Enough of the superlatives, and on with some justifications: Rush 2049 started life as a little-known racer in the arcades, characterised by its bright futuristic settings and eye watering speed. Rush brought something a bit different to the genre which, at the time, was going through a rather stolid period. Unsurprisingly the Dreamcast version retains the tight arcade racing and style of its arcade brother. What is surprising is that the racing is actually the weakest part of the console port. Recognising the core arcade game has about as much life as a Butterfly, Midway decided to utilise the same game engine to produce five games in one.

First under the microscope is the race mode, which is highly accomplished and allows for up to four players to battle it out around a variety of circuits. All of the tracks are beautifully designed with a vibrant futuristic feel to them, not that you will get time to admire the scenery as everything whizzes past at an incredible rate of knots. Sadly, the frame rate does stutter occasionally in single player and this gets worse with more players, which detracts from - but doesn’t ruin - the experience. The circuits themselves are not the usual restrictive, linear affairs, allowing as they do a certain amount of deviation from the ‘normal’ path. Indeed, a lot of thought has gone into the design of each circuit, with shortcuts and switches which open up new paths and jumps to clear. To assist in the latter each car is equipped with a set of pop out wings, which are deployed by holding the B button. The wings don’t allow the cars to glide, but they do afford the player control over the pitch and roll of the car, essential for making sure the car lands on all fours and doesn’t explode.

The problem with race mode is that once the light and twitchy tail-happy handling of the cars has become second nature and the circuits have been played a few times, most of the shortcuts will have been unearthed and there really isn’t much challenge in beating the CPU cars, who invariably stick to the road proper. It’s only worth persevering with the race mode to unlock all of the circuits for use in the more entertaining practice sub-game.

The practice sub-game isn’t a game mode in its own right, but presents more of a challenge than the race mode itself. Essentially the same as race mode, but with no restrictions on the number of laps or time, and with no cars to race against, players could be forgiven for dismissing this option as a simple time trial add-on. Far from it - there are hours upon hours of gameplay lurking within. Scattered throughout all of the circuits in Rush are Gold and Silver coins to be collected. Some of these can be collected during the regular race mode just by making a small deviation off of the racing line, but most require careful manoeuvring and jumping to reach. Some are even hidden way up in the sky on top of buildings, or deep underground, and just working out the combination of jumps to reach them is a puzzle in itself. Collect enough of them and additional vehicles are unlocked. One small gripe is that an awful lot of them need to be netted before the player is rewarded with anything at all. To make things a little easier, coins aren’t just the preserve of the race mode: there are plenty more to be collected in the stunt mode.

Stunt mode at first appears to be a stupid and somewhat lazy addition to the game. Up to four players are dumped in an arena with some very big ramps to launch themselves off. Points are scored by performing tricks either in the air or during the landing. Here the wings really come into play and their operation warrants some further explanation. Whilst in the air there is no resistance to the vehicle’s rotation; for example if the wings are deployed and the analogue stick is moved to the left the vehicle will start to perform a left roll. Centre the analogue stick and the rate of roll will remain the same, to correct the roll it is necessary to apply a movement to the right to slow the roll rate. Extend this principle to rotation along two axes and it’s clear that controlling the car in the air requires a high degree of skill and patience. Patience, because it is critical to land the car on its wheels otherwise it explodes, and any points gained during the last trick are lost. Perhaps the only gripe with this mode is that landing can be quite random, with (seemingly) competent landings resulting in a fireball.

Despite the tricky control and, at times, harsh collision detection it is possible to become skilled at the stunt mode. Novice players will simply take off and jam the stick to one corner, pushing the car into an insane pirouette and hoping for the best. An experienced player will precisely move the car through a series of aerobatic moves and land it nearly perfectly, but not quite, in order to pick up as many tricks on the ground as possible. This is important, because it is the variety of the moves executed which dictates the score multiplier, so it is better to string together an array of single tricks than put in multiples of the same trick.

The game keeps a running total of the points scored in the stunt mode and unlocks further arenas with increasingly convoluted and twisted creations to test the player’s mettle. Once a million points have been reached, a whole new sub game is opened up called the Gauntlet which is the ultimate test of Rush car control. Only available to a single player, the Gauntlet is a nightmarish series of obstacles which have to be overcome one-by-one against a time limit. Reaching the end of the gauntlet is perhaps the ultimate badge of honour for a hardened Rush player.

Which leaves the battle mode, best described as Quake on wheels. Once again four players can go head-to-head in an arena, but this time the objective is to blast the be-Jesus out of each other. The arenas are all pretty small, which makes for some very frenetic and tight matches. There are a wide variety of weapons to pick up and some handy power-ups too. Although this is just a mode within a bigger game, it is one of the most well-realised vehicular combat games. Owing largely to the twitchy arcade handling, the cars can really been thrown around and turned on a sixpence, making the vehicles in other games of this type seem unresponsive and dull.

Rush offers a comprehensive package and, whilst it is not uncommon to find games which offer such variety, it is rare to find a gem of a game like San Francisco Rush 2049 where it not only has the width, but the depth too. Perhaps this is why even four years after its release the game is a perennial party game favourite that has many more years of racing, flipping and shooting left to offer.