GT Advance Championship Racing (GBA)

This video was captured using the actual game on an actual Gamecube Game Boy Advance player.

This is a first generation title so the GBA's full potential had not yet been realized. Much like the Super Nintendo developers in these early stages of the GBA developers decided to use the mode 7 function on racing games. This provided nice smooth movement of the road, however it did not produce stunning visuals. The scaling of objects on the side of the road was kept to a minimum, so most of the time you just have a flat looking track. The cars were rendered with sprites instead of polygons and the music sounded more from a NES or even the Sega Master System. So can you still have a great racing title without any frills whatsoever? Absolutely.

Enter GT Advance Championship Racing. A game that is not the most visually appealing especially when playing it on a TV. This game clearly was not meant to be displayed any bigger than a GBA size screen. It doesn't blow up to a bigger screen well and consequently it can sometimes be difficult to judge turns. That's ok though. It's a game for a portable console, so this is to be expected. It's kinda cool looking at the sprite based cars that are faithful renderings of the real thing. The sound of your car though a little loud is good, and even changes as you change certain parts on your car. I was quite taken back by that for some reason. The place where this game shines is in the most important part of any game. The game play. The controls are excellent and the racing is pure fun. It doesn't have a total arcade feel to it. It's sort of in between an arcade and a sim. The tracks are very well designed and very distinctly different from each other. In this capture I play through the entire beginner championship, and the game eases you in quite a bit so it is very easy to pick up and play. In the last race though, the difficulty gets ramped up significantly. I guess you could call it a "difficulty spike" which is not normally well received these days and critics rip on games that have them. Well don't be such a big baby and play this game. You'll need to learn how to handle a tough course because the middle championship gets much harder. It's not so hard you'll hate the game, but you will have to do some races over to gain first or second place. This game features an upgrade system similar to Need For Speed Underground except there is no money system. You win new parts by taking the checkered flag. Overall the game despite it's lack of visual flare is an excellent racing game and as a racing game fan I recommend this one highly.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• game
• boy
• advance
• video
• retro
• classic
• old
• gameplay
• gt
• moto
• gp
• thq

[De19thKingJulion]

I got my first ever gaming console (GBA) and this game on my 10th birthday in 2004 and I always thought the white dots of smoke were my lights shining on the ground. I thought the graphics wer awesome too

[OldsXCool]

@De19thKingJulion This handheld is IMO is still the best there is even though I didn't even realize that back in the GBA's prime. It wasn't until recently that I started collecting games for this console that I realized how amazing the GBA was and still is.

[scrambaldfilms]

I used to have an adrenalin rush playing this as a kid, good times.

[madcapoperator]

I remember vividly the first person i knew to get one of these the day it came out (i got mine a day later lol) got this game with it thinking because of the title and how it looked that it was going to be an official gran turismo game but just on the GBA...how dissapointed he probably was haha. But he still liked it and it did look impressive for the time.

[AndrewDaniele87]

holy nostalgia! i thought the graphics were crazy when i got this back when the gba came out :)