I'm started a XNA project to make a game similar in gameplay to Super Spy Hunter on a NES, which is used as a feature reference. The first thing I thought of is how to store and display level. Currently I'm thinking of using some tile graphics editor and custom pipeline for drawing level. I'm not sure however, that all is possible to implement every feature of reference game, but at least it's a start.
Question is, looking at a given gameplay video, can you think of any possibly better approach then to design level using a tiles?
By "better approach" I mean which will be either easier to work with, which will be more "natural" for this kind of game. The doubt comes mainly from a huge technology gap between then (1990) and now. So there is possibility that using current cpu power this could be done easier.
Update 1. As I continue study reference game and @ashes999 correctly mentioned procedural generation also comes into my mind. I began to think game logic is something like (simplified):
while next road section exist:
get road section data;
set road generation options (borders type, road type, etc);
set road section lenght;
while not end of a section:
generate road;
apply pseudorandom eye candy stuff;
this all looks like a pretty good data driven algorithm.