Top Gear Rally (N64) vs Boss Rally (PC)

[Iron Draggon]

from the wiki at wikipedia:

"Top Gear Rally is a rally game for the Nintendo 64, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance. It features six tracks. It has a feature that allows the user to give their virtual cars custom paint jobs. Although the name stayed the same, the developers changed between consoles. As a result, the games are very different depending on the platform, but they often have similar features such as the paint shop.

The Nintendo 64 edition of Top Gear Rally has an electronic MIDI soundtrack composed by the same artist as the older Super Nintendo Top Gear releases. The game features a realistic physics model with functioning suspension, a relatively new gameplay development for the time. The graphics were very advanced at the time of the game's release, and as a result the game will slow down dramatically if more than 3 cars are shown at once. Kemco/Boss Games did not have licenses to use the real car names so the names are somewhat disguised within the game. However, an advantage to this is they can use car damage (although the damage does not affect performance). The game's release was met with mixed reviews from journalists and gamers alike. This version of Top Gear Rally was also released as a PC title called Boss Rally."

I didn't know that Top Gear Rally and Boss Rally were the same game... and actually they aren't exactly the same, but the two games certainly have alot of stuff in common...

compare these screenshots:

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images..._screen001.jpg

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images..._screen005.jpg

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images..._screen001.jpg

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images..._screen002.jpg

the first two are from Top Gear Rally... the last two are from Boss Rally... you can tell that they're both taken in roughly the same areas of the two games, but you can also tell that the PC version is alot more detailed than the N64 version... so it's more like enhanced Top Gear Rally remix...

I don't own an N64 and a copy of Top Gear Rally anymore, but I used to... I remember it being alot of fun... I enjoyed the ability to customize the car graphics the most though... my preferred car was the Toyota Celica Supra, customized with my name on the back bumper... MONROE... I still had that car saved on the cart when I sold it and my N64... I figure whoever bought it prolly thought that the Monroe on the back bumper was an ad for Monroe shock absorbers...

anyhow, I just bought a copy of Boss Rally for the PC on ebay for practically nothing... only $1 plus shipping for a brand new factory sealed retail box... yes I've read the reviews... so it's frustrating and it hella sucks... I figure that in itself is all the more reason to own it, especially when I can obtain it cheaply... games like that fade away into obscurity and sometimes end up becoming rarities... don't care if that happens or not... I always loved Top Gear Rally on the N64... so now I'm gonna own the PC version...

[Synergy]

I wondered the same thing a while back. I remember buying Top Gear Rally way back in the N64's prime, and I liked it a lot too.

I also frequent IGN to read reviews, especially the PC games, and when I read the review for Boss Rally, the first thought that went through my mind was "Hmm, it might as well be called "Top Gear Rally PC: Director's Cut" or something."

Judging from those screenies, I would have thought they were the same game. I tried looking for an image of Boss Rally before to try and verify this, but couldn't find it anywhere.

...and actually they aren't exactly the same...

What's different about them exactly?

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

Hm, now isn't this odd?

Just yesterday I read in an issue of EGM from 1999 that such-and-such racing game coming out for the N64 had been renamed Boss Rally. I thought from the screenshots that the game in question must have eventually come out as either MRC or World Driver Chamionship. It definitely didn't look anything like Top Gear Rally, which came out much earlier anyway.

Checking on GameFAQs, I see that World Driver Chamionship was also coded by Boss Studios and was released in 1999, so that's probably is indeed the game that EGM was talking about. I wonder if it really was called Boss Rally at some point during development. That sure would have been confusing.

Anyway, Top Gear Rally is indeed a pretty great game. The sequel is good, too, though the original is better in my opinion. I also like V-Rally '99 and Rally Challenge. It's a close call between Rally Challenge and Top Gear Rally which is my favorite rally game on the N64.


...word is bondage...

[Iron Draggon]

unfortunately I've never played Top Gear Rally 2 on the N64 yet, so I have no idea what it's like... and I have to wait until my copy of Boss Rally gets here to check it out on the PC... I wish I still had a copy of Top Gear Rally for N64 to compare them side by side... but I don't, so I'll have to base my opinions on memory... but I remember Top Gear Rally pretty well... and from what I've seen of screensots of both games, I suspected that the two were the same game before the wiki confirmed it for me... I was originally gonna ask if anyone else suspected that they were the same game, or one was heavily based on the other... I think it's more the latter... they took the N64 version and improved on it to make it what they wanted it to be for the N64... only the PC was capable of that at the time... remember Top Gear Rally came out for the N64 in 1997 and Boss Rally came out for the PC in 1999... still a long time ago technologically... so I thought that it would be cool to have another game from that era for my PC... wondering how well it will control with my PC gamepad though... heard the controls are very touchy, but figure that's because they were designed for analog pads... and I have a dual analog PC pad, so we'll see how it goes... if I can get it to work running on XP... no idea if it will or not...

[dreamcaster]

I'd LOVE to get my hands on a copy of Boss Rally - can't find it anywhere though. :-(

Top Gear Rally is one of my favourite games on the N64 - completely mastered it. I bought it about a week after it launched here in Australia.

Trivia! The USA version has different theme music to the PAL and JAP versions. The Japanese version has a bonus Mini and Sports Truck to unlock which are not present in the PAL or USA versions.

Also, Top Gear Rally 2 was NOT made by Boss Game Studios, it was made by Saffire, and whilst they introduced better gameplay ideas, license tests, some licensed cars and more detailed customisation - the physics engine is terrible and ruins what could've been a better game than the original TGR.

[Iron Draggon]

I'd LOVE to get my hands on a copy of Boss Rally - can't find it anywhere though. :-(

It's right here on ebay USA!

[dreamcaster]

I'd LOVE to get my hands on a copy of Boss Rally - can't find it anywhere though. :-(

It's right here on ebay USA!

I have no means of paying for it. :/

[Iron Draggon]

why not? flat broke? looks like the seller accepts anything...

[dreamcaster]

I don't have a credit card, thus no Paypal.