Home » Technology » Gameboy » Review: Top Gear GT Championship

Review: Top Gear GT Championship

© Gregor Simeonov

The Game

Top Gear GT Championship was released a few weeks after the debut of the Game Boy Advance and its primary titles. However, it already had very heavy competition from Advance GT Championship, which showed everyone the fresh power of the modern handheld system. Top Gear GT Championship had to live up to Advance GT and higher, if it was going to succeed, which it didn't exactly do. Top Gear GT consists of three major modes. Championship mode which takes up most f the time in the game, quick race and time trial. The cool thing this game is equipped with is a truly fantastic track-editor mode, which allows to construct your own courses, on which you can battle it out against the computer or test it out by yourself, to see it's efficiency.

The game does have a lot of depth when it comes to car settings and selecting your course, and it's weather conditions. At first, you can select from six racing cars, from carious car companies and your transmission. Afterwards, you can really tune up your car by selecting how hard you want the tires to be, gear ratio, weight handicap, steering sensitivity, aerodynamics and brake sensitivity. The catch with this game is that you have to flip through at least six menus before you can actually start burning some rubber. I'm not sure why they decided to make so many menus, which could be done on two or three. It might not seem that bad, but it really dose get in the way if you're aiming for a quick race.

Even though everything before the actual race sounds pretty good, which is actually is, Top Gear GT's biggest weakness is the game play. It's not that the racing engine is smooth, but the environment itself is nothing remotely 3d or entertaining as in Advance GT. You drive on these awkward roads, with repetitive scrolling objects on the side of the roads, which you would expect in a Game Boy Color racing game, such as Test Drive LeMans. Back the 3D issue, Top Gear GT uses a shifting horizontal line to try to fake a hilly surface or any simple 3D environment. With Advance GT, you are actually treated with a mode-7 3D track, which enables you to see your opponents or upcoming turns in the distance. Moreover, when you make corners, the relation between what the car and the track do is rather "weird". This is partially due to sloppy controls, as well as the bad programming. Another negative thing I can say is that the game is rather hard to win in. The roads are so narrow, that you will sometimes find it impossible to pass an opponent, who neatly sets himself up directly in the centre of it, especially with the bad controls. You'll either hit the opponent trying to pass him, which slows only your car dramatically, or you will slip onto the side of the road due to the bad controls, which slows you down even more.

The copyright of the article Review: Top Gear GT Championship in Gameboy is owned by Gregor Simeonov. Permission to republish Review: Top Gear GT Championship in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.