The world of Formula 1 love letters is becoming a crowded place. From Formula Evolution to Newstar GP, we are spoiled for choice when it comes to getting our hands on ‘Not’ Formula 1 games that have varying levels of arcade-y focus. Formula Legends from 3DClouds gives us yet another taste of the Formula 1 love letter that pays homage to the roots of the sport and moves us to modern vehicles as the game progresses, similarly to Formula Evolution; however, this version comes in the form of SD. Not Scooby Doo, but Super Deformed (or Chibi) art style. The cars are squished together like your novelty air brushing caricature on a T-shirt at the county fair. This distinct art style combined with a simcade experience gives us a strangely deceptive offering that will subvert expectations.

The meat of this game is the story mode, which allows you to select an era from the early days of the ‘60s to modern power houses of the 2000s. Each era has a set number for races: four at the start concluding with eight in the final chapter. Each era gives you period-correct cars along with period-correct drivers to choose from. Mind you, there are no licenses at work here. All team and driver names are laid out with a fictional, yet familiar rejumbled wink and a nod labeling scheme. So, Nigel Mansel becomes Nick Mandels, Alain Prost becomes Alan Proust and Rubens Barrichello becomes Borus Rubichello, and so on. The same happens with the teams. Ferrari becomes Ferenzo, McLaren becomes McLauden, Williams becomes Will Win, you get the idea. None of this affects the game play or really ruins the immersion of the game once you are in. The other modes such as custom or time attack also allow you to select your driver/team and track if unlocked during the story mode.

Style is the first thing you will notice. There is plenty of substance but you can tell the publisher was really into the retro style that evokes Atari–more specifically “Pole Position” in its game play style with its purple, blue and brown motifs during the victory screen, not to mention the speed lines that converge at the top and separate at the bottom when the cars reach their podium positions looks like the Atari logo. In a race you can change views to give you differing perspectives of your race. The default view definitely had me flashing back to the ‘80s “Pole Position" or even the “Final Lap” series on PC Engine. The cars’ audio from the exhaust pipes certainly sound like high revving monsters from real life and the sound of the cars does change from decade to decade. It would have been easy to get lazy here and have all of the cars make the same noise but they didn’t, so kudos for that. The music is pretty consistent throughout though. It would have been neat to hear some funky ‘70s jams become synthy ‘80s pop and into some ‘90s grunge but as is, it's an all electro trance playlist that would have been at home in the pause menu of Cyberpunk 2077. Not that this is a bad aesthetic choice, but it would have been a neat little detail.

As you move from the ‘60s to the ‘70s and forward, the cars certainly look and feel different. For good reason too; as the technologies advanced, so did the vehicles. The 2000-era cars handle massively better than the machines from the golden era of Motown and that's where the game starts to trick you. The cutesy chibi cars with their oversized bobble head drivers really can be difficult to handle. There is rainy weather that will increase your stopping distances. There is a fuel and tire consumption model. There is a penalty system that will dock your lap times if you cut corners and there is car damage that can be disabled in the settings menu. All this combined with its retro style seems to suggest that this game is aimed at a crowd that is old enough to remember when Formula 1 cars had 14000 RPM redlines and manual transmissions (let’s get you to bed, grandpa). Formula Legends makes a real effort to seem to not to take itself too seriously but will punish you if YOU don’t take it seriously.

To that effect, when you hit the pitlane due to tire wear, unlike some Formula 1 games that do the tire change for you, Formula Legends makes you do it in the form of quick-time-event button presses. Botch it and that 2.2 second tire change becomes 4 to 6 seconds, costing you precious time that can make or break the race. You better focus on that one shot qualifying lap to ensure your best position on the grid. As you race through the eras, you can unlock new teams and drivers to select in your campaign or custom races. The same goes for the race tracks, which also carry the same wink and node name and design scheme. The Old Prestige GP looks suspiciously like Silverstone and the Riviera Streets GP is the spitting image of Monaco. These too also evolve in design through the decades to reflect the years gone by.

As far as gameplay is concerned, it really does feel more sim than arcade but with some pitfalls. You have to select your tires for a given situation as one would expect in a sim game. While it is always recommended to use wet tires for rain, there didn’t seem to be a discernible difference when using dry tires in the wet. The AI loves to bump you off the road which should result in race steward investigations and penalties, but it doesn’t. The early era cars really do struggle with severe understeer on brake and snap oversteer on throttle but feel almost artificially over boosted for dramatic effect. Finally, sim or arcade, usually an in-cockpit view of the action is a staple of the racing genre but it's one that is missing from Formula Legends. Multiplayer options are also amiss and it's worth noting that the starting grid of this bite sized racer is a light snack of 7 teams/14 drivers, down from the standard formula (pun intended) of 9-10 teams with 18 to 20 drivers. The result is a distilled, yet demographically confused cutesy styled light sim Formula 1 like racer with solid gameplay.

At the end of the day, this love letter to all that is Formula 1 is a unique and fun way to pass the time and feed the beast that lives within each gear head gamer. The pros greatly outweigh the cons in analysis. It's retro enough to show the kids how it used to be done back in the day, yet modern enough to run at a smooth framerate in a handheld form factor. Still, this subversively styled game can be a difficult taskmaster with all of the race assists disabled and rule accurate settings in place. It's the tsundere waifu that will happily cook you dinner with a smile but will clobber you with a frying pan using all the force of the Incredible Hulk if you dare say it’s a little salty.