EDIT 7/30/11: Eric over at the excellent blog Musings of a Sega Racing Fan linked to this article and did an awesome write-up on it. Check it out here!

I recently found this April 1997 issue of one of my favorite (and dearly departed) gaming magazines, Next Generation. As a fan of excitement and hyperbole when discussing games, I decided to scan and share the Super GT (aka “Scud Race”) cover story on what they call “the best arcade auto-racing game of all time.”

Keep reading for the incredibly enthusiastic opening page and an interview with a younger, less tan, Toshihiro Nagoshi.

One of the highlights of the interview for me comes on this last page, when the interviewer asks who AM2’s biggest competitor was. Nagoshi simply responds “AM Annex” (also known as Sega AM9, Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s team).