Street Racer (Saturn) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
186A playthrough of Ubisoft's 1996 kart-racing game for the Sega Saturn, Street Racer.
This video shows the following modes being played on the expert difficult level:
2:45 Bronze Cup with Hodja
19:25 Silver Cup with Frank
40:06 Gold Cup with Sumo
1:37:18 Rumble Championship with Rabbit
The Sega Saturn version of Street Racer (Street Racer Extra in Japan) is by far the best looking version of the game that was released on consoles. It is also the only version of the game that was never released in the United States - go figure.
Clearly, this is a substantial upgrade over the SNES and Genesis versions of the game. It may surprise you, however, to learn that the Saturn game was also a massive improvement over the barren-looking PlayStation version. It runs at 480i and 50fps without any hiccups despite being the most graphically demanding version of the game - just check out how many sprites are used for roadside objects, and how smooth that sprite scaling is!
Besides the presentation, though, there aren't too many differences from the original 1994 SNES release. The Saturn's Street Racer still wants desperately to be Super Mario Kart, and it still fails to live up to Mario Kart here. It's not bad by a long shot - I have had a lot of fun with the game in the past - but it lacks most of the Mario crew's personality, the AI blatantly cheats (the rubber-banding is sooo frustrating!), and the only time you can really easily see the track ahead of you is when you are using the ugly overhead mode... as you can see from this video, I sacrificed playability for looks. Playing with the "VR" mode that places the camera directly behind your back, it becomes extremely difficult to see far enough in order to avoid the bad stuff. Oh well, at least it's damn pretty.
Street Racer reminds me a lot of Power Drift on the Saturn, or any of Sega's other SuperScalar arcade games - the developers clearly knew how to pull power from the Saturn hardware, and the game ends up being a real showcase for the system's sprite-pushing capabilities.
And a random side-note: Street Racer was developed by Vivid Image, who was mainly known for First Samurai. Anyone else remember that gem? It was an Amiga game that was ported to the SNES, and was pretty notable for its bizarre story and music.
Another side-note: You'd think Hodja would be the best one because of how well-rounded his stats are, but he's actually the worst racer in the game. I only picked him because his head looks like a Werther's Original.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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