Slip Stream

Slip Stream is a Formula 1 arcade racing game developed by Capcom and released around 1995. It is historically notable as the only third-party game ever produced for Sega's System 32 arcade hardware, a Super Scaler-style board that Sega otherwise reserved for its own titles. That a company with its own well-established arcade boards chose to build on a competitor's platform makes Slip Stream an oddity in Capcom's catalogue.

The game is a Super Scaler-style racer modeled on the 1993 Formula 1 season, featuring that year's cars and circuits. Its defining mechanic is the slipstream of the title: by drafting closely behind a rival car, the player charges a boost meter that can then be released for bursts of extra speed. Contemporary impressions praised its sense of velocity and its detailed scenery.

Slip Stream is also one of the rarest arcade games in existence. It appears to have released only in Brazil, and collectors estimate that only around 150 printed circuit boards were ever manufactured, making surviving units extremely scarce. The game is further remembered for an unrealized feature: Capcom negotiated with Senna Brands to include an audio clip of the late Ayrton Senna narrating a lap of the Interlagos circuit. Those talks took place after Senna's death, were complicated by recording rights held by TV Globo, and ultimately collapsed for financial reasons, so the clip never appeared. The game received no wider release, and its long absence from emulation has kept it almost entirely unplayable outside the small circle of collectors who own a board.