Original Release: Namco, 1987, Arcade
Other Releases: NES (1988)
Namco’s follow-up to Pole Position in the F1 racing genre leveraged new hardware breakthroughs to become more of a sim and a multiplayer phenomenon
Final Lap (Arcade, Namco, 1987)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: Arcade Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
Released about four years after Pole Position, Final Lap is essentially Namco’s “grade up” of their earlier F1 racing hit for the debut of their then-new System 2 board. Aside from the spiffier hardware, it was also the first racing game that could have up to four cabinets chained together for up to eight simultaneous players.
The modern problem with this system is that the game was designed entirely around this feature, with little thought for solo play. It was expected that this thing would be wowing people in the center of arcades and you’d hop in and play with strangers (a solid theory at the time, as it was one of Japan’s top earners for three years straight). You’re stuck with one track, a replica of the Suzuka Circuit that the real world 1987 grand prix was held on, and each lap takes less than a minute.
Another issue with modern emulation is that the default controls in MAME will be way too sensitive to replicate the game’s steering wheel properly (which was designed to automatically snap back to center). You’ll have to fiddle with settings in a way I don’t have time or patience for, and you might end up needing a paddle or analog steering wheel to actually make it playable. The good news is, there was a Famicom port that is more tailored to the home single player experience (and gamepads) in its design.
The game also has the unusual distinction of being sued for inserting free advertising, as its look-alike “Marlboro” signs were not authorized by Phillip Morris and the company worried they would take PR flak for pitching smokes to children!
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Final Lap (Famicom, Namco, 1988)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
The Final Lap arcade game was meant to be about as close to an F1 “sim” as anything could get in 1987, and also as a breakthrough title in using multiple linked cabinets for up to eight players. Obviously, none of that was going to translate to the humble Famicom. So Namco wisely re-imagined the game within 8-bit boundaries the following year, keeping the same core sprite-scaling gameplay but tweaking it for graphical limitations and gamepads. The result is a basic but solid racer that’s easy to get into and doesn’t get demanding until the later reaches of the single player racing mode.
Final Lap Fami does retain a multiplayer option of up to eight players … but this was well before the four-player adapter, so it’s just a tournament where two players race at a time. The only other mode is a 20-track single player campaign that has you taking on one main rival for each track, with some useless green NPC cars scattered about just to make the occasional turn tougher.
Aside from being simple and easy to get into, one of the fun things about it is that the computer never drives robotically perfect. Even at the higher levels it still slows for corners and even occasionally crashes into another car or skids off the course.
Unfortunately it DOES gets very cheap in the absolute last stages, though, as the CPU cars just get insanely fast and packed with nitro boosts (the strategy guide says the only way to win the last three levels is to try to ram it into road signs repeatedly), so single player kinda has limited utility. I feel like this would be good candidate for ROM hacks to expand its offerings, though.
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Videos