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These days, a racing driver who wants to hone their craft off the track can cobble together PC parts and build a low-spec system that can run a variety of simulators well enough. The video game industry pretty much passed the threshold for photorealism a decade ago; any further advancements, like raytracing, are just icing on the cake now for uber-nerds, like the one writing this story. But 25 years ago, if, say, Rubens Barrichello wanted a relatively accurate, engaging, and convincing digital facsimile of driving a Ferrari sports car, he couldn’t just find it anywhere. He had to enlist the help of Ferrari’s friends at once-juggernaut Sega, and get himself a Ferrari F355 Challenge arcade cabinet—like one that’s listed for sale right now at Bring a Trailer.
Right off the bat, I’ll say that if I had a garage, I’d be fighting the top bidders for this machine. Either way, I love that we’ve reached a point where these are getting the respect and attention they deserve on sites like Bring a Trailer, alongside actual F355s.
For those who don’t know the story, F355 Challenge only happened because legendary game designer Yu Suzuki, responsible for 1986’s Out Run, wanted a realistic simulation of driving his personal F355. He and his AM2 development studio made it happen, and the game released to arcades in 1999, before home conversions on the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 in 2000 and 2002, respectively.
F355 Challenge was pretty advanced for its time, a title laser-focused on replicating the dynamics of Ferrari‘s sports car alone, on many of the courses that the customer racing series of the same name used to visit. The original run of deluxe cabinets was fitted with clutch pedals and six-speed shifters, as well as paddles, which were novel back then. It all sounds quaint by today’s standards, but you didn’t see a true, three-pedal manual transmission in the arcade outside of early 3D sims like Hard Drivin’, and that game was generations out of date by the time F355 arrived.
The deluxe cabs also had triple-screen setups, foreshadowing the chosen rigs of many future sim racing enthusiasts. Sega stuffed four of its NAOMI arcade boards to power these things: One for each display, and another as a master, to sync them all together. I had an opportunity to get behind the wheel of a deluxe machine a few years ago, and although the decades were not kind to its inputs or force-feedback steering system, I still had a blast.
By the way, you may notice a screed on the seatbacks. It’s a message, written by Yu Suzuki, and it’s so earnest and of the era that I adore it: “In 1985, there was Hang On, followed by Out Run in 1986. Over the years, I’ve made many driving games, and it has always been my aim to produce a driving game in which pro drivers would be able to beat game enthusiasts. After ten years, I have finally been able to achieve this goal. With the assistance of Ferrari and many pro drivers, I have created a machine that is more like an actual racing simulator than a game, and I hope that this game will evoke the same level of feeling and passion as that of an actual Ferrari. I now present this game for the enjoyment of all motor sports fans around the world.”
I doubt anyone would call F355 Challenge truly faithful to driving the real artifact today, but it is fun, and it does still reward precision and finesse in the way modern racing sims do. Suzuki once said that Barrichello was interested in buying such a machine, though I can’t find any word that he ultimately did. Somebody should ask him next time they see him.
Unfortunately, the cabinet for sale today on BaT is a dual, two-player unit, which lacks the six-speed shifter and clutch pedal. That wouldn’t stop me, though, and it shouldn’t stop you. The unit is located in Connecticut and is being auctioned with no reserve, though the bidding has already reached $4,500 as of this writing, with two days left to go.
