Remembering classic games: Le Mans 24 (1997)

There have been many attempts to capture the world’s most famous endurance race in video game form and all of them have had to grapple with the problem that no one wants to risk deep vein thrombosis to play a racing game for 24 hours straight. With that in mind, the arcade, where you usually get a meagre minute and 30 seconds or so of gameplay in exchange for your shiny pound coin, seems like a terrible fit for Le Mans.

That didn’t stop Sega attempting it in 1997, though. Le Mans 24 certainly isn’t as well known as Daytona USA or Sega Rally, but its format was totally unique. As soon as the arcade cabinet was switched on in the morning, the race was live, complete with transitions between day and night and variable weather conditions. Players who dropped a coin in the slot started an authentic endurance race ‘stint’ from the pits, with the straightforward objective of passing as many cars as possible.

And what cars: Le Mans 24 was fortunate to coincide with an era of GT racing that featured race-bred versions of the Ferrari F40, McLaren F1 and Porsche 911 GT1. Not content with a stellar crop of contemporary machinery, Sega also threw in the rotary powered Mazda 787B, the dominant Sauber C9 prototype and the classic Porsche 917K from the 1971 Le Mans movie. What’s the collective noun for a group of unicorns?

While it captured the spirit of Le Mans, where the ‘live race’ concept fell down was that in multiplayer, you were sharing the same track but essentially running entirely different races. You could even end up in a baffling situation where two or more players could appear in the exact same race position. Certainly makes Formula One’s occasional struggles with officiating look trivial by comparison...