About Taito Grand Prix: Eikou e no License

"Taito Grand Prix" is a pretty unusual and ambitious racing game for the Famicom. It is one of the earliest games featuring tuning and upgrading your car. And that is not all. Between the races you can move around on a kind of overworld and visit different cities. In the cities are shops where you can buy car parts and take part in a few races. You start the game with a mini-van, after finishing low rank races you can upgrade to a ferrari. Successfully beating all courses will give you access to a complete formula 1 season. Content-wise the game offers quite a lot for its time. Gameplay is the usual Out Run, Pole Position mix. The games has lots of courses, but sadly they are also repetitive of course. Even the Formula 1 courses take place in the usual low rank areas (desert scenario in Italy?). That damped my initial enthusiasm quite a bit. Controls are ok. So in the end "Taito Grand Prix" was partly ahead of its time and partly just another standard driving game when it comes to the driving action itself.