Street Supremacy Review

Years ago, the Tokyo Xtreme Racer franchise was top dog on the Dreamcast. There was nothing so fun as racing around a city at night, flashing your headlights at challengers and ripping through dark highways to become supreme ruler of the streets. It was a good game that spawned a plethora of knock offs. Street Supremacy for PSP is developer Genki’s attempt to bring their much-loved series to Sony’s handheld – but sadly, the translation and time have been unkind to the core game, and in the end, it’s just not fun.

The game fails pretty much right from the moment it leaves the starting gate – with a physics engine that feels completely out of place in a modern racer. The fact that any sort of impact results in your car simply bouncing backwards a bit and losing a bit of speed just makes the game feel cheap. There’s no damage so to speak of, and so you’re never concerned about using the other cars as rails to guide you along the track. Start to lose control? Just bounce off a few guardrails or competitors and you’re back in line. And with a competitor AI that’s about as bright as a 10 watt bulb, it won’t be too hard to use them this way.

The basic gist of Street Supremacy is this – winning races gives you control over sectors of the city. The more sectors you control, the happier your gang of street-racing miscreants will be, making you the super-boss of the city. Lose races and you lose sectors, and become the lamest guy in town. As you win races, you also earn cash, which can be used to customize your ride. Customization is fairly basic, mostly some performance parts and pretty paint.

Production-wise, this game’s not going to even be nominated for any awards. The color palette is bland, textures are flat and there are almost no special effects. Then there’s the sound, or lack thereof. What soundtrack there is, you’ll barely notice, and none of the cars sound even vaguely real.

Lastly on the pain list is the basic uncontrollability of the cars themselves. It constantly feels like you’re racing on a grease covered sheet of ice, with the car switching between being uncontrollably squirrely and insanely bouncy. The lack of any sense of control of even the best vehicles in the game removes all semblance of fun from racing.

Street Supremacy would’ve done fairly well on consoles six years ago, but for a modern racer, it’s barely passable. The lack of any style, substance or polish makes this one you should skip, no matter how much you loved Tokyo Xtreme Racer.

— Craig Falstaff