Gale Racer

3

4 /5

Gale Racer shares similar gameplay to Rad Mobile, with the player driving eastwards across America against rival cars against a strict time limit. There are, however, a number of graphical and technical changes to better suit the Saturn's hardware, and rather than one continuous journey, "areas" are split up by loading screens. There are also 23 rival cars, as opposed to the arcade's 14.

Gale Racer has the player drive a completely different vehicle to Rad Mobile, and renders all the rivals as polygons, rather than resized sprites. Similarly to Rad Mobile, a Sonic the Hedgehog "mascot" hangs from the car's ceiling (resembling his look in Sonic the Hedgehog 3), however others from the Sonic series are available, including the first home sightings of Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel.

However, despite being a port of a then-three-year-old game (for arcade hardware that had been retired), Gale Racer is noticeably scaled back over its arcade counterpart, running at half the frame rate with lower draw distances, and less detailed "textures" for the road and scenery. The breaking up of areas means stage transitions no longer exist, and the road is always the same colour. The physics of the mascot are also simplified, always swinging and rotating at the same rate regardless of what is happening in-game.

There are also no exploding police officers when the player finishes first.