“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

A lot of racing games came out for the NES, from Excitebike to Rad Racer and everything in-between. There was a surprisingly wide variety of them.

In 1988, Rare threw their hat into the racing ring (OK, that one got away from me) with R.C. Pro-Am, a racing game that revolved around remote controlled cars.

Pro-Am is the first racing game I ever played that incorporating drifting in the game mechanics. Its isometric view lent itself well to having your car spin to various angles when making your way around the game’s windy tracks. There are twelve different track layouts total, but they repeat indefinitely mixing up the oil slicks, water hazards, pop-up walls, weapon placement, and “zippers” (those things that magically make your car go faster).

There are two weapon types, and strangely enough only the player’s car can pick up and use them. Missiles shoot straight out from the front of your car, while bombs drop out the back and explode. If you successfully manage to hit another vehicle, it will be temporarily destroyed.

There is also a temporary shield that all cars can pick up. It makes your car flash, and if another car comes in contact, it will spin out. If a car that is spinning (either from touching a car with the shield or from an oil slick) hits the side of the track, it will temporarily be destroyed.

As you progress, you can pick up upgrades off the track in three different categories; Higher top speed, acceleration, and turning. These take the form of an engine, a turbo impeller, and a tire. While logic would state hitting these at top speed with your car while trying to race would make you crash out, this is an NES game. Instead, you get a short boost of speed and a permanently increased stat for that car.

The other upgrade mechanic is in the form of letters, one appearing per track, that spell NINTENDO. Once all of these have been collected, you and the A.I. cars will upgrade from the standard pick-up truck to the sports van, then to the race car. The race car looks exactly like the R.C. Car I had as a kid, making Pro-Am wiggle that much farther into my heart.

R.C. Pro-Am‘s winning conditions are probably the strangest part of the game. Rather than having all cars race to the finish, the race ends when one car crosses the finish line. As long as you are not in last place (out of four) when that happens, you get to continue on. In addition to this, you get three continues.

I found some interesting info on the game’s AI when researching more on Pro-Am. Within the first 24 tracks, the blue car is programmed to either accelerate or decelerate based on how well the player is doing. The green and yellow cars will stay at a constant speed that is just under the player’s max. However, using a lot of missiles and bombs can trigger the yellow car to hit his “go faster button”, making his max speed much faster than your own.

I’ve personally never made it this far, but if you can get up to track twenty-nine, the three computer cars will start the race off going the maximum, higher than you can ever go, top speed. This changes it from a race to a game of trying to shoot them all with missiles to keep up.

Why did I choose this game?

When Jeremy, my oldest brother, won the Metroid Art Contest in Nintendo Fun Club Magazine, he chose R.C. Pro-Am as one of the two games for his prize (the other was Super Mario Bros. 2).

We used to take turns trying to get as far as possible on our few continues. I remember it being one of the better racing games on the NES and having a lot of fun with it.

How does it hold up?

R.C. Pro-Am is not without its charm, but it is a hard one to go back to. The lack of music (other than a short ditty when you start the race) and constant “tire screeching” noise in the turns really starts to grate after a while.

AI, as mentioned above, is a little goofy and can start to get pretty frustrating in the later levels. While it is fun to throw it in and play a game or two, it isn’t one I could see putting a lot of time into these days.

Tags: FOG, Friday Old Games, isometric, NES, R.C. Pro-Am, racing, Rare

This entry was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 at 9:43 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.