Squaresoft which is now SquareEnix put out this early tidbit which was a surprisngly good racing game in an 8-Bit era...
User Rating: 8.2 | Rad Racer NES
Squaresoft, a company now known for such blockbusters as Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and other great RPG's started off as any other company making simple games and games just for fun that would sell themselves. One of those games is Rad Racer for the NES. For an 8-bit system you were going to have pretty simpe graphics and there were racing games out there but none I can remember as fun as Rad Racer. A game where you race against the clock to the finish line which later a bunch of games would follow the formula such as the Rush and Cruisin lines and other games but Rad Racer is one we would really remember because it started them all. I am uncertain about the story and all but basically you're a Rad Racer and to prove that you had to race against the clock and around track in Night or Day which of course is all it was capable of. If you hit a vehicle in traffic at high speed you would flip over and crash, the screen would put you back in the center of the track and it would start again. If you went outside the track you would slow down and eventually hit a sing and be forced to come back to the middle. There were no shortcuts or things like we have today, no tricks. Although if you pressed select it toggled a 3D mode which if you had 3D goggles was pretty freaking sweet, I mean no games we're doing that so that was really cool. when you were running out of time a fast paced melody would be heard and when the time ran out it would show you a map and your progress and how far away you were from the finish line and sometimes you wanted to throw the remote because you were like inches but close doesn't cut it. This pissed me off so many times! I remember trying to beat the game so many times and it wasn't easy doing so, so all in all I think it was a great game of it's time and it really made you compelled to do better then your buddy by getting the farthest.
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