They could not buy the drivers. So they bought the street instead.
Formula One in the late 1990s was a locked room. A studio without the championship license could not use the drivers' names, could not draw the cars as they actually looked, could not put a constructor's badge on a nose cone. Ubi Soft Paris did not have that license.
So the grid in this game is invented. Eleven teams and twenty-two drivers, all fiction. The seventeen circuits they race on are not.
Sega put a game called Monaco GP into arcades in 1979. This one shares the name and nothing else — no rights, no staff, no lineage. It was built in Paris by Ubi Soft almost twenty years later, and the licences that mattered came from the Automobile Club de Monaco and the Formula One sponsors, not from anybody's back catalogue.
The circuit is a real street plan, which means the town had to be surveyed before it could be raced through. How they did that survives nowhere I can reach.
About this game
Seventeen circuits, eleven teams, twenty-two drivers — and not one of the drivers ever existed. Ubi Soft Paris built this Formula One game without the Formula One license. It reached Japanese shops on March 11, 1999.
Gallery
The Story Behind
The Dreamcast this disc went into was fifteen weeks old.
Ubi Soft Paris was building a Formula One simulation without Formula One. Everything a spectator uses to identify the sport — the drivers' names, the liveries, the badges on the constructors' cars — sat outside the line they were allowed to draw. What sat inside it was geography. Seventeen circuits, reproduced in full — and the one the game is named after was licensed by name from the Automobile Club de Monaco.
So they made the ground carry the authenticity the cars could not. Corner sequences, track surfaces, and the sponsor boards that stand at the edge of a real circuit and stand here too, because Ubisoft went and licensed them one company at a time. A player who knew these circuits would know where they were within a corner or two — and never once recognize who they were racing against.
Tricks & Tales
Twenty years before this disc, Sega had already made a game called Monaco GP. It went into Japanese arcades in November 1979 and finished the year among the three highest-grossing games in the country.
It had no processor. Sega built it out of transistor–transistor logic — more than a hundred chips laid across two boards, wired so that the shape of the circuitry itself produced the cars, the road and the score. It was one of the last arcade machines Sega made that way. After it, the microprocessor took the job.
Look for a line joining the two games and you will not find one. No shared studio, no lineage, no rights changing hands. What they have in common is a place — a small principality on the Mediterranean that both of them wanted to put in front of a player. One did it with a hundred logic chips and no CPU. One did it with a license agreement and a Dreamcast.
Collector's Guide
Region & Compatibility
The Dreamcast enforces a regional lockout by software, with discs manufactured for Japan (NTSC-J), North America (NTSC-U), and Europe (PAL) each restricted to their respective consoles. Most Japanese Dreamcast games output at 60 Hz over composite or S-Video, which works on NTSC televisions worldwide; VGA output bypasses the TV standard entirely and is supported by the majority of titles, making a VGA box or HDMI adapter a practical solution for overseas buyers. PAL-specific titles are the exception: a minority of PAL games do not support VGA or force 50 Hz, so checking compatibility lists before purchasing PAL software for use on a Japanese console is advisable.
Maintenance Tips
The GD-ROM drive is the Dreamcast's most common point of failure — the laser lens wears out faster than those in most contemporaneous CD players. If games freeze, fail to load, or the drive makes repeated seeking sounds, the lens is the first thing to check. Clean it gently with a cotton swab lightly dampened with 90%+ isopropyl alcohol; do not press hard or use high-speed cleaning discs, which can scratch the lens. Compressed air is useful for blowing dust out of the drive bay and the fan area. The console's internal clock is maintained by a rechargeable ML2032 coin cell — the correct replacement type is ML2032 (not CR2032, which is non-rechargeable and can be damaged by the console's charging circuit).
Going deeper
Explore the machine this game ran on, and what to check before you buy or care for one:
What to Watch Out For
Before buying, these are the points worth knowing — from someone who handles original Japanese Monaco Grand Prix Racing Simulation 2 copies regularly.
Will this Japanese Dreamcast game work on a North American or European Dreamcast?
No, not on unmodified hardware. The Dreamcast enforces regional lockout via the console BIOS — Japanese GD-ROMs will not run on Western consoles. Options include a boot disc (such as Utopia Boot Disc or DC-X) that bypasses region protection without hardware modification, a BIOS replacement, or a Japanese Dreamcast. The Dreamcast's regional protection is widely considered one of the easiest to bypass among disc-based consoles of its era.
Do I need a VMU (Visual Memory Unit) to save game progress?
Yes. The Dreamcast has no internal save storage. A VMU must be inserted into the controller's memory card slot to save game data. Each VMU holds 200 blocks; most games use 1–20 blocks per save file. The VMU also has a small LCD screen and can run mini-games independently of the console. Third-party memory cards are available, but the official Sega VMU is recommended for reliability.
How should I handle and care for a Dreamcast GD-ROM disc?
The Dreamcast uses GD-ROM, a proprietary high-density disc format. Handle by the edges and center hub, avoiding the data surface. Clean by wiping from the center outward in straight radial strokes with a soft lint-free cloth — never in a circular motion. If the console struggles to load an otherwise intact disc, the Dreamcast laser may need cleaning or adjustment, which is a common maintenance issue in aging Dreamcast hardware.
Before You Buy
Things worth knowing before you buy Monaco Grand Prix Racing Simulation 2
A short checklist for buying a used Dreamcast disc wisely — useful with any seller, anywhere.
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Choose a seller who tests it before shipping
A copy that has actually been powered on and checked is a known quantity. An untested one is a gamble you only settle after it arrives.
Look for a seller who states it was function-tested and says what they confirmed. A serious seller can tell you exactly what was checked.
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Check the disc for scratches
Deep scratches on the playing surface cause freezes and read errors. Light surface marks are usually fine.
Ask for a clear photo of the disc's underside. A seller who tested it will confirm it loads and plays through.
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Make sure it fits your console
This is a Japanese Dreamcast GD-ROM. The Dreamcast is region-locked, so a Japanese disc generally needs a Japanese console.
Play it on a matching Japanese console or a region-free system, and confirm the listing states the region.
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Saves use a VMU — no disc battery
Dreamcast games save to a VMU memory card; the disc itself has no battery.
Make sure you have a VMU with a working battery and free blocks.
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Read the seller's reviews and return policy
A 100% positive record across thousands of sales is close to a guarantee — packing, communication and problem-solving all work for everyone. A return policy protects you if something is off.
Read the feedback and confirm a clear return window before you buy.
The last step before buying anywhere is knowing what it's worth.
See the unit we have →Unexpected Discoveries
Games you weren't looking for — but might be glad you found.
Rooms this game lives in
Wander deeper — explore the themed rooms where Monaco Grand Prix Racing Simulation 2 sits alongside its kin.
Memories from around the world
This is a young museum, and this page is still waiting for its first voices. The memories people send reach Taisei personally, and the ones that move him find a home here over time — always with the writer's blessing. Yours could be the very first for this game.
Share your memory ↑From the Museum's Screening Room
Monaco Grand Prix — Max Explains