Race Drivin' (Game Boy) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
212A playthrough of THQ's 1993 racing game for the Nintendo Game Boy, Race Drivin'.
In this video I win the championship on all three tracks.
This version of Race Drivin' came about a year after the SNES conversion, releasing on the same day as the Genesis cart. Despite wearing the THQ badge of shame, Race Drivin' is one of the most impressive games on the Game Boy. It manages to surpass even the excellent (but unfortunately cancelled) Hard Drivin' on the NES.
As for the reason why it turned out so well? See the mention of Argonaut Software on the opening screens? They were also the guys who created the SuperFX chip and Star Fox for Nintendo. They clearly had a lot of skill and resources, and on an 8-bit handheld with a monochrome screen, they pulled off something that Imagineering couldn't manage even on the 16-bit SNES.
The graphics are amazingly clear considering the low resolution and the limited palette. It must be said, though, that this is not a game that you'll want to play on a Super Game Boy. The slow refresh rate of the original Game Boy's LCD panel seems to have been carefully accounted for here, and the game takes advantage of it in a way that makes the game look much smoother than you might expect in motion.
If there are any real negatives to Race Drivin' on the Game Boy, they are ones that it inherits from original arcade game. The car handling feels good and the track design is cool, but the game was too insubstantial to justify a home version at full retail price, much like the SNES and Genesis versions were. With only three races, the entire game can be seen and done in less than an hour. A rental would've been a much smarter choice for this one, but that doesn't detract at all from what an amazing showcase this is... even if the game itself is much better suited for the arcade than it is the home market.
If you'd like to see the other Drivin' games I mentioned above, here are a few links:
Hard Drivin' (NES, prototype)
https://youtu.be/9kIM8GOg2Ag
Race Drivin' (SNES, official release)
https://youtu.be/CKfkZCvdqqY
Race Drivin' (SNES, SA-1 enhanced)
https://youtu.be/dlhwFv7BSvo
*Recorded using the DMG shader in Retroarch to mimic the look of the original hardware.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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