Overall Rating: 2/5
Back in the Stone Age of Video Gaming, arcade classics such as Pac-Man, Asteroids, Sinistar, Galaga, and countless others provided a very narrow, specific gameplay experience. One draw for their replay value, though, was the advent of the high-score chat: Now, players had an incentive to keep playing, over and over, in order to better their scores (and their friends’ scores!).
Over time, as video gaming moved to home consoles and the entire experience began to improve, it took a while for titles to evolve past the repetitive, high-score formula and into truly story-driven, fulfilling gaming experiences. One of the last bastions of the play-until-you-die idea was the obscure Tengen title Super Sprint, for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
A top-down racer, it featured a half-dozen racetracks. Every race had four cars, one or two of which were human-controlled, and players would race through the tracks repeatedly until a computer car won a race. In summary, it was like a poor-man’s version of the Off-Road arcade unit.
Graphics
The on-course appearances were simplistic and lacked detail, but it worked to make every race sleek, smooth, and competition-focused. The tornado that ran havoc across later tracks was laughable, and the explosive clouds of smoke could surely have spread across more than a car-sized sprite, but overall the courses were sharply defined and did not detract from the throttle-shoving experience. Sometimes, keeping it simple is the way to go.
Sound
Bordering on Atari 2600 quality, the sound of Super Sprint was basic and not even produced to a moderate standard of synthesized quality. Yes, the engines roared in tandem with a car’s speed, and the after-race tune was memorable and catchy, but an utter lack of background music of any kind was a fault. You had better love engine noise, because that is the only sound you will hear for 80% of your Super Sprint experience. Even the title screen was forebodingly silent.
Innovation
One thing Super Sprint did well was take the top-down racer genre and engineer it to near-perfect if you’re into that sort of thing. It was certainly not an original idea, but Tengen honed it to a level that could definitely be enjoyed by a couple players for a while. The high scores started anew after a certain number of digits, but it was still good for some fun to see how many dozens of races you could beat before the computer finally won.
Replay Value
In the end, Super Sprint was a tad too formulaic and repetitive. The computer cars follow a predetermined course at a constant, unerring speed even when you knock them out of place, they quickly re-sync their predetermined path and hop right back into mock contention. The only semblance of fresh air is the option to upgrade your car after collecting wrenches on the racetrack, and the appearance of obstacles after the first couple of circuits; however, once your car is completely upgraded, you return to the same tracks, same obstacles, and same computerized opponents.
Good for a yuk or two but not a profoundly enriching gaming experience, Super Sprint is a glorified Atari game with a few colors, a lot of engine noise, and minimal atmosphere. Players should see how far they can advance, then cast it aside with the rest of the repetitive dreck out there. Two stars out of five is the rating rightly earned not a terrible game, but rather shallow.