Rad Racer

Rad Racer
Also known as: Highway Star (JP) Developer: Square Publishers: Square (JP), Nintendo (US/EU) Platforms: NES, Arcade (PlayChoice-10) Released in JP: August 7, 1987 Released in US: October 1987 Released in EU: January 15, 1988 This game has unused text. This game has a hidden level select. This game has regional differences. This game has anti-piracy features.

Rad Racer or Highway Star is basically Square's take on OutRun. Playing the game with the Power Glove and 3D glasses is very cool and impressive.

Notably this would be the first Famicom game Nasir Gebelli programmed for Square. It's also the game that proved to be a massive success for Square and practically saved the company from its previous failures. Later, the game would be published outside of Japan by Nintendo and would be one of the three games featured in the Nintendo World Championships 1990 competition game.

Course Select

After selecting a vehicle, press B the number of times for the course you want to select. The speed meter will increase with each press. Then, hold Up + Right and press Start.

Presses	Course
0	Course 1	Sunset Coastline
1	Course 2	San Francisco Highway
2	Course 3	Grand Canyon
3	Course 4	Ruins of Athens
4	Course 5	Los Angeles Night Way
5	Course 6	Snow White Line
6	Course 7	Seaway in Typhoon
7	Course 8	Last Seaside Running

A similar stage select method was used in the sequel.

Regional Differences

Title Screen

Japan	US/Europe

The Japanese title is a possible reference to the 1972 song "Highway Star" by Deep Purple, and may have been changed to avoid copyright infringement. Both versions of the title screen are rendered in a similar style, but the Rad Racer title screen adds a trademark (™) symbol.

Despite the name change, the "HS" logo seen on the vehicle select screen was left intact.

3D

Japan	US/Europe

Pressing Select during gameplay will switch the game into its 3D mode.

The Japanese version was one of the few games to support the Famicom 3D System, which used active shutter glasses. Since this peripheral wasn't released outside of Japan, the international versions changed this to the simpler anaglyphic system for use with basic red/cyan glasses.

...or at least it attempted to. The game still used the rapid flicker effect from the shutter system, simply changing the palette of each frame that was supposed to go into each eye. Since both images couldn't be displayed on-screen simultaneously, the effect had mixed results from display to display (later becoming ineffective in the modern day).

FDS Text

There are some unused FDS-related strings among the demo's HUD strings: "PLEASE WAIT" at $DB53, "PLACE SIDE B" at $DB62, and "PLACE SIDE A" at $DBE9.

Anti-Piracy

This game contains a similar anti-piracy check to that found in Final Fantasy. If the any of the 5 bytes "NASIR" are changed at CPU address $DBC4, the game will intentionally crash when it tries to draw the Start->Goal meter.