The gameplay could be better, but the buck or two you'd spend on this game is worth it just to see the goofy TV ads.
As the title suggests, Cyberspeed is a futuristic racing game. You can choose from 8 ships, which have different stats, like speed, thrust, mass and shields (more on that later). Each ship has it's own character driving it (although you never see the character while racing), and each ship represents a different country. All the ships play identically, though, and they don't have any special weapons or anything of the sort to make any one ship different from another. It'll probably boil down to you picking which ship looks the best, and they all look very different, despite playing the same.
The way Cyberspeed is different from other racers is you're attached to a beam in the center of the track. This means you can go up and down and all around 360 degrees around this beam, which helps you avoid obstacles (of which there are a lot, especially in the later races). The controls in the game are simple but a little tough to handle sometimes. X accelerates, Square fires your primary weapon, R1 and Square fires your missiles, L2 boosts. The directional buttons move ship around. There's no braking in this game because the beam allows you to take a corner without crashing. But you'll still need to adjust your ship to enter the corner at the right angle. A red meter on the right side of the screen tells you how well you're cornering. One problem with the controls is if you accidentally press L1, your ship will turn around and you'll be facing the wrong way. You can press the button again to turn back the right way, but by that time it will have cost you a place or two. Other than this problem, the controls are fine and work well.
You can choose from a few different race types. There's the regular race mode, which is your simple racing mode where you race in all of the tracks, one after the other against 5 other ships in order. You must place in the Top 3 to move on to the next race. But if you race well, you can also unlock a bonus track where you race one on one against a particularly tough opponent, to unlock some goodies. The other modes consist of a Quick Race mode, where you jump right in, pick a ship and track, and race a standard one-off race against 5 other ships. The only other race mode is Time Attack, where you pick a ship and track and then race one on one against another ship, trying to get the best time possible. There's no other gameplay modes and every race is pretty much the same.
The only goal is to reach the end of the race in first place. To do this, you must master a number of techniques. It's impossible to just win a race outright just by going pedal to the metal. Instead you have to use a variety of relatively simple techniques, like shooting, boosting, cornering and avoiding obstacles. To keep your enemies behind you, it's necessary to shoot them. Actual damage to your ship doesn't make your ship slower for the rest of the race, but it can cause you to spin wildly and come to a stop, which usually sets you back about 3 or 4 places in the race. The amount of damage you can take before spinning out is determined by how high your Shields rating is. You can also boost, but your boost doesn't last long if you're not good at cornering. And you also must learn to use your few boosts wisely, because using them all at the beginning will get you the lead for now, but by the end of the race you'll be in last place. Because of the balance and overall difficulty of the game, races tend to stay close. It's hard to win in Cyberspeed. Not just hard to win, but hard to even place in the top 3. The game is a little too difficult for it's own good sometimes, which effects the game negatively. For an early PS1 game, Cyberspeed looks pretty good. The ships are detailed, with all distinctive looks. The tracks are colorful, but nothing else really stands out about them. Overall Cyberspeed looks about average for a game that came out in 1995.
Cyberspeed's sound is decent, but nothing special. The ships don't make much noise, which is disappointing considering they look like they should make a lot of noise. The other sounds in the game consist of weapons firing. A nice touch as far as the missiles go is a little beeping sound goes off when someone fires a missile at you, and it becomes faster the closer the missile gets to your ship. The other weapon sounds are kind of like muffled Star Wars laser sounds. There's an announcer in the game that says things like "behind you". "two laps to go" and "look at him go!" during gameplay. He's pretty annoying and he doesn't sound right in the context of the game. Overall the sound is okay in Cyberspeed.
The best part of Cyberspeed are the wacky TV commercials that play after each race. They're funny little spoofs for futuristic products. There's a scientist who demonstrates his brand new products, although the products all seem to have one fatal error in them. There's a company that delivers pizzas in 30 seconds while using a laser to cut a whole in the window where they deliver the pizza, and the same company also happens to be a window repair company. This weird stuff is just the tip of the iceberg. And while these commercials may not all be funny, they're goofy enough to be enjoyed by anyone who's into that sort of thing. The commercials may be good, but the actual gameplay is not as fun. It's okay but the game has a few too many flaws to be good. Either way though, if you were to find this game in a bargain bin, it'd probably cost less than a dollar. And for that price, it's worth it just to see the goofy commercials.