You know the kind of lifestyle advert Nintendo are very fond of? The ones with the happy, ethnically diverse families all playing games together at home, at the beach, in the car…
Well here’s one for your next campaign Furakawa: I played Pocket Racing in my back garden, sat next to the chicken run as I ensured that our two newly integrated hens (Ginger and Nutmeg) weren’t getting overly bullied by our incumbent matriarch; Pepper.
Newsflash: Squabbling poultry have no respect for the concentration required to execute a perfect outside pass on a two and half inch screen.
Maybe there’s very little interest in hand-held driving games out there but, much like Super Monaco GP on the Game Gear, there’s very little information on the internet about Pocket Racing (which I believe is called Pocket GT in other territories).
I can tell you it’s developer, MTO, had made a decent name for themselves in Japan-only PS1 street racing games in the late nineties, but they may be best known to game collectors as the company that made Initial D Gaiden; a spin-off game from the famous franchise for the original Game Boy - boxed examples of which will, when in good condition, regularly change hand for prices in the region of £100
Interestingly, it’s this game that appears to have had the biggest impact on the developers fortunes as it doesn’t take a genius to see the bones of Initial D Gaiden in Pocket Racing. And while this game may have fallen from the face of the internet itself, their next developments on this theme were the 3 ‘GT Advance’ games for the GBA - all of which reviewed, and sold, very respectably.
Despite the super-distorted artwork on the box, I, for some reason, didn’t expect Pocket Racing to actually feature this graphical style. Even when the cartoony visuals pervaded into menus and car selection screen, I still assumed that as soon as I hit the track it would be boxy business as bog standard as usual.
Happily though, each of the cars (unlicensed but clearly inspired by real world motors) are recreated in a chunky, inflated style. Even more happily is that the best way to see this is as you drift through the increasingly twisty corners of the 32 available tracks.
These are split into 4 types: Circuit, Highway, City, and Country - although, truth be told, this rarely changes anything more than the roadside palette and image on the horizon.
There are much better looking and technically superior GBC racing games out there, and those less charitable than I might even say there’s little here to differentiate this from a colourised Game Boy game, but I find simplicity of ‘Pocket Racing’ part of an idiosyncratic charm.
There are 18 vehicles to choose from at the start, and the collection can grow to 32 as you unlock more. There are modifications too and, in a nice touch, a couple of them actually change the way the car looks - something that far more sophisticated games don’t always achieve. Any modification you unlock can be applied to any car, which sounds like a great idea. But as you unlock better cars, and then instantly apply better parts to them, it contributes to the game’s biggest problem: It’s far too easy.
I need to caveat that I’m only about a third of the way through the campaign mode (called GT Park) but I haven’t lost a race yet, worse, I’ve won with a lap to spare nearly every time, and there are only three to each race.
I’m happy to dismiss simplistic presentation as a style choice, or something to bring retro-chic to proceedings, but this engine is capable of delivering a fun arcade challenge, so it’s very disappointing that the game’s simplicity extends beyond the visuals.
It's not like there's anything else in the package to flesh this out. The only other SP game mode is time attack. Link-cable multiplayer is supported but I can't see this game ever being, or ever having been, popular enough to make that a genuinely viable option.
No comments:
Post a Comment