At least you get a decent selection of tracks. Races play out in seven different locales: Los Angeles, London, Monaco, Munich, Paris, Rome, and Turin. Each area includes around three to five different courses. You can't access all the courses or cars right away in the game's quick race or time attack modes, though. For that, you'll need to play the championship mode. Here you can enter a design series using a car you create in the styling studio, or you can enter various series using the licensed cars. Since the racing offers so little of interest, there's almost no incentive to keep slogging through these series.
The game's overall presentation is as poor as the racing, though the soundtrack is a little interesting. These days, it seems like nearly every racing game resorts to some style of techno music, and most of it ends up a forgettable waste of notes. That's only partially true of Supercar Street Challenge, which features yet more techno, but techno with a difference: Real bands like Cirrus composed the tracks. Overall, this isn't exceptional game music by any stretch of the imagination, but some of the cuts are pretty catchy, and they fit the onscreen action well. It's a step in the right direction.
The actual sound effects come off very poorly. Engines just have a simplistic whine that doesn't really scream "high-performance engine," but rather "generic sound effect." The same is true of screeching tires or the little bangs you hear when cars bump a wall or each other. The sound effects can actually hinder gameplay, too. When you play a racing game with cars set to manual transmission, you should usually know when to up-shift by sound alone. That's not always possible here because of the sloppy engine sound effects; you'll need to keep glancing at the tachometer. This weakness is doubly problematic because an apparent bug can prevent the cars from shifting out of first gear when set to automatic transmission. Needless to say, you won't win any races like that.
The promise of building a supercar goes unfulfilled here.
Supercar Street Challenge is a visual disappointment, too. All the exotic cars and locales just beg for the deluxe graphics treatment, but the game looks about two years out of date. It's utterly outclassed visually by games like NASCAR Racing 4, 4x4 EVO 2, and Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed. Particle effects like the smoke from spinning tires look unconvincing, and cars all feature an improbably glossy sheen. Overall, the drab textures and poorly detailed scenery offer precious little to catch your eye. You don't get a rearview mirror in the optional first-person view modes, either; instead you have to temporarily glance backward. On a happier note, city skyscrapers, particularly those lining the Los Angeles tracks, look realistically tall and imposing. If you weren't roaring down the road at 150mph, you'd want to crane your virtual neck to get a glimpse at their towering tops.
Supercar Street Challenge is an excellent opportunity wasted. Despite a roster of licensed cars that rank among the best in the world, you never really get to enjoy them. Instead you get an oversimplified arcade racer without a drop of the wildness or excitement that the best arcade racers offer. If you want more than half an hour's light entertainment from your racing games, detour well around this one.
