Race Drivin' (SNES, SA-1 Enhanced Version) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
233A playthrough of THQ's 1992 racing game for the SNES, Race Drivin'. The version I am playing here has been reprogrammed to leverage the power of the SA-1 coprocessor to improve the fluidity of the gameplay.
If you'd like to see the game in its original form, you can find my video of the official release version of Race Drivin' on the SNES here: https://youtu.be/CKfkZCvdqqY
The upgraded version featured in this video is the result of a whole lot of time and effort put in by Vitor Vilela. If you'd like to try this out for yourself, you can grab the patch from Github (https://github.com/VitorVilela7/SA1-Root/releases/tag/v1.6 ). He has also created similar upgrade patches for games like Contra III, Gradius III, and Super R-Type. If you're a fan of his work, make sure to also check out his Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/vitorvilela .
The SA-1 is a processor that was embedded in official cartridges back in the day to relieve some of the demands placed on the SNES CPU. Around three dozen games in total made use of it, and seven of these were published in America, including the likes of Top Gear 3000 and Super Mario RPG. It was essentially a clone of the SNES's CPU, but with the clock speed tripled. It ran at 10.74Mhz (as opposed to the base console's appx. 3.6 Mhz CPU), and as you can clearly see from the video, the gameplay has been utterly transformed thanks to the extra horsepower that has been made available.
On average, the original SNES game runs at roughly 5fps. This updated version of the game runs at a full 30fps. Yeah, that's a 6X increase, and it is as much of a game changer as you might imagine. The controls are far more responsive now, and at such a buttery smooth frame rate, it wouldn't look out of place making a cameo in the old Dire Straits video Money For Nothing. It looks amazing, and the gameplay now actually feels like gameplay.
I've seen some people complain that this patch makes it run too fast, and to those nay-sayers, I say, "Booooooooo!" It now runs at the speed that it was intended to run at. Now it actually conveys some sense of speed!
One thing to keep in mind: this patch fixes the framerate, and as a result of that change, it also improves the controls. However, it does not aim to address any underlying gameplay issues. Your car still tends to feel like it's riding on an ice skate (apparently physics wasn't a priority for the original developer), but overall, the game is far, far more playable today than it was thirty years ago.
It's as shallow as ever, but if you insist on playing a 16-bit console conversion instead of the original arcade game, this rendition of Race Drivin' is *the* way to play it.
Really cool stuff, this!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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