Also pretty close to real life are MSR's first-rate visuals. The cities look exactly like their real-world counterparts, right down to street signs on our favorite corners here in San Francisco. London looks fantastic -- even through the intermittent fog -- and at night, Tokyo's Shibuya section has a beautiful, neon-lit glow. Unfortunately, the cities are not modeled in their entirety, so players won't be able to drive freely through them. Instead, developer Bizarre Creations has had to rein in its ambitions, creating roughly 80 circuits within three large sections of each city. While it won't let you drive everywhere, the sections the game does model are amazingly detailed and lifelike.

Even the cars' radios heighten the sense of realism. Each city has its own set of fictitious radio stations that give accurate weather and traffic updates in between cuts of the game's more than 25 eclectic pop, rock and country tunes. There is even the option to turn off the radio and switch to a "virtual CD," which only plays the songs of a certain genre -- or, even better, players can "create their own CD" and select the songs they want to hear and in what order. It's that sort of amazing attention to detail that makes Metropolis Street Racer the luxury sedan of driving games.

But this kind of quality Corinthian leather and brushed oak finish would be nothing without a powerful engine underneath the hood. Luckily for us, Metropolis Street Racer has a brilliant blend of driving simulation and high-speed fun. There are more than 40 cars from 13 different manufacturers to unlock and test out. Players can drive everything from the familiar Mazda Miata to the more exotic Jensen S-V8 or the pricey Mercedes SL. And those cars will all feel and handle differently, not only among the cars, but even among the cities. San Francisco's hilly terrain requires different skills than driving through the narrow streets of Tokyo's Shinjuku or the tight turns of an English roundabout.

The gameplay emphasis is on driving, not tweaking. There is no garage where players can go to adjust the camber of the tires or increase the fuel/air ratio for greater acceleration. Thankfully, the game is won on the road, not in the shop. Instead of letting players advance through the game by simply finishing with the fastest time, Metropolis Street Racer employs an ingenious "Kudos" system. Players are given points, or Kudos, not only for finishing quickly, but also for driving with style and avoiding obstacles. Style is earned by skidding through a turn, which naturally slows the car down. Thus, players have to balance the desire to go fast with the desire to go powersliding through a tight turn.

There are 25 chapters in the game, each composed of 10 challenges. Some of the challenges are rather straightforward, such as completing a certain number of laps in a set time. Others are more interesting, such as passing as many cars as you can, through traffic, without hitting them. Opening up new challenges and chapters depends on the number of Kudos, and while gamers can go back and replay levels they have already completed, they risk losing whatever Kudos they have earned in any chapter by replaying it. It's a brilliant system that rewards players for not only mastering the gas pedal; to be successful, they will need to master switching between the foot and handbrake while turning into a Kudos-earning skid.

If there is one weakness in MSR, it's that too much of the game is locked away. Players have to begin, like in most driving sims these days, by qualifying for the very first car. From there, only three cars can be housed in the garage at one time. Unfortunately, for players who just want to do some quick racing, the only tracks available are those that have been unlocked in the championship mode. We can easily envision a scenario where a bunch of guys buy the game on a Saturday morning for a day of splitscreen racing, but can't play a single track when they first plug it in because they are all locked away. It's not a serious weakness in the basic gameplay, only an irritating limitation of the structure of MSR.

There is some limited online play for drivers who don't care for the splitscreen style. Players can upload their best times, download the "ghost car" runs of other players and race against those. It's not as satisfying as trading paint with the guy next to you, but it's still a good time. Ultimately, though, Metropolis Street Racer is about those 250 challenges and all the Kudos points you can grab. It wonderfully blends the realism of contemporary driving sims with the fun of a foot-to-the-floor arcade racer. There aren't hidden shortcuts or floating powerups like in most arcade-style games, but there is no other driving game on the Dreamcast -- or any other platform, for that matter -- that perfectly balances the two. And while we're not normally betting types here at Daily Radar, we'd wager that some of the great ideas found in MSR will become standard in the next generation of driving games.