Firstly, we can’t talk about Motor toon grand prix without clearing up the poor naming convention with the series. The original Motor Toon Grand Prix is a Japanese exclusive title and was Sony Computer Entertainment’s first in house project for the original PlayStation, it was originally pegged as a launch title on 3/12/1994 but due to delays it missed the deadline by just under 2 weeks releasing on the 16/12/1994.

There was a revision, revision 1, done for this game which was just to fix bugs and fix the credits which had a few people miss spelled and one person missing altogether. People believe the revision made the game harder too, I’m not sure it has made it harder, but it does feel ever so slightly different, on the hardest difficulty you do rely on a bit of RNG (Random number generation) which means on some play throughs the opponents are very far ahead and the traffic you encounter can be frustrating to pass, but they are winnable.

Now the second game which came out in 1996 called Motor Toon

Grand Prix 2 in Japan is as the name suggests is the second game in the series with new tracks and characters and control mechanisms but in America it was called Motor toon grand prix which is where the confusion comes from. It’s worth noting that the second game from Japan is harder than the U.S and European releases, it seems that it was re-balanced when it was localized to make it easier for the western market. In Europe though this game was still called Motor
toon grand prix 2 despite Europe not having the first game released here. Furthermore, Japan got a second release of the second game called Motor toon grand prix USA edition which is a reverse import and re-balanced Motor

Toon Grand prix 2 and has the difficulty and progression more akin to the American and European releases.