Top Gear Rally 2

• NA release: 3rd December 1999
• JP release: 4th February 2000
• PAL release: 28th February 2000
• Developer: Saffire
• Publisher: Kemco
• N64 Magazine Score: 90%

While I’ve spoken about Saffire games before, their earlier N64 games had all been ports, making this their first fully developed N64 game (with their second coming out a week after this). While it’s called Top Gear Rally 2, it bears no similarities to the original game, this being much closer to a rally sim than the original arcade-style game.

Top Gear Rally 2 features a damage system where bad driving will completely wreck your car. I was so bad at the game, that I couldn’t even finish a single race due to damage, but I think I’m more at fault than the game there. The handling has a lot of customisation and feels quite good, although the car is oddly “magnetic” in that it sticks to the ground, making it jerk around in an odd way on bumpy sections.

Something that really bugged me was the tracks, as there was something really off about them – a strange sense of déjà vu, as I seemingly kept encountering the same obstacles again and again, sometimes the same sections repeated in the same race. As I looked it up after playing, it turns out my feeling was right: there are no properly designed tracks in the game.

There are four different “themes” and, for each race, the game stitches various parts together. Specific combinations of these parts act as “tracks” in the game, while you unlock a “random track generator” after completing the game.

The training mode is, strangely, the best mode in the game. Here, you’re set into lots of driving challenges while avoiding cones. It’s definitely more compelling than the random tracks.

Top Gear Rally 2 is a good rally game, but would have been even better with specifically designed tracks, and having the random tracks be a bonus, like in F-Zero.

Fine

And that’s not all. Top Gear Rally 2 has a driving school, different weather conditions and CPU opponents who drive properly, making mistakes as well as being darn good. It’s fast, the tracks are splendidly designed, the graphics are more detailed than Top Gear Rally’s, and – almost inconceivably – there’s a brilliant random track generator (á la F-Zero X’s 5th cup) that’s opened up when you complete the game. Genius. One thing, though – do make sure you play this with a steering wheel, if you can.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #38

Remake or Remaster?

A collection of the various Top Gear games would be quite nice.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Top Gear Rally 2

Europe

Japan

North America

N64 racing