0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Advan Racing

        

Advan Racing also known as Toyota Netz Racing or Toyota Netz Racing - Advan Racing, is a racing game developed and published by Atlus the game was released exclusively in Japan on the 19^th of November 1998, the game was developed alongside ADVAN, a real extreme car competition in Japan

The game features 16 cars taken from real life races, including roadsters and rally cars the game also features many unlockable cars as well, from Manufacturers such as BMW, Honda, Nissan, Lamborghini, Mitsubishi, and Porsche as well as others, in total there are 8 tracks to choose from including Fuji Speedway, Suzuka short and international circuit and Tokachi International Speedway.

Car views are you standard array of camera positions however the in car camera is under developed with no steering wheel or dials on the dashboard which is just you generic dashboard, the game has two main game modes the Advan Racing which is basically your career mode, and quick race, with the latter having multiple sub modes including Championship, Time Attack and Spot Race.

Racing game no story or story mode present.

With this being a Japanese only release reviews are very hard to come by, with only one review that I have been able to find, which comes from German publication Mega Fun, who were positive in their review conclusion with their 83 rated review quoted as saying Hats off, Atlus. What the programmers were have delivered, can almost compete with the best of the genre.

With the lack of review we head over to GameFAQs for their user ratings, with 14 user ratings in total, with an average user rating of 3.79/5, with the majority of users giving the game a good 4/5, with almost the same number of users rating the game either a 4.5/5 or 5/5, a small number of user ratings were either 1.5/5 or 2.5/5.

Difficulty wise out of 5 users 3 rated the game as just right when it came to difficulty, with the remaining two users rating the game as simple or easy, lifespan wise again only 5 users rated their playtime with the game with a fair range from less than one hour up to the 20 hour mark, with the average play time coming in at around 11 hours.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, who along with eStarland.com, Retrogames.co.uk and Amazon.com don’t stock this title, the co.uk version of Amazon does however stock this title, with a mix of used an new titles that all ship from Japan.

The cheapest you can pick up a copy of this title is around £6 this comes with free delivery as well, this is for a good quality copy of the game, that converts to $7.71 in the US, in the Euro zone countries you are looking at €6.59, and in Hungary it will set you back 2003.76 Hungarian Forint.

If you are looking for a new copy of the game you are looking at a minimum price on Amazon.co.uk of £30 this also comes with free delivery and ships from Japan this converts to 10018.80 Hungarian Forint, in the Euro zone countries you will be looking at around the €33 mark while in the US it will set your wallet back $38.55, this copy according to the retailer ships in 4 to 5 working days.

The Japanese version of Amazon.com has a plentiful supply of the game and very cheap copies as well a good quantity of copies as well a good quality used copy can be picked up for a couple of dollar, however shipping costs are likely to push that figure up, new copies are also cheaper from the Japanese amazon site, again though shipping fees are likely to push the price up if you are outside of Japan.

Ebay.com has a few copies of the game available as well a complete used copy of the game can be picked up for $9.99  this copy comes with free international shipping and ships from Japan, this is the cheapest you will find the game on Ebay, with other copies having shipping fees which bump up the price.

Written by

P J Gibbon