Not what I thought it was to begin with...thank goodness!
User Rating: 7.5 | Al Unser Jr.'s Road to the Top SNES
When I first switched on this game and got to the start screen, I thought that the only thing you could do was have single goes at various courses and that was it. Luckily I then realised that the practice option could be switched to 'road to the top' haha whoops...Well anyway, now I know that this is a pretty fun racing game and one of the best I've played on the SNES. The graphics are what I would call pretty great at the time. There is also some sort of pseudo-3D going on as well, I'm not sure how to explain it. But it looks nice anyway, albeit a little pixely. The sound is ok, nothing great. Just various tunes that play during the menus and your usual vroom vroom sound effects as you rev your engine. It does have a nice speech sample at the start of each race that says something like "Ready, Set, Go!" though. the gameplay is similar to Super Mario Kart's in the sense that you control a vehicle that stays near the centre of the screen, and everything around you looks semi-realistic and involving, unlike previous racers like OutRun where everything seemed flat. You'll know what I'm talking about if you ever play this. What I like about this game is that it varies between sets of races by giving you different vehicles as you take the "Road to the Top": you start off with comparitively slow karts, then move onto snowmobiles, then onto some intermediate type I can't remember name of (a bunch of initials), then finally you get to the Indy cars. Inbetween each set of levels you have a sort of time trial getting up a mountain course in an off-road buggy type thing, and at the end you play against Al Unser, Jr. himself in Vancouver. Each race gives you a choice of three cars: a fast one that handles poorly, a slower one that handles well, or a mixture of the two. So quite some choice available in the game. Lastability-wise, the game is moderately challenging (luckily you only need to score in the top 3 to progress but you need to finish 1st to win the last level I think) but it should be beatable if you're good at these type of games, or once you have got some practice in. It'll last maybe a few hours anyway, and it's fun enough to play again.
Overview
Graphics - Pretty high quality pseudo-3D thingy, but a bit pixelly.
Sound - Average sound FX and music, but a nice sounding speech sample.
Gameplay - Fun, arcadey style with plenty of vehicle and course variation.
Lastability - Will take a little while to beat, dependent on skill at racing games.
