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\nI like the Japanese cover.\u00a0 The American one isn’t quite as interesting:
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This one is a new review!\u00a0 Just played this game this week.<\/p>\n
\nI like the Japanese cover.\u00a0 The American one isn’t quite as interesting:
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Extreme Go-Kart Racing is a kart-racer themed, but drift-racer playing, super low-budget racing game released late in the PS1’s life.\u00a0 The game is a budget game released for cheap, and you can very much tell.\u00a0 I got this game fairly recently, and beat the game quickly; somehow the challenge made me want to get through the game.\u00a0 The game is bad, and super low budget, but it is a little interesting.\u00a0 Yes, despite the title, this is a drift-focused racing game; it’s not really a Mario Kart clone.\u00a0 The Japanese title has “Drift” in the name, which is a more accurate name than the US title.\u00a0 This game has no weapons, either.\u00a0 It is about perfecting perfectly timed, Ridge Racer-esque auto-drifts.\u00a0 It works just like in some of the Ridge Racer games: to drift, let go of accelerate, hit drift, then hit accelerate again when you’re pointing in the direction you want to go.\u00a0 Also, the game has absolutely no analog support, insanely.\u00a0 The Dual Shock controller appears in the control settings menu, but the analog sticks do nothing, in the US release of the game at least; this game is d-pad only, shamefully for a game released in 2000 in Japan and 2003 in the US.\u00a0 That is, unless the Japanese version had analog and they pointlessly cut it out of the US version; the Japanese case back does have teh analog controller logo.\u00a0 I don’t know if that version actually has analog or not, though, but I will try to find out.\u00a0 Anyway, this game does not look as late a PS1 game as it is!\u00a0 These graphics would have looked old years before this games’ release, even for the PS1.\u00a0 There are seven tracks in the game, and no difficulty settings; seven races and it’s over.\u00a0 That doesn’t mean winning will be easy, though.\u00a0 This is a hard game, for both good and bad reasons, and beating the game will require a lot of practice in a game of quite questionable quality.\u00a0 Is it worth it? I’m sure many people would say no, but I had enough fun to stick with it, I guess.<\/p>\n
Mode options are only the basics: two player splitscreen, single race, championship mode, or options (control settings and audio levels).\u00a0 You can also save here, but NOT during a championship; that you have to complete without turning the system off, annoyingly. You have infinite continues, but can’t save your current circuit.\u00a0 Unfortunate.\u00a0 It does unlock tracks as a starting point as you reach them, but doesn’t save your current game.\u00a0 Once you start a race, you’ll notice how long the load times are in this game.\u00a0 As fitting with the general dated nature of the game, the loading times in the game are far longer than they should be, and are definitely irritating.\u00a0 Before each race there’s an untranslated line in spoken Japanese about the upcoming track.\u00a0 Lazy localization work there.\u00a0 In championships, you progress to the next race by finishing at least third in each race, and though there are only seven racers in each race, this is a challenge.\u00a0 Championship mode doesn’t really have an ending at the end, just credits with a generic (same for all characters) CG background.\u00a0 Disappointing!\u00a0 I was hoping for more.\u00a0 At least completing tracks does unlock them, so in the future you can start a circuit from any of the tracks. Still, with a game as frustrating as this one, I was hoping for better when I finally managed to beat it,and yes, finishing it was an effort. I’m not sure if it was worth it or not, but I completed it anyway, once at least; I’m not sure if I will again.\u00a0 Anyway, once choosing a mode, you then choose a racer. You start out with seven options, all stereotypical anime-kart-racing characters.\u00a0 There are four more unlockable ones, though I have no idea how to do that.\u00a0 The character stats do matter — larger racers really do control differently from smaller ones, for example.\u00a0 So that’s good, at least.<\/p>\n
Again like Ridge Racer, this is a catchup-centric racing game, not one where all the racers start at the starting line together.\u00a0 You start at the start line with two other racers right in front of you, but the other four opponents start far ahead, just like in classic Ridge Racer games.\u00a0 This way there are fewer sprites to render at once!\u00a0 Catching up to the leading four requires good play and practice.\u00a0 You can get a fast start with proper timing of the accelerator button.\u00a0 Hold the accelerator from the moment the game finally finishes loading, let go just as “1” appears on the screen, and then hit the accelerator again when the race starts.\u00a0 This should start you at top speed right out of the gate, an extremely useful advantage.\u00a0 Learn the timing for this.\u00a0 I often would just restart a race if I messed it up and spun out instead of got the turbo, because that delay would be hard to make up for.\u00a0 One of your two rivals at the line quickly falls behind in last, but the other one tracks you and is your toughest opponent.\u00a0 In each game you’ll have one other racer as your rival throughout the circuit, but who it is is different each time.\u00a0 This racer is also the one who appears before races, giving you some little hints.\u00a0 The text is always the same, though; only the racer pictured changes.\u00a0 I never finished in the top three in a race on my first try, it always required spending time memorizing the track, because you need to learn the turns — which should you drift on?\u00a0 Drifting is faster than slowing down, of course, but mess up and you might need to restart the race; you cannot make many mistakes and do well.\u00a0 I finished the game, but I don’t know if I ever even SAW the person in first place; I mostly moved on with third-place finishes, and a few in second.\u00a0 Winning would require even more practice, and this game is not anywhere near fun enough to be worth it.<\/p>\n
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During the race, your primary task is to memorize the course.\u00a0 Most of the seven tracks are too narrow, and so not hitting the walls is frustratingly difficult.\u00a0 As I will describe, walls are a major threat in this game.\u00a0 Sort of like Mario Kart on the SNES, tracks are entirely flat; this game does not have any hills on the courses.\u00a0 It’s quite dated in that respect.\u00a0 Each track has a different setting, at least, mostly in kart racer-style environments.\u00a0 My favorite was the last track, which was inspired by Rainbow Road, of course; the gameplay may not be Mario Kart at all, but the graphical design very much is.\u00a0 The last track is fun because it’s wider than the others.\u00a0 It has no walls, but the wider size makes it more manageable. Tracks are littered with Turbo powerups, each of which gives you a different amount of turbo.\u00a0 Once you build up enough, you can use a turbo. You can’t store more than one at a time, but once used turbos last a reasonably long time and significantly increase your speed.\u00a0 Drifting and turbos are the keys here, but both must be PERFECTLY timed, because one of the games’ most frustrating design choices: if you ever touch a wall, you spin out and lose almost all of your speed.\u00a0 Touch one wall and you lose a LOT of time, and likely a position or two as well.\u00a0 So, turbos can only be used in very specific locations!\u00a0 This is really a key point: you need to learn where you can use turbos. Some tracks mark spots where you should use turbo with signs that say “Turbo” on them, but also try to find other spots you can use turbos.\u00a0 Some tracks have them.\u00a0 The hardest thing in this game would be trying to make corners while at turbo speeds.\u00a0 So far at least, I’ve found that near-impossible; you can barely turn normally while in turbo, and while you can drift, you’ll need to start the drift even earlier in order to make it at high speeds.\u00a0 And of course, if you mistime it, you’ll hit the wall and waste the whole effort.<\/p>\n
On the whole, Extreme Go-Kart Racing is a pretty awful game.\u00a0 The description above may not sound too bad, but the controls are not very good.\u00a0 Car control is touchy, and getting used to the controls takes time and doesn’t work as well as it should. Drifting is also frustrating because of how narrow most of the tracks are; it’s far, far too easy to hit the sides over and over.\u00a0 Also, of course, I haven’t mentioned the graphics much yet, and that’s because they are bad.\u00a0 This game has some of the worst polygon-seam-popping issues you’ll find!\u00a0 Sure, all PS1 games have polygon issues, because the hardware does not have perspective correction, but better games try to cover over the problem.\u00a0 This game, however, doesn’t do a thing, and so visible broken polygon seams can, and often do, appear between every single polygon in this game.\u00a0 The polygon count is low, too, and characters are sprites, not polygons.\u00a0 Environments don’t have much to them.\u00a0 The game doesn’t have popup, as you can see to the horizon, but with environments this low on detail, that isn’t saying very much.\u00a0 The PS1 can do far better than this.\u00a0 When combined with the frustrating controls and lacking featureset, this game is not very good at all. With practice you can get better at the game, but the question is, is it worth it?\u00a0 No, it probably isn’t.\u00a0 On the other hand though, the music is nice.\u00a0 Music does play during races, and it’s reasonably catchy stuff.\u00a0 I didn’t remember any of it afterwards, but none of it was bad either.\u00a0 Decent work.<\/p>\n
So, overall, this is a pretty awful game, and I wouldn’t recommend playing it, but it was just playable enough that I stuck with it to the end despite how poor and frustrating a game it is.\u00a0 Extreme Go-Kart Racing is a budget game, clearly made on a miniscule budget.\u00a0 This game appears to be a cute kart racing game at first glance, but it’s really more like Ridge Racer crossed with Power Drift, or something like that.\u00a0 Unfortunately, being different doesn’t mean that it’s any good, of course. With only seven short tracks, few options, long load times, no analog controls (in the US version anyway) in a game that needs them, frustrating crashes whenever you touch almost anything, and not-so-good gameplay, this game won’t last long.\u00a0 On the positive side the music is okay, graphics are decent (for something from years before its release), character designs are solidly drawn and amusing, you do eventually start to get used to the poor controls with practice, and the game is playable and definitely requires some skill to master.\u00a0 Just finishing a circuit with all third-place finishes won’t get you everything in the game, either; and even though I finished the circuit and saw the credits, it didn’t unlock any of the four unlockable characters. My only guess is that you have to get first (or maybe second) place finishes in most or all races? I don’t know; the manual doesn’t explain it, and despite searching I don’t see anything about it online.\u00a0 But still, even if I almost never finished above third, I did complete the championship and see the credits, so that counts as a win!\u00a0 This game was hard; each track took a lot of practice.\u00a0 You basically have to be near-perfect in order to actually finish in the top three, and I almost never managed to even SEE the person in first.\u00a0 Perfect those perfectly-executed drifts!\u00a0 Or don’t bother, and pass on this subpar budget game.\u00a0 That would probably be the better approach.\u00a0 This game had potential, but it was not realized. 6.8\/10 (D+<\/span><\/strong>).<\/p>\n Here is a video of the game.\u00a0 It’s running in an emulator, so the graphics are better than on a real system, but it’s the only video of the game I can find.\u00a0 https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=clR2aGwjm2M<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This one is a new review!\u00a0 Just played this game this week. I like the Japanese cover.\u00a0 The American one isn’t quite as interesting: Title: Extreme Go-Kart Racing (US) \/ Kart Race Kimete wa Drift (JP) Developer: Now Production Publisher: … Continue reading