Hacker rewriters Race Drivin’ on the SNES to bump its single-digit framerate to run at 30+ fps

When I was a youngster, one of my favorite arcade games was Race Drivin’. I was blown away by the game's visuals, and I sat down to give it a go every time I had the chance. Imagine my disappointment when the SNES port ended up being a mere shadow of what that arcade experience was like.

Race Drivin’ on the SNES had an absolutely abysmal framerate, running at 4 fps most of the time. That's low enough to break the experience in multiple ways. There were no doubt plenty of people who were upset, if not downright angry with how bad the game ran. All these years later, there's finally a solution.

Over 30 SNES games made use of the SA-1 chip, which featured faster clock speeds and RAM. Hard Drivin' wasn't one of those games, but thanks to hacker Vilela, now it is. In the video above, you can see Vilela's hack that makes use of the SA-1 chip, and the results are astounding. From a single-digit framerate all the way up to 30+ FPS. It may be decades late, but it's impressive nonetheless!