Top Gear Rally was loved so much by N64 Magazine that they dropped Multi-Racing Championship’s score from 81% to 71%, claiming that it was scored high because it was first. As much as I wanted to love this, this just felt like it had the same kind of “early days” bias as it’s still another arcade style racer where you work from the back of the pack with very few tracks.

The racing itself feels pretty decent with a lot of options to change to alter the handling of your vehicles, and the graphics are very nice for their time, with some nice water effects. In championship mode, you play through a bunch of seasons as you race across the same four tracks multiple times. The weather does change and, while the effects are quite lovely, the rain and slow just make the handling a nightmare. In total, you play across these four tracks a total of 21 times – and then again in mirror mode.

There are some nice touches to the game, for example, you can create custom paint jobs for your cars in a surprisingly nice (for the time) image editor. There’s also “arcade” mode where you can have a 1v1 race against the CPU or another player. The music on the jungle level is also absolutely lovely, although the rest of the music is quite poor. There’s also a hidden track.

If you play through the whole 21 track season and win every single race, you’ll unlock the final track. You can’t race this in the main mode, only arcade and practice. When N64 Magazine wrote their review, they knew it existed but had no idea how to unlock it, it’s that much of a pain to do. Yet it’s easily the best track of the game, with a ton of interesting shortcuts. It’s strange how the best 20% of their game is locked away so hard – another fun vehicle would have been much better, and would allow for a bit more variety in the game’s main mode.

One other thing I noticed is that it doesn’t feel like the other racers have any kind of AI – it just feels like they’re on a set path. They don’t react to you and if you get in their way, they’ll barge you away without slowing down. If you try to crash into them, they’ll be unaffected. They’re more obstacles than opponents.

Top Gear Rally is a fun game, but shows its age with its arcade nature and lack of content. At the time of release, it was definitely the best car racing game on the system.

Fun

Top Gear Rally is pretty much as state-of-the-art as it gets, rivalling most coin-ops with its smooth, high-speed 3D graphics. It uses the N64’s analogue joystick to allow you to steer your car precisely, it’s got four tracks (plus a hidden extra one), it’s got varying weather, and it’s not nine cars of differing speed an ability.

Jonathan Davies, N64 Magazine #8. Review Score: 86%

Remake or Remaster?

A collection of the various Top Gear games would be quite nice.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Top Gear Rally