RC Pro-Am: 1HN Racing

Back in my adolescent days, I owned an NES console, along with 15 or so games. Most of the time, I was entertained by those 15 or so games, but there were times when I wanted to try other games, so I'd often borrow games from my friends Ed and Brian. One game I borrowed from Brian was RC Pro-Am.

The premise behind RC Pro-Am was simple: take control of a red radio-controlled car as you zip around a track riddled with various power-ups, oil slicks, speed-boost strips, and other road hazards. All the while, you can use bombs or missiles to hold your rivals at bay as you strive to cross the finish in third place or better (fourth place meant elimination). It was a relatively simple game except for one wrinkle: as it is with controlling RC (radio-controlled) cars, if the car comes toward you, you have to steer left to go right, and vice versa. Okay, this is a bad explanation... Imagine this: the RC car is coming at you and you want to make it go to your left, so you press right on your control stick, right? Wrong. You press left because you have to pretend that you are driving from the perspective of the RC car... Get it?

That's okay -- my sons don't...

My wife and I got RC Pro-Am, along with several other NES games, for our sons for Christmas, along with a Gen-X Dual Station clone console. I initially thought that my boys would enjoy this racing simulation, but I found that the concept of oncoming perspective was too much to overcome. Thus, after 10 minutes, both of my boys asked to switch games, obviously frustrated at the idea that you had to press left to go right.

In any case, once you overcome this mental hurdle, RC Pro-Am is a whole lot of fun, especially when the computer turns on the cheese and gives the yellow RC car sudden bursts of supersonic speed -- and, the only way to stop this yellow demon is to blast it to bits... repeatedly. Despite this, RC Pro-Am is addictive and is easy to pick up, play for a while, and then put down with the satisfaction of having gotten the "need for speed" (and destruction) out of your system.