Remembering classic games: Scud Race (1996)

The problem with licensing a proper motorsport championship for a racing game, no matter how desirable the cars are, is that as part of the agreement you’re usually also stuck with the circuits it races on. That includes all their tedious, real world concerns like spacious run-off areas, collision dampening tyre barriers and adequate bathroom facilities.

Sega’s arcade racer Scud Race proved there was another way. While it featured the cars from the short-lived BPR Global GT Series, which included race versions of the McLaren F1 and Ferrari F40, it had precisely zero interest in recreating places like Silverstone and Monza. Instead Scud Race had you drifting through a towering Aztec temple and across the cobbled courtyards of a vast Germanic castle. If you’d ever fantasised about leaving big rubber tyre marks all over a UNESCO world heritage site, this was your opportunity.

You might reasonably be wondering what the title Scud Race actually means and the answer is that ‘Scud’ is an acronym that stands for the somewhat clumsy ‘Sport Car Ultimate Drive’. Even Sega’s American division wasn’t convinced, though, politely requesting that the name be changed to Sega Super GT in the US to avoid unfortunate comparisons to the scud missiles that were, just a few years prior, blowing people to bits in the Gulf war.

Scud Race remains one of those lost arcade titles that was never ported to home systems. There was apparently a version in development for Sega’s Dreamcast console, but for whatever reason it never materialised. And with the game a tangle of defunct licences and high end manufacturers, it’s unlikely to ever appear again.

Still, what we can do is learn from its legacy, which is why we expect to see a track set in a Bavarian mountaintop fortress in the next Formula One game...