RPM Racing (short for Radical Psycho Machine Racing) is a Super Nintendo Entertainment System racing game developed by Silicon & Synapse (now known as Blizzard Entertainment) and published by Interplay Productions.
It is a successful remake of the Commodore 64 video game Racing Destruction Set, developed by Electronic Arts in 1985. It claims to be the first American-developed game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.[2] A spiritual successor, Rock n' Roll Racing, was released in 1993.
In celebration of the company's 30th anniversary, RPM Racing was re-released for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as part of the Blizzard Arcade Collection on April 13, 2021.[4]
Players can race in a regular season, a single race, or create their own course. The courses can be straight and oval, curvy and or hilly and unpredictable. The winner gets money and a chance to score their initials for the fastest time.
RPM Racing was developed in four months,[5] using the Sluggo development system created by Rebecca Heineman and her partner. It allowed uploading of bin files to a cartridge simulator for the SNES. It was programmed in 65c816 assembly language using a cross compiler on an IBM computer.
RPM is one of the first SNES games developed in high resolution graphics mode which allows for sharper detail but fewer colors. This limits the amount of unique graphics displayed from the SNES video memory. Due to this, the sequel, Rock n' Roll Racing, was developed in the lower resolution graphics mode, allowing for much more vibrant colors and graphic detail.
The logic engine and track editor for RPM were ported from an older Electronic Arts game Racing Destruction Set. The 5A22 8-Bit assembly code was modified for the 16-bit system but otherwise mostly left intact.