Metropolis Street Racer

Developer: Bizarre Creations. Published by Sega. Release date: 11th March, 2000.

Metropolis Street Racer was initially pegged as a launch title for the Dreamcast, however due to numerous delays it was not to be. Probably a good thing too because it gave Bizarre Creations time to fine tune everything from the tyre up. Make no mistake about it, this is a fine racing game with slick looks, cool soundtrack and a great feel to the races.
Foolishly I ignored it first time around (those adventure/fighting games again) but I picked a copy up a few weeks ago for peanuts and have gone some way to redeem myself by taking it for a spin every chance I get. And richly rewarded I am too whenever I do.
There are 3 cities to tear up (not literally) - London, Tokyo and San Francisco and each of these are recreated with delicious detail and are a joy to race on. They 'feel' like their real life counterparts. Considering the title is a decade old its quite a feat as other racing games at the time were often lazy in track design. For example if they wanted to make a British based circuit the would simply include a few red phoneboxes and miserable weather conditions or for a Dutch track a couple of windmillos would suffice but Metropolis Street Racer doesn't steep so low. Racing in Tokyo IS like racing in Japan (or how I would think it is) so big THUMBS UP to Bizarre Creations for pulling it off.
The soundtrack to this was a neat innovation of the time too. Basically it was a mix of fictional radio stations. There were 9 in all, 3 stations for each city and the only other game I remember doing this back in the day was Grand Theft Auto.
There were 5 race modes:
Hotlap: A solo sprint consisting of usually 3 laps attempting to beat a specific time.
One-on-one: A race against an opponent. (Players can give themselves or the computer opponent a head start up to 60 seconds.)
Street Race: A single race against multiple opponents.
Championship: A 4 race series against 3 opponents. Points are received based on the player's position at the end of each race.
Challenge: A race with custom rules like passing a certain number of cars within a time limit for instance.

All of them pretty spiffing too. And what is also cool is that this is STILL one of the BEST racing titles out there in Videogame Land© which can be bought for as little as £2. £2 for Metropolis Street Racer you say? Get thee off the starting grid on the double!