Square Enix recently released Final Fantasy XVI to huge critical and commercial success, which might make it easy to forget that Squaresoft was once a small development house unsure of its future. In 1987, their development MO was to knock off take inspiration from popular arcade games, hoping to nab a piece of the pie for themselves. It’s obvious that Rad Racer took some furious notes while watching Sega’s iconic OutRun rake in quarters with a vengeance…but how does it stand on its own?
Rad Racer (Square, 1987)
Rad Racer follows the same formula as OutRun; a pseudo 3D racer where the goal is to beat the clock, meaning the other drivers on the road are mere obstacles that stand between you and that sweet, sweet 8-bit victory. Hitting the brake button to slide around corners is the key to finishing rounds with time to spare. Navigating the tight turns is fun instead of frustrating, which speaks to Rad‘s quality overall. The game also has this crazy mechanic where, if the timer runs out, you’re granted a scant few extra seconds to hit the next checkpoint while your car rolls to a gradual stop. It adds a pulse pounding tension to running out of time that OutRun itself lacks, adding some much needed distinction between the two titles.
Generally speaking, the game allows one crash or screw-up per track. There’s no official counter set in place to enforce this, so you can still finish if your mistakes are timed just right, but the in-game clock is rigorous. The high difficulty is made much more accessible thanks to Square being nice enough to officially include the extremely simple continue code in the game’s manual. Thanks, Square!
Rad Racer boasts some cool (dare I say rad?) pseudo-parallax scrolling effects, which were especially impressive for 1987. You have to love that deliciously 80’s colour palette that many of the levels have going for them; black and purple meshing with oranges just right…ooh yeah. That’s the good stuff. It also sports the little used feature of hitting the Select button at any time to flip the game into 3D MODE! Finally, an excuse to bust out those blue-and-red paper glasses that’ve been gathering dust at the bottom of your desk drawer for days. Or maybe that’s just me. Can it possibly get any more radical than this?!
Turns out it can. Oh my God. The music is super catchy, since it was composed by the maestro himself, Nobuo Uematsu. The soundtrack will be lodged in your head like the most insidious of earworms for days after spending some quality time with Rad Racer. Because it is just that rad.
I finished Rad Racer in roughly 90 minutes while stuck on a boring phone call, which was just the right amount of time for it to not overstay its welcome. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it and would happily rev up those engines again in the future. Raaaaad.
Final rating:
Rad Racer II (Square, 1990)
All told, Rad Racer sold a respectable 500,000 copies in North America. It might not’ve been the seventy billion units that OutRun shifted, but it was enough to keep a substantial supply of instant noodles on Square’s tables. In 1990, Rad Racer II zoomed its way onto store shelves exclusively in North America, looking to recapture some of that success.
With a four year gap in development, Rad II feels subtly different to the original. The graphics have had an injection of late NES era Botox, meaning the colour palettes and parallax scrolling are both drool-worthy…which is good, because most of the levels are just prettier rehashes of stages from the first Rad. The music is still pleasant and boppy to cruise down the highway to, but doesn’t have quite the same level of earworm-age as the original.
The biggest differences lie in the gameplay itself. Remember those tight controls that made the original Rad feel as smooth as butter racing down a warm pancake? They’ve paid a visit to the plastic surgeons too. But like a pair of lips beefed up with a touch too much filler, this is one enhancement that wasn’t for the best. No matter what direction you’re steering in, you’ll experience a mysterious gravitational force pulling you towards the center of the road at all times. There’s now a turn indicator at the bottom of the screen as well, which is more intuitive than the tiny signs on the side of the road warning you of an upcoming curve from the first one.
The difficulty has also been ratcheted up from the plucky first game. The already unforgiving timer feels slightly less forgiving, crashes feel constant in the later levels, and your fellow racers WANT. YOU. DEAD. Their road rage is unrelenting, and even slightly bumping into them will send your car spiralling into a hard stop. A lot. Not all that rad, I’m afraid.
It’s odd. I recognize that Rad II isn’t a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, but as I chipped away at learning the tracks, I was left quietly wishing I was playing the first one again. Much like comparing a $12 supermarket cake to a scrumptious homemade number, the more visually appealing Rad Racer II is still enjoyable, but it’s a slightly less tasty version of something that already exists. It lacks the tight controls and charm of Rad Racer despite being a carbon copy of it in many respects, and playing the two back-to-back only highlighted those subtle flaws. Not at all bad, just…slightly less good.
Final rating:
Final Verdict
I’d wholeheartedly recommend Rad Racer to any fans of racing or arcade games. I’d also recommend Rad Racer II, but with a slightly less committal “yyyeah, it’s good!” With that said, I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who love the second game much more than the first. It’s all about personal preference, and the only way to find out is to play them for yourself…so get out there and race most radically!
NESJunk 