F1 Race

The game features racing in one of two Formula One cars on a variety of tracks in landmark scenery. On Famicom, the cars come in three colors: red, light orange, and dark blue. It uses a faux 3D perspective view simulated using the Famicom's 2D tile-based graphics hardware. Cars and objects are rendered as 2D sprites using billboarding.

Famicom gameplay is similar to that of Namco's Pole Position. The player must finish 2 laps of each course within the time limit in order to progress to the next. Points are scored based on the distance the car travels, with the goal being to gain a high score. Vehicles in the game have a generic two-speed manual transmission governing their speed (with a "LOW" setting and a "HI" setting).

HAL Laboratory developed F1 Race, in a small team led by Satoru Iwata. Production began shortly after the completion of Golf, and lasted alongside several other Famicom games such as Pinball, Mach Rider, and Balloon Fight. In a 1999 interview with Used Games magazine, Iwata recalled production being a challenge, as the first Famicom game with raster scrolling, a feature not built into the system and so programmed from scratch. It was developed based on Iwata's personal love for racing games, which influenced later Nintendo projects such as the F-Zero and Mario Kart series. It was published by Nintendo and released in Japan on November 2, 1984.

GamesRadar ranked it the 49th best game on the Game Boy and Game Boy Color, calling it a "first-class racing game" and praising its wide appeal to racing fans.