Top Gear

The starting light goes out, the engine roars and the screen splits into two halves even when you're playing alone. Top Gear is a Super Nintendo racing classic developed by the British-Argentine studio Gremlin Graphics and published by Kemco in 1992. For plenty of players it remains synonymous with fast arcade racing at the eight-bit to sixteen-bit turning point.

At the core of the game is a pseudo-3D view from behind the car, along which corners, hills and rivals come hurtling toward you. You race across a series of tracks inspired by real cities and countries, keeping an eye on your fuel consumption and refilling the tank in the pits. Fuel is precisely what adds a tactical layer: do you risk skipping a stop, or would you rather slow down? Four cars with different characteristics push you to experiment with your driving style.

Top Gear became famous for its sense of speed and, above all, its music. The soundtrack was composed by Barry Leitch, and his energetic tracks became one of the most memorable parts of the whole game. The melody from the opening track ranks among the most-cited chiptune memories of SNES owners.

A big draw was the cooperative and competitive two-player mode on a split screen. Racing through the championship together, overtaking a friend on the finishing straight and battling for a better placing gave the game long-lasting appeal far beyond a single playthrough.

The game earned a sequel and gave rise to the entire Top Gear series, which was one of the mainstays of the racing genre on the Super Nintendo. Thanks to its combination of accessible controls, distinctive music and multiplayer, it built a strong fan base that still remembers it with a smile.

Even after decades Top Gear remains a demonstration of how much a sense of speed can be squeezed out of relatively simple technology. It's not a simulator, it's pure adrenaline arcade, and that is exactly how it won its place in the hearts of retro gamers.

Why play it: For an unforgettable soundtrack, a sense of speed and superb two-player split-screen racing.