R.C. Pro-Am (1988) - MobyGames

The Good
R.C. Pro-Am is an Isometric Racing game developed by British studio Rare and published in 1988 by Nintendo on the NES. The game also saw a remake on Sega's Megadrive under the name Championship Pro-Am (published by Tradewest in 1992) ; it also had a go in the Arcades under Nintendo's Play-Choice 10 stand up machine, where every quarter bought you a few minutes of play time (which speaks volumes about the quality of this 8 bit game, being able to compete for your money against the powerful Arcade Machines)

The premise is simple, you race against three other RC cars; the objective is not coming in last in order to play the next race. If you end up 4th you lose and then you have to re-do the current course (you get 3 tries). You can shoot the other cars and the combat - where you get to slow down your opponents - is really what sets the tone for the game: this is not a realistic simulation of Remote Control cars. The game was influenced by the arcade game Super Sprint (1986, Atari), but while in that game there were only a few items, here there's a whole set of upgrades (turbo, hotter engine, sticky tires) and weapons (missiles, bombs, ammo, roll cage). There are also some Track hazards to avoid (rain squalls, oil slicks, puddles, pop-up barriers, and skulls) and finally you can get letters to form the N-I-N-T-E-N-D-O word and thus upgrading the vehicle for an entire new - faster model.
The isometric view that seems suitable for this genre comes from the Commodore 64 game Racing Destruction Set (1985). Super Sprint had a top down view mode, but more important it was a single screen game (one screen per course); instead here the camera scrolls freely following the different directions your car goes; and this smooth multi-directional scrolling is an impressive technical achievement for what still is the early NES era.
R.C. Pro-Am would actually be the first huge commercial success in Rare/Nintendo short but fruitful relationship (selling 2.3 million copies) and helped establish Rare as the greatest western 2nd party developer. The legendary Stamper brothers were behind the concept of the game and the whole project really (as with most of these early Rare pieces); As always Tim Stamper designed the beautiful graphics and his older brother Chris did the main programming (with the help of Mark Betteridge and others)

The Bad
Rare's in-house musician the amazing David Wise made the few tunes we have: Opening, Race Start, and Game Over; which are really good but still the game needs more music, and the grating sound is kind of annoying.
Now, not everything is positive within the game. The difficulty is very high. The rivals feel faster than you, and the AI seems too good: they never miss a Zipper or fall for any traps. Also there's a very cheap glitch were one of the cars picks up speed and becomes unreachable. Collecting the Nintendo letters upgrade your car but also your rivals (making them faster and harder to beat).

In essence, it was a brutal game. One of the hardest but fair NES games to beat for sure. This makes me recommend the Megadrive remake Championship Pro-Am as the one to get, it controls even better and many small changes make the difficulty more balanced; (plus has an option to play with a friend).

The Bottom Line
R.C. Pro-Am is an NES masterpiece and certainly a classic. Beautiful graphics, perfect controls, tons of things to get and do, a lot of replayability and incredibly fun. Created an entire genre and was highly influential in many future games like Micro Machines (1991, Codemasters), Rock & Roll Racing (1993, Blizzard), Death Rally (1996, Remedy), and even the Mario Kart series owes a lot to it.

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