Remembering classic games: Porsche Challenge (1997) was basically a playable car brochure

Back in 1997 at the height of the original PlayStation’s popularity, Sony’s own internal European development studio released a game in collaboration with Porsche. A game that was named Porsche Challenge, but had the audacity to not include a single 911. Which is a bit like Rick Astley releasing a greatest hits album that doesn’t include ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’.

Instead, this game was itself a vehicle. A vehicle to promote Porsche’s then new upstart sports car the Boxster, which is why the only car available to drive or compete against in the entire game is the first generation 986 Boxster. Finally, a video game had arrived that delivered the escapist fantasy of not quite being able to afford a 911.

The game did at least make the most of the fact that its cars were all convertibles, by introducing a series of cliched competitors to occupy the drivers’ seats. There was a kickboxer, a model, a DJ and even a hacker, presumably because the 1995 movie Hackers had briefly convinced everyone that nerds looked like Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie.

Beyond that, the entire thing was fairly spartan, with variations on only four different locations to race around, one of which was Porsche’s own stomping ground of Stuttgart. In an effort to improve on this mayfly-like longevity, there was an Interactive mode which rearranged the track layout every lap.

And if you were in any doubt that this game was one big advertisement for the Porsche Boxster, bear in mind that the final five pages of the instruction manual were just a big list of the names and phone numbers of Porsche dealerships. Duping us into paying £40 for the privilege of playing a glorified car brochure has to go down as one of the most cunning marketing moves in history.