When i've tried selecting hardened difficulty and playing a race I find the performance drops notably (kind of goes in slight slow motion) and I can no longer control the car besides shooting. Has anyone else expereienced this or have a fix?

Funnily enough I recall this happening when I played it as a kid but as a young kid it didn't click with me that something was wrong with the game and I thought I was doing something wrong in playing it.

Guessing this is for Megarace 1.

You actually need to setup the controls first =)

When the game starts, its the middle bottom icon, then go to keyboard and press the keys. Then you can control the game.

I don't know about the performance as of yet but the first 10 seconds are fine.