Product Description

Participate in the World's most exclusive racing series--where driving makes the difference. F355 Challenge will take the player right into the action of the Ferrari Challenge series. Head-to-head multiplayer racing, using a state of the art "engine" to drive the ultimate race experience allows the player to become involved in the passion and emotion of the Ferrari experience.

With six courses, three levels and three modes of play, this game provides all the challenges and replay-ability you could want. The six race courses are in exact detail with corners, peaks, valleys and the grandstands in the right places and even details such as landscaping and advertising signs on the fences are present, as if you where really there.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13772 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Acclaim
• Released on: 2000-10-20
• Platform: Sega Dreamcast
• Number of items: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Ferrari 355 Challenge puts you at the helm of one the of most cherished cars of all time; racing around six glorious race courses this game is all about realism.

With three racing modes--training, driving and racing--the learning curve presented allows you to slowly ease yourself into what is a very real and very hard racing game.

The Training Mode--where its advisable to start off--gives you help and guidance through voice and visual commands, showing you braking and gearshift timings, as well as the ideal driving line. The Driving Mode, however, allows you to practice to your hearts content, without the omnipotent voice in the background, and the Race Mode, of course, is where all the action takes place and involves you racing against other F355s to become the F355 champion.

As now standard in driving games, all the usual stunts and tricks are present--championship mode, versus mode and cable modes are all here--but the nice addition is the network option, allowing you the chance to connect via Dreamarena and register your driving data. Once done, you can then enjoy a time attack against two to 16 other virtual players.

With Yu Suzuki, Sega's leading game producer behind the helm, this game comes up with the goods that it promises and although at times is can be gruellingly difficult, this game certainly lives up to its title. --Stuart Miles

Customer Reviews

Ferrari! Need I say more
Absolutely fantastic. This is the greatest racing game ever made and most appropriately features the most well known of car manufacturers, Scuderia Ferrari, with the game featuring just one of its cars, the F355. The graphics from the arcade original have been expertly transported to the Dreamcast with very little in the way of detail beeing lost and with a constant 60 frames a second of silky smoothness retained, makes it the best looking racing game ever.The gameplay is the hardest you'll find in any game with almost real life computer intelligence making you have to learn how to operate the gears and practice for hours hours before your even able to stay on the track.You do get a variety of assistance panels that help with stability control, traction control,ABS and Intelligent braking but any true racing game fan should turn these off and give temselves the ultimate challenge .This game is for the true racing game fanatic and should definetely tide you over until Metropolis street racer arrives.Excellent.

Pure class
Ok, to start with, let me say that this was the game that made me buy my Dreamcast.

Lets get it straight from the beginning, this game isn't supposed to be a quick arcade style thrill - check out Crazy Taxi for that. This game is a racing simulation, and an excellent one at that. It's aimed at those who want a bit of refinement in their driving sims, and appreciate playing a game where a car handles as it should. Whilst it's fair to say it's a game you'll need to work at, for beginners there are a host of driving aids to assist you in getting into the racing action without having to spend time practising each track. The driving aids cover things such as auto braking before corners, traction control to stop wheelspin, ABS and something to help you position your car correctly into a bend (I think... never used that one).

Whilst some may want to use these driving aids all the time, I have to say that for me, it takes the fun out of playing - believe me, you'll want to turn them off ASAP and learn to drive on your own. Only then can you experience the thrill of braking too hard into a corner, getting the car into a powerslide, and then trying to give it a bit of throttle to straighten it up on the exit without spinning off. If you're happy to miss out on this kind of attention to detail in the car's handling by using the driving aids, then you may as well play MSR, because it's this realism which, for me, makes it such a great title.

The graphics are top notch throughout. The cars are modelled perfectly, and the tracks are very detailed indeed. Sound is mixed, with some great sounding engine noises and lovely tyre screeches, but the music does let it down. It ranges from nice mellow guitar tracks through to horrendous rock with cheesy vocal. Luckily, the BGM music can be disabled very easily in race if required (some of the development team must have had the same view on the music!).

F355 boasts internet gameplay, but the way it does it is a little odd. You connect to the net, start a game, and wait until you get some other racers to join. You then do the qualifying lap and the race all on your own. Once the race is complete, the laps from the other racers are downloaded to you DC and you're taken to a replay with all cars shown. You don't know who wins until after the replay is finished. This system works well, but not being able to race with other players online for real means that you can't cut up your opponents to get that extra position, or just to get revenge. Luckily, there is a split screen two player mode for this kind of unsportsmanlike racing, although I would have liked to have been able to race split screen with some AI cars as well, not just me and my victim... err opponent!

If you can forgive the dodgy music tracks, and the slightly quirky online racing, I think you'd have a hard job to fault this title. I also own MSR, but to be honest, it doesn't even come close IMHO. MSR fails to give the kind of reward you should get for skilfull driving in terms of excitement and sense of achievment. Sure you may get a new track or car, but that to me isn't a reward, it's just a new track to work on so I can unlock the next and so on. F355 doesn't spend much time trying to make you work to unlock courses, nor does it bother trying to offer you ten thousand variants on a similar track - it doesn't need to. To become a real master on any track takes time and skill, but what you get from that for a reward is knowing how far you can push the car before it looses control, where you can leave the braking to the last minute and hope your sideways slide will get you around the corner and how best to overtake your opponents without putting yourself out of the race. By driving on the limit like this increases the excitement and the rush you get from the game, and it's that kind of payment I expect for my efforts, not another variant on a track or another car with arcade handling like the last.

F355 is a thoroughly enjoyable simulation that has no equals. Buy this game now, and enjoy DC racing at it's very best.

taxing..
very, very, very hard to master.

i played the suzuka curcuit for about 4 days non stop.. just practising and practising and practising, getting very frustrated, but one day-the race clicked perfectly... came 1st...
the feeling of achievement and wow factor at doing it is one of the best ive ever felt in a game.

steer clear if you dont have a patience for try and try again type of games, love it if your a racing purist. people sit and watch me play this game and start chipping in comments and suggestions to help me race.

a great game, steep lurning curve