TOCA Touring Car Championship - Game Boy Color - Review

TOCA Touring Car Championship is a simulation racing game that was originally released for the Playstation and PC back in 1997. Based on the British Touring Car Championship season of that same year, the game puts you in the driving seat of one of 8 competing teams and lets you race around 9 famous circuits in order to be crowned the British Touring Car Champion. The game was very well received at the time and was widely considered as the best simulation racer available at least until the release of Gran Turismo the following year.

In the year 2000 a new version the game was made for Nintendo’s then booming handheld, the Game Boy Color.

 All 8 fully licenced cars and 9 tracks from the console version made the transition however to work within the limitations of the 8-bit machine the behind the car camera was switched to an isometric viewpoint such as that used in classic racers like RC Pro Am.

The game’s graphics do a good job of conveying the action with cars that look nicely detailed and varied. There are some decent particle effects and weather effects too, and the cars will leave skid marks as they race around the nicely detailed tracks. Cones are liberally placed alongside the circuit and can even be ploughed through, which will send them flying in all directions. In fact the game’s manual even tells you to do so as it states ‘Have fun with the cones. They were made for that one purpose only.’ (Don’t mind if I do, Codemasters. Don’t mind if I do.)

The footage probably doesn’t do it justice but the whole game is very pleasing to eye and looks great on the GBC’s small, sharp screen.

Sadly, aside from the great title screen music the sound design in TOCA is severely lacking. The car engines sound pretty awful and unfortunately it’s the only soundtrack you’re gonna get during the racing action. It’s less like being at Brands Hatch and more like sticking your head in a beehive.

 The games controls are exactly as you’d expect, A accelerates, B brakes and left and right on the d-pad steers.  It’s a simple as racing games get, however I can almost guarantee that when you attempt to tackle your first bend in TOCA your car will comically slide off the track and eventually come to stop in a neighbouring county. Don’t feel too bad though, it will happen a lot.

You see, Codemasters clearly had a vision in mind when porting their simulation racer to the 8-bit handheld. The simulation bit stays.

The cars move at a blistering pace reaching top speeds of 150mph in a matter of seconds, but like real cars at that speed, one wrong movement from the driver can end in disaster.

When I first tried the game I found it absolutely unplayable. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t keep my car on the track, if I took a bend too fast I would spin, if I took it too slow I would spin, if put so much as an inch of tire on the grass I would spin.

It doesn’t help that the game’s first track, Donnington GP is one of the hardest in the entire game. It’s a long gruelling lap full of challenging bends, tight corners, an impossibly tight chicane, and finally culminates in a two consecutive hairpin turns.

Spin, Spin, Spin.

I hated it.

But for some reason I kept on playing. In fact couldn’t stop playing. I found myself lost in the game’s time trial mode where you can endlessly race against your own ghost. The ghost represents your best lap of the current session and gives you a constant barometer of where you can eat away precious seconds of lap time. You might creep ahead after the first turn only to be overtaken again in the second; it’s a constant battle that encourages you to improve. Every time I managed to beat my ghost I felt a huge sense of achievement but at the same time and new challenge is set, and more time needs to be found, and less mistakes need to be made.

I started to find ways of braking later, accelerating earlier, I aimed to hit the apex of each corner, I found racing lines that would enable me take bends without lifting off, I started to find landmarks on the track to use as braking points, I started to turn into corners before I could even see them.

The game had forced me think like a racing driver. Pretty impressive stuff for a humble Game Boy Color game.

Only once I’d thoroughly learnt the nuances of the track was I ready to actually race against the AI cars.

The game has a single race mode and a championship mode. The championship mode has two difficulty settings, normal and hard, and takes you through 24 rounds of wheel to wheel racing over the games 9 tracks. If you manage to accumulate the most points over the season you will be crowned as the TOCA champion.

Each round begins with a brutal qualifying session where you have one attempt at a lap to determine your place on the grid. If you haven’t memorised the track perfectly then you can be sure of starting from the back.

Luckily the actual races are a lot more forgiving as the other cars generally slow each other down as they inevitably knock into one another. Touching the bumper of another car will often leave your car stopping dead, so it’s essential to find enough space when overtaking. Devious drivers will be able to use this technique to their advantage as cutting other cars up can cause them to stop and giving you a bit of breathing space on the track.  

Assuming you’ve earned enough points in the race to continue on, the next round will be on the same track. You’ll have another qualifying lap to earn your grid position and then it’s time to battle it out in another race.

If all goes well again you’ll finally earn yourself a savepoint to continue from. Sadly the game doesn’t have a battery save so you’ll need a way of jotting down the painfully long passwords. You can continue straight on from here but it’s best to just see what the next track is and return to the Time Trial mode to get practicing again.

Overall TOCA is an impressively deep experience for a small hand held game, but not one that will be appreciated by everyone. Some will rise to the challenge and find a game of pure driving pleasure whereas others will pass it over for a more arcadey racer. The game can be picked up on eBay for a few quid so if you like what you’ve heard, then why not give it a try?

I’ll leave you with this taken from the games manual which I think sums things up quite nicely.

“Like in real life, controlling your vehicle is real easy. The hard part comes when you have to master it. Only practice, practice and more practice will help you achieve perfection.”