Seta is a name that will be familiar to SNES owners thanks to the firm's well-recieved Exhaust Heat / F1 Race of Champions titles and the Castlevania-inspired Nosferatu. During the N64 era the firm pledged its support to Nintendo with a raft of titles including Wild Choppers (Chopper Attack in the west) and a version of Tetris, and even went as far as to create an arcade platform based on the N64 called Aleck 64.
Seta's output diminished towards the end of the '90s due to financial problems, and one of the games which had to be sacrificed was the promising Rev Limit. Looking like a cross between Ridge Racer and Gran Turismo, it boasted a wide range of cars and some impressive graphics but never saw the light of day, despite rumours that development was going to be shifted to the 64DD add-on or released on the aforementioned Aleck 64.
While some presumed the title was largely unfinished, a prototype has been discovered which proves Rev Limit exists in a playable state. Interestingly, the title screen on this version states 1999 as the copyright date, which is surprising as many assumed that the game had been canned the year before.
Given the quality of the game, it's a real shame that we never got to play this on our N64 consoles.
[source retrocollect.com]
Comments 47
Another sad case of a game never reaching the Finish Line...
Looks amazing though for its time
Ah, gameplay video! This looks like something I would have picked up for sure back then, loved arcade racing games and there weren't many good non-Nintendo ones on the N64.
Looks real good for the n64
Hard to believe this is an N64 title, especially considering games like F1 World Grand Prix II looking nowhere near as tasty as this.
I remember reading about this in magazines at the time. Didn't realise it never came out.
Very good game engine considering its a N64 game.
Kinda weird that it got cancelled.
@Shiryu Did u like Crusin USA and that Volkswagen Beetle racing game? It's name escapes me at the moment. What about San Fransisco USA? I thought the 64 had some killer racing games. My love for the genre died with the 64.
@outsider83 Indeed, it did. I own "Bettle Adventure Racing" and "San Francisco Rush 2049", they're both brilliant. "Ridge Racer 64" is also one of my favorites of the whole franchise.
It's a shame they never saw fit to finish this because what's there is a very solid foundation for a potentially great little racer.
I didn't listen but that sure looked like tap, tap, tap gameplay. Why not use the analog stick. Maybe they didn't implement it yet? I so would've got this game though. I had just about every racer the N64 had.
I remember reading about this and then hoping for a release!
Then it got canned, I was devastated.
Had heaps of promise, now I'm even more saddened after watching this.
Still, I have Chopper Attack CIB and it's a great game.
@Shiryu
Same!
I have all those games you mentioned still complete, great racers.
I also have the rare Aussie version of Beetle Adventure Racing called HSV Adventure Racing, same game just with Holden cars replacing the VW's, oh, and a god awful Aussie accent voice over guy.
If it was purely a contest of the best looking racer on N64, then World Driver Championship would win hands down. But the controls weren't all that, unfortunately.
This game looks okayish, but no more than that. And lol at "randam"...
@KiWiiU ! I had no clue that even existed. I shall dig into that. One of the missing gems from my N64 collection is actually an Australia only game: the PAL version of "Starcraft 64".
@Shiryu
Yeah, it has a slightly different cover too.
I'm lucky enough to actually have bought StarCraft 64 for $80 Australian about 3 years ago, now it sells for $1200!
I'm collecting CIB N64 games, PAL Australian versions, 140 down, become an obsession.
I hope that the owner of this prototype releases the rom. Then we can at least enjoy it on Everdrives and the like.
Doesn't look like it approaches World Driver Championship from a technical standpoint, but nice graphics just the same and definitely above average.
Test Drive Rally was the N64 racer that I was most sad to see cancelled. Looked great in the screenshots that outlets like IGN released and reportably played and ran very well.
And what makes it all the more tantalizing was that this developer behind Test Drive Rally, before EA acquired them and they became a full-time Battlefield studio, was the developer behind RalliSport Challenge 1 & 2.
With how well those turned out, it makes me even more confident that this one was also going to be an excellent game. Hopefully a playable prototype of that one surfaces as well.
I hate it when I work on something and then it doesn't get used or the project changes and that work is no longer required. I cannot imagine how devastating it must be when you put months, or even years, into making a game that never gets released. Especially if it is down to financial troubles rather than the game being of poor quality.
@AlexOlney I'm sure I would have picked this up at the time, I played basically all the racers on 64.
Funny that so many of you mention the game looking tasty... It may well be 2016 nostalgi-o-vision, but I felt like it looked like a good PS1 game! In my mind, World Driver Championship looked much nicer. I know this was unfinished, too, but it looks light years away from being fun! That car handling and awful collision detection, with AI cars scraping along the sides at 60mph...
Still, great to see a dev kit being used for a game that I didn't even hear about
The N64 was in no short supply of racers. It looks like it still had a ton of work to be done, but I was quite happy with the quality of my N64 racers, RUSH, MK, DKR, BEETLE Adventure Racing, TOP GEAR RALLY, RR64, Fzero64, Excitebike, extreme G etc....
I sometimes wonder if Nintendo have some kind of hatred of racing sims. The SNES had my favourite racers of its era and the N64 never really embraced 'realistic' racers. Even 20 years on I don't really know of any decent racers on Nintendo besides a few NFS games.
This looks brilliant.
I wonder if anyone could finish it and release it as homebrew.
(Don't laugh, there are many Intellivision games to which that treatment has been given).
Surprisingly good Drop Distance for Nintendo 64.
My favorite game of course for Nintendo 64 is Ridge Racer 64, but I really wish this game would have been completed.
@outsider83 San Francisco Rush and rush 2 on n64 did not age well.
Ridge racer 64 on the other hand holds up great. Still very playable today and the graphics are quite good
Playing Rush 2 and RR64 back to back is like night and day.
@KiWiiU I got 52 CIB PALNintendo 64 cartridges. I ddidn't collected them, these were all bought back in the day. I dare not even look up today's prices.
I remember this game. I remember that they were really struggling with the N64 hardware and had to ask Nintendo for technical help on this game and just ran out of time. For years I've been trying to remember the name of this game to as I couldn't remember what happened to it.
@samuelvictor Whether or not there's a lack of these genres on the N64 also kind of depends on your tastes or your personal perception of what quality stands for, but there certainly are more than enough titles available in both genres:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nintendo_64_racing_games
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/nintendo/n64/the-n64-fighting-game-library
@mid_55 Totally agreed on World Driver Championship: that looks many times as good as this. Besides being the best looking racer, it's arguably also one of the best looking games on the N64 in general.
@Danrenfroe2016 San Francisco Rush 2049 looks better than Ridge Racer, but for the best looking racer on N64, look no further than World Driver Championship...
How can one mention Seta without Bio Force Ape (its most famous game that was never even released)?
Weird watching an N64 game running at a decent frame rate although realise the game is unfinished!
I remember reading about this game back in the day. Cool to see it in action now
There is an ad for Rev Limit in the manual for the Japanese N64 game St. Andrews, which is also made by Seta. Must have been close to a release.
@samuelvictor True, the other platforms, or rather: the PS1, had a lot more racers and fighting games, but a lot of them were rubbish or of the a dime a dozen type.
And personally, I don't care much for reviews. I use them only as a minor indication, and more to see pictures and/or videos, and then I'll make up my own mind by play-testing it in my regular game shop or at a friend's house, if he already happens to have the game.
My favorite realistic/semi-realistic racers on the N64 were V-Rally, Top Gear Rally (all three, and they really weren't as bad as reviews apparently made them out to be) World Driver Championship (even though it had a steep learning curve due to the less than friendly car physics and controls), Formula One Grand Prix 1 & 2, Beetle Adventure Racing, Off Road Challenge, MRC: Multi-Racing Championship and F1 Racing Championship.
As far as fighters go, I've personally always been partial to Mortal Kombat, no matter which game, even though some were significantly better than others, but for a solid fighting experience on the N64 I can personally recommend the Fighter's Destiny games. Great mechanics, good gameplay. Not much of a looker, but back then, Tekken on PSX wasn't much better, and I also played that regularly at a friend's house.
I thought that Fighter's Destiny was a more than decent replacement for people that only owned an N64, and as a former judoka/karateka, I also liked the points system and rules in the games.
Killer Instinct was a good one for the 2D fighter fans, as well as the Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and Flying Dragon is one to buy if you either have an NTSC system or a region converter available.
And personally, I also rather enjoyed the Xena Warrior Princess game. Decent fighter, decent graphics, and some interesting special powers for each character. And back then we also had the TV show so it was cool to be able to play a game based on that.
Custom Robo and Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. were also decent, if somewhat more complicated due to the somewhat over-complicated control schemes, due to all the various weapons and so on.
But all in all, more than enough to do on the N64. And then there were also the arcade racers, so I've had more than enough fun with the system, and to this day still have many favorite titles on there.
This looks surprisingly decent. I remember following the story of this in N64 Magazine (UK). They had still shots first and were drooling over it, then they played it at (I think) Spaceworld 1997 and were crushingly disappointed by its awful framerate. Given the N64 was struggling for racing games at the time Nintendo started helping with its development but then it disappeared. This looks better than N64 mag suggested so I guess work had continued on it.
It's also odd to think the N64 was short of racing games at one point as it nearly drowned under them eventually though as @samuelvictor says, not that many realistic car racers to compete with Gran Turismo, TOCA, Ferrari F355 etc.
@ThanosReXXX seriously? You like 2049 over rr64?
@samuelvictor I'd have to take your word for it. I don't know if the UK situation was different from mainland Europe, and I didn't buy my N64 at launch, but months later.
As for the ports of games arriving later: True, but most of them were far superior to their PSX counterparts, both in graphics and in controls. Good examples of that are Ridge Racer, Hydro Thunder and WipeOut.
And I truly hated the PSX's "heat wave effect" that always occurred on the 3D graphics. The N64 had rock solid 3D, with none of those shenanigans, which was due to it having floating-point calculation, whereas the PSX had fixed-point calculation, making 3D graphics "jump" and ripple.
Interesting article about that:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4111/dirty_coding_tricks.php?page=3
@Danrenfroe2016 Yes. I prefer the controls, and besides the obvious benefits of it being able to use the Expansion Pak, it also had more to offer in track variety and vehicles.
@samuelvictor I did preorder Ocarina of Time, although I didn't get the golden cartridge...
And I did like quite a few PSX games, regardless of the heat wave effect, AND the textures made up from ministeck tiles, but I never bought one. A lot of my friends had one, so if I wanted to play Crash Bandicoot or the other parts of WipeOut, then I would just visit them.
And nowadays I just run my favorite PSX games on my modded Wii. Without the heat wave effect...
And my model 1 Dreamcast can also play PSX games and makes them look quite a bit better, courtesy of Bleemcast.
@samuelvictor Here you go then:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/wii64-and-wiisx-recompiled-improved-usb-support.295936/
@samuelvictor And there were indeed three "commercially" released Bleemcast games, but after the cease and desist from Sony, homebrewers took over and made several versions of Bleemcast that worked with nearly every PSX game. The only difference is that the three original Bleemcast games were discs with Bleem included, so they auto-booted into PSX mode, and the homebrew versions are only available as separate boot discs, so you need burnt copies of PSX games to run them.
That Wii version uses virtual discs, so ISO files on a hard drive. Faster loading and cleaned up textures. And you can use the classic controller to mimic the PSX controller...
The game forums I mentioned to you a couple of times before have more than enough info on both programs.
@samuelvictor You're welcome. Do you have a LinkedIn profile, by the way? I'll look you up on IMdb to boost your profile, but connecting on LinkedIn could do us both some good somewhere in the future...
@samuelvictor No rush, was just wondering. Here's a couple of vids on WiiSX:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCuQIhOhpFw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFD7LiFCIkk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVh0Md9PlPM
Third one has a compatibility list in the description...
And be sure to skip the "download the emulator from the homebrew channel" part if it's mentioned in any of the videos, because that is the standard, unmodded emulator that doesn't work with external HDD's. The rest of the instructions are the same.
I've found that many of the big titles work almost flawlessly, so Crash Bandicoot games, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear, WipeOut, Ridge Racer, the Spyro games and so on play like a dream.
Here's my list of PSX games currently on my HDD:
https://s16.postimg.org/lrhh9vjlx/Image1.jpg
On the HDD, make a folder called WiiSX, and in that folder, make another two folders, named isos and bios.
In the bios folder, put the two Playstation bios files called SCPH1001.bin and SCPH1002.bin and in the isos folder the games, obviously. In bin format, as you can see in the picture.
You can also see a cue sheet folder there, but that is not really needed. I just have it there for any optional disc burning purposes. I saw some tutorials mentioning putting the cue sheets in the folder with the isos, but they work just fine without them.
Now that your HDD is prepared, you can do the rest of the tutorial for the Wii and the SD card files, and skip the part where it says to put files on SD that you have now already put on the HDD...
Good luck and let me know when you've got it up and running.
@samuelvictor And yes, I use an old OS on my PC meant for emulating and downloading purposes.
WAY more compatible in a lot of cases...
@samuelvictor And be sure to visit The ISO zone and look for the Triforce bundle. It's the GameCube Arcade games that were never published on any console. They do work with Nintendont, however...
@samuelvictor All 5 games are great. There's two arcade Mario Kart games, the arcade version of F-Zero GX, which is called F-Zero AX, and then there are two Virtua Striker games. The iso zone has the entire list in one bundle.
And use this site for information on the titles and correct names for the folders: http://www.gametdb.com
The games go in the same folder as the GameCube games (folder on the hard drive called "games" in which all separate game folders should go by name and number. I'll email you a picture of my folder later today)
@samuelvictor And it's actually not just Nintendo hardware: it's also partially based on the Naomi board from Sega. It's a custom arcade board, which makes it all the more special that a homebrew program designed for GameCube games can actually run them.
And maybe you already know, but the Triforce name comes from the three companies involved: Nintendo, Sega, Namco.
Fun fact: what you will instantly notice on the Mario Kart games is that the sprites/karts are bigger and the tracks are completely different with the weirdest power ups and the graphics in general are slightly better than GameCube's.
@samuelvictor Well, actually there were: there are newer games since 2013, that run on another arcade board (called System ES3), but these are WAY beyond the GameCube's capacity, so I guess we'll have to wait until there's a ES3 emulator for Wii U or NX...
The latest Mario Kart game on that newer board:
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