Neo Racer

Summary
Neo Racer (ネオレーサー) was a game released on December 14th, 1984 for the Nintendo Famicom (任天堂ファミコン) in Japan, later seeing a release on the NES in 1986. The game did fairly well and went on to spawn many sequels, spin-offs, 2 manga series, and a successful anime.

Development
Neo Racer began in the head of Yoshioka Koizumi, a new designer at Ocean Games. The company was finishing up a new game called Bumper Balloons (バンパーバルーン). While the company was polishing Bumper Balloons, they created a new team to develop new ideas for a game. While at work, Yoshioka was looking out of his office window, contemplating different game ideas. He was looking down at the roads, and the cars filling those roads. His eye caught a very popular car in Japan at the time, the Mitsubishi Starion ESI-R (TSi). This car ignited his imagination, with him immediately drawing up the car on a piece of sketch paper. He believed that the car looked futuristic and imagined a futuristic car game. But what type of game would it really be? As Koizumi was a massive fan of the Super GT races, he decided that the game would be a futuristic racing game. He presented his ideas to his team and they loved it.

The game officially began development on June 22nd, 1982. The game originally was being developed for the NEC PC-8801mkII per request of the companies higher-ups. However, the game's console was changed when the company Nintendo (任天堂) caught wind of the development of the game. Nintendo offered to publish the game unless they released the game on their console, the Famicom and that they signed a 3-year contract which meant that Ocean Games (海洋ゲーム) couldn't develop any games for any competing hardware or couldn't create their own hardware if so inclined.

Ocean Games didn't have many problems in the development for the game. The main issue for the developers was restarting development for the Famicom after Nintendo made their publishing offer. The game had already been about 50% completed at the time Nintendo made their offer. This added a whole year to the game's development, as it was originally going to release on October 23rd of 1983.

Launch
The game received good scores and sold around 50k units in its first week on the market. Eventually, those sales numbers grew to be around 500k units sold overall. The game had such a good initial reaction, that the Japanese gaming magazine Hobby's Jump (ホビーズジャンプ ) made a manga about the game, marking the first appearance of the now series staple character Jet. The manga lasted from the year 1984-1988 when the magazine shut down.

Cups
This game would have 9 different cups for the player to go for. Each cup would take place in a different setting. Each cup would also have 3 races attributed to it. The 3 races attached to each cup would get progressively harder as the races would go on.

Neo Cup
The Neo Cup (ネオカップ) - The first cup presented to the player. This would take the place of the tutorial cup in every single Neo Racer game. This first cup would take place in Neo City. The color scheme would be black and purple.

Stellar Cup
The Stellar Cup (恒星カップ) - The second cup would be a beginner's cup. Everything would be a little bit faster than in the Neo Cup. This cup would take place in the Stellar Center. The color scheme would be dark blue and yellow.

Metro Cup
The Metro Cup (メトロカップ) - The third cup would be an intermediate cup. As with the Stellar Cup, everything would be a little bit faster than the last cup. This cup would take place in Metro Metropolis. The color scheme for Metro Metropolis would be neon green and black.

Jet Cup
The Jet Cup (ジェットカップ) - The fourth cup would be an advanced cup. This cup would take place in Jet City. The color scheme for Jet City would be of red and black. (City name is not connected with the main character of series)

Callista Cup
The Callista Cup (カリスマカップ) - The fifth cup would be considered "Advanced II". This cup would take place in Callista Metropolis. Callista Metropolis' color scheme would be orange and black.

Kocros Cup
The Kocros Cup (コクロスカップ) - The sixth cup would be considered "Hard I". This cup would take place in Kocros City. The color scheme for Kocors City would be light blue and black.

Zorro Cup
The Zorro Cup (ゾロカップ) - The seventh cup would be considered "Hard II". This cup would take place in Zorro Megalopolis. Zorro Megalopolis would have a color scheme of white and black.

Neo Cup II
The Neo Cup II (ネオカップ2) - The eighth cup would be considered extreme. This cup would take the player back to Neo City but would include a whole new track, connected with the original track. This would be the fastest track that you would be able to see at the start of the game. The Neo City II's color scheme would be purple and black.

X Cup
X Cup (xカップ) - The ninth cup would be considered "Extreme II". This cup would take place in an underground lair called "X's Lair". You'd only be able to unlock this cup through completing the game 100%. This would be amazingly fast. X's Lair would have a rainbow and black color scheme.

Gameplay
The gameplay for the game would be of your average racer, save for the boost feature. The game would utilize all of the buttons the console provided including the d-pad, A and B buttons, and select and start.

Controls
Boost - The A-button would be used to boost. You'd simply have to tap the A-button once for the feature to work.

Hand-Brake - The B-button would be used for the hand-brake. For the hand-brake to work, you'd have to hold down the B-button and even then it wouldn't immediately happen.

Moving Forward - To move forward, you'd have to hold down the top D-Pad button.

Moving Left and Right - To move left, you'd have to hold down the left D-Pad button. To move right, you'd have to hold down the right D-Pad button.

Gradually Slowing - To gradually slow down, you'd hold down the bottom D-Pad while not holding down any other button.

Drifting - To drift, you'd have to hold either the left or right D-Pad buttons and the bottom D-Pad buttons.

Modes
There would be two different modes in the game: singleplayer and multiplayer.

Graphics
Neo Racer's graphics would be fairly advanced for the Famicom. These graphics would be more advanced than Super Mario Bros. (スーパーマリオブラザーズ. ) but not as advanced as something like Super Mario Bros. 3 (スーパーマリオブラザーズ. 3) per se.

Every car would have a slightly different aesthetic, usually just a different color. However, the one car that the player would drive would look slightly different than the other cars, as it would be a little bit more angular.

Every different cup would have a different color scheme, but every race that would be in the same cup would all look identical. (Check the "Cups" section for what all those color-schemes for the different cups would be).

Merchandise
There was much merchandise released for this game over the years, including, but not limited to: a mini-arcade machine, a manga series, a plushie, etc.