Metropolis Street Racer

Most gear heads consider the Gran Turismo series to be the closest to recreating the driving experience in a game console. But a certain little game known as Metropolis Street Racer, or MSR for short, managed to become many a driving gamer's darling.

Featuring eye dropping graphics, especially in the environments, and a nice selection of cars, Metropolis Street Racer is the whole package. The game even comes with a number of radio stations which play original music.

But the show steal has to be the three beautifully rendered cities; including San Francisco, London and Tokyo. All of these cities are rendered in their full glory, which makes the game stand out. The level of detail is outstanding even by today's standards.

A free roam mode, unlocked later in the game, make Metropolis Street Racer a nearly perfect game. What keeps it from being truly wondrous? It's the so called Kudos system. MSR has a point scoring system called Kudos, which awards not "how fast you drive" but "how you drive fast." Unfortunately, the systems leaves much to be desired.

Another one of the wonders of the game is the internal clock system, which makes you play at the exact time of each city, making the experience far more virtual.

You don't have to be a fan of racing games to appreciate the quality of Metropolis Street Racer. The nuts and bolts of this game have lived on in the Project Gotham Racing series on the Xbox and Xbox 360. This is one of the best racing games on the Dreamcast, the type of game that raises the bar in almost every way.