In my previous reviews of the more serious kind of racing games, I said that they’ve aged far less gracefully than arcade racers. This seems to be one of of those examples, as I couldn’t get into it at all – or even finish a race higher than 7th place. World Driver Championship got some very high reviews when it came out, so it was well regarded.

World Driver Championship’s graphics are really nice for the N64. When played in higher resolutions you can see how they do this (with heavy use of level of detail models), but this would be well disguised when played on an actual console. The game also offers a high-res letterbox mode, although this does provide very big black bars. The high res mode is impressive for not using an expansion pack, but it does make you wonder how it could have improved by having optional Expansion Pak support.

The handling is the main thing I had an issue with here, with cars sliding about rather than actually tuning. N64 Magazine says that you need to get used to this method of driving, but I just couldn’t get the hang of it. To make matters worse, the CPU racers will just plough right into you, and whenever you’re in the pack, you bounce around like a dodgem car. While they feel overly aggressive, I feel like it’s more that they just aren’t programmed to react to your car.

The championship mode does have some interesting ideas. You pick a racing team and you’ll have access to their cars. You can stick with them to access their better cars, or swap to another team – although some teams hate each other so much that you’ll won’t be able to join one if you joined the other. With these teams, you’ll compete in cups across the rather nice tracks (10 different locations, but some different routes in each).

While I couldn’t get into it at all, I can definitely see why some people would have loved this, and the ideas to make the championship mode more interesting are good ideas.

Fine

There’s so much here that, if you’re even the slightest bit interested in throwing a wheeled metal box recklessly around a right-angled corner, we’d advise you to buy this game immediately. It’s beautiful to look at, wonderful to play, frighteningly engrossing and will take you plenty of time to finish. Bear in mind that it’s a game that takes time to love but, when you’ve tamed the beast, you’ll have the greatest time.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #32. Review Score: 91%

Remake or remaster?

It could be included in a collection of Midway racers – it would be a lot of variety in one package.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get World Driver Championship