Formula One World Championship: Beyond The Limit

Formula One World Championship: Beyond the Limit, released in Japan as Heavenly Symphony: Formula One World Championship 1993 (ヘブンリー シンフォニー フォーミュラーワン ワールド チャンピオンシップ 1993?), is a 1994 racing game released for the Sega Mega-CD. As the name implies, the game places you in the seat of a Formula One car complete with multiple teams and opponents, and all the licensed tracks of the series.

Beyond the Limit made heavy use of scaling and rotating background layers and sprites as well as limited use of texture mapped polygon graphics (like the grand stands), with scaling and rotation (via affine texture rendering) one of the key features of the Mega-CD/Sega CD console. The effect is similar in some respects to Sega arcade classics such as Super Monaco GP and Outrun, but far more advanced with the rotation, warping, and textured simple polygon models. (albeit less smooth in terms of frame rate) Though the Sega/Mega CD was capable of scaling and rotating objects, the quality of these effects varied from developer to developer and game to game. Beyond the Limit showcased competent scaling and rotation on a system where the effect was rarely used, making this a significant technical accomplishment of the short lived system. (several other examples on the Sega CD were developed by Core Design and Clockwork Games such as Soulstar or The Adventures of Batman & Robin)