Top Gear 2

I played the crap out of Top Gear 2 on the SNES back in the day. It had catchy music, good graphics & game play. Night time & weather effects. You could upgrade parts with earnings.The game was bad ass, probably the best 'realistic' racing game on the SNES.

I just played the Genesis version which is relatively forgotten and has no review up here on the site yet. I never really played this version before.

It maintains the colorful graphics, the sound is good, the game play seems intact from what I've looked over. It seems to be awesome. But they've removed music while racing...all you can hear is the engine, a constant annoying tone.

Really... WTF?! It totally destroys the game by comparison. It's a shame really, the SNES version's main theme during the first few races is the menu music in the Genesis version, and it's done rather well.

I don't know what they were thinking, I don't think memory constraints would have been an issue. It's such a slap in the face to my nostalgia for this game.

Does nobody play this game? It's a lot better than Super Hang On or the Lotus games that came before it.

I used to be a fan of the original on the SNES, and tried for years to get my hands on the sequel (which along with it's followup, "Top Gear 3000" is hard to come by) when I stumbled upon a CIB copy of the Genesis version at a Software Etc. back in late '01. I remember WTF'ing at there being a Genesis version of TG2, but buying it anyways.

Dunno why, but in several other Genesis racing games (including the TG series' close relative, the "Lotus" series), you can only ever choose to play music or sfx during races, never both. "OutRun" is another one, to a lesser extent.

A side by side. The game is awesome. It just sucks that Gen version is mostly soulless without the music.

You CAN choose to play either music or sfx in-game in Genesis TG2. It's somewhere in the menu. It works similar to the option in the "Lotus" games.

Yeah, I didn't notice that option when playing it before. Most of the nostalgia for the SNES version comes from hearing the 'more powerful' engine upgrades when you buy them.

I'm going to give the Genesis version a long play through one of these days.
I'm still surprised it's not popular.

"Sound" -> "Race Sound" allows you to select either music or sfx. (~0:17 in the video)

Edit: Didn't notice above replies.

It's still a trade off. Not cool from my own perspective. Aside from that though, the game looks to be just as awesome as the SNES version. I haven't played through it yet though.

Does anybody know if it has the foggy weather, and night stages?

Yeah, no idea why they didn't allow music + sfx. Genesis actually got two more channels than SNES, even though they were 3x PSG + 1 noise.

Knuckle Duster, if you wanna play the best Top Gear 2 version, get the WinUAE emulator (http://www.winuae.net/) and find an ISO of Top Gear 2 for Amiga CD32. Higher resolution, faster and better graphics compared to the SNES version.
You will enjoy that very much.

Configuring the WinUAE can become a major pain in the ass, but you'll enjoy the quality in the end.

Take a look at: http://hol.abime.net/3039
"The Classic Lotus Trilogy" is another good CD32 game (ISO).
I'll not post any link, but is very easy to find using google.

Best regards.

Talking about MD racing games, I can remember only the Super Hang-On to have sfx+engine noise+music in game. Does anyone know why??? I'm curious about that.

Newman/Haas Indy Car Racing has the same problem: sfx+music in the SNES version. sfx OR music in the Genesis version.
Rock N' Roll Racing (MD version) has to stop the music to play Larry's comments... WTF? The soundtrack in these games are samples? WTF?
OutRun is another shame example. The Sega "native" version on MD has no engine sound. The TurboGrafx16 version has (the sliding sample is horrible, but this is another question...). WHY???

I'll not talk about "Nigel Mansell's World Championship Racing" because it is very sad for anyone that has/had a Mega Drive, like me.

You're right, a lot of Genesis racing games do only have either engine sounds (such as in Super Monaco GP 1 or 2) or only music and other sound effects, but not engine noise (many games such as Outrun, the Road Rash games, Combat Cars, etc.).

The only ones I have which do both are Super Hang-On and Outrun 2019. Some others that also do have engine sounds include Turbo Outrun, OutRunners, and Street Racer, and I'm sure there are plenty more... but why do so many not have it? I mean, I can see it for top-down games like Micro Machines or Combat Cars, but for behind-the-car ones, not so much, if you can do otherwise.

The SNES Top Gear games really are fantastic, they're some of my favorite racing games from that era... but that Genesis version, no, it's not even close, sadly.

Yeah the music in TG2 on the SNES is freakin' EPIC! I just hated how the main melody channel would cut out when the tires squeal. I always thought that was strange. But the fact the Genesis version has NO music (with engine sounds) is much stranger! I hated that in the original Lotus game and I had no idea TG2 was still the same.

Well, I just played it with the music on for a bit.

The First stage song & the Menu selection song is reversed when compared to the SNES version. After that it's the same songs from what I can tell.

Stage 3's music still the same kick ass tune I remember, only now it sounds like Genesis as I'm bombing around the night course burning out of nitros. They did different things with the music by having it fade in and out with different instruments or something. It's cool.

Stage 4, rain, lightning, cool song intact.

Aside from feeling a little floaty compared to SNES, it's the same awesome game; probably the best racing game on the system.

I'm shocked, I didn't really know it came out for Genesis.

Street Racer is great. I think the Mega Drive version is, overall, superior to the SNES one. The Mode 7 graphics didn't fit well for the items (turbo, bombs...) and, as many SNES games, is pretty slow compared to the Mega Drive.

I don't like Turbo OutRun or OutRun 2019, 'cause they put OutRun series in shame.

Genny's racing games are a genre that I perhaps know less about than even sports games. I wasn't even aware of more than Top Gear having no sfx + music options.