack of Mode 7 means that here the power-ups appear as flat sprites rather than 3D icons laid on the track. The Rumble mode is also somewhat inferior, being changed to a simple circular track rather than an arena.
GAME BOY 1996
“We used an external programmer for it, John Williams,” says Mev Dinc, of the Game Boy version. “He was brilliant. John also did First Samurai on the C64, which was amazing.” Impressively, this version packed in almost everything from its console cousins, although it can be hard to distinguish the cars from the track.
PLAYSTATION 1996
“Doing almost like a straight-ish conversion obviously didn’t do justice to the Playstation version,” highlights Mev. “We should have really started from scratch. It wasn’t an all-out proper 3D racer, although we did use a 3D engine. It got quite a good reception, but it should have been much better, to be honest.”
SATURN 1996
The Saturn port was essentially identical to the Playstation version – and one crazy feature that they both shared was an eight-player splitscreen mode using two multitaps.
“60 frames a second, too,” notes Mev. The 32-bit versions also featured an animated intro as well as an unlockable secret character: Rabbit.
AMIGA 1997
“It was really crazy,” says Mev about the decision to port Street Racer to the Amiga so late in the computer’s lifetime. “I mean, we shouldn’t have really done it!” Guildhall published the game as a budget title, and it was based on the Mega Drive version rather than the Playstation/saturn one or the superior SNES original.
PC 1997
The DOS version is the same as the Playstation and Saturn ports – and like those versions, it features a Micro Mode, whereby the game is turned into an overhead racer a la Micro Machines. Two more conversions
– for the Game Gear and Sega 32X – were also in development, but were never released.