Motorsport Musings Ramblings of a racing enthusiast…

Behold, Super Monaco GP!

Three years is a long time to ask anybody to wait, especially for the majority of gamers out there with their short attention spans. Which is why this week’s release of Codemasters’ F1 2009 game on both the Nintendo Wii and Sony PSP is so hotly anticipated by spotty herberts up and down the country, despite the fact it looks about as realistic as some of the waxworks at Madame Tussauds. Me, I think I’ll be sticking with Super Monaco GP on my Mega Drive, thanks very much.

Super Monaco GP started life in the arcades some twenty years ago and thanks to its popularity spawned a whole host of ports to various platforms in the early 90s, the most faithful of these being for Sega’s newly launched Mega Drive/Genesis console. This version not only successfully replicated the arcade version in its entirety, but also brought some longevity to the party with its World Championship mode.

The ultimate goal when playing in World Championship mode was to win the drivers’ title in your debut season, before going on to defend your crown the following year. Initially the player begins driving for minnows Minarae (Minardi), but through challenging other drivers on the grid and beating them, you could move up the pecking order with the ultimate goal coming in the form of a drive with the Madonna (McLaren) team.

Each of the sixteen rounds begins with either the choice of unlimited runs in free practice mode to become accustomed to the circuit, or jumping head first into a one-lap qualifying session ready for the race itself, and that’s where the fun begins.

Now Super Monaco GP will never win any awards for its realism, because even I know you can’t navigate a hairpin at 120mph without so much as breaking into a sweat. But that’s not the point really. It was incredibly easy to get into and amazingly fast, especially since it adopted a first-person perspective and made it feel like you were almost sitting in the cockpit of your ‘Minarae’ driving around a strangely featureless Monaco harbour, or the half-a-dozen trees in the forests of Hockenheim for example.

The thing with Super Monaco GP is that it holds a very special place in my heart. As a sprightly seven-year-old, it gave me my first introduction to the world of Formula 1, which up until that point I had dismayed as just being a glorified Scalextric set (yes I was cynical even then). I think I must have played it to the point I could beat that pesky A. Asselin (Alain Prost) even in my sleep, and that’s not something you can say everyday is it?