Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix Hands-On

TOKYO--Genki's racing games have typically fallen into the Tokyo Xtreme Racing series, a collection of late-night racing games that put you on the highways surrounding Tokyo. The company's latest PS2 racer, Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix, maintains many of the same gameplay mechanics that Genki's other games contain, but this time it takes the cars off of the streets and drops them onto proper racetracks.

Racing Battle will contain licensed cars. The version on display only has a handful, including an RX-7, a Supra, an Integra, an Impreza, and an S2000. The car models in the game look decent. They're nice and smooth, but they don't seem to be quite as detailed as the car models in some other comparable racing games.

Like most other racing games, Racing Battle has multiple camera angles. But the first-person angle is pretty interesting. From this view, you get indicators that show how hard you're steering, accelerating, or braking. You also get a second, TV-style camera angle in a small window at the top of the screen. This is cool because it gives you a good idea of what's going on near your car. It's easy to see cars coming up behind you with this view and more effective than a standard rearview mirror.

The gameplay in Racing Battle is roughly the same as what Genki has done with the TXR series. Each car is associated with a fighting gamelike life meter, and the car in second place constantly loses pieces of its life meter. When one car runs out of "health," the race ends and a winner is declared.

Genki's been making highway racing games for years now, so it's interesting to see the company take the same gameplay concepts in a slightly new direction. We'll have to wait and see how the final version turns out. For more updates, be sure to check GameSpot's coverage of the Tokyo Game Show 2004.