Test Drive Le Mans

The tire screech sounds like a cat being stepped on, which is oddly fitting for a Game Boy racer that's trying to cram Le Mans into a screen smaller than a postcard. Test Drive Le Mans arrived in 1999 when handheld racing was still figuring out what it wanted to be, and this Atari effort is proof that not every experiment works out.

You're piloting a car around the legendary endurance circuit, except "around" is generous—it's more like following a flickering line while the track scrolls at you in crude sprite animation. The Game Boy Color version pumps up the colors a bit, but whether you're on the gray original or the colorized variant, you're staring at chunky graphics that turn every corner into a guessing game. Infogrames published this through their Australian operations, which partly explains why it never made much noise outside the region.

The driving itself is basic arcade steering—tap left, tap right, hit a button to accelerate. There's no real sensation of weight or grip. Your car slides around like it's on ice, and the track design doesn't help matters. The famous Le Mans circuit gets squeezed into a series of turns that all blur together. You're not fighting the track or your opponents; you're fighting the Game Boy's hardware ceiling and your own growing indifference. The collision detection is forgiving to the point of uselessness, and the AI opponents are just slightly faster sprites that rubber-band if you pull ahead.

By 1999 standards, this was already old news. Mario Kart Super Circuit would show up two years later on Game Boy Advance and make everything here look like a relic. What Test Drive Le Mans lacks isn't just polish—it's personality. No charm, no memorable tracks, no reason to keep playing once you've crossed the finish line once.

If you're hunting down every Game Boy racer ever made for completeness, sure, it exists and it runs. But there's no hook here, no moment that makes you smile and think "that was clever for hardware this limited." It's the kind of game that was probably cheaper to develop than to promote, and it shows. Grab Mario Kart instead, or even the original Pole Position racer if you want something that actually understands what makes driving fun, even on a four-inch screen.