A Severly Out-of-date Take On Arcade Racing.

User Rating: 2.5 | Lamborghini: American Challenge SNES
By so_hai | Review Date:
"Lamborghini – American Challenge" features (I believe) the Lamborghini Countach. You find yourself in many locations throughout America, racing a bunch (three actually), of CPU Countach-drivers. After selecting your driver (a choice of three, initially) for the "Championship" mode, you are then presented with a map of available races, all, funnily enough, situated somewhere in the U.S. (At this point, any gamer who had ever spent time with the several quality racers on the Super NES would be noticing the poor presentation and production values).

A nice feature in this game is the opportunity to bet on the race. It's a win-only bet, and you can only bet on yourself. So, there is a chance to make some money out of this thing at least. Now, you select your event (you're given a choice of available races, (a la "Burnout"), and your away. Immediately, the underwhelming nature of the gameplay is painfully apparent.

I've read in other reviews that this thing uses the Super NES's innovative "Mode 7" rendering technique. However, it doesn't look like it to me; not at all. This game is one-hundred-percent sprite-based. It literally looks like "Chase H.Q." on Amiga. It is THAT basic. Along with the simple, (and ugly) Countach sprites, the traffic and road-side terrain are very basic and really quite uninspired. If the sheer repetition doesn't get you, the poor colourised sprites and sound effects will.

The track "design" really lets you down as well. What you race on is a super-slick "road" that bends this way or that in a seemingly random fashion. There's no way to learn the tracks, and your vehicle will constantly come off the track at any moment. The punishment for this is not that severe, as the gameplay itself does not punish for poor driving, nor reward good driving. You just step on it and go forward somewhere up there on the horizon. Dull.

Sure, you rack up some pretty fast speeds in this thing, but it doesn't really do it for you. You just continually bounce your way through traffic and past "rivals" (that change mid-race, by the way) until your little progress meter hits that magical one-hundred-percent point.

There's really not much to recommend about this game. I wouldn't even bother with a download of the ROM. There are plenty of better racers with similar themes out there. Titus, the developer of this thing, went on to make the superior "Top Gear 3000" on the Super NES. So, I'm afraid to say, vintage-gamers that this thing is not worth your time. It's an out-of-date take on arcade racing that would have been inferior even in it's own time.

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