That is what I used, up and A to reset the game. It didn't work the first few times, I beat the game 4 times and this was the only time it worked. You can pause once you cross the finish line as your car is skidding. You'll lose any extra time bonus points, but that's it. When I do it again that is what I'll try to do. I'm surprised holding reset for a few seconds didn't work, I didn't try that one.

Course 5 is def. going to be the breaking point for people that haven't played this game a ton in the past, and course 8 is def the breaking point for even the best players. The cars are stupid suicidal in 8. You go to pass and they will just merge right into you, even if they just got done merging.

When i was 12 years old i beat this game in 2 days with my dad.
Rad racer is also the only nes game i returned back to toyland.
I bought the game with my dad on a saturday and the shop had a 24 hour return policy.
After beating it in the weekend i traded it in on monday morning with my dad for trojan.

Trojan sucked and rad racer was 1 of the first games i got when i started collecting.
Looking back i must say that beating it in 2 days was amazing.

Rad racer was the only game my dad played better than me.
It's been 20 years ..Let's see if the old man's still got it.

That didn't work for me either time I beat the game so I guess I'll just have to make sure to take a picture when I get to the finish line. There must be a small margin for error when it comes to pausing it when you cross the finish line as well. I think you still have to have time on the clock, because I tried pausing it as I rolled across the finish line the first time with no time left and it wouldn't pause at all. As far as the ending screen goes, I tried pushing reset and holding it for a few seconds, but both just result in looping the ending. As a last option, I tried quickly turning the power off and back on hoping that it might keep my score if I did it fast enough, but it ended setting the high score back to 0 so I'm going to start over and hope that I can at least duplicate or pass my 66k score.

I practiced pausing on the lower levels and noticed you have to pause before your cars speed gets to 0. I haven't tried it drifting across the line, but imagine it might be hard as the skidding lows you pretty fast and if you are coasting, well. Can always pause with the finish flags in site if you are coasting I suppose. The time bonus wouldn't be there anyway and the distance points would be negligable.

I'm trying to get a "no wreck" run in. I'm not sure what the highest possible score is on this game, but I'm hoping that I can hit 70k if I'm lucky.

Major probs if you can pull it off. I can no wreck it, but only get around 68ish.

Updated score.

Damn it I managed to up my score by 7,000 but I didn't have a camera ready so the only pic I managed to get off failed to capture my username.

Gah! Gotta get past that wall and reclaim my lead.

I love that the scores for this game have a wall that can't really be extended; things are going to get super crowded on the leaderboard, and that is going to make for some really fun competition

EDIT: better score below



Decent placeholder score until I get past the 5th level. Hopefully the score is clear enough to see. As webb said, this is gonna be a tight race with small differences betwen the top scores, should be fun to watch.

Updated to 66,468 and I didn't even finish! So close! You can only crash once on track 8 and I made the damn rookie mistake of being aggressive and not letting the other cars make the first move. Darn it all!

It looks like my high score won't be safe for long at this rate. It's a good thing I spent a few hours practicing each track today so I can make another run at it tomorrow!

I'm hammering away at this game right now. Overusing the acceleration can ruin a many good runs. It has for me anyway.

Truth. I always fuck up because of the boost. Run right into a car changing lanes. I am too impatient.

Ugh,definitely getting tired of this game and the ultra cheap MFing cars. Such bs. Ever since I posted my top score,most of my games have sucked and if they haven't I'll end up not getting past the 2nd leg on track 8. Trying to figure out wtf I'm doing wrong now that I wasn't doing earlier. Then I was just cruising to level 8,now half the time I F up on a stage I was wailing on,like stage 4 or 5. What the hell....

48,989



Okay, things are getting better. I was able to beat level 5, it's really not that hard as long as you slow down. The green cars definitely are not driving fast enough though (seems like the real L.A. possibly?)

Level 6 is not very hard but I had a poorly-timed crash near the end and couldn't get enough speed to coast. I don't expect this level to give me many problems.

I think I'm overplaying this game or pressing too much as I'm getting worse.

Yeah, it gets frustrating. Especially because it take a little time to get to the last level and once you crash all that time is wasted. Take a break for a day? My best tip I can give you is to just coast behind the cars until you know it's clear. Then wait for them to make their lane switching move first, then boost past them. And never try to pass going into a turn. You can pass in a turn, just not going into a turn. 

Yeah,I'll probably take the day off. I've been doing all the things you said. I'm probably pressing way too much and am way too aggressive.  When I was driving more defensive I could get to level 8 pretty frequently,but lately I seem to die on track 4 or 5 way too much. I guess because I'm trying to get the best time I can since I know it'll be a log jam at the top. Figured I would have beaten it by now. Leg 2 of level 8 is still ridiculous.

Shoot.  This is dissapointing...

As I was making the post, I realized that the top 1/4 of the TV in my pic was cut off.

Damned haste.

Looks like I'm going to have to try again. :'(

65.580

Nothing beats the feeling of being out of time and rolling over the finish line.

Soooo pissed! I had 68,500 and rolled and crossed the finish and couldn't grab my phone in time cuz I couldn't pause. God damnit all!

Edit: I screamed, "Nnnoooooo!!" fairly loud because of this. I came upstairs and my wife asked me if I just found out Padme was dead.