F-1 World Grand Prix

Release Date - July 31, 1998 (NA)

Developer - Paradigm Entertainment, Video System, Lankhor

Publisher - Video System

Platform - Nintendo 64

Formula 1 is the pinnacle of motorsports, a world wide contest of individual driving skill and manufacturing prowess. In the world of video games, trying to capture the excitement and passion of the sport has been hit or miss, but F-1 World Grand Prix is most definitely one of the best attempts to bring the thrill of racing into the home.

F-1 World Grand Prix aims for realism, and comes with all the tracks of the 1997 Formula 1 championship, the drivers and all the cars. The entire game is presented with a great TV broadcast-esque display when playing, and the gorgeous tracks that have been lovingly recreated are shown off with a flyover before each race. A lot of attention and care went into making this look as real as possible. Equal measure was spend on the sound design, with engine noises being recorded from the real cars when possible, different noise to indicate the car running over different surfaces and even your expert pit-crew over the radio giving you updates on the race and conditions.

Sparks fly as cars bottom out. Little details add up to make the game a special experience for F1 die-hards.
(Image from https://youtu.be/sMe_I0WtGxQ?si=Om6LmtlLkPiJEyuU)

Presentation alone does not a great game make, so it’s just as well that F-1 World Grand Prix features a lot of excellent gameplay too. As expected the game contains the usual mix of single races and a Championship Mode to work through, as well as a two player mode (sadly no four player mode for this Nintendo 64 game). The Championship Mode even has the option to turn on ‘1997 Mode’, which will cause the game to replicate the events of the 1997 season as you play through. Crashes, weather conditions and the like will happen during your races, matching the time and position they happened in real life! Finally, it contains a clever Challenge Mode as well, but more on that later.

TV-style presentation adds to the authenticity. Everything down to the sponsors has been recreated!

(Images from https://youtu.be/sMe_I0WtGxQ?si=Om6LmtlLkPiJEyuU)

While working your way through the tracks in any mode, you’ll encounter a feast of options available to fine tune your car. You can adjust things like the steering, suspension, brakes and more to get your speed, acceleration, turning and braking just right for the upcoming race and conditions. Different weather will affect how you want to approach the race and set your car up, and the rain effect is quite stunning with the water spraying off the cars and a nice misting effect as your long distance vision is obscured by the heavy downpour.

Weather plays a huge effect on how a race will play out, and how you should approach it!
(Image from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmmgzLOAX7U)

Not content with just providing the option to play through the 1997 Formula 1 season, F-1 World Grand Prix also offers up a fantastic Challenge Mode, tasking players with replicating some of the (sometimes herculean) feats that happened in the previous year’s championship. The challenges are spread across ‘offensive’, ‘defensive’ and the ominously named ‘trouble’, as you might have guessed they challenge you with offensive driving, defensive driving and overcoming some kind of technical or similar problem that is encountered. As you might expect, many of these are very difficult to beat. Can you slip into the driver’s seat as Heinz-Harold Frentzen at the San Marino Grand Prix, Michael Shumaker in hot pursuit, and weave your way through lapped cars to create an obstacle for Shumaker? Think you have what it takes to recreate Giancarlo Fisichella managing to drive his car back to the pits on only three wheels at the German 1997 German Grand Prix and then continue the race? Good luck, you’ll need it for these awesome tests of driving skill. In a nice touch, each challenge has it’s own little build up that gives you the context and history of the event before throwing you into the deep end. It’s a great feature that has been under-utilised in racing games.

Can you recreate some of the greatest feats in F1 History?
(Image from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QO8KjjMl9s)

The game even features adaptive controls for different difficulty levels. If you need some extra assistance, you can turn on ‘Rookie Mode’ and the game will even provide assistance with braking to help you get through each race. Putting it into the highest difficulty leaves everything up to you.

A fantastic racing game that has some innovative ideas, it was the closest you could get to the real thing on your Nintendo 64!

Arm-chair racers will find plenty of great reasons to revisit this classic, even a quarter decade beyond the release.