Racing games had been a big part of gaming for a while. N64 had a lot of big racing games. You had F Zero, Mario Kart and Wave Race with Wave Race being the one I played the most.

My second most played racer wasn’t any of those and went under the radar. It was so obscure, that I have never met another person who played it. I don’t think it ever has been on any list of games that went under the radar. The game was called MRC.

MRC or Multi Racing Championship was road rally game ahead of its time. I originally found it at a video store. I was interested in by looking at its front and back, took it home and wow.

In Wave Race or Mario Kart you had four player races, MRC was doing ten. You could race in the day or night, plus they had weather effects. You could have had rain, snow or fog with changing conditions. Some circuits were all tarmac and you could use a street car but most were mixed.

Another thing I remember about this game was it was hard and unforgiving. The grip changed big time between surfaces, and you could easily slide off into a house or wall. There were a lot of deceptive corners and wall riding didn’t work, you would get slowed, which got me frustrated. But I still liked it so much that I ended putting it on my Christmas list. I had rented it multiple times before then and late fees added up. Sometimes buying the game is cheaper than renting.

MRC came out months before Gran Turismo. This was one of the first racing game I had that you could upgrade the car. Tires, turbo, trannies, suspension, brakes, aero, and steering can be upgraded and tuned. The was one of the few N64 racers with a bumper cam.

Looking at the reviews of the time I don’t understand. One of them said the realistic physics make the cars too slow around corners and doesn’t have the illusion of speed. Many are saying the announcer was annoying, when he acted like a co-driver, telling you what corners are coming up. I get the small number of tracks and overall length as a criticism, but there were many variations plus mirrors. and this was doing things weather and racing wise, I don’t remember any other doing before.

Genki is the games dev and I hadn’t seen a game from them since MRC. They went on to make the Tokyo Extreme Racer series