You are at the starting line, the camera looks down on the track from a bird's-eye view, and your radio-controlled car waits for you to hit the gas. But R.C. Pro-Am is not just a race for placement, it is a battle in which you collect missiles and bombs to blast your rivals off the track.
The gameplay combines an isometric top-down view with arcade racing, into which it adds weapons, upgrades and the collecting of letters that spell out a word which permanently improves your vehicle's kit. The player thus not only drives but also strategises about when to use a missile on the opponent ahead and when to drop a bomb for the one behind. This mix of speed and destruction made the game something more than an ordinary race.
Behind the game stands the studio Rare, a British development team that built its reputation on the NES with technically advanced and inventive titles. R.C. Pro-Am came out in the late 1980s and was one of the flagships of what Nintendo's hardware of the day could do in the hands of experienced authors.
Culturally, the game foreshadowed the entire genre of weapon-based racing later made famous by series such as Micro Machines or the much later Mario Kart. The idea that winning does not just mean driving the fastest but also eliminating the competition most cleverly proved extraordinarily addictive.
The isometric perspective also gave the track both depth and overview at once, so you could see the bends ahead and plan your attacks. It is precisely this combination of strategy and reflexes that made R.C. Pro-Am one of the highest-rated racing titles of its era on the NES.
For many players it was the first game where a race turned into a fight for survival, and that memory carved itself in deep.
Why play: Bird's-eye racing with missiles and bombs that turned a pure sprint into a tactical slugfest and defined an entire subgenre.
Game 62 of 120 for Nintendo NES
