Top Gear 2 Review

For those of you who only know two games made by Kemco, Batman: Dark Tomorrow and Universal Studios Park Adventure, I’m about to make a shocking statement. There was a time, at least once in Kemco’s history, when they made a good game. The game to bear this honor is none other than Top Gear 2, a racing game on the SNES, one of the el-cheapos I bought the day I finally broke down and bought an SNES, and certainly well worth the dollar I paid for it.

Graphically, I was quite impressed with this game. The course moves at a steady clip, and it looks very nice to boot. The cars look nice as well, and there’s a bit of fire effect when you use a nitro boost. There’s even some comic-like captions when you hit something hard or pass somebody. Overall, I have no significant complaints about the graphics except that it is sometimes hard to see when you are supposed to turn. Sound-wise, the sound effects are typical racing game fare, but the music is very good, almost good enough to distract you from the task at hand at some points. There’s not much else to say about that.

So far as the gameplay is concerned, it’s a racing game. You race on varying tracks against nineteen other vehicles. You have the traditional acceleration and brake buttons, as well as a button to use a nitro boost. If you choose to use a manual transmission, L and R are used to change gears. Everything is pretty much straightforward for a racing game.

There is a multiplayer option as well to add some replay value to the game, but it is a challenging game, so novice racing game people like myself will have to work at it a bit before they are able to do very well against the computer. Still, the game is fun enough that you will want to keep playing until you figure out how to do well at it. If you are in the market for a racing game on the SNES, this would be a good choice.