Sunday, June 1, 2008

Day 91: Wacky Races

Wacky Races for the Sega Dreamcast is easily one of my top five kart racers of all time. Wacky Race for the Game Boy Color is okay, but nowhere near that good.

First, three of the racers are missing. Pat Pending , Lazy Luke and the Gruesome Twosome are gone. Whether this was a space issue or simply because eight racers was the established norm at the time, I don't know. Of the eight available racers, only four are available to start the game. Dick Dastardly, Peter Perfect, Red Max and Sergeant Blast all have to be unlocked.


The power ups are so generic that not only does the "ghost" do the same thing as Mario Kart's "Boo," it plays the same music while doing it. The courses are also fairly bland. Rather than laps around a circuit, each race is single end to end route, which fits more with the original source material, but makes for courses that feel more like a bunch of random left and right turns than a real track.

Wacky Races feels like it's just not quite there in a lot of ways. Most of that, I'm sure, can be attributed to the technical limitations of the Game Boy Color hardware. The game is certainly playable, but there are so many better options out there in this genre.

No comments: