WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - Jaguar XJ220
Publisher: JVC Developer: Core Design Release: 1992
About a month after I bought my shiny new Sega CD, I was at a bit of a loss. I'd worked through all the cases in Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. I'd managed to complete Sol-Deace. I'd gotten all the mileage I was going to get out of the four-game compilation disc that came with the system. And I'd listened to Chubb Rock's Lost in a Storm way too many times.
But I didn't know what to buy. I'd played a bunch of Sewer Shark and Night Trap already, and none of the other launch games really seemed all that interesting to me. I was lamenting this fact one day at my local game shoppery when the man behind the counter suggested I give Jaguar XJ220 a spin. As this man happened to be my best friend and we had almost identical game tastes, I bought the game then and there.
Gearheads might recognize the name Jaguar XJ220. It was the world's fastest production car at the time of its release, holding the production car record on the famous Nurburgring Nordschleife from 1992 -2000, and setting a top speed of over 217 mph at a speed test that first year. This car was a monster – built to remind drivers of Jaguar's racing glory days in the 1950s and 60s.
So, naturally, British developer Core Design snapped up the rights to build a racing game around this homegrown automotive perfection. And what a game they built.
The goal in Jaguar XJ220 is to run one of two championship series, not only to be the top driver on the podium at the end of the season, but also to help carry the Jaguar name to a manufacturer's championship as well. Up against you and your teammate are nine other teams, each unofficially representing other famous carmakers such as Lamborghini, Porsche and Ferrari. Interestingly enough, the version of Jaguar XJ220 released on the Commodore Amiga platform actually features the proper names of the rival manufacturers, but they were changed in the Sega CD version.
The first racing option is Grand Prix mode, where you compete in a series of races all over the world. Here each race is three laps long, and the only thing the driver has to worry about besides going fast is taking car of his car – any major collisions will cause body damage that has to be repaired using some of the money won in each race. Normal wear and tear on engine parts, transmission and tires must also be repaired eventually.
The other series – the one spent the most time in – is World Tour. Here you start in Britain (naturally) and make your way to events in 15 other countries as you compete for your championship. On top of maintaining your XJ220 as in the Grand Prix mode, you must win enough money to afford the cost of travel from one country to the next. There's a level of strategy here, too, as the distance between countries affects the cost – travelling from Britain to France is quite cheap, while travelling from Britain to Japan or Brazil is prohibitively expensive.
It's possible to set a higher number of laps in World Tour mode as well. You can race as few as three and as high as nine in each event. Running any more than three laps in a race also brings fuel consumption into play, which is one of the things I absolutely loved about this game back in the day. Do you make regular stops for fuel and play it safe or try to get a leg up by short pitting or gambling on only taking on exactly as much fuel as you think you'll need to finish the race?
My absolute favourite bit, though, is that all of this can be done in two-player split screen. My brother isn't a big game fan, but this is one title where I have vivid memories of the two of us playing through entire series, both trying to work together to get our team a great result, but also competing to be tops within the Jaguar camp in each event.
Visually, Jaguar XJ220 is no slouch. This game put the Sega CD through its paces. A tonne of roadside objects streak by as you hurtle down the smoothly-scaling tarmac and slide into each new turn. This game looked closer to something you'd see on Sega's System 16 arcade board (home to games like OutRuna and After Burner) than a standard Genesis game.
Capping it all off was a full track editor. So if and when you got sick of the 30+ tracks included in Jaguar XJ220, you could create your own using a very controller-friendly interface and the full roadside object set from all 16 countries in the game.
Jaguar XJ220 is the total package. And it still holds up very well even today, which isn't something a lot of racing games can claim. It was definitely a hidden gem of the Sega CD launch library, and I still count it as one of my favourite games of all time.