STREET RACER (SNES)
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Publisher: Ubisoft.
Developer: Vivid Image. Released: 1994. Genre: Racing. Other versions: SMD; AMI; PS; PC; GB. Posted 22nd October 2013. By Alan Passingham © 2013 |
The sincerest form of flattery has often been identified as imitation. Well, that’s what Quentin Tarantino hoped everyone would acknowledge after it became common lore that the last ten minutes of Reservoir Dogs borrowed extensively from Ringo Lam’s City on Fire. Actually, imitation seems more like a sure-fire way of making a sh!tload of money at the expense of someone else’s intellectual property. So you can perhaps understand why Ubisoft’s eyes were rolling with “£” signs when they decided to ride the Super Mario Kart gravy train back in yonder days and released Street Racer, a kart racer with more than just a whiff of Mario and company about it. Although unlike Quentin’s rendition of Chow Yun-Fat’s pig reveal Street Racer’s emulation of exciting and fast-paced karting is more like a constipated-dog with a severe limp.
With a template that follows Mario Kart closely it’s not immediately obvious why Street Racer falters in comparison. With eight characters of varying skill and 24 tracks to race around there appears to be plenty of meat on this bone. The big bold graphics, with the characters and their karts pretty much resembling Street Fighter II sprites, move swiftly around each circuit and the lovely parallax scrolling for horizon help to provide a convincing sense of motion. It’s no slouch either. Despite the bulky karts, races shift along at a whip-cracking pace, although whether this is due to pure speed or the shortness of some circuits is certainly questionable. Constant jingles throughout are the perfect accompaniment to the lively visuals, despite not being quite as catchy as that other more well-known karting game.
The tracks from Super Mario Kart...
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...mixed with the font from Street Fighter. What could possibly go wrong?
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Indeed, in an attempt to show a brief glimpse of originality Ubisoft decided not to mine Mario’s power-up feature. A circuit desecrated with banana skins and tortoise shells will not be found here. Instead each racer starts with and can pick up additional tokens that allow for a quick boost of speed. Alternatively, if opposing racers get to close they can punch them for larks in the hope that their kart will spin wildly out of control; a damage bar neatly indicates when your own kart is about to die a death from too many collisions or too much fisting. The amount of damage one can take is largely dependent on initial character selection. Again, unlike Mario Kart where perceived advantages and disadvantages were implicitly implied by the character archetype chosen (Toad = nippy and quick, Donkey Kong = an aggressive slouch), the eight characters in Street Racer are complete unknowns. The fact that Frank, Biff, Surf, Suzulu et al. are not born equal is only indicated by a series of stats on the character selection screen that shows how good their speed, acceleration, handling, defence and attack measure up. Although these differences are barely discernible when actually racing!
Lack of variation makes Jack a dull boy and, unfortunately, the samey performance of the eight racers also extends to the circuits they race on. Short, derivative and unimaginative, they barely get beyond going around in one big circle. Whilst Frank’s spooky castle (read: complete rip-off of Bowser’s castle) makes some amends with the inclusion of a couple of do or die short-cuts, the lack of obstacles, tough cornering and thoughtful circuit design throughout makes Street Racer’s street-racing exceptionally bland.
In turn, this is neither helped by the difficulty level. Whilst punching racers is a neat addition it’s barely required on the easiest settings and will rarely affect your own performance seeing as the sustained damage bar re-sets itself quite frequently. At least a red tortoise shell made waste to best laid plans with its one-hit cluster-f*ck and could induce some frantic inspired racing when needed. Here staying out of trouble, frugal use of the boost button (there are more than enough tokens to pick up) and careful manoeuvring around a circuit (which is an astonishing piece of piss owing to the insubstantial circuit designs – you can almost hear Mario chuckling in the background) should see any competent gamer through the three available cups and three difficulty settings with very little bother.
Lack of variation makes Jack a dull boy and, unfortunately, the samey performance of the eight racers also extends to the circuits they race on. Short, derivative and unimaginative, they barely get beyond going around in one big circle. Whilst Frank’s spooky castle (read: complete rip-off of Bowser’s castle) makes some amends with the inclusion of a couple of do or die short-cuts, the lack of obstacles, tough cornering and thoughtful circuit design throughout makes Street Racer’s street-racing exceptionally bland.
In turn, this is neither helped by the difficulty level. Whilst punching racers is a neat addition it’s barely required on the easiest settings and will rarely affect your own performance seeing as the sustained damage bar re-sets itself quite frequently. At least a red tortoise shell made waste to best laid plans with its one-hit cluster-f*ck and could induce some frantic inspired racing when needed. Here staying out of trouble, frugal use of the boost button (there are more than enough tokens to pick up) and careful manoeuvring around a circuit (which is an astonishing piece of piss owing to the insubstantial circuit designs – you can almost hear Mario chuckling in the background) should see any competent gamer through the three available cups and three difficulty settings with very little bother.
Imitation is the sincerest form of stealing other peoples ideas
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Bleedin' traffic. Where's the hard shoulder when you need one?
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And that’s only if you don’t die from boredom first. The way the cups are setup in Street Racer just shows Ubisoft never really understood Mario Kart’s success. A few punchy and entertaining races of vastly differing styles have been replaced by cups that go on… forever. The gold cup is a meaty 15 races in length - about nine races too many - and even though lap times barely go above the 20 second mark it’s just a dull approach to designing a fun and entertaining game. Even the victory screen – a static picture of the top three racers – is anti-climactic bobbins that pale into insignificance against Mario Kart’s victory parade party atmosphere. At least with Nintendo players felt they had achieved something, even on the 50cc setting!
There are alternative modes of play available, but do you really want to play football with karts? No. Even if it was good (which it certainly is not here) why would you even consider it when Sensible Soccer exists? Disappointingly no time-trial mode is included, so multiplayer is perhaps the only reason for Street Racer really existing. Use of the four-way multi-tap for a post-pub session was probably great fun back in the day, but as a single player game its short-comings are far too obvious. A shame as Street Racer had the street-map for success in its back pocket. Perhaps there-in lies the problem though; you really can’t get away from the enduring thought that for presentation, gameplay and longevity ‘Super Mario Kart did all of this so much better’. And then some.
There are alternative modes of play available, but do you really want to play football with karts? No. Even if it was good (which it certainly is not here) why would you even consider it when Sensible Soccer exists? Disappointingly no time-trial mode is included, so multiplayer is perhaps the only reason for Street Racer really existing. Use of the four-way multi-tap for a post-pub session was probably great fun back in the day, but as a single player game its short-comings are far too obvious. A shame as Street Racer had the street-map for success in its back pocket. Perhaps there-in lies the problem though; you really can’t get away from the enduring thought that for presentation, gameplay and longevity ‘Super Mario Kart did all of this so much better’. And then some.
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VERDICT
Visual: 7/10
Audio: 7/10 Gameplay: 6/10 Longevity: 4/10 OVERALL: 5/10 |