Street Racing Syndicate

Tune it up and turn it loose.

NA release: 31st August 2004
EU release: 4th March 2005
JP release: N/A
Developer: Eutechnyx
Publisher: Namco
NGC Magazine Score: 58%
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

A quick and cheap copy of Need for Speed Underground. Street Racing Syndicate is a game all about tuning cars and racing them on a city at night just after it has been raining, although the effect is just a blurry mess here. For a Eutechnyx game, the racing is surprisingly functional, although still devoid of any excitement and still feels slow in the fastest cars. While it is clearly inspired for NfS Underground, there are a few differences.

The biggest difference is that the city is open world and you can drive freely between events. there’s also three maps you can access, so it isn’t just the “city just after the rain” look for the whole game. You can challenge people to point to point races. If only driving around in this game was remotely exciting, because with the game’s racing mechanics, none of these places are fun to play on.

The other aspect is that you can win girls (FHM have adverts on most billboards in the game). These come out at the start of the race and if you win while using them, you unlock a video of their actress dancing. They all have stats, which just relate to their physical measurements. There’s nothing worth spending time with in this game.

Poor

SRS falls flat on its face when it comes to the most crucial aspect of the game – the racing itself. To be perfectly honest with you, it’s absolute rubbish.
Geraint Evans, NGC Magazine #105

Remake or remaster?

Nothing for this.

Official Ways to get the game

Street Racing Syndicate is available on Steam. Which is bizarre when you think about how licensing works for car games, as they tend to expire. The Steam version (which just seems to be the original PC version) is published by Funbox Media, who also have some old Premier Manager games. My best guess is that this publisher threw these old games on Steam without getting the rights and are just hoping that nobody notices. At least this oddity has finally given me something interesting to talk about with SRS.