Top Racer or Top Gear, as it was also known, was a series of pretty great racing games that I played a lot of on the SNES and spiritual successors to the awesome Lotus series… that I also played a lot of. In short, I played a lot of these games many moons ago. So when Top Racer Collection, from developer/publisher QUByte Interactive, came up for review, my code request was sent off faster than a really fast thing.

“The thrill of 16-bit racing from the 90s is back! Play the complete Top Racer series with Top Racer, Top Racer 2, Top Racer 3000 and Top Racer Crossroads, a brand new game with new cars and exclusive content made especially for this unmissable edition.”

Let me get right into this one. What you get with Top Racer Collection is all three of the Top Racer games bundled into one huge package, with several additions and enhancements. In fact, you get an all-new fourth game in the series, but still presented in that classic 16-bit way. All of the games here share the same basic premise of picking a car and racing to the finish line, hopefully in 1st place. However, each of the titles have their own unique bits to make them slightly different from each other. The biggest and most obvious differences come with Top Racer 3000, which is set in the future and adds things like money and upgrades… as well as futuristic racing. The all-new fourth game, Top Racer Crossroads, is not quite as new as this collection makes it out to be, In reality, it’s just another version of the original Top Racer, but with four cars taken from the pretty damn awesome Horizon Chase Turbo game (which I reviewed a few years back).

The games play exactly as they did on the SNES, which is both great and not-so-great. The emulation used here is good, and you’d think that you were playing on the native hardware. At first, the controls felt very awkward and very 16-bit, but I soon got used to it after a couple of races or so. Another issue is that Top Racer Collection emulated the SNES so well that you get the frame-rate drops that these games had back in the day. It would’ve been nice if the game ran smoother, but hey, it’s a very faithful emulation in that regard. There are some new options that you can tinker with, such as screen layouts and so on, and even an online mode.

Priced at around £17 and out now for Steam and all of the consoles, Top Racer Collection is well… a top racing collection. A pure fuel injection of 16-bit action. However, this will not be for everyone. If you have a love for these classic games, then this is a collection that you will most definitely want to get your hands on. I don’t think it’ll appeal to anyone else though, I don’t see your average modern gamer rushing themselves to nab a copy. Top Racer Collection is something for us old farts who miss the heyday of the 16-bit age and long for some old-school racing action.