Another car racing game, and this one is a mixed bag. It’s an arcade-style racer but everyone begins on the starting line (so it’s not a catchup game), and it has an “arcade” mode with a timer and a tournament without. But parts of the game just don’t quite gel with other parts.

One thing I was surprised about was that, despite the name, this game isn’t entirely about Lamborghinis. You start off with two of them, plus a bunch of cars which are Lambo-inspired in different colours. However, you then unlock other cars from other manufacturers: Farrari, Bugatti, Porche, Dodge and McLaren.

When playing in the Lamborghinis, I found the game to be immensely difficult, and once racers got ahead, there is generally no way to catch up. Once I’d got other cars, the game was much easier. So it seems like the Lamborghinis in Automobili Lamborghini are the worst cars in the game, which is surprising considering the tie in.

The handling is very arcadey, and it felt rather nice to turn around corners. It’s possibly my favourite handling in a car game so far on the N64. This then feels really odd due to the pit stop mechanic where your tyres will wear out and you’ll need to play a pit stop minigame. This bit of “realism” feels really at odds with the rest of the game – although you can turn it off.

There are only six tracks, none of which are memorable and the game overall just has a really dull feeling to it, it never feels speedy or exciting. The Japanese version (called Super Speed Race 64) has a few extra features, such as fog and night time racing, but it doesn’t help the overall experience.

You ever play a game based purely on listening to it's soundtrack? That's basically the only reason I decided to randomly play this, along with the fact I haven't been touching my N64 in a while. I'm sure it's very pleased that I played a painfully average licensed racing game instead of a childhood classic or even the superior N64 licensed car game Beetle Adventure Racing.

The game is about what you'd expect, a bunch of Lambos driving around bouncing off walls like there's a force field keeping them from obtaining physical damage, because the licenser would put the devs in the scorpion deathlock, the usual stuff. The cars drive well enough despite being loose and aren't that bad to use, honestly the only thing offensive about the game is having to see the ugly Titus logo on billboards. The CPU is also really stupid, they're very beatable but it's also a common sight to see them smash themselves head on into a wall, because I guess they had two weeks to program it. I really shouldn't have expected that much from the Superman 64 lads, but it is funny.

As much as I like the music it does unfortunately get pretty repetitive, because the game seems to choose music tracks randomly and I've had times where the same one played two races in a row. I do still adore it when composers actually bother to put in the work for the one kid who might end up with this shit instead of Diddy Kong Racing. I couldn't find any info on who made the music, and the OST I have downloaded doesn't credit them, but I hope they're doing alright.

Taito apparently released an improved version of this for Japan only for some reason, but I'm not gonna bother with it. Here's the only footage on youtube I can find if you want to see it.