World Driver Championship

Developer: Boss Game Studios Publisher: Midway

Released: June 15, 1999 Rated: E 7/10

The N64 has a lot of racing games. Yes, I’ve said it many times at this point, but it’s worth bringing up again because for as many as there are per capita on the system, none of those games were ever going to be Gran Turismo, which, sadly, is what a lot of people wanted after the series debuted on the PlayStation in 1997. Unfortunately, taking so much advantage of the CD format and first-party budget with copious amounts of licensed cars and music tracks, the N64 had little chance of replicating anything in the way of a true next-generation driving sim like that. Boss Game Studios, however, was certainly not about to let that stop them from trying, though.

Much like Paradigm Entertainment’s F1 World Grand Prix, World Driver Championship is a driving sim that attempts to squeeze everything out of the N64 to deliver a finely-tuned, detail-oriented, and highly demanding racing experience that also matches that intensity with graphical definition and customization. And much like F1 World Grand Prix, I am well below the measuring stick of their target demographic in terms of how much I can grasp in terms of mechanics and driving technique, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be impressed by this game, particularly against its peers such as GT64: Championship Edition or MRC: Multi-Racing Championship.

Spectre from Twisted Metal? All the stars are here!

Without even having to discuss the minute details and quirks of its controls or gameplay, one thing about World Driver Championship is immediately clear: this game looks phenomenal for the N64. Boss’s proficiency in microcode optimization and overall resource management produce wonders in models, texturing, draw distance, and lighting effects. It’s a game that looks great still or in motion, and specifically outdoes so many games in their weakest areas at even standard resolution. Add in a hi-resolution widescreen mode with the expansion pak that doesn’t sacrifice performance like so many other N64 games with this option, and World Driver Championship holds up tremendously from a visual standpoint. Along with the Star Wars titles that utilize the expansion pak, World Driver Championship is easily one of the top N64 games graphically with a realistic visual style.

The audio doesn’t quite match that level of refinement, both in terms of BGM and the all-important sound effects like those that the car engines make. Even without being on the PlayStation, the lack of competition on the system makes Gran Turismo even more of a measuring stick and that includes this department. The licensed CD-quality music in GT is a naturally unattainable gold standard, but composer Zack Ohren’s soundtrack of hard rock instrumentals are just okay at best. Though not quite generic or grating, there isn’t anything that really sticks with you, though I have seen some high praise for it here and there online, so YMMV depending on your standards in the genre/context. Sound effects can be a mixed bag, on the other hand, with some cars sounding satisfyingly powerful and others failing to impress in an area that most playing this type of racer would consider fairly important.

Yes, Hi-Resolution mode does require the use of the letterbox framing, but it’s kind of worth it for graphics far above what the rest of the system can do.

The format of World Driver Championship, particularly in its career mode and the learning curve and progression system therein, will probably turn off a lot of players once they get over the presentation, but in this case, that’s probably for the best and not a knock on the game itself. In addition to a pretty demanding driving experience for its time, requiring careful braking, shifting, and racing line refinement across its dozen tracks and their set of variants, the outright grind of its progression is probably not the most inviting prospect for those looking for a laid-back or relaxing driving game. While it doesn’t offer so much in tweaking the individual aspects of cars in your garage, the expectation of learning the nuances of the cars you acquire and their increase in proficiency in different areas can be quite the undertaking, and the overall career mode experience is a long, grinding affair of running the same races over and over to improve times and earn your way up the ladder of racing teams and the various resources available to you.

World Driver Championship’s only shortcomings effectively come from the fact that it doesn’t have the hardware or budget necessary to be anything but the poor man’s version of Gran Turismo. Additionally, it isn’t able or possibly even interested in getting most outside of its most dedicated audience of gearheads to stick around once the novelty of its technical achievements wears off. And that’s fine by me, too. It’s not hard to appreciate a game that doesn’t cater to me personally because not everything has to, nor is it difficult to admire things it does well from afar, and World Driver Championship is one of the N64’s quintessential examples of this concept. Serious racing fans that otherwise don’t expect the driving sim genre to be all that well-represented on the system will be very pleased to try this one, and the developers should be proud of that fact, but the rest of us watching from the sidelines will still have to admit — this is one sweet set of wheels with a lot of horsepower under the hood.