Virtua Racing, 1992 Sega (20 From '92 Part 5)
9Absolutely stunning (for its time) 3D polygon color/shading racing game, running on the revolutionary Sega Model-1 Hardware. You can race another player or against computer cars on 3 different tracks: Beginner (Big Forest), Medium (Bay Bridge), or Expert (Acropolis). You can also choose Manual or Automatic transmission, and if you choose Manual you must use yellow switches to flip between the gears (up to 7). Even the Beginner course is very, very tough to complete-- you must do 5 full laps on each course-- each checkpoint (and every time you pass the finish/starting line) gives you an extra 10 seconds of time. The more difficult courses may give you a bit more time than that. Note that running over the shoulders of the track REALLY slows you down.. as does slamming into a wall or another car at high speed; that will FLIP you over! Try reaaaally hard not to do either! If you like, you can pit right next to the start/finish line, where a cute 3D-polygon-rendered pit crew attends to your car, and grants you a little extra time (though I don't recommend it). If you complete all 5 laps you get a Game Over screen and put your name on the high score list. If you finished in the top 3 after completing 5 laps, you get a cool extra scene involving you taking your place on the "Top 3" stand, and possibly accepting a trophy (for 1st place) and throwing your hat in victory! Another cool aspect of this game is that you can change the viewpoint of the race with 4 colored buttons: RED (cockpit mode), BLUE (follow mode), YELLOW (float mode), and GREEN (fly mode)! Beautiful game for 1992, and was ported to numerous home systems.