After many years of owning the game and not being able to clear it from start to finish in without a gameover, I finally managed to beat the much harder sequel to the first Rad Racer game. The last two levels in particular are cruel, and you can't simply follow behind a car to avoid traffic, requiring instead intense memorization to beat. I broke down and used the level retry cheat a LOT to practice the last two stages (hold A after losing a level on the title screen when pressing start), before managing to clear all the levels from start to finish in one go.
The power mechanic where you have to hold down on the D-Pad to charge up then go from 0 to 255 mph instantly frankly sucks. Your acceleration without it is awful, and the added inertia to steering makes you feel super unresponsive. It also feels terrible for recovery, especially if your sudden speed makes you slam into a slow car instantly, you often want to slow down to 200 mph right after using it!
I tried to spice things up for the first 6 stages by playing my own music. The game has no engine noises when music is playing for some reason, but the engine also sounds considerably worse than the first game. What a shame. Music is from various games as follows:
Stage 1: Ginga Force
Stage 2: Akai Katana
Stage 3: Lotus II RECS
Stage 4: Wild Guns Reloaded
Stage 5: REDPULSE (boghog.itch.io...)
Stage 6: Nitemare 3D, Creepain's remix of E1M6 (creepain.bandc...)