Wow, so this is going to be quite the review. First off, I remember this game being called Team Losi RC Racer, which from my research turns out to be the name of the American release of this game on the PS1 (which is the system I've owned this game for). From what I can tell gameplaywise, they're about the same, though the rc's look differently cosmetically between Team Losi RC Racer, and Buggy.
So first off, ignoring the quality of the port and emulation, I'm going to go right into the gameplay itself. The driving physics are alright (although no option to control with analog controls, just analog mapped internally to d-pad), however, what really shines with this game is the power up system. To get power-ups in this game, instead of something like Mario Kart, where you run into a box and then get something random back, instead you have these colored gates, and what these colored gates do let you build your power up a color at a time. If you want a speed boost, find a Yellow then a Red gate, invincibility, Green then Orange, etc. This is something unique for sure, but not interesting enough to be a big draw. Overall, for a ps1 RC racing game, this is actually still pretty good, but shows its age a ton. Unless you have nostalgia for Buggy/Team Losi RC Racer, I would probably find something else to play.
So, onto the quality of the port. I played a ton of the American version of this game, Team Losi RC Racer, on both my ps1 and ps2 growing up, so I'm somewhat familiar with how the game should feel. The first thing I noticed about this game is that this steam release of buggy is most likely a Playstation 1 emulator, versus the actual PC port of the game. This means the game has Playstation button prompts, etc. My only two gripes with the emulation are that you can't map an xbox controller's analog stick to the emulated playstation's analog stick, it just automatically maps it as the d-pad. It's not like this game is unplayable without analog steering, but it's dissapointing. Other than that, the quality of the emulation seems fine, but I'm still confused as to why they didn't update the windows port of this game.
Now, about this Windows port of the game I'm talking about, according to my own research (mostly on Gamefaqs), back in 1998 when this game was originally released, as Buggy in EU territories, and Team Losi RC Racer in the US for PS1, a windows PC port was released at the same time, as Buggy in all territories. There was a EU only re-release of the game in about 2003-04 on both platforms as well by Zoo Publishing. Now back when this game was proper abandonware, I managed to track down a copy of the .iso file from the EU re-release, but couldn't get it working in Windows 10. However, I still have that .iso saved, and then installed it on an extra machine running Windows 7 I recently purchased, and it runs great. It has much better graphics options, runs at a higher resolution, has better resolution settings, actually lets you rebind controls, etc. compared to this emulated port. Since I just recently learned about this port on steam, I was assuming that they managed to fix the original Windows release, and now they have it for sale, but it turns out that they just emulated the ps1 version. It makes me wonder, why didn't they fix up the better windows re-release, or at least let us have analog controls in game.
Overall, it's hard for me to recommend this Steam port, as the American release of the game can still be found fairly cheaply (only a few $ more than the steam release's price), and owning the original release means it's fair game to emulate it on a more configurable emulator. I can't speak for how easy the original is to come by in the EU, but you might have better luck with there being both an original ane re-release of it. However, as a game, I think it's definitely a pretty good, overlooked game on the ps1, so maybe if you're familiar with ps1 games, and want something you probably haven't played yet from that era, I would recommend the steam release on sale only, and the original release, either emulated or on original hardware, in a heartbeat.
UPDATE: I looked into finding the source to the "engine" they are using, and it turns out it's based pcsx-r, which is an open source PS1 emulator, that, much like other emulators emulating the PS1, handle it's video, audio, and Controller inputs via plugins. The version of the emulator used on this Steam release is no exception, and it seems like the AudioDriver.dll, ControllerDriver.dll, and VideoDriver.dll files are just preconfigured plugins like what epsxe or other plugin-based emulators use. This also means that you can get a controller plugin that supports analog inputs, replace the ControllerDriver.dll with whatever you want to (I went with lilypad.dll, pcsx2's default controller plugin, with good analog controller support) renamed it ControllerDriver.dll, copied the ini file from it to an inis folder, and that's how you can get analog controlls properly in this game.
Long story short, if you tinker with a bunch of the files, you can get analog sticks to function as they should in this game, which means that, if you're willing to mess with it, it's a worthwhile game purchase, but if you aren't willing to mess with it, I'd still say wait for a sale. If you need help with the process of replacing the controller plugin, comment here, I might try to figure out how to edit pcgamingwiki articles and add my solution there too.
