Super Off Road: The Baja (Actual SNES Capture) - Baja 1000 Playthrough

This is a capture of me playing through the Baja 1000 mode in Super Off Road: The Baja for the SNES. This is not an emulator. This footage was recorded directly from my Super Nintendo using an actual Super Off Road: The Baja cartridge. I'm playing on intermediate difficulty.

Back in the early '90s I used to play various racing games with my uncle whenever I visited his house. We would play titles such as Rad Racer, Excitebike and Top Gear. Although I wasn't very good at those games, I enjoyed the fast action. Top Gear was especially fun because you could play through the entire game in a splitscreen two-player mode.

Some time around 1994 my cousin and I were visiting my uncle when my uncle (probably at the suggestion of my cousin) decided to buy a new racing game. My cousin and uncle then headed to the store and subsequently returned with a brand new copy of Super Off Road: The Baja. All three of us then proceeded to take turns playing the game, although I think my cousin and my uncle spent far more time with the game than me. They may have even beaten it within a day or two.

Super Off Road: The Baja is a direct sequel to the original Super Off Road game, and it's actually a Super Nintendo exclusive. It retains the basic upgrade system and Ivan Stewart/Toyota licenses from before, but it uses a third-person/pseudo-3D perspective (similar to Top Gear) instead of the old top-down view. The game is also based upon the Baja off road races instead of the old stadium races from the '80s. This basic style was later utilized for the third game in the series: Off Road Challenge.

This game also introduced some new concepts such as the damage meter and the ability to run over animals and bystanders. I used to laugh my ass off as a kid whenever I ran over an ATV rider, and I have to admit, it still makes me laugh to this day.

For some reason I thought this game had a splitscreen multiplayer mode, but I must have confused this title with Top Gear since there's only an alternating two-player mode, similar to Super Mario Bros.

This game is still fun, but it can be really hard to follow the track at times, especially when there's a sudden turn after a hill. Also, the controls are stranger than I remember. With most racing games, when you stop pressing the D-pad or analog stick, the vehicle straightens out automatically. But in this game, if you let off the D-pad, your truck stays in its current trajectory, even if it's steering left or right. So it takes some getting used to.

For this playthrough I completed the entire Baja 1000 mode in a single session. Surprisingly, the biggest challenge isn't finishing in first, but finishing at all. Your truck will take a lot of damage during each race, and if you fill your damage meter all the way, your truck will break down and you'll get a game over. So more than anything, I had to focus on not doing too much damage to truck. Enjoy the playthrough.

Recorded with the Hauppauge HD PVR and the official SNES S-video cable at 60 frames per second. I used a Toshiba model D-R550 DVD Recorder to upconvert the SNES's native 240p signal to 480i so that the Hauppauge could capture the console's audio/video signal.

I'm using a Super Advantage joystick.