Thrill Drive - Continue feature demonstration

There is one unique version of Thrill Drive which runs on the Hornet hardware and has a feature not found in any other version. It is version GK713K*B, with the K obviously standing for [South] Korea, released around the time when Kim Dae-Jung took office and severely eased restrictions on Japanese-made products and media, thus allowing Konami to open its South Korean office. Despite being a unique Korean release, the warning screen still denotes that it is for sale and use only in Asia excluding Japan, features the Japan course in its opening sequence and that the version of the game is entirely in English, hence why the option to play this version in Japanese is absent, despite the fact that like the Japanese, not even many [South] Korean people speak and understand English either.

Missing Japanese language option aside, what sets this unique Korean version of Thrill Drive apart is that it has a Continue feature, which, when enabled, severely restricts the game timer to the point where you must cross the next checkpoint quickly and without crashing once or twice. However, each time you cross a checkpoint, rather than adding time to your overall countdown timer, the timer itself resets to a fixed amount for each checkpoint, expecting you to do the same for the other checkpoints without crashing once or twice. This makes the game overall more challenging than it already was for the most part, especially if you have to deal with denser traffic and bigger collision systems that are unique to the Hornet hardware versions of the game. When your time is up and your car comes to a complete stop, you are taken to a continue screen where you must coin-up to continue your race, but there's a catch: Each time you continue, it resets the weather back to its clear bright setting and the music resets to the point where you never had any crashes whatsoever. But, this will also reset your overall performance by the end of your race, regardless if you cross the finish line or not. This version also lacks the Tournament feature found in other versions of the game.

And yes, even the emulation of the Hornet hardware versions is also just as imperfect as it was when emulating the original NWK-TR hardware versions of the game, as even it too lacks a fully-working rear-view mirror. It also runs at full speed, but also chugs in some areas just as was the case in the emulation of the original NWK-TR hardware versions.

While the game itself remains technically the same on the Hornet hardware, the only notable difference is that it runs on a slightly lower resolution (512X384) than its original NWK-TR incarnation (512X400). Gameplay-wise, I still prefer the original NWK-TR version, especially the European version with the many options of choosing gear types, enabling clutch and handbrake functions and where the shifter and tacho displays should be located. The UFD version has the option to enable the handbrake but no clutch, even though this [then-] current build of MAME doesn't have the handbrake, clutch and H-Shifter functionalities built in unlike the original NWK-TR version. That is until the much later versions of MAME eventually added in the inputs for those functionalities that were missing in the earlier versions.