Not being one of my favorite genres, every time I went to an arcade I couldn’t resist playing a game of racing. Because being in the cabin, with the steering wheel, pedals and others, the control and the sensation of speed was more realistic, so it was a more fun experience than at home.
Konami’s GTI Club was one of the ones I enjoyed the most in the mid-nineties. It was an arcade easy to see around the halls and in front of which you wanted to drop a few coins. That is why I was happy about its update for PS3 in 2008. The pity is that it ended up being withdrawn in 2012. That is why we want to re-analyze it.
Welcome to the French Riviera, cuca version
GTI Club: Rally Côte d’Azur , the original from 1996, was a very minimalist arcade racing game. In the broadest sense of the word. Because it was moving away from simulation and because we drove small cars, such as the Austin Mini Cooper, the Lancia Delta or the Renault 5, among icons of other times.
Its environment was also peculiar, set on the Côte d’Azur, with a small coastal city on which we could run without any worries as the traffic was cut off for us (like the Monaco circuit in F1, but to another type scale), except when we competed at a difficult level, which did include vehicles following their daily routine .
There were different routes, depending on the level of difficulty, and not a few shortcuts that it was convenient to control to shorten the opponent enough seconds if we wanted to win, especially when we depended on checkpoints for time.
At the beginning it required a bit of practice due to the tremendous unevenness of the circuit, with a very steep climb after passing the local gas station and a falling jump when facing the descent where it was inevitable to get badly stopped if we did not control the braking. And the machine, in this sense, did not forgive. But also for the civilians we could hit hard.
GTI Club needed little to get hooked
At the time this Konami classic came out, we enjoyed great representatives of more arcade speed, such as SEGA’s own SEGA Rally or Namco’s Ridge Racer. And it is precisely with the latter that he shares the same spirit of his circuit by reusing the only one that exists in various ways based on the level of difficulty and its demanding mirror mode.
It was, without a doubt, a game to play fast games, but to which we could easily get hooked due to the undeniable attractiveness of its environment. There was something special about it that is still valid today, perhaps also for getting out of the usual cars with luxury features and for the simple pleasure of driving through an attractive city, beating the clock and squeezing its shortcuts.
In the update of PS3 ( GTI Club + Rally Côte d’Azur ) its multiplayer increased from four to eight people ( online , yes), including both the classic career mode and a very special one with a bomb in between, such as if it were a pilla-pilla with hot potato. The laughts. It was a shame what happened with this version when its license expired in 2012 and disappeared from the PlayStation Store, except for the lucky ones who bought it before that happened.
Luckily he was also accompanied in a free way to explore his small town without worrying about anything, just run and calmly see each and every one of his shortcuts. The best way to practice before seriously considering competing in Hard and Very Hard (Mirror) modes. However, Konami could not resist taking a slice in 2009 of the DLC to include content from the subsequent GTI Club Supermini Festa! recreational, so it was very fair entry.
Has it stood the test of time well?
Yes, although the lack of content weighs on him . The same thing happens to the aforementioned Ridge Racer from Namco: as much as we liked it and squeezed it thoroughly in its day, today it would be unthinkable to get a game of these characteristics with a single circuit. But the affection that we continue to have for GTI Club + Rally Côte d’Azur makes us forgive it for those shortcomings as it is a great driving arcade.
GTI Club
| Platforms | Arcade and PS3 (analyzed version) |
|---|---|
| Multiplayer | Yes, online (up to eight players) |
| Developer | Sumo Digital (PS3) |
| Company | Konami |
| Launch | 1996 (Arcade) and 2008 (PS3) |
| Price | Is discontinued |
The best
- The undeniable appeal of the Côte d’Azur
- Being able to pilot such mythical racing cars
- 100% arcade spirit
Worst
- The jump before the gas station … Grr!
- Just a single circuit to compete
- To be discontinued from PSN in 2012
