Speed Devils is the epitome of creativity in both the design and gameplay departments. Racing through Hollywood will offer up obstacles like King Kong, a dinosaur and racing over a pool consisting of a giant shark and the boat from Jaws. Over in Las Vegas players will tear through Area 51 and have to deal with a UFO crashing into, and thereby basically destroying, a bridge out in the desert. Snow courses are full of avalanches; others have tornadoes that actually travel around the track while you're racing. Although some of the obstacles can be annoying one thing is for certain, there's never a dull moment.

Likewise the cars are a mixture of contemporary sports cars and classic muscle cars. While there's not a licensed vehicle in sight you can tell that a lot of real world cars have influenced these strange hybrids heavily. It also should be noted that each car has a huge amount of paintjob options, though I really wish I had the option to create custom colors designs on them.

The gameplay is like nothing I've seen before either. Outside of the generic arcade mode you can choose to run the championship mode. In this section of the game you start out with one car and the goal of gaining enough points (money) to move up to the next class. You can also spend your money on upgrades for your car (which modifies both performance and appearance) or on purchasing a new car.

Sounds pretty straight forward, right? Well here's the beauty part. Your earnings aren't only based on your placing in each race, but a variety of factors. Finishing first does not mean you'll make the most money. You also get cash for leading the longest amount of time and setting the fastest lap time during the race. Not only that, but each track has a number of speed traps. When you approach these a radar-gun readout will appear which shows the target trap speed and your current speed. Busting the radar earns you money, depending on how much faster you are than the target speed you stand to earn well over $1000 on each speed trap. It's no wonder the original name of this game was "Speed Busters."

But that's not all. Racing against the same crowd of competitors over and over again is a great way to make enemies. Once in a while these guys (or gals) will offer to make a bet with you. It could be anything from having to lead a certain lap to busting a particular radar on a particular course. If you accept the bet you'll be endlessly taunted by your adversary during said race, but you stand to make a pretty penny.

Finally, certain drivers may challenge you to a race where the stakes are your vehicle or theirs (like NFS4 I guess). This one on one race is a single lap long on that driver's home track. If you win not only do you gain a new vehicle in your garage, but also you knock that driver out of the current points chase.

Overall the championship mode is one of the most thoughtful, well-crafted ones I've seen in all my years playing video games.

Ok, sure, that's all well and good, but how does it play? Very well, actually. The cars may not feel overly realistic, but they do stick to the road like glue and offer up a great sensation of speed. All of this runs at a silky-smooth framerate too, another perk of the incredible processing power of the Dreamcast.

Speaking of processing power, the graphics are excellent in this title too. All the cars are nice and big and have no breakup whatsoever, same with the locales. Although some elements of a few tracks could have been better models, overall the game is just really nice to look at. Especially when you get into some of the levels featuring a lot of weather effects, quite impressive.

The only less than great element of the presentation is the music. It's not necessarily bad, but it just doesn't work. The Hollywood and Vegas tracks use some music that is trying to sound thematic, but ultimately ends up feeling like it's not in sync with the action on the screen. However, the sound effects are beautiful. Especially the sound of the engines, they all have a very throaty growl that muscle car lovers will go nuts over.