I'm trying to see if there were any other games in this style. The most notorious of these are Megarace 1 and 2. In Megarace 1 the cars are sprites and the "track" is basically a bunch of frames of a prerendered 3D movie of a camera panning through a track. In Megarace 2, the cars are realtime rendered 3d models, but the track is still frames of a prerendered 3D movie of a camera panning through a track. This is kind of similar to those FMV games on consoles like the sega CD and 3DO, or some pc games like Rebel Assault. I think of Megarace 2 as the pinnacle of this style as with the 1996 era computers, the prerendered frames have an excellent framerate and mesh very well with the 3d models. This seems to me to be a little bit of a compromise between the old school 2D driving games on 16 bit systems, and the psx and beyond era of realtime rendered tracks. Are there any other examples anyone can think of for racing games that are similar in this category? Maybe Crash n Burn on 3DO? I always see arguments about whether the tracks are prerendered or not for that title.
Crash and Burn on the 3DO is polygons but done on rails which is stupid for a racing game. There's a racer for the iphone that uses pre-renderd tracks and polygon cars. It does look quite nice but not as good as a real 3D game.
I don't understand why they use prerendered graphics in iPhone games. The iPhone - especially the 4 and 4S - have some pretty amazing, near-console-level graphical ability. It pissed me off that Street Fighter IV Volt for the iPhone was all prerendered. If they can make a good 3DS port of SF4, they ought to be able to do a decent iPhone version as well.
All of Capcom's iphone games look like shit. Yes, All of them! Soul Clalibur looks amazing and even runs full speed on a 3Gs. Yakumo
Not really a racing game per se, but I think this would still count: Hot Wheels Stunt Track Driver http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNbID0c6qqs (the audio is kinda off in the video.) I remember playing a PC demo for this back in the day, it was surprisingly fun. There was a sequel that used the same approach as well: Hot Wheels Stunt Track Driver 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM64NZ722VI
