Original Release: Nintendo, 1987, Famicom Disk
Mario’s first turn behind the wheel was a Formula 1 racer in the vein of things like Micro Machines and RC Pro Am
Famicom Grand Prix: F1 Race (Famicom, Nintendo, 1987)
Where to Buy: Play-Asia
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Did you think Mario Kart was Nintendo’s first venture into racing? Nah, it was this Japan-only Famicom Disk title that slapped Mario in to boost interest.
It made use of a style better known in the later Micro Machines games, a birds-eye zoomed-in view with little visibility ahead of you. This game requires even more precision steering than those titles, however, as just a tap in a direction makes a fairly major adjustment and it’s easy to oversteer.
The meat of the game is a Grand Prix mode that has you buy a starting car on a small budget, then win cash prizes from races to eventually upgrade through a couple more tiers of cars. In addition to speed and handling your considerations are turbo boost options, and the robustness of the body and tires which will take damage throughout each race (especially the tires). Each course has a pit stop near the end at which you can refresh your health bars at the cost of three or so seconds of race time.
F1 Race is pretty tough right from the start as the CPU has some big inherent advantages. They get to keep rolling through collisions while you spin out, and they never seem to need to hit the pit, at least in the early going. They tend to drive well slower than your top speed but cause serious problems as they cluster together and make it much harder to take corners at a high speed without running into one of them.
Because the adjustments to your steering are so precise and minimalist, I’m pretty sure you could map out an optimal series of taps on each of the game’s 10 tracks to stay on the perfect racing line and basically commit it to muscle memory if you want to get way into it. The only variable is the other cars being scattered about the track.
F1 Race has the typical polish of a Shigeru Miyamoto game and is decent enough, but it’s just too fussy for me. The tiniest bit of overcorrection kills you and the other cars being so reckless and invincible is just too much of a handicap IMO. You may want to check it out just as a forgotten Mario / Nintendo first party title tho.
Links
Basic guide
English translation patch
Videos