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NASCAR CHALLENGE (GBC)
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Publisher: Hasbro Interactive.
Developer: Morning Star Multimedia. Released: December 1999 (US). Genre: Racing. Posted 6th May 2022. By Tom Clare © 2022 |
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NASCAR ballooned in popularity around the turn of the millennium, something reflected in a rapid influx of gaming licenses based around the racing series. EA hit the ground running with the enjoyable NASCAR ‘98, as annual updates would thereafter become a regular fixture on the PlayStation. The series would also branch off into a separate, sim-targeted line for PC gamers. Hasbro Interactive meanwhile snapped up the rights for the Game Boy Color, rushing out three licensed racers in the space of a year. NASCAR Challenge was the first and least impressive of the trio and it’s immediately clear why it never made it over to Europe. It’s about as far from the high-octane thrills of the sport as a game can get, playing like a NES tech demo, producing all of twenty minutes gameplay and looking as if its tracks were drawn by a five-year-old.
There are worrying signs from the off. There’s very little in the way of options or modes and don’t expect to tackle anything like a full season, as the main championship comprises just three courses. Interpretations of Topeka, Sonoma and Seneca raceways bear little more than the basic outline of the real tracks. There’s no choice of cars and whilst drivers from the sport appear to have been licensed, the player doesn’t get to race as any of them. Indeed, they only ever appear as names on the results screens.
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So little to see and do: NASCAR Challenge is one of the bearest, most tedious racers you'll ever play
After the somewhat challenging Topeka hosts the opening round, the remaining courses are shorter, innocuous affairs that offer very little of note. Presumably, to alleviate boredom, much of the challenge from the overly lengthy, six lap races comes from lapping cars. You’ll be doing a lot of this: typically, the player will catch a train of traffic as early as the second lap. The racing functions but is extremely simplistic, conjuring little sense of speed or involvement, with only a short draw distance to trouble the player.
NASCAR Challenge’s lack of design direction is summed up by its strangely extravagant pit-stops, which showcase a dynamic range of crew stills. It’s odd that Morning Star would go to such lengths over a tertiary element that is never called upon. There’s no fuel consumption or tyre degradation and to the best of my knowledge, no ill effects result from shunts. It’s almost as if there was a simulation mode in the works that didn’t make it to the final product.
NASCAR Challenge’s lack of design direction is summed up by its strangely extravagant pit-stops, which showcase a dynamic range of crew stills. It’s odd that Morning Star would go to such lengths over a tertiary element that is never called upon. There’s no fuel consumption or tyre degradation and to the best of my knowledge, no ill effects result from shunts. It’s almost as if there was a simulation mode in the works that didn’t make it to the final product.
FOCAL POINT: HASBRO'S NASCAR ODYSSEY
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NASCAR Heat (2000, Game Boy Color)
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NASCAR Racers (2000, Game Boy Color)
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Now I’m no sleuth, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Hasbro Interactive secured a short-term, multi-game deal to release NASCAR-licensed games on the Game Boy Color at some point during 1999. In the year that followed, Challenge was swiftly followed by two more racers featuring the name. NASCAR Heat (which also saw PC and console versions) offered stronger gameplay and much more in the way of content, playing like Micro Machines, from an overhead perspective. NASCAR Racers, meanwhile, had nothing whatsoever to do with the stock car series, but was instead based on an animated TV show of the same name. Racers is an interesting curio. An up-the-screen, scrolling racer in the mould of Amiga and Atari ST racers of the early nineties, it features a fresh-faced cast and colourful, global locations more typically associated with a kart racer. It sees futuristic cars compete on courses littered with speed strips and obstacles. These two subsequent titles were far from perfect, but they represented a sizeable improvement over NASCAR Challenge.
There’s no two ways about it, NC looks woeful. Its backgrounds are ultra-basic, gaudily coloured and poorly drawn, whilst aside from the odd directional board, there’s no trackside scenery at all. The cars look rubbish and the game encounters considerable trouble with sprite scaling. Opponents’ vehicles look massive and by the time you’ve pulled alongside, they routinely dwarf the player’s car. Aside from appearing unintentionally comical, these sprites make avoiding collisions with AI, particularly on corners, a problem. If you’re lucky enough to encounter drivers on the straights, you’ll generally pass them as they all drive in a uniform line. Here, they’ll often stack up, passing through each other with no apparent ill effects.
Otherwise, not a lot of time was put into making an adequate game of NASCAR Challenge. The music is repetitive, plodding and thematically bizarre, feeling as though it belongs to an entirely different kind of game. Sound effects offer the bear-minimum to compliment crashes and off-course excursions, nothing more.
Otherwise, not a lot of time was put into making an adequate game of NASCAR Challenge. The music is repetitive, plodding and thematically bizarre, feeling as though it belongs to an entirely different kind of game. Sound effects offer the bear-minimum to compliment crashes and off-course excursions, nothing more.
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The tournament can be polished off very quickly and by the close of a second playthrough, you’ll feel satisfied you’ve extracted every drop of experience from this extremely lightweight title. Lamentable visuals, duff gameplay that’s basic to the point of crude and a remarkable lack of content for a turn of the millennium retail release ensure NASCAR Challenge should be given a wide berth. There’s little here for racing fans and even less for followers of NASCAR. A very sorry effort.
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VERDICT
"...about as far from the high-octane thrills of the sport as a game can get... There’s little here for racing fans and even less for followers of NASCAR." OVERALL: 2/10 |