The Best Racing Game on the Mega-CD? F1 Beyond the Limit Review

When it comes to F1 on the Mega-CD your options are extremely limited, but thankfully Formula One World Championship: Beyond the Limit offers one of the best racing experiences of the era. Let’s return to the Mega Driving Club and explore this wonderful love letter to F1.
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[@swerutufon]

One of my absolute favourite games ever. What I really appreciated about this game, is all the teams, and all the crew. In modern F1 games you see the same general crew, but in this game, you got to meet with every team principal, such as Frank Williams for Williams, Flavio Briatore for Benetton, Ron Dennis for McLaren and so on, along with their unique engineer, and each team with its own unique goal. This gave the game, in my humble opinion a little bit of RPG feeling as well, not only the driving expereince itself. They also added absolutely every driver in the game, even those who only did a single race in the 1993 season (play as Rubens Barrichello, and you get no less than five team members through the season!).

[@drunkensailor112]

This game is truly a love letter to formula one in the early 90s. I love it while I can't stand current formula one

[@Chemical_Ali]

Games like this were why Mega Drive owners invested in the add-on. Love it. These super scaler style games were a great stop-gap between console generations. TBH I think the only piece of hardware that was a mistake was the 32X. It really wasn't needed if SEGA would have put more support and effort behind pushing the Mega CD's capabilities.

[@SwitchRetroGaming]

The game was so far ahead of its time. Wonderful video liked and subscribed

[@nicolaashamman6201]

Formula One World Championship's soundtrack is definitely interesting from a historical perspective, being the first time SEGA worked with Beat On Beat Recording in New York for its musician roster (which would later be pulled from for the theme songs in NiGHTS, Burning Rangers, DAYTONA USA 2 and the Sonic Adventure duo)

[@segadriven]

Did not know this! Very interesting!

[@ChristianGiaconiBonaguro]

Pardon me, but I've played this game religiously since I was young, maybe 1995 or so? (I even have all of the races, done by me, on my, "channel," lol). I have 0 idea what you mean by bad framerate: are you able to point to a part of your video to show an example? Perhaps it is only a PAL thing, but I have never experienced slowdown or any issues with dropping frames, etc. BTW, I'm not here to nitpick: this is a great little video, giving the game the attention it deserves as easily the best F1 game for a fan of the sport: if I do want to nitpick, you should have mentioned the soundtrack! lol Brilliant musicians cranking out phenomenal tunes, from the opening track, "Time to Detonate," to the main theme (that you play at the end), "Winds of Victory," to the final, end-game track, "...and close your eyes!" this is arguably one of the best soundtracks on a Sega title ever. Thanks for the video, I love this game to pieces!

[@segadriven]

Maybe framerate wasn't the best choice of wording but it definitely appears to run around the 20fps mark and the way the sprites come towards the player is very choppy. It's a minor issue I have with the game though and I think it's largely negligible compared to how great the rest of the package is

[@ChristianGiaconiBonaguro]

@@segadriven ah, I see, not that there's an issue with the framerate, just that you wish it was higher: I gotcha, that makes more sense. Draw distance I agree with you with, but that's why there are turn signs off-track 😉. Lol I've just played it so much, I've got it basically memorised, so it comes like second nature to me 🙂

[@segadriven]

It definitely rewards repeat play, but it's just a little unfriendly to new players. Again, minor criticisms!

[@CasperEgas]

I love Beyond the Limit. Real love for the sport. Fantastic real fragments, great music, real teams, drivers and even team bosses. Love the 1993 scenario mode. What happened to the German flag though? The game uses the Mega cd very well, but the tracksides are far too empty and flat. If there would have been a hard mode....it would have been fantastic.

[@Gorilla_Jones]

Wonderful game. I still play it. You just need to learn the tracks and adjust your steering. Practice.

[@khuntington]

so on a stranded island, which MCD game do you reach for. this? or super monoco?

[@segadriven]

This. Super Monaco is just a slightly enhanced Mega Drive game. Still a good game but there’s so much more to Beyond the Limit and it feels like a game that only the Mega-CD can pull off

[@RTPJu]

This game is almost perfect and, yet, too bad to be playable. I believe that it was somehow rushed or underdeveloped. A little more optimization to deal with this offensive frame rate and, specially, a little gameplay tweak just to smooth the steering ratio performance. If someone release a revision patch for it, this game could be turned on the best console racing game for that generation. Cheers!

[@byrosonline5876]

This is one of those games where everything was planned to be great, except for the gameplay which is ruined by the heinous frame rate, other than that, it has everything to be a real gem. If only they had offered an option to simplify tracks and speed up the frames per second to 30 or so, similar to Super Monaco GP from 1990, it would have been a blast to play, but for some reason SEGA chose a rather detailed slide show over good playability. Perhaps someone from romhacking can patch/mod the game to remove unnecesary detail/GFX and increase FPS to a decent level, sometimes less is more...

[@CasperEgas]

To me it just needs a hard mode.