SNES Game Review - Kyle Petty's No Fear Racing

Kyle Petty's No Fear Racing, developed by Leland Interactive and released in America in July 1995, is a racing game loosely based on NASCAR (a form of car
racing popular in the USA). The game was designed to be only loosely based on NASCAR so that people unfamiliar with the sport could pick up and play the game
just as easily as the die-hard fans. Almost uniquely to driving games of it's time, Kyle Petty's NFR contains a track buiding tool with a number of options
including custom decals and even your choice of what music plays while you race.

As the title suggests, the game is based mostly on the career of the driver Kyle Petty, now retired after winning 6 racing personality awards and with
just under 200 top ten positions in both Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series races. He began racing at a very young age and became the youngest driver to win
a major-league race at the 1979 Daytona ARCA 200, aged only 18. He raced for his family's team for the next 30 years, finally cutting ties with Petty Enterprises
in early 2009 and retiring to become a regular NASCAR broadcaster for the TNT industry.

The game was released on the SNES in mid-1995, but the graphics and sound were of a poor quality even then. A major criticism was it's lack of play-by-play
commentary. This shortcoming is made even more apparent when you consider that play-by-play announcement systems had been implemented as early as the previous
year in games on the Sega Genesis, a less powerful machine. The car models were also poorly done and the number decals on every car except Kyle's ended up as
00 in place of their actual number.

Other criticisms of the game include a very poor difficulty curve. After a brief tutorial, you enter proper races against top AI opponents. The courses are
all very similar to one another and the game as a whole comes across as rather repetetive. One thing you can do, or rather must do, in order to complete the game and win races is upgrade the
components of your car; gearbox, chassis etc. However, there are few upgrades and once you have purchased the top ends ones there is no point in paying further
attention to this mechanic. However, the game may be partially excused of it's easiness when you consider it was designed with a large demographic in mind and
may even be considered a 'casual' game.

All in all, the game seems to just be a shameless attempt at marketing the Kyle Petty racing team. Little thought has been put into most of the game mechanics
it feels like it's just been thrown together in a back room somewhere over the course of a few days. The graphics are average at best, the sound is of
adequate but not exceptional quality. However, due mostly to it's ingenuity in certain other areas, I'm willing to give it a respectable 6/10.