The BEST F1 Game for PS1? | Monaco Grand Prix: Racing Simulation 2 

I like how the cockpit view gives you this feeling of superiority as it's almost as if you're 15 feet in the air driving a monster truck

"This is England '98... Grand Prix."

I remember being so impressed by the fuel depletion and tyre wear over 50% races. Also playing around with car settings was so satisfying. What-a-game!

Petition to have this as the official 98 game instead of ... the OTHER 98 game. I do have this game. It's still around somewhere. For some reason I didn't like it way back, probably because my go-to F1 game was F1 Championship Season 2000, basically an updated re-released F1 2000 with more setup stuff and a scenario mode which I love and adore. It does look like a quite fun game, even if it isn't F1 97/99 quality. It does seem to be the superior 98 game. I'm guessing we will see more of this one in the future.

I remember a comment on one of your old videos where we said Gerry Bolger was Gerhard Berger in the unlicenced version. Along with John Alsessi driving the Benton Rento. Good to know its possible in this game This game looks better than the official 1998 game

I remember thinking this was hurriedly made/ported to PS1 because F1 '98 was so unbelievably bad that they thought it would be worth a shot even without the licence. I rented it, then bought it because I needed something Formula 1-y a with some 98-ishness and this was quite good. I spent about half the first time I rented it fixing the names and liveries, kept the file obviously for future rental/ownership. It's not as good as F1' 97 or F1 (1996) in terms of handling or graphics but it's genuinely playable and scratched the itch. I played this recently researching a TechStomper article and I could get back into the handling really easily 🙂

Editing driver names in F1 97 was always one of my favourite features. Back in the day, I even put in classmates and teachers to see how they'd theoretically stack up. For replay-value, being able to change drivers and teams season by season seems like a genius idea. Looking at modern F1 titles (or racing games in general), the closest we've come is either modding or playing career mode, hoping for entertaining driver transfers to occur. And even then, the plug-and-play nature of such a feature is something I will miss dearly for a long time to come. Fantastic video as always! Looks like a better game than I'd originally anticipated. Never picked it up myself as a kid, though I might have been too young to realize it even existed. While old F1 games were all the rage on the flee markets I used to go to in as a child, non-licensed titles just didn't catch my interest. Another detail somebody mentioned in the comment-section of another RS2-video: Apparently, the guy they elected to be Michael Schumacher in that game is wearing Ayrton Senna's helmet. Not sure what they wanted to tell us, but I thought it was an interesting fact to point out. ☕

Had this game. Wasn’t my favourite but did help keep me going between F1 97 and the EA Sports F1 2000 which was the next official game I had for the PS1. Used to play about creating different seasons with the generic car colours.

Like many i was disappointing with F198 on release so i found SMGP in the summer of 99 in Dixons and thought i'd give it a try, and I absolutely love this game 👍 great racing with the AI and great handling too, If you race in 20% races or higher the AI suffer engine blowups and faliures. Like you i changed the teams to the 98 lineup, Sometimes changed them to 96 season too lol I've played pretty much all versions of this game, The PC version has different Physics and handling the cars feel more understeery and heavy, its also based on the 97 season, The dreamcast version is same as PC, N64 is almost the same as the PS1, Just different liveries i think. Great video, hope you do a full season of this gem 😁

I was similarly bugged by the lack of licensing in this as a kid, but my mum bought it for me following a random trip to Asda and I put waaaaaay more hours into it than I "should have", considering my stance. I remember it being really fun and really solid. Looking forward to watching this to see if you find it as good as little me did! (Will edit in my response!) Edit: Okay, this actually looks even better than I remember it, which is shocking. I need to give this another go for sure.

This was a great watch! Always looking out for some PSX era racers to try, in cockpit mode it doesn't feel a million miles away from a port of Grand Prix.

I had this for the N64 and as a racing game i really enjoyed playing. I remember doing one race at full distance with full damage on and the race i was in on the last lap i think or a few laps before cant remember exactly. I was nursing high brake rate and the brakes failed and i retired so close to the end.

EDIT: This is specific to the PC version, which was based on the 97 season and came out before the PS1 port, but.... This is still a great game even now, but I always wonder if there was/is a modding scene for it as far as skins and driver names go? GP2 and 3 got all the big modding support, but this came with tools at least on the PC version, and if you had Photoshop or something like that you could make your own team liveries. IIRC they also used it or something similarish for the ITV F1 track laps where Martin would talk over a lap of the track from the cockpit of either this, or a version iTV had but had customised for the TV side of things. If you are old enough to remember that, it was just before, circa 97-98 when they did this and it only seemed to last a few years before they switched to using a qualy lap from the previous day. Also this game, at least on PC, don't know about other versions, had a 50s mode with IIRC at least more accurate, I don't want to say real names and a rough approximation of a 50s GP track that was surprisingly good EDIT: PS1 version actually looks really good, albeit with not quite the 98 season mind, but it looks great for a PS1 racer from that time Those names are fantastic though. Huh I now want to go check if the PC version had those sponsors too, I'm fairly sure most of them were fake sponsors or that may be my recollection of it however...

Great video as always. I'm glad you did few races. The game looks racy. Duels, changing lines, blocking you, giving space, attack back. I love it. Shame it doesn't have license but I laughed at Frentzens name so hard 😂

If you think the engineer is bad here - he says "try driving on the track" in F1 World Grand Prix on Dreamcast and it sounds so pointed and intentionally demeaning.

Oh I’m 💯 giving this a go, and s usual, your content is bang on bro 💪

Bang out of order!! 🤣 This is a new one to me, but it looks like a ton of fun. That battle with Villeneuve in particular made for some really good viewing. Even in Formula 1 97, as decent as it is, I don't think you witness AI opponents pulling moves on each other very often, whereas here you do. So, I can't help but wonder... if you're planning on doing a series of videos for the 1998 season, might this be a better choice of game? Or do you find that Formula 1 98 is markedly better in some important areas? Does the official licence matter? Would you miss dear Murray too much? Fantastic video with a couple of big laughs and gasps - thank you!

That was my first F1 game and I hated it. Only played F1 97 before this and then had Formula One 2000. It has only been 2 years when I went back on the Dreamcast library that I replayed it, and realised that this game is good.

It was a highly rated game back then and you can see why.

For some reason i spend more time in this game rather than F1 23, love both of them (and perhaps ill try another f1 game some day) but Monaco Grand Prix is simple but really funny. I think is a well rounded game , considering that was an unofficial game , and of course is a port to ps1. But hell, everything is good. AI is enough smart to no crash into your car and make good battles , damage model is ok , you can destroy your front wing if drive so dangerous , but is not common to wreck cars like other frustrating games. And setups , i love changuing setup while doing qualy , and then making a strategy on the go based on fuel and tyre degradation.

The frame-rate is a little jumpy on native hardware, it might be slightly more so on PS3... 😲

Never really played it other than the demo, but graphically it reminds me of another solid racing game on psx; Newman-Haas Racing.

I still play this on PC. It is extremely difficult compared with Ubisoft's prequel F1 Racing Simulation. In fact the only way to play it is in a sim rig as you really have to master throttle and break pedals with skill and precision. I still have a massive soft spot for F1 Racing Simulation and as it's a fair bit easier to challenge near the front on hardest setting and IMO had everything one needed for a great sim racing experience. Although somedays I settle for a midfield battle and choose Monaco Grand Prix Racing Simulation 2.

I agree, it was the only f1 game that had "decent" AI for psx. in all other f1 games the challenge was only how many time you doubled the second

I liked the game and this channel

Anything to avoid f1 98😂🤣🤣🤣

I think this is also pretty horrible looking.... did you play GP2 (1994 season) and GP3 (1998 season) games on computer? I would say some of the BEST! Also, you were able to download kits for them, so you could change the whole teams to look like in different seasons, I mean skins, power adjustments regarding how the team were doing in the certain season and so on... In GP3 I have played like 15 if not more full seasons, starting with 1991 as Michael Schumacher is my favorite driver.

Dreamcast Version is mutch better