Reader Reviews
This week: Titans of Steel, Ikaruga "and more".
Star Review: Ayrton Senna's Super Monaco GP II (Mega Drive)
by Niren Nair
Ah, the good ol' Mega Drive days. 16-bit platforms: good for 2D platformers and isometric/top-down adventure games, but not really very adept at reproducing a decent 3D experience. Good driving games require a good feeling of immersion, a feeling of speed, but how do you do this when you're limited to an engine only capable of producing really fast moving sprites?
A question the development team at Sega must have pondered for many days before they started working on Ayrton Senna's Super Monaco GP II. For a 16-bit game, the sprites really are as lavishly detailed as you're going to get on the Mega Drive, and the movement of the driver's hands on the steering wheel is so fluid you'll wonder how they managed to maintain such a smooth frame rate with all that animation going on on-screen. The feeling of speed is boosted by the fact that almost the entire screen is filled up with trackside detail, the driver's cockpit, and a rearview mirror, with all lap and track position info overlapping the in-game graphics. This manages to create an impression of objects appearing larger than life, which makes the game feel faster than it actually is, especially when played on a large-screen TV.
The most appealing factor of the game though has to be racing against 'rivals' for a chance at a better drive with another team. Perform badly against a driver driving for a team ranked lower than yours, and you could find yourself driving for a struggling team with an under-powered car. The main difference between the different teams' cars is the speed rating, which actually affects gameplay as a superior top speed is a key factor in winning races, but the 'career mode' aspect of the game adds some much needed tension in races, and without it driving an entire season would be repetitively dull. It really is a stroke of genius from the game's designers, and it adds many hours of replayability. It's hard to believe that something similar has only recently been implemented in EA's F1 Career Challenge.
Ayrton Senna's SMGP II is one of the best racing titles on the Mega Drive, and is probably the best F1 sim you'll find on the platform. It's slick, fluid, fast, and highly addictive, with solid gameplay that you'd be hard-pressed to find in another 16-bit racing title. Let's just hope the Sega Ages remake of Super Monaco GP lives up to it's Mega Drive predecessor.