Review: San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing (N64*)

Graphics- 9/10
Sound- 2/10
Gameplay- 7.5/10
Replay Value- 7/10
Overall- 7/10

A good racing game with nicely done graphics. This will not be your first choice if you want to race your friends, but it should be considered. You should mute your television though.

When I got this game I was at an age where this game was amazing to me. I felt so cool driving a car so life-like, and, while they are pretty well done, the game is nothing special. It is a straight forward racing game with its big selling point being the graphics. The effort that went into recreating the streets of San Francisco is amazing and, as a result, the finished product looks really good. You can tell this because you are driving all over San Fransisco on any given track - in other words, there are a lot of shortcuts. When I say a lot I mean a lot, sometimes I have trouble remembering the way that you are supposed to go on the track. The high amount of shortcuts will lead you to play the course again because you think that if you take "shortcut B" verses "shortcut A" you can shave off a significant amount of time. Enough about the shortcuts, back to the graphics - the worst part of them is the collision damage. The crash damage is the same for every hit you get, and while I understand that it might have been hard to do incredibly realistic crash damage on a N64 it could have been way better and realistic. Along the lines of realism there is one thing in this game that isn't - the gravity... and that's fine by me. The air you can get in this game is unreal at points.

The problem with this game is how predictable it is. San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing does nothing new and does not appear to try to do anything new. You will probably find this game fun for a while but after you get good at it - well, the game will just go downhill from there. You may be thinking "What about multiplayer?" Sure, multiplayer is fun but if you are playing someone who hasn't played that many times, the race is no fun. You will end up absolutely owning your inexperienced friends because you have the shortcut knowledge that they so desperately need. The other negative feature of this game is the key collecting. It was kind of fun for a little while but the novelty soon wore off and I gave up on it. Do not get me wrong, you may love this feature, but I found it to be nothing more than an attempt to bulk up the game - and if you don't have a controller pack that's too bad because key collecting is truly pointless. However, the far and away worst feature is the sound, more specifically the music. It is absolutely shameful - mute your television except to hear the announcer say "It's Dangerous!!!" when you scroll over the harder to drive cars. In the end this would be a great bargain bin purchase. It will provide you with a few days of entertainment and not much more... except for the few times you friends will play multiplayer with you and unless they like to lose, they won't be playing it with you a lot.

Pros: "It's Dangerous!!", Graphics, Shortcuts, Exaggerated gravity.
Cons: Music, Collision damage graphics, Predictable.

Review: Dan

*Also released for Playstation - Review for N64 only.