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FAMICOM GRAND PRIX - F1 RACE
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ファミコン グランプリ F1レース
©1987 Nintendo
Release: 1987-10-30 (¥3500)
DiskCard FSC-FRGE
F1 Racing game
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Famicom Grand Prix: F-1 Race is a top-down Formula-1
racing game by Nintendo. Several play modes are available and the
competition mode is certainly the most entertaining. The
player starts with 50 credits of money and must first purchase a Formula
1 car. The players then needs to pick a level
(from one to four) and compete in his first race. The car's controls
are simple - one button gets the player to drive in Low-speed and
the second in Hi-Speed. Because cars are never fast enough,
a Turbo can be triggered at hi-speed by pressing the Up
direction on the control pad. However, it should be used sensibly and
three gauges at the bottom of the screen indicate how many are still
available. The Body, Tire and Gas indicators
also slowly decrease and are linked to the player's actions.
If dangerously low, these will dramatically reduce the car's control and
behavior effectiveness. The only way to refill them is to stop
at the pit located right before the finish line. Once the race
is over, the first finishers are awarded with money and get
ready for another, more difficult, race. The game offers other
modes such as training or time attack. The title screen also gives
access to the Service Data, which was a way to access Nintendo's
official Tournament (see the info section for more information).
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A first racing game, F1 Race, was released on cartridge by Nintendo
in 1984 but it shares little in common with its Famicom Disk counterpart.
The race was viewed from behind the car rather than from a top-down view.
A sequel to Famicom Grand Prix: F-1 Race exists though, called
Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally. The game also features
Luigi and uses the clever Famicom's 3D goggles. The top-down
view has also been switched to a traditional 'behind the car' view.
3D Hot Rally was also part of a national contest organized by
Nintendo (read next paragraph for more details).
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Famicom Grand Prix: F-1 Race was part of a large contest
organized by Nintendo in Japan. The winning prize of the F-1 Grand Prix
Tournament was a yellow version of the Super Mario
Game & Watch (picture on the left) and the game's documentation
mentions that only 10,000 copies are supposed
to exist. It also says that the contest was opened from
October 30th,1987 to December 15th,1987. The winning prize
came in a special box with instructions and a
letter addressed to the lucky winner. The game itself came in a yellow
plastic case in the shape of Diskun, the official Nintendo's
DiskCard mascot at the time. Famicom Grand Prix: F-1 Race
was the third contest to be organized by Nintendo. The first two
were Golf Course Japan and Golf US Course. The third one
was Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School and the last one, as far as I know, was
3D Hot Rally.
I often wondered
how Nintendo ever managed to receive all those best scores from thousands
of players all around Japan. The answer is somehow simple - along with
the traditional Disk Writers, Nintendo also manufactured machines
called Disk Faxes (Picture on the right). These machines could upload the data directly from the
disk card (score, player's name etc...) and send all this information,
via modem, to Nintendo's headquarters. Blue discs are the ones supposed
to be used with the Disk Fax machines.
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G
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Japanese guide Book
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LK
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Add your Pov here !
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P
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s
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Famicom Grand Prix: F-1 Race is surprisingly
good and perfectly captures all of the features that make
racing games fun and entertaining. At first, I was expecting a
traditional 'behind-the-car' racing game - but how wrong
I was. F1-Race is actually much closer to other top-down
games such as F1 Circus, Nihon Bussan's popular
Formula One racing game series. The car's handling is nothing
short of sumptuous, the feeling of speed (thanks to a two-gears
and turbo options) is intense. The game tops all of that with excellent
sound effects and a very entertaining competition mode
where the player has to also manage his wallet to purchase new cars.
F1-Race is an excellent game.
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