Just like many other Dreamcast games started F355 Challenge: Passione Rossa out as an arcade game. And it's not just any arcade game either, F355 Challenge is considered to be one of the best racing arcade cabinets of the late 90s. In fact, you can still find the three-screen F355 Challenge cabinets in some arcade halls. But it's not that strange that F355 Challenge is such a great game when it's developed by none other than Sega's own arcade game studio AM2. AM2 is one of the world's leading arcade game developers and has been putting out games on the market since 1985, when they wowed the arcade market with the ground breaking motorcycle racer Hang-On. They followed up their first arcade hit with even more successes like Space Harrier, OutRun, After Burner, Daytona USA, Virtua Cop, Virtua Fighter and many other games that still live on today. AM2 are still an very active developer and putting out games, mostly for arcade systems, but also on Xbox and Playstation. Besides AM2, Sega has a handful more internal developing teams like Hitmaker (Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis), Amusement Vision (Monkey Ball), Smilebit (Jet Set Radio, Gunvalkyrie, The Typing of the Dead), Sonic Team (well... Sonic games) If you want to know more about the awesome F355 Challenge arcade cabinet you can find more information here: F355 Challenge has one more very notable feature; its designer/director Yu Suzuki. Yu is one of the biggest names in game developing outside of Nintendo. He started his career in 1984 as a director and programmer behind Sega's arcade game Championship Boxing. He went on to produce and direct games like Virtua Cop, Virtua Fighter and Shenmue. He is still active and recently launched a successful Kickstarter campaign for Shenmue III. Also, supposedly, Yu's own Ferrari F355 was used in the development of F355 Championship. The arcade game F355 Challenge was ported to Dreamcast (as F355 Challenge: Passione Rossa) in late 2000 and to the Playstation 2 (as Ferrari F355 Challenge) in September 2002. The Dreamcast port (coded by CRI) was received very well by critics and has an average of 86% at Gamerankings.com. The Playstation port, however (coded by Tose Co) wasn't a huge hit with critics and have "only" 70% at Gamerankings.com. The lower score could be explained by that the Playstation 2 version is just a port of the Dreamcast version. A lot happened to games (and graphics) between 2000 and 2002. Maybe critics expected more than an ageing game. Is F355 Challenge: Passione Rossa worth buying and playing today? Well, if you don't mind retro racers and are up for a challenge, you are in for a treat. F355 Challenge: Passione Rossa is a really fun game, but hard as nails. The in-game physics model of the F355 is demanding as heck, as anyone who's played the arcade or this Dreamcast version of the game knows. The training mode is an absolute necessity when learning the twists and turns of each track, because it displays the best driving line for that course and provides visual and audio warnings before every turn. You will need to use this mode, and use it a lot, because the AI is brutal and unforgiving. Also, you will probably also need a steering wheel, because F355 Challenge: Passione Rossa is not optimized for playing with the Dreamcast controller. You can easily see this in our video (where we play with the controller). Even after calibrating the controls to the least sensitive, the slightest touch on the control stick throw your Ferrari into an oversteer. But it's still worth it. The Dreamcast version also features a 2 player mode (split screen) and online leaderboards (that don't work any more, but still).
