The Super Play Top 100 was the 1990’s SNES culture magazine’s final ranking of the platform’s catalogue mere months before the publication ended. This regular monthly feature takes a look back at each title, how it fared back then and how it fares now. This month, it’s a racing game like there’s never been before, nor ever will be again. This, is Unirally.
Just Imagine this: it’s the mid-90s. Nintendo is dominating living rooms and kids bedrooms. Everyone’s hyped on Donkey Kong Country, Street Fighter II, and inhaling sugary cereal like it’s oxygen. Amid this gaming golden age, someone — presumably sleep-deprived and fuelled by copious amounts of Irn Bru — says: "What if we made a racing game... but instead of cars, or karts, or other sensible racing things… it’s just unicycles? And they ride themselves?" And thus, Unirally (or Uniracers if you're North American and think 'rally' means political protest) was born.
Developed by DMA Design, who would later create Grand Theft Auto and fundamentally alter your relationship with video game pedestrians, Unirally was a fast-paced, psychedelic fever dream of a racing game for the SNES.
Instead of humans, animals, plumbers, or blue hedgehogs, you control brightly coloured, riderless unicycles — which apparently have a deep, burning desire to race, stunt, and absolutely humiliate each other on impossible, rollercoaster-style tracks. You race solo or against friends on vibrant, physics-defying tracks that look like they were designed by someone with a vendetta against straight lines. Performing flips, rolls, and spins mid-air boosts your speed — because gravity respects style. Mess up those stunts? Prepare to wobble along like a sad shopping trolley. Multiplayer mode? Chaos. Friendship-ending chaos.
DMA pulled off some neat tricks with the development of Unirally, including pre-rendered 3D sprites that gave the unicycles slick animations, similar to Donkey Kong Country — but with 100% fewer gorillas. The tracks loop, twist, and defy physics, making Rainbow Road look like child’s play. The action is fast. It's fluid. It's weirdly mesmerizing to watch legless, riderless unicycles flip through the air like they’ve got something to prove. But what did Super Play have to say about it to make the top 100?
“The only SNES-only games from Scottish coders (and Dream Team members) DMA Design, Unirally is a fine example of original gameplay and innovative graphics. Using a process not far removed from Rare’s ACM, the unicycles call upon countless frames of pre-rendered animation to give a splendidly vivid, if occasionally headache-inducing, look to the thing. Perhaps the fastest game around, the enjoyment of hammering around loops and twirls is heightened by the split-screen two player mode, which makes all the difference.”
Yes, it’s as weird as it sounds. And yes, it's awesome. It’s simple, addictive, and feels like Sonic the Hedgehog had a secret unicycle-themed cousin.
However, just as Unirally started rolling, Pixar, still a humble animation studio at the time, showed up with lawyers, probably holding VHS copies of their short film Red’s Dream — a movie about, wait for it, a lonely, sentient unicycle. Pixar’s argument was that Unirally looked too similar. Never mind that Unirally’s unicycles are neon-coloured, attitude-infused, and traveling at the speed of sound. Apparently, anthropomorphic unicycles were a crowded market at the time.
The result? DMA lost and, moreover, Nintendo lost. Production halted after roughly 300,000 copies, turning Unirally into an accidental collector's item and a cautionary tale about annoying Pixar before they got rich off talking toys. DMA Design, licking their wounds, would go on to create Grand Theft Auto. Every cloud and all that. But Unirally remains a beloved oddity — a neon-drenched fever dream in the SNES catalogue. It quietly influenced the stunt-racing genre, with echoes found in Trials, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and every game where flipping for points is encouraged. Meanwhile, Pixar would get busy with Toy Story, probably thanking their lucky stars they squashed the unicycle competition early. The rest is history.
Unirally ticks all the boxes if you love: Absurd concepts, physics-breaking speed, turning your friends into bitter rivals via stunt racing and being able to say, “I played the illegal unicycle game Nintendo doesn’t want you to remember", then Unirally is your jam. It’s ridiculous. It’s fast. It’s legally dubious. And it’s proof that, sometimes, the dumbest ideas make the best games — right up until Pixar sues you.
