Until the SNES Classic Mini came along in 2017, my sole experience of the Super Nintendo was an in-store demo of what I only discovered a very long time later (and probably the first time I fired the console up) was Mega Man X! That would put us around 1994, meaning it would most likely put me on a demo unit in the Virgin Megastore at the Tottenham Court Road end of London’s Oxford Street, which, at the time, was a regular afternoon stop-off before hanging out in Camden then going to a gig there or in Kentish Town or Kilburn or Brixton or somewhere in the evening, and that was most weekends and often weeknights too. I think three different bands, three nights in a row, travelling from Bedford to London St Pancras to Brixton Academy and back again was probably peak madness and nearly killed me, even back then in my late teens! That was a couple of years before Mega Man X, right before Christmas in 1991, and I reckon involved New Model Army one night, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and Power of Dreams the next, then Jesus Jones, Blur and various others on the Saturday, which was also my present to my brother for Christmas that year! Things were changing a bit come 1994 though, with new-found access to after-show parties and dingy music biz bars down the stairs behind unmarked doors meaning even later nights (or earlier mornings!), and it wouldn’t be long before my own band was doing the playing in a lot of those places, but those are all tales for another time!

We were talking SNES, and as excited as I was to finally get my hands on this curated library of stone-cold classics when my Mini finally arrived, almost seven years on I’m looking through what’s on there again now and I’m slightly perturbed by having still not so much as loaded Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy III, Earthbound, Super Punch-Out! and a bunch of Kirby games, let alone unlocked the never-before-released sequel to Star Fox hidden away on there! Okay, now I’ve written them down, most of those just aren’t my cup of tea, and after developing a properly unhealthy obsession with Punch-Out!! on the NES Classic Mini not long before, I’ve genuinely intentionally avoided that sequel to this day for fear of more of the same! Maybe it’s time now though… Anyway, despite that, the machine has had plenty of love, with Super Castlevania IV becoming an all-time favourite, likewise Super Mario World, which I’ve 100% cleared, and I’ve finished Yoshi’s Island, Zelda: A Link To The Past, Donkey Kong Country, Secret of Mana, Super Metroid and the aforementioned Mega Man X (several times!). I’ve also caned F-Zero and Super Mario Kart on there, and thoroughly enjoyed my time with Street Fighter II Turbo, Contra III, Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts and the original Star Fox, so I reckon it’s done alright for itself after all!

What that Mini also did was get me properly invested in the wider SNES library, and while there’s always more to discover, by now I think I’m pretty au fait with it – as evidenced by the relative obscurity I’ve decided to get into here today! But while my non-history with the SNES is pretty clear in my mind, I have absolutely no idea where I came up with this thing, which not only currently sits painfully on the doorstep of my top ten racing games of all-time, but the same again for my top fifty games of all-time period! I’ve always loved a racing game though, with 20% of that list of top fifty games seemingly made up of them, and one of those is Mario Kart: Super Circuit on the Game Boy Advance, and I played several F-Zero games on that as well as the Game Cube one to death too, and this isn’t so far removed from any of those, especially when we come back to their SNES counterparts. And while I’ve been threatening to not bother with watching Formula One anymore for several years now, here I still am listening to Sky Sports commentators trying to convince me that the race I’m falling asleep to yet again really is exciting despite what we’re all witnessing, so there’s clearly something to that side of the game too! Which is probably a good time to jump into it…

F1 ROC: Race of Champions is a ridiculous name. It’s like people talking about an ATM machine turned up to eleven! Which is possibly why it was renamed Exhaust Heat in Japan and Europe… I’ve always known it by the other name though, and like the rest of the game, we’ve got the now-defunct Japanese developer SETA Corporation to blame for that, and, as an aside, if you ever want a test of just how au fait you are with the libraries of a number of old systems, just have a look at their output… As well as F1 ROC, as I’ll now start referring to it, and its sequel, I’ve played their SNES baseball game, Super Stadium, as well as Nosferatu on there, because I’m a nerd in both fields, but the rest – from NES to PlayStation to GameCube – is mostly a mystery to me! One possibly-related game I did know, though, was something they published on the NES in 1990 called Formula One: Built to Win (pictured above); in fact, I did wonder if The NES Encyclopaedia, where I first came across that, might have mentioned some kind of spiritual sequel on the SNES, just to solve that mystery, but sadly not! Interesting game though, where you start in a Mini Cooper and have to win thirty races across America to upgrade your license and earn enough money to buy a Vector W2 to race in, then a Ferrari F40, then finally an F1 car, at which point you get to take part in a full season! It’s a massive game, but there is a casino too, if you fancy gambling your winnings to speed things up a bit!

Right, back to F1 ROC, and that’s no slouch in the content department either. There’s even a casino tucked away somewhere in this one too, although according to the instruction manual, you need to send $5 to “The Guy In The Back” at the SETA Las Vegas branch to receive a copy of The Hot Tips Book to find out exactly where! That includes race course maps and technical questions and answers too, so quite the bargain, but I’ll also see what I can do on that front later! Aside from illicit gambling, the game’s main racing mode takes you through a full season of sixteen tracks that reflect the 1992 Formula One season, and while the back of the box gives the impression of behind the car, arcade-like gameplay, we’re talking simulation-like setup, customisation and accuracy, right down to the slightly altered (presumably to avoid tobacco and alcohol-related censorship) sponsor advertising you’d have seen in the real thing back then! As far as I’m aware, none of it’s licensed though, so while you might be racing on something like a recreation of Monza, it will be called Italy, and racing teams are reduced to (still perfectly recognisable) initials, like FER, WIL and MCL. Competing driver names are a bit more fictional though, with the likes of A Seta and R Pakula joining you on the grid. 

Coming back to the gameplay itself, we’ll get into it more later but just to set the scene, we’re talking somewhere between arcade and simulation – arcade-realism, maybe… Er, with nitro-boosts! You start out with a choice of jumping into Grand Prix, where you’ll be spending most of your time, or Training, as a well-crafted and suitably energetic piece of synth-rock plays along in the background. While none of it is especially memorable, outside of the race you’ll be greeted with a new bit of music pretty much every time you have to press a button to go from one menu to the next, and is really indicative of the above and beyond care that’s gone into pretty much every element of this game. I’ll quickly cover that Training mode, where you can choose to race any of the sixteen circuits, then choose any weather type before setting up your car accordingly, which is probably the main reason you’ll be here… You’re given a load of money which gives you instant access to the various chassis, transmission, brake, suspension, diffuser, front and rear wing, tyre, engine and nitro options you can buy, of which there are about forty in total, and will take a hell of a lot of winning races in Grand Prix mode to get your hands on otherwise! Then you can just drive to your heart’s content for as long as you want to see what you’re missing out on!

This stuff does soon start to make a difference in the Grand Prix mode too, although not being a petrol-head in the slightest, I do appreciate the very simple graphical before and after comparisons between current and upgraded performance shown before you splash out – I don’t even know what a diffuser does, let alone know which of the four types I should be saving up for! Once you’ve bought something it’s yours though, and will stored if you decide you want to try something in its place later. Ideally you’d want to have a suite of options for your driving style on each course type and current weather conditions, which vary from hot sun to miserable to full-on monsoon, but in reality, as long as you keep an eye on the tyres and don’t go wild with parts combinations that outperform your current abilities, then you’ll be okay and competitive enough to not have to worry about car weight and downforce and other nerd stuff! Equally though, you could spend hours tweaking the bewildering number of possible configurations to really fine-tune things to fit your own needs if that’s what you’re into, and I imagine you’ll get even more out of the game (including progress a lot quicker) if you do! Either way, the game is confident enough in its own abilities to set you up for slow but respectable progress through your first season, when, about halfway through, you’re going to already be thinking about next season, not to mention sitting on enough money by now to naturally want to start tinkering regardless.

Grand Prix mode does also give you the opportunity to try things out under different conditions in a separate Test Run mode, where you can also race in your current setup on any of the courses, but it’s for real this time, so no fantasy upgrades here! Or you can just choose to get your race career underway, taking each of the tracks in turn through the season, beginning with Italy. Or Monza! Then there’s a take on Silverstone, Monte Carlo, Phoenix, Suzuka and so on, all of which have their own unique traits, so some are fast, some are technical, some have long straights and one is even a road circuit. After a rundown of course records and a look at weather conditions, accompanied by a moving, zooming and rotating track layout (because SNES), you’ll be in your garage, starting with $500 to spend on improvements before you move on to a two-lap qualifying run (effectively out-lap plus one flying lap) to compete for starting position, after which you’ll be returned to the garage where you can make any final adjustments to the car before the race itself. Worth also noting that racing itself doesn’t come for free, and you’ll have to pay a $1000 entrance fee on every track, although if you don’t have that much in the bank, your sponsor will make up the difference. Expensive business all the same and we haven’t even started yet!

For context, you’ll get $7000 for winning a race, $6000 for coming second, $4000 for third, then it drops to down $850 for eighth place. Which particularly hurts if a crash has left you floundering in the lower places because you’ll have to pay for any damage you finish the race with too, although there is a strangely precise cap of $3,180 for getting things fixed up, and worst case you can pit for repairs before the final lap, which I’ll come back to shortly. Damage sustained is shown on a meter on your instrument panel at the top the screen, together with speed, revs, current gear, which you can default to automatic or use manually or a bit of both on the fly, plus nitro level then a mysterious gauge at the bottom that looks like fuel but as far as I’m aware fuel doesn’t come into it – I wonder if that was originally planned then dropped? Over on the right, you’ve got a map view, showing your position as well as everyone else’s on the track, and on the left there’s current and best lap time plus total time, which brings me to the first of two faults I have with this game! There’s no current position or current lap counters, with the latter not being a huge issue when the race itself is only three laps, and it tells you which one you’re starting across the middle of the screen as you cross the line, which is also the only time you get your race position. And that’s not in the middle of the screen! Instead, the timer view top-left very briefly switches to show it, but more often than not you either forget to look in time or you’re just too busy to glance up, which makes race strategy a bit more challenging than it needs to be, for the sake of one more number! Apart from that, corner signs tell you there’s one coming and what it looks like – which are total game changers so you don’t have to go all-out sim and do a load of practice sessions to learn the tracks – but apart from that, the majority of the screen is all about the races!

The races have a wonderful flow to them though, with driver-AI obviously of its time but it’s just the right side of unpredictable, with some racing better than others, or some might be having a better day than others, and it’s always fair while still leaving a bit to chance, all combining to a create a narrative within both a single race and across the whole season, as contenders emerge and jockey for position, and rivalries develop that last way beyond that. It creates some really good battles for position too, with cars moving at similar speeds and going after the same line on the track, demanding patience and real care, and similarly you’ll sometimes be faced with traffic build-ups and crashes, as well as taking weather into account (where rain especially has a marked effect), making each new race something to relish because you never quite know what it’s going to throw at you and how it will subsequently affect your season. By the way, as well as cash, you’ll get points for where you place at the end of each race, with the season total kept track of between events, then bonus cash awarded at the end depending on where you end up against the eight other teams. And while subsequent seasons will see you starting with a better machine and more cash than the last time, just keep in mind that so will the others, so don’t expect to just walk it! As said earlier, it’s built for the long haul! You’ll only stick around for that if the driving feels good though, and while you’ve probably already guessed it certainly does, you might be surprised at how it pulls it off! I’ll add visuals to the growing list of things to come back to but how it plays is totally at odds with how it looks, so while you might be thinking sterile Mario Kart, the driving is way closer to the Formula One sims you’d see coming into their own on the PlayStation; actually, if I’m comparing it to anything, what immediately springs to mind is F1 Racing Championship on PS2!

The first thing you notice is there’s a real weight to the car, which you really feel as the lights go green and you accelerate away slower than you think you want but then you’ll be grateful for as you work our which corners you can hit hardest and pull out of the fastest, and you’ll definitely feel the virtual G-force coming out of them! There’s also a real physicality between the car and track surface too, with a friction that translates right back into the controller, but just make sure you stay on the track because while cutting a corner on one of the more angular chicanes might maintain your speed slightly better than weaving around it, stray too far onto the grass and at best you’ll be giving up track position but at worst… And now we can tick off one of those things to come back to with the second thing I really don’t like about the game! As you travel around the track, there’s not exactly a lot of roadside decoration but you will see plenty of grey concrete (I guess) things that aren’t just there for their lack of visual appeal but seem to act like (totally flat on the ground!) walls that you partially bounce off of and partially stick to, resulting in this horrible yo-yo effect if you collide with one! You’ll eventually come unstuck so you can gingerly crawl back across the grass to the track and rejoin the race but it’s going to kill any chance you had of winning. It can cause some serious damage too, as can colliding with another car, which will also cause a time-consuming spin, and when damage is looking bad (or too costly) then a trip to the pits next time around is kind of a necessity, although you’d need to be going some to actually get to that point! This is a bit underwhelming when you do need it though, effectively just a visual time penalty with you trundling through the pit lane on autopilot while the damage meter decreases. What I’d really have liked is a bit of dynamic weather on top of the damage so you might need to decide to come in mid-race for wet tyres, for example, which could all still be automatic but would add a bit of strategy. And a full-on arcade-racer like Continental Circus had been converted onto lesser machines and managed this long before F1 ROC arrived!

Maybe I should just leave the visuals for another time altogether because they really don’t sit right with anything I’ve just covered! It’s hundreds of races, dozens of hours ago since I experienced this so I really can’t remember, but sitting on the grid waiting to qualify just now, and specifically thinking about what I was looking at, as a newcomer it’s probably even quite jarring to see this undersized, stiffly-animated, cartoon car sat on its own in the middle of this bland and seemingly oversized race track! Fill it with other cars and it soon gets smaller though, especially when you’re all bunched up on a hairpin bend, and throw in occasional exhaust flames and lovely little sparks coming off the floor of the car as it touches the ground, or dirt being thrown in the air as your tyre crosses the kerb, and there’s more than enough going on there after all. And all those Mode 7 rotation effects keep things spicy enough on their own, with everything moving very smoothly and at breakneck pace. The tracks are bland though! While their counterparts in Super Mario Kart have almost as much character as the characters themselves, here the backgrounds change depending on where you are but not a lot and that’s about it! The weather effects are good when they happen though, and there is occasional detail on the track itself so it just about gets away with it. I’ve mentioned Mario Kart a couple of times but actually the whole package is more reminiscent of the more sparse presentation of F-Zero, especially in motion, but despite similar looks, all of them are definitely doing their own thing! There’s also between-race illustrations, like podiums and the woman (obviously wearing a bikini) keeping you cool under an umbrella after qualifying, and they’re fine, although it goes go the extra mile when you stump up the cash for an upgrade and you see it animated as it happens in the garage, with a different sequence for every part. I did mention the music earlier, so just to close on F1 ROC’s presentation, a quick note on the sound effects, which seem mostly sampled and perfectly meaty, with the realistic whine of your engine sounding impressively distinct to that of other cars when they get close, and similarly distinct sounds as you cross from road to kerb to grass… And a fittingly horrible crunch as you inevitably then make contact with that horrible concrete stuff!

I think that leaves us with just one more thing to come back to, which is saving you $5 on finding out where that casino is! Okay, apparently, you call yourself CASINO on the Grand Prix mode player name entry screen, then after the Monaco event you’ll be able to play a slot-machine game to raise extra money. I’m really not into gambling and that’s a lot of races to get through as Mr Casino, so you’ll have to try it for yourself and see if it works. I can confirm that calling yourself SOUND unlocks a music test screen though! Apart from those, it might be low on frills, and is no Out-Run when it comes to thrills either, but it knows how to make a race feel like a race, and a race car feel like a race car, and that adds up to pretty much all you could want from a more or less proper 16-bit racing game, or any other variety of racing game come to that. Rubbish name or not!

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