''Wacky Races'' is a racing video game developed by

Appaloosa Interactive Appaloosa Interactive (formerly Novotrade International) was a corporation, founded in 1982 in Hungary, that produced video games, computer programs and television commercials during the 1980s and 1990s. History Andras Csaszar and Stephen J. Fri ...

for PC and

PlayStation is a video gaming brand owned and produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), a division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. Its flagship products consists of a series of home video game consoles produced under the brand; it also consists ...

and by Velez & Dubail for the

Game Boy Color The (GBC or CGB) is an 8-bit handheld game console developed by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on October 21, 1998, and to international markets that November. Compared to the original Game Boy, the Game Boy Color features a color TFT scre ...

. It was published by

Infogrames Atari SA (formerly Infogrames Entertainment SA ()), also known as Atari Group, is a French holding company headquartered in Paris that owns mainly video gaming-related interactive entertainment properties. Atari SA's core subsidiaries include ...

in 2000. The games use the story and characters from the American series

Wacky Races ''Wacky Races'' is a media franchise containing five animated series, several video games, and a comic book, with most centered on the theme of various Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters primarily engaged in auto racing (although occasionally employ ...

created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. The eleven racing cars compete against each other across circuits inspired by the cartoon characters.

Gameplay

The game features eight ready-to-play vehicles and an additional three boss vehicles that must be unlocked. The eight regular vehicles (and their drivers) are the Buzz Wagon (Rufus Ruffcut and Saw Tooth), the Boulder-Mobile (the Slag Brothers), the Arkansas Chugga-Bug (Lazy Luke and Blubber Bear), the Compact Pussycat (Penelope Pitstop), the Bullet Proof Bomb (the Ant Hill Mob), the Turbo Terrific (Peter Perfect), the Creepy Coupe (the Gruesome Twosome), and the Army Surplus Special (Sergeant Blast and Private Meekly). The three boss vehicles and their drivers are the Crimson Haybailer (Red Max), the Convert-A-Car (Professor Pat Pending), and the Mean Machine (Dick Dastardly and Muttley). Each vehicle has its own characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses, resulting in a wide variety of driving styles. For example, the Army Surplus Special has low acceleration but a high top speed. The Arkansas Chugga-bug, meanwhile, has a moderate top speed but very good handling. As in ''

Mario Kart is a series of kart racing games based on the ''Mario (franchise), Mario'' franchise developed and published by Nintendo. Players compete in go-kart races while using various power-up item (game terminology), items. It features Characters in ...

'', each competitor has abilities and weapons to fight their way to first place (such as

bubble gum Bubble gum (or bubblegum) is a type of chewing gum, designed to be inflated out of the mouth as a bubble. Composition In modern chewing gum, if natural rubber such as chicle is used, it must pass several purity and cleanliness tests. However, ...

, exploding

pumpkins A pumpkin is a cultivated winter squash in the genus ''Cucurbita''. The term is most commonly applied to round, orange-colored squash varieties, but does not possess a scientific definition. It may be used in reference to many different sq ...

, and

land mines A land mine, or landmine, is an explosive weapon often concealed under or camouflaged on the ground, and designed to destroy or disable enemy targets as they pass over or near it. Land mines are divided into two types: anti-tank mines, whi ...

). The player must accumulate floating pink coins, called Wacky Tokens, scattered around the tracks in order to use their vehicle's specific abilities. These abilities are divided into three categories: defense, speed, and attack. At the end of the championship mode for the first time, the player has access to the Mean Machine, driven by Dick Dastardly and Muttley, with superior gadgets. The game has four game modes:

Time Trial In many racing sports, an sportsperson, athlete (or occasionally a team of athletes) will compete in a time trial (TT) against the clock to secure the fastest time. The format of a time trial can vary, but usually follow a format where each athle ...

Championship In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match system In this sys ...

Multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

, and Super Gadgets. The latter offers a detailed list of all the gadgets available in the game.

Reception

The PC version received "mixed" reviews according to the

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website

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

. In Japan, where the PlayStation version was ported for release under the name on July 26, 2001, followed by the Game Boy Color version on November 22, 2001, ''

Famitsu , formerly , is a line of Japanese Video game journalism, video game magazines published by Kadokawa Game Linkage (previously known as Gzbrain), a subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, Kadokawa. ''Famitsu'' is published in both weekly and monthly f ...

'' gave the former a score of 21 out of 40.

Notes

References

External links

* * {{Wacky Races 2000 video games Cartoon Network video games Game Boy Color games Infogrames games PlayStation (console) games Racing video games Video games developed in the United Kingdom Windows games Video games based on Wacky Races VD-dev games Multiplayer and single-player video games