Next up on Famicom Impressions is a racing game called Nakajima Satoru F-1 Hero 中島悟F-1ヒーロー (VRE-F1), released by Varie in 1988.
I’m not that into racing games, but I gave it a shot.. You can choose between “Warming Up”, “Battle Mode” or “Grand Prix Mode”. I began with Warming Up, then I got a guy, who I presume was Nakajima Satoru, explaining the stage I picked and all the tips and tricks of how to get around the corners. This was all in Japanese though so it didn’t do me much good XD It was almost impossible to stay on the track! I haven’t played much racing games, but the only one I can compare it too is Super Monaco GP on Sega Mega Drive which is WAY easier in comparison! Here you only had two buttons, accelerate and break, and I couldn’t figure out what I did wrong in the corners, I tried button mashing the steering, I tried speeding up and slowing down, breaking, releasing.. nothing seemed to work..
Now that I come to think about it, it’s pretty similar to Super Monaco GP on Sega Master System which I only tried out once with my friend Becki, and I completely sucked at that too XD I even have video proof of that here >> if you fast forward 10 minutes into the clip you’ll get right to it ^_^
After this I went into Battle Mode. At first I assumed it was two players, since one wasn’t moving, after a little bit I realised I WAS THE ONE not moving! I didn’t understand why so I quit and went on to Grand Prix Mode.. Then my car wouldn’t move either! Until I realised that I had to use up and down to shift gears all of a sudden. Why wasn’t this in Waming Up mode?!
After having qualified with the shittiest time it went on to the competition, I was looking forward to racing against other cars.. but alas.. all of a sudden I’m not in control anymore?! An AI has taken over my car and is driving it extraordinarily awesome! Why?? Maybe they felt sorry for me being so shitty at this game… :/
See my complete failed attempt at this game here: