World Driver Championship
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| Released in North America by Midway on May 31, 1999, and developed by Boss Game Studios, World Driver Championship brings simulated racing action to the Nintendo 64 |
I remember 1999's World Driver Championship receiving solid reviews at the time of its release, but I'd just played through Beetle Adventure Racing and had my fill of racing games, plus I'd just got a Dreamcast, plus I was having the best year of my life, and well...it just didn't happen. I saw the game was being touted as the Nintendo 64's slightly lesser answer to the Playstation's heralded Gran Turismo, and I put it on my "one day I'll get to it" list, but "one day" ended up being 22 years later.
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| The time between when this came out and me playing it could buy me a beer |
The Nintendo 64 is rightly known for being home base to a large handful of great kart racer games, as well as many arcade-style racers with fun and easy, but unrealistic physics. This played into the "Nintendo 64 is for kids!" narrative, with the (hated by Nintendo diehards) Playstation getting all of the "serious" racing games, instead of Nintendo's Fun Machine. Midway, known for their wacky arcade games, looked to change this perception with World Driver Championship, which utilizes a much more realistic and unforgiving physics engine than most N64 racers. In other words, you can't just mindlessly speed through this game's ten locations expecting to win a race.
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| Dammit, my car should be able to jump over The Colosseum if I want it too! |
Yes, World Driver Championship is difficult. During your first race, when you hit the first turn, and spin out wildly before ramming into a wall, you'll quickly realize just how demanding this game's controls and physics systems are. World Driver Championship starts the player off with the choice of two cars, and both control like an elephant on ice skates...or I guess like an off the lot car put on a race course, and forced to take tight turns at 130 MPH.
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| While some other jackass is ramming into you |
While the game has training modes, and an arcade mode that doesn't change the physics engine one bit, but does let you choose from a number of cars and tracks to do one-off races, the nuts and bolts of World Driver Championship is its... "Championship" mode. In this option, you start off ranked 30th, choose one of two available teams, and enter one of the two available race cups. If you win or place highly in these cups, which contain two courses each, you'll earn points. Earn enough points, and your rank increases. Thus enters World Driver Championship's hook.
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| Getting yelled at by Reginald |
As your rank increases, more of your team's cars become available to you. These cars are generally faster and easier to control than the cars that were available to you at a lower rank. That's not all, though. Win and level up...er, increase your rank enough, and new racing teams with different, and possibly better cars will start courting you. Choose wisely, though. If you decide you don't like your new team, some teams will welcome you back. Others will give you the cold shoulder, and you'll never be able to drive their better cars. All of this is conveyed in enjoyable portrait head/text boxes.
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| You seem way nicer than Reginald, Skip. I'm in. |
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| Whatever, dad!!...er, I mean, Reginald! Go find another whipping boy! |
Your team owner will give you encouragement/discouragement after each race, giving you a pretty good idea of their temperament. Thankfully, you can get a peep at the stats of their available cars, and even test drive them before switching. I found that some cars with better stats were actually HARDER for me to control. It's all up to the player's personal taste, but I did finally earn some cars that didn't control like a trashcan sliding down a driveway incline on a windy day.
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| I'll take this one, Skip |
Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean the game ever gets "easier." The cups increase in difficulty, as the amount of races and laps grow, and the computer AI gets more and more clever. There are many, many courses to master here, as each of the game's 10 international locations feature multiple tracks, and most tracks have "reversed versions," where you drive in the opposite direction as you did in the original.
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| If you're curious about what the back of this old ship looks like, don't worry, you'll get your chance to see it when you're coming from the opposite direction in the reversed version |
I should state here that I am excellent at most video game genres, particularly platformers, with two exceptions: fighting and non-arcade-style racing games. With arcade racers and kart racers, I am generally, at the least, serviceable. With simulated racing games, meaning games simulating what it's like to actually race with a real car, I am dreadful. However, I can generally tell a good game from a stinker. World Driver Championship is very good, with a few caveats.
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| Out of my way, Reeds! |
Once you begin to earn and find cars that fit your taste, the controls start to feel much better. There's a large learning curve and time-barrier to get to this point, but this does add to the sense of accomplishment when you start to happen upon favorite cars. None of these cars are officially licensed, but their designs are based upon real world models. Once the controls become more intuitive and natural, though, there is still a flaw: it's hard as hell to back these things up. At certain points, unless you are an absolute World Driver Championship master, some car is going to ram you, or you are going to judge a corner wrong, spin out, and ram into a wall. Thankfully, or perhaps not thankfully if you're a slave to realism, the cars here don't take actual punishment. Getting off a wall, though, takes an act of congress. You still hold the "A" button to accelerate, but you've got to hit back on the joystick to move in reverse...and it just doesn't work. I lost several races due to the fact that the game kept mixing up my reverse input, and gluing me to the wall. This is extremely frustrating.
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| I'm rubber, and you're glue...everything bounces off of me...and I still stick to you |
World Driver Championship game utilizes very few buttons, with the aforementioned "A" to accelerate, "B" to brake, and the joystick for direction. If you decide to drive in manual instead of automatic (you're a maniac!!), the "C-Buttons" are used to up and downshift. A powerslide is not accomplished with a separate button, but by letting off and then hitting the accelerator at the perfect moments in a turn. Powerslides are difficult to master, but extremely satisfying when done to perfection, and quite necessary to win.
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| It sure does and I sure do, Skip! |
You can then punish a World Driver Championship-ignorant friend in the game's solid two-player races, by power-sliding through turns as their car spins into, and gets stuck on a wall. Of course, if you want to completely master this game, you're going to be spending a lot of time alone. Around 50 hours to be exact because...
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| You might be in second place, but you're still going fast enough to time travel |
If I haven't made it clear yet, for a racing game, World Driver Championship has heavy RPG elements. You'll need to consistently grind in the replayable earlier cups, to gain enough points to gain access to better cars that will in turn better your successes against more difficult cups. Some players will lament the fact that there in no "garage" feature here, which would enable the ability to customize vehicles, but that's not really the point. The focus here is being at the mercy of your chosen racing team, and grinding and reaching a higher rank to get to a better team to get to better cars--in effect, that IS the garage.
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| You SUCK Reeds! Eat it, Reginald!!! |
I buried the lede, though, only mentioning the graphics here in the final paragraph: World Driver Championship is absolutely beautiful. With high polygon car models, detailed tracks (real-world landmarks everywhere), and realistic lighting, World Driver Championship looks like an early PS2 game. The frame rate is high, slowdown is almost non-existent, and the sense of speed is extremely high, particularly if you switch to a first person view. There's also a widescreen, hi-res mode that looks even better, features only a minimal performance dip, and doesn't even require the expansion pack. This game is a visual miracle, and you can its beauty even more by re-watching your favorite victory, as there's an option to save the footage of an entire race, though you're gonna need a lot of memory card space.
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| What a beauty!!! |
The cars also sound great, each engine distinct in its vroominess. There's no voice-acting, which is unfortunate, as I do wish I could actually here my fussy team owner yelling at me for losing. I hate you, Reginald. Music is high-energy rock that, despite being adequate, you might eventually want to turn down or off--and thankfully, you can! Sound effects only, while listening to a CD, was my 90's racing game recipe, and it still works now with however the player gets their music.
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| WHAT A BEAUTY!!! |
If you want a deep racing game to take up hours of your time, you'll find major value in World Driver Championship. If you just want a casual, pick-up-and-play racer, you should look elsewhere. Either way, it's tough not to admire the care Midway put into this one.
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