Rush Hour

Overview

Rush Hour, known in Europe as Speedster and in Japan as BattleRound USA, is a top-down car racing game developed by Clockwork Games and published by Psygnosis for the Sony PlayStation in North America and Europe on April 30, 1997, with a Japanese release by Nichibutsu on April 29, 1998.

Gameplay

There are 3 game modes:

Single race: Where you choose a single track to race on and attempt to beat the other races to come first.

Time trial: Where you chose a single track and car and attempt to set the fastest time for a single lap.

Championship: The main game mode where most of the unlocks are held. The player choses their car and competes against others over a number of races to be crowned champion.

The game featured a damages system which meant that if you crashed your car a few times you were out of the race, this was easier to do than you might think, especially on some of the jump heavy tracks.

Features

The game featured 8 different tracks set in different locations around the world, the player could unlock over 15 different vehicles ranging from all out high performance race cars, to monster trucks.

The vehicles are unlocked in a number of different ways from setting fastest times in time trials to winning championships.

The game also features 2 player split screen where you and a friend can compete head to head around any of the tracks in the game.

Unlike the huge amounts of racing games being released at the time Rush Hour decided to take an above and behind view whilst playing. This meant that the common problem of environments popping into view in the distance was eliminated due to the smaller draw distances, which lead to a smoother and cleaner look to the game as a whole.