Which SNES Top Gear Games Are Worth Playing Today? - SNESdrunk 

Curious what everyone thinks the toughest race is in the first Top Gear game? I have the most trouble with Rio (Brazil) and London (UK)

I wrote it in another video, but I will say it here to : some Brazilians made a spiritual successor called Horizon Chase TURBO, and the soundtrack is from the same composer and even contains all tracks from top gear, and is on every major platform. Try it out!

Greetings from Brazil! We sure LOVE this game, oh! yeah! Soooooooo much. Tons of hours battling with friends, arguing which car is best and racing to prove that.

The first track theme in Top Gear 1. Oh man...

Same rank as mine: 1, 3, 2. I'm from Brazil and that's true, Top Gear was a very strong franchise here, specially the first one. Top Gear 3000 was so damn hard to rent, your only chance was being luck to find it wednesday and keep it through the weekend. Also was very hard to find a perfectly working copy, they had a tendency to not work at first try.

Top Gear 2 will always be my favourite. Played a ton of splitscreen with a friend. That soundtrack is amazing. Still find myself humming Ayer's Rock every now and then. I love those old racing games with upgrade systems like that. One of the reasons why the R.C. Pro Am games were so fun back on the NES.

i've said it before and i'll say it again. you're a great writer with a very unique cadence that blends in perfectly with all your game footage. accolades are in order for developing your craft so well. Bravo good sir! I say!

This was the first game I ever played. I was 3yrs old. My mother wanted me to learn how to read with this game. 20 years later, I am a racing driver with a burning love for cars. This game literally changed my life.

2:53 Yep, I'm from Brazil and we loved the Top Gear games, specially the first one. I think, for the time, there wasn't too many options for a fast pacing 2 players racing game. Out Run was fun, but single player only. Also, the vibe was very different from Super Mario Kart. And the soundtrack, oh man, the soundtrack. There was an online radio in my time in college back in 2004 and sometimes they played some game soundtracks. When Top Gear first track music played, everybody was like "damn, Top Gear rocks!". edit: I had the Top Gear 3000. Would you believe there is a black hole at the end of the game?

This game is so well loved here in Brazil that a brazilian development team made a spiritual sequel called Horizon Chase that has the same gameplay, but in 3D. They even hired the composer of the first game.

The Top Gear 1 cartridge was only 4 Mb, which was somewhat of a rarity as most SNES games were 8 Mb (I believe the first 16 Mb game was Street Fighter II); perhaps that explains the decision to use split screen in order to save some memory. The music was fantastic, though. I longed for the moment the video would say that if you ran out of fuel, you could still have a chance of reaching the goal in 1st place if another car crashed with you from behind (oh, how many races were won that way! ^_^).

Brasil loves it! Every SNES owner have one copy! Every weekend have a attempt to finish Top Gear in 2 players!

Loved your vids from day one man,

My wife is from Brazil and this was the 2nd game she wanted me to track down once we decided to build a classic snes collection. You're very accurate with how much the Hue's like this game.

My first snes game. I must say that .... You must be missing some of the benefits stereo can provide!

colombian here. top gear was big way back when. it still is big today. on the retro market there always someone looking for a top gear copy. ( topgear 2 been my favorite). thanks for your videos. i always look forward to them.

I'm from Chile and yeah, Top Gear was very popular at the time in my city. I owned 2 and 3000

Top Racer Collection is set to release in March 2024 on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam. Top Racer is what this series is called in Japan, and this is what the series is now called as the Top Gear name is trademarked by the unrelated TV show of the same name.

Cheers from Chile dude. Love your videos.

Greetings from Argentina. Great memories from my snes! Top Gear and Rock and Roll Racing are the best racing games in the console.

I would also vouch for Top Gear 2 on Genesis. Man... I've played it so much when I was young.

Top Gear is so popular here in Brazil I remember hearing the soundtrack on the radio (dance mix show - manaus)

I never played these and I am starting to realize I missed out. Lately I have been playing a lot of Horizon Chase Turbo on Switch and I'm told this series is that game's primary inspiration.

Top Gear is a classic. I haven't played it in probably 15 years, but absolutely loved it growing up

"You may be missing some of the benefits that stereo can provide". Great soundtrack. I upgraded my home hifi system back in the day just for Top Gear 1 and 2.

"The frogurt is also cursed" -nice reference :).

Good review. Man, I have fond memories of Top Gear 2. With my big brother we rented the cartridge to clear the game in 2 player mode. Good to know that you're well informed with the gamer community in South America. Greetings from Argentina!

Excellent. I was a massive fan of the Turbo Lotus Esprit game on Amiga. The music on the radio, all 4 tracks were class. I've just bought the first in the TG series and Chrono Trigger because of your videos! Keep up the great work.

Both top gear 1 and 2 are very enjoyable, these games are worth playing more than the modern ones from today, awesome review!!

In regards of the first Top Gear game, it is very popular in my home country of Peru since it appears on the game itself. They even had a tournament some time ago and it’s a great game for everyone! Great video as well

Yeah, I'm from Brazil and this game was (still is) widly popular around here. It was like, everyone snes owner awalys had Mario World, Sreet Fighter II and Top Gear, insane lol . Badass game and soundtrack

Totally agree with how awesome the soundtrack was... part 1 played super fast and drove smoothly. The challenge was in the fuel management and not recovering from crashes due to hard controls. Very player friendly racer. I rented it several times back in the day.

Finally after 2 years of looking I found top gear 3000 or The Planet’s Champ as it’s called here in Japan! I now have all three games (cart only, never ever seen a boxed copy anywhere of any of these three games). Really love this series.

Top Gear sound track still is freaking amazing!

This game was my childhood. Not a lot of retro gaming reviewers touch on this classic. Glad other people feel the same way i feel about this game. I even have the tracks downloaded. Music is so good.

Fond memories of playing Top Gear back in the day. Most fun playing a racing game I ever had. Didn’t realize it was so popular in Brazil! I’m from California but my parents were Brazilian. Very interesting. 🤔

Have you played Horizon Chase Turbo? It’s like they took TG2 and made it (technically almost) perfect. Also, the devs are very supportive and keep updating the game. It really needs more recognition.

Top Gear is very popular here in Brazil, indeed! Specially the 1st one! I've spent countless hours playing it with my sister back in the 90's.

I loved top gear 2, mostly because I played it with a friend, I can't really be sure but if one of us was on first place the AI of the other cars became harder to try to catch up with that player, so the other player really had to run quite well to advance. Two player mode also made nitro system quite important since it was the edge over your rival and one mistake could cost you the race. It was an amazing game I will always remember

For the Top Gear (and all the racers that resembles Outrun) lovers, try Horizon Chase for iOS and Android. That game is awesome, and it has remixed music from Top Gear ;)

I love the first Top Gear spent hours playing this game as a kid.

Really glad you went back to this. This time around the video was a bit more fair. Also just makes me want to listen to all of their soundtracks again.

Great vid. I feel much nostalgia for this series.

Top Gear 1 music is so good that I have a flash drive in my car with the songs it. I make game noises when it plays (nitrous, tire screech)

Hope you cover the Top Racer Collection, SNES Drunk! It'll be cool to have a quick summary of these games again. :D

What a great channel you have here, I stop by whenever I can, even if the video features a game I never played. That is not the case with Top Gear! Thanks for your videos!

Top Gear soundtrack is so good Muse took the intro for their song “Bliss”

Hack from the first Top Gear game. On the final lap when you're about to cross the finish line, try driving really close from side poles (with me it works better on the left), as you're close enough, steer the car to hit the pole a bit on an angle. if you succeed the car will bounce backwards then drive forwards again, which will grant you the points for whatever position you're on, and the next one combined.

I absolutely love all 3 of the games & the music blew me away when I was younger

2:58 Me, a Brazilian, felt nostalgic this day and went looking for a review on this game.

my friend got this first for his snes. I was so jealous. the soundtrack blew my mind. snesdrunk you mention the limitations I think it was the same with super Mario kart when they put the map rotation at the bottom screen

Nice, downloading these to the mini

Thanks, so great when I get the odd chance of using one of your videos as research and not just enjoyment.

The cars in the first Top Gear just look so much better than any that followed.

I love Top Gear. From Brazil here, very important information.

your videos are relaxing for some reason. They have a nice aesthetic.

Love the original Top Gear! So many great memories playing that game growing up...

the toppings contain potassium benzoate

Me and a friend played Top Gear 3000 listening to an old disco tape. Good memories. Every time the band Tower of Power came on singing "You should be having fun" my friend would start wrecking, and cursing. One of the cool things about Top Gear 3000 that SNES Drunk didn't mention was it has a hidden bonuses. It was so cool blowing your friend away and then a whole bunch of secret bonuses popping up at the end of the match. I loved the ambient space age music kinda reminded me of F-Zero and Utopia both games I also really liked. It was so cool upgrading your vehicle. The only thing that sucked was when your car broke down you'd be stuck driving like 50 mph until you found a repair zone. Not fun! Overall though its an excellent game to play with a friend even being as old as it is.

the first top gear was my childhood game. Best of the series

As a chilean i can confirm that Top Gear it's pretty popular in our retrogaming community

I LOVE the Top Gear trilogy. My favorite is the original as well. White car for life!

This makes me think of 80's Overdrive on the Nintendo 3DS Network. Wonderful game, and now I have to download these to go with it.

TG2 for me (one of 21 titles I hack added to my mini). While TG1 does arguably a stronger core game experience (speed, music, fuel), I simply played it into the ground as a kid renting it with friends. TG1's split screen simply ages it out for me. TG2's course variety + nice weather effects in full screen make it the keeper for me. Then again, my fav of this genre is probably still the first Rad Racer... no racing game makes missing a checkpoint by virtually a hair more addicting to conquer.

Been following your channel for a little bit, but saw you comment on a Cocteau Twins song and am now even further sold on your channel. :)

Top gear 1, best top gear. Still have my copy from the 90s. ^^ The split screen really didn't bother me. I liked it.

Perfect video. And I am so glad you said addictive haha. Just bought the first game and can’t wait to take it for a spin. The second game looks like it has a bit of personality with the speech bubbles and other subtle things. They really took that to the next level with the 3rd game that’s for sure haha. Keep up the good work :)

0:19 Makes sense. Top gear's visuals always reminded me a lot of Lotus - The Ultimate Challenge for DOS, which is a port of Lotus III for the Amiga.

Love the music in the first one!

I said this on one of your other videos today, but man you are so right about the music. I have always loved the first one just for the sound track alone (I listen to it for fun to this day). I played the third one too, and as a kid I enjoyed its system and weird story (even though I thought the cars looked hideous). The first one is on one of my top ten most memorable and, awesomely enough, well aged (mostly) soundtracks ever. Your thoughts about SNES, NES, SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis, and all the rest are so like mine. I'm just devouring your channel. Your observations are always great and your videos bring me back to my childhood in a way my adult brain can enjoy too. Thanks for the great content and I hope you have a great rest of your day as well.

Awesome video, man! Greetings from Brazil!

Yessss~ First game has such a memorable soundtrack to me. I love it. You play Rock n' Roll Racing? I forget if you covered that or not.

As a Chilean I agree top gear had quite the following back home

I remember the first one was very popular in my town... Until Mario Kart 64 arrived. I still played it often with my friends. That soundtrack is just timeless. But I didn't know there were two sequels. That's great! Cheers from Nicaragua, SNES Drunk. Keep up the good work.

Top Gear is still my favorite game!! Love that soundtrack

I hope you also have a good rest of your day as well

I borrowed the original “Top Gear” from a friend and loved it! I ended up getting “Top Gear 2” for my birthday that year and played the heck out of it! I loved the two-player races and trying to get more money than your opponent! However, I later got “Top Gear Rally” for N64 because I had loved the other two games. It was okay, but nowhere near as good as the two on SNES. And it only had like 4-6 tracks. And I think some of those were the same ones in reverse. I never played “Top Gear 3000” but will have to check it out.

Fun back story the developers from Lotus left the publisher and made the SNES game as an exclusive title. It was so popular that Top Gear 2 was made for other platforms...not sure about all the details but I know it's an interesting story

Hey Snesdrunk!!! In Colombia Top Gear was so popular too.

2 was and still is my favorite you can also jump over cars in 2 you just gotta doit with the 2nd controller

Those headlights are so useful.

Man, you're right. The first Top Gear is worshiped in Brazil. There are even local songs made out of the melodies of the game. Nice video

This soundtrack is epic. It's been in my regular music rotation for quite a while now. Up there with Ninja Warriors!

You rock! I remember when Video Games Live went to South America and they had to include one song from the first Top Gear, they said that the song is only played in South America because nobody cares about TG in North America.

West St. Paul? MN local? Coolness!

I'd rank them in this order: 2-1-3 Sure, the OST and strategy is great in Top Gear 1, but the tracks are kinda boring/short, it's also a very easy game enev in the hardest difficulty, the split screen is reeeeeally annoying, and because of it, the fps suffer, it runs much choppier than 2 and 3. Top Gear 2 might not have every single bgm as good as the first ( Ayer's Rock is a master piece though! heheh), but it fixes a lot of stuff, the split screen is gone and the fps are much higher, it just runs smother, the resolution seems higher too, also, there are crash animations that varies with the strength of the impact. The climate change is also really good, the game shows you a description of the next track before letting you upgrade your car, so if the weater is rainy, you might want to upgrade your tires, and so on. Sure, you have 6 nitros, but in the beggining, even if you use all 6 at once, the cpu sometimes goes crazy on you, specially on the first race, and the first place is impossible to get, only when you start upgrading your car is that the game get's easier. Don't use all 6 nitros at once, and you got yourself with a pretty balanced game in terms of difficulty. Top Gear 3000 is cool, but it lacks the OST epicness of the other two. The graphics are a little better, and it runs even smoother that 2, you have a LOT more of upgrade options for you car, some of wich are basically cheat devices and weapons. That makes it sillier in my opinion. It's the hardest of the three in terms of difficulty as you gotta manage fuel, damage AND plan your car upgrades carefully. I can't enjoy it as much as the other two though, it doesn't feel (and sound) as "race-y" as the other two.

The first top gear looks best imo, even though it's splitscreen it feels like you can see more of what's ahead. I thought this would include the n64 games (top gear rally was great!) but oh well

Ah, Top Gear, the first game I always see in used game shops. Good to know it's a quality title.

i love this game my personal favorite snes game of all time not kidding such an underrated game

After saying Argentina I suddenly understand why one of my Argentina friends is so obsessed with cars. We actually run around with vehicles in Second LIfe of all places.

For some weird reason this game is FUCKING HUGE in Brazil, like is up there with Super Mario World and Sonic The Hedgehog

Oh man I played 3k as a kid but had no clue what I was doing. I should revisit it

This and your other videos have been super helpful in curating a selection for a modded SNES classic. As someone who managed to miss the entire 16-bit generation, thank you!

I'm from Brazil, I love Top Gear and the first game is a favorite game.

One of the coolest moments of my indie video game career, I reviewed this and remarked how much the intro sounded like Bliss from MUSE and how the music in general was amazing as it’s the tracks from an AMIGA favourite Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge. The kid of the guy who did the sound saw my review and informed me it sounds like Bliss as MUSE contacted his father to ask if they could use his music to develop a track around it. Less cool was I then used Bliss as an outro to my reviews and on Christmas Eve Warner Music pulled down every single one of my videos.

Here in Brazil que love the top gears series, like u said! Thanks to mention us!

Top Gear 3000 is still one of my favorite SNES games. Top Gear 3000, Aladdin, Bubsy 1, Mario World, Congo's Caper. Some of my favs. Also, neat. I didn't realize Top Gear was based on Lotus. Explains why the Genesis Lotus games seem so similar.

Just saw your channel yesterday and I'm loving it! Keep up the great work!

Check out Chase HQ II on Genesis. It reminded me of this, except instead of racing your goal is to chase/find and destroy (by bashing with your car) the car of a fugitive. It's a little too short and probably not as polished a driving game as this, but I got it over the summer and had a ton of fun with it. While short, it is fun and it makes it an easy pick up, play and complete in 30min or so which is nice for just a quick retro gaming fix.

You know, I was thinking that a really cool video you could do would be "What Genres On The SNES Are Most Worth Playing Today?", with an emphasis on the Today part. As in... what kinds of games on the Super Nintendo still can hold up and compete with their modern counterparts? Cos the thing... racing games? No. Like... just ... not really. No. I love racing games, and I have probably clocked AT LEAST 500 hours on Super Mario Kart over the course of my 33 spins of this hellish rock around its sun. But just... racing games have gotten SO INCREDIBLY REFINED and well-honed over the years. On the one hand you've got the arcadey stuff like Need For Speed or Burnout that Top Gear just can't compete with on ANY level. You've got silly combat racing in things like Wipeout and Blur and the modern Mario Karts. And most technologically imrpessive, we've got obsessively detailed and realistic simulator games like Forza, Dirt, Grid, Project Cars, iRacing and Gran Turismo that are so completely on point with replicating the experience of motorsport that A SPANISH KID ACTUALLY HELPED NISSAN TAKE 2ND AT LE MANS AFTER LEARNING FROM GRAN TURISMO. So stuff like Top Gear? I mean, it's not gonna be a PAINFUL experience to play today. There's worse things you can do with your time. But it's really not on par. It's stuff like platformers, JRPGs, Beat-Em-Ups, Puzzle Games, and CERTAIN kinds of shmups/shooters... THAT'S the stuff where the Super Nintendo library can genuinely, legitimately hold its own against modern game design.