''World Driver Championship'' is an

automobile racing Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition. Auto racing has existed since the invention of the automobile. Races of various sorts were organi ...

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

. It was developed by

Boss Game Studios Boss Game Studios was an American video game developer based in Redmond, Washington. The company was founded in 1994 and closed in 2002. It specialized in Nintendo 64 racing games with releases such as ''Top Gear Rally'' and '' World Driver Champi ...

and published for the

Nintendo 64 The (N64) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo. The successor to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, it was released on June 23, 1996, in Japan, on September 29, 1996, in North America, and on March 1, 1997, in Europe and Au ...

by Midway. It is notable for having especially high quality graphics.

Gameplay

''World Driver Championship'' is a

racing In sport, racing is a competition of speed, in which competitors try to complete a given task in the shortest amount of time. Typically this involves traversing some distance, but it can be any other task involving speed to reach a specific goa ...

game that features ten locations. Most locations feature six tracks (marked "A", "B", and "C"), three of which are in reverse (marked "R" next to "A", "B", and "C"). The exception is Black Forest, which has only four tracks, two of them being in reverse. These are the ten locations:

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

, United States;

Les Gets Les Gets () is a commune in the Haute-Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France. The village's first single-person chair lift was opened in 1938 with the first chair lift on Mont Chéry in 1954. Geography L ...

, France;

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

, United States;

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

, New Zealand;

Lisbon Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...

, Portugal;

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, Italy;

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

, Australia;

Zürich Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...

, Switzerland;

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

; and the

Black Forest The Black Forest (german: Schwarzwald ) is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is t ...

in Germany.

Development

The game was showcased at

E3 1999 E3 (short for Electronic Entertainment Expo or Electronic Entertainment Experience in 2021) is a trade event for the video game industry. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) organizes and presents E3, which many developers, publisher ...

. One of the last racing simulations to be released for Nintendo 64, this graphically intensive title uses custom

microcode In processor design, microcode (μcode) is a technique that interposes a layer of computer organization between the central processing unit (CPU) hardware and the programmer-visible instruction set architecture of a computer. Microcode is a laye ...

optimization and high polygon count modelling. The development team was able to optimize the usage of the various processors within the N64 to allow a great draw distance (reducing the need for fog or pop-up), highly detailed texturing and models,

Doppler effect The Doppler effect or Doppler shift (or simply Doppler, when in context) is the change in frequency of a wave in relation to an observer who is moving relative to the wave source. It is named after the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler, who d ...

MP3 audio, and advanced lighting and fog effects for realistic weather conditions. Additionally, unlike many other games of its type on the platform, the game runs high resolution at a smooth pace. The soundtrack, consisting of original rock and heavy metal tunes, was composed by musician Zack Ohren.

Reception

Although ''World Driver Championship'' received generally positive reviews from critics, it suffered from intense competition at the time. While the game was an improvement in nearly every way compared to Boss's similar earlier effort, ''

Top Gear Rally ''Top Gear Rally'' is a 1997 racing video game developed by Boss Game Studios and released for the Nintendo 64. A follow-up to Kemcos original ''Top Gear'' game, it features a championship mode where a single player must complete six seasons o ...

'', it was up against the impressive new ''Gran Turismo'' series and other new racers. Complaints included a somewhat unconvincing driving physics model, non-licensed cars, and poor sound effects and music quality. The dislike for the physics model often stems from the beginning cars being difficult to drive and offering a "sloppy" feeling of control. ''

Next Generation Next Generation or Next-Generation may refer to: Publications and literature * ''Next Generation'' (magazine), video game magazine that was made by the now defunct Imagine Media publishing company * Next Generation poets (2004), list of young ...

'' praised the graphics, gameplay, cars, and tracks, but noted that due to its driving physics model the game will be difficult to master for arcade racing fans.

References

External links

* {{Boss Game Studios 1999 video games Boss Game Studios games Midway video games Multiplayer and single-player video games Nintendo 64 games Nintendo 64-only games Racing video games Video games developed in the United States