Forgotten Gems: Top Racer Back In Top Gear

ign.com:

If you’ve read the last 10 issues of my Forgotten Gems column, you’ve probably noticed a pattern. I pick a game that may either spark some recognition and you’ll go “oh, yeah – what happened to it?” – or you’ve never heard of the game I’m profiling and you google what year I was born so that you can rest easy that it’s not you, it’s me. Inevitably, the column turns gloomy. An awesome-sounding sequel was planned, but never made. Or, somehow, an entire series of games is no longer accessible to play.

Not today, friends! Today’s Forgotten Gems has a happy ending. As of March 7, 2024, three classic SNES racers are back on the track, broadly available to play on Xbox One, Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Courtesy of Brazilian studio QUByte and retro experts Piko, of Evercade fame, the Top Racer Collection includes the original trio of Top Racer games – Top Racer, Top Racer 2, Top Racer 3000, and an original title featuring four new rides that recall other classic racing games, called Top Racer: Crossroads.

If you’re an old-school SNES fan and you’re scratching your head right now because you’ve never heard the name Top Racer before, once again, it’s not you. In 1992, Japanese publisher Kemco -- sometimes referred to by its less sexy corporate name, Kotobuki System -- launched a game with two names: Top Racer, in Japan, and Top Gear in the US and Europe.

Developed by Gremlin Graphics, the team behind the Lotus Turbo Challenge racing games, Top Gear became a surprise hit, selling more than a quarter million units in the west alone (as disclosed by court documents that I’ll get to in a minute). Top Gear predates Nintendo’s own Mario Kart by a few months, but like the SNES mega-hit, it hooked players with impressive Mode 7 graphics and a focus on split-screen multiplayer.

Whether you’re playing alone, with (this is the way), or against a friend, Top Gear – er, Top Racer, let’s just stick with that – displays a horizontally split screen by