Formula One World Championship: Beyond The Limit - Gameplay

Gameplay

Beyond the Limit was a very complex game for its time, despite sharing some similarities with Sega's own Super Monaco GP series. You started in a test track with a generic car, aiming for a top time in order to receive contract offers from Formula One teams. After accepting an offer, all the races on the season had to be completed and depending on your performance, bigger and better teams would offer you their cars. Race bad, though, and you could even get fired.

Because this game was made after the 1993 season had already finished, the game included what can be considered the most extreme amount of features included in a racing simulation for the time that was released outside of Japan. The game included all of the tracks used in the 1993 season, including a fictional 'Sega Park Circuit' course used for testing. Also included were all thirty-five drivers that drove at some point during the 1993 season, and as most of the driver changes occurred in the last third of the season, as you play near the ending of the season you'll begin to notice many of the driver's changing in the lower classed teams. On a secondary note, Ayrton Senna is not included in the game as his license was held by his own game produced on the Sega Genesis and Mega Drive. Fortunately, the driver that replaces Senna is the only editable driver in the game, thus it allows you to put Senna back into the game, although there is not enough room in the editor for his full name and thus must be named 'A. Senna.'

The game was very similar in gameplay to Exhaust Heat for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, albeit this game was in first person view, which is saying it was about as realistic as console racing simulators got during this time. The full use of the Sega CD capabilities, though, came through the superb sound and music of the game, streamed straight from the CD, and the complex scheme of progressing to better teams and cars.