833rd played so far
Genre: Driving
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1996
Developer: Konami
Publisher:Konami
In my last write up about Fuel, I wrote about games that would have been good when the book was published, but wasn’t as notable now. On the other hand, GTI Club Rally Cote d’Azur feels like it fits in with the likes of Sega Rally Championship, games that are notable because of what they became, but may not be the best now. I guess we’re getting another checkpointed race – I’m happy I’m starting to run out of these arcade racers.
Our Thoughts
This game’s basic game is quite straight forward when you’ve played earlier arcade racer – you go around a track, hitting check points in order to increase your time limit.ย However, where other games stick you to a single track, GTI Club takes you to a small village with a street plan that you can explore. You don’t really get much time in the arcade mode, but there is a small alternate route I’ve used to avoid a tunnel at one point.
Beyond that, while the idea is nice, it’s not at the level of the Carmageddon games where there are plenty of opportunities to explore and gain extra time to let you do so, here you have to stick to the track to be able to complete the rounds on time. The preset tracks all follow a fairly similar route, not using most of the village, which feels like a waste of the area. I guess it’s there for the visuals, but it feels like it might have been too much.
Final Thoughts
As is the case with many of these arcade racers, GTI Club has bigger ambitions than its arcade set up allows. There’s a nice growth in where you could go in the game, but the time limits make it difficult to actually do something with it. It was nice to spend some time with it, but not something I am keen to keep playing.