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1988 · NES
| Region | Date | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| North America | Feb 1988 | Nintendo |
| Europe and Australia | 15 Apr 1988 | Nintendo |
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A race between four radio-controlled cars, seen from above at an angle, on tracks lined with puddles, oil slicks and pop-up barriers. Finish in the top three and you move on; finish fourth and it is over. You steer with left and right on the pad, and it handles like the real toy.
The tracks are littered with things to drive over. Turbo, a hotter engine and sticky tyres make your car better. Missiles stall the car in front for a moment, bombs the car behind. Letters spell NINTENDO, and a full set upgrades your truck to a 4-Wheeler, then an Off Roader. The box promised 32 tracks; there are twelve layouts, repeated with extras, and by track 32 the computer cars are flat out and only weapons can beat them. There is no ending. You keep racing until the ammunition runs dry.
Rare grew out of Ultimate Play the Game, the ZX Spectrum studio Tim and Chris Stamper founded with Tim's wife Carol in Ashby-de-la-Zouch in 1982. Rare built the game in 1987 as Pro-Am Racing, and Nintendo published it as R.C. Pro-Am in North America in February 1988 and in Europe on 15 April. David Wise wrote the music.
It sold 2.3 million copies worldwide and made Rare a major NES developer. Super R.C. Pro-Am followed in 1991 and R.C. Pro-Am II in 1992, and Tradewest put out a Genesis remake, Championship Pro-Am, the same year. Rare later started a Nintendo 64 follow-up, Pro-Am 64, which turned into Diddy Kong Racing. The NES game is one of the 30 in Rare Replay (Xbox One, 2015), and it joined Nintendo Classics on Switch on 21 February 2024.
Very well, for about twenty minutes at a time. The view is clear, the cars handle with weight, and the first time you fire a missile into the leader on the last bend it feels like cheating in the best way. The music is short and catchy.
The difficulty curve is the catch. Early races are a doddle. Later, lean on your weapons too hard and the yellow car kicks up to 127 mph, a speed you cannot match, so the game becomes a fight for ammunition rather than a race. There is no two-player mode, which is the one thing it really wants.
Kids who owned a real radio-controlled car spent most of their time chasing it across the backyard and replacing batteries. This one never runs flat, never hits the fence, and carries missiles. A Nintendo newsletter in 1987 told RC owners the game was a must, and they were the right audience: it takes a toy you love and lets you play the version in your head.
Winnicott called that space between the inner and outer world the place where people get creative and find themselves. A toy car on a driveway sits there, and so does a toy car on a screen. R.C. Pro-Am just widened the driveway.
Read: The magic circle: the world that rules make →
You have been training these without noticing. Here is how to do it on purpose, and where it pays off away from the couch. All the skills games teach →
In the game. Fire too many missiles and the yellow car kicks up to 127 mph, faster than you can ever go. Every shot is a trade: a place now, a monster on your bumper later.
Do it on purpose. Hold every missile until the final lap for a few races. Compare finishes to when you fire them early.
Off the couch. Knowing when to play your best card, in a negotiation, a job offer or a pay rise chat, matters as much as having it.
In the game. Steering with left and right handles like the real toy, so you have to think about which way the car's facing, not which way you're facing.
Do it on purpose. Race a track with one rule: never touch a wall. If you do, restart.
Off the couch. Reversing a trailer, parking in a tight spot, anything where the controls feel backwards. Getting good at that is just practice.
In the game. Finish fourth and you're out, with two continues that restart the race and wipe your points. There's no ending, you just keep going until you can't.
Do it on purpose. Every time you lose a race, go again immediately and change one thing about how you took the first corner.
Off the couch. Knocked back from a job or by someone you asked out? Go again, change one thing, don't sulk about it.
Verdict · 8/10
A small toy-car game that quietly invented a genre. Still a joy, as long as you stop before the yellow car starts winning.
