Back in the very late 1960s, there was a short-lived cartoon series known as The Wacky Races. This “racey” cartoon emphasized better driving than speed and followed the misadventures of 11 different drivers as they raced to find out who is the wackiest racer. There is the lovely miss Penelope Pitstop, the archetypical gentleman Peter Perfect, “gothic” monsters The Gruesome Two-some, country-hicks Luke and Blubber Bear, the Neolithic Slag Brothers, Red Max, The Ant Hill Mob, that crazy Professor Pat Pending, manly treecutter Rufus Ruffcut and Sawtooth, Sergeant Blast and Private Meekly, and the infamous Dick Dastardly, who could actually win if he stopped trying to cheat. The oddest part about the series is that the mysterious Announcer interacts with the racers. And it’s hilarious because he grounded the show. I digress, out of these 11, there is at least one character that a viewer will like. Now, nearly 40 years later, Eidos has released The Wacky Racers: Crash and Dash for the Nintendo DS. So, how does it stand against good gaming criteria and the original cartoon?
Graphically, the game is just a notch below the cute cartoon graphics of the original. The game opens with an full-motion video that looks like it could actually come from the cartoon show. However, when the racing actually starts, it tends to get rather messy, making it difficult to tell what is going on. Twice in every race, Dick Dastardly sets up some sort of trap. This time, they actually influence the results of the race. It is at these times that a little FMV runs showing the trap, and at the end, Dick gets what is coming to him before a brief tutorial of how to escape the trap (more on that in a bit).
Controls are rather intuitive as they use the touchscreen to control where the racers go while the top screen has brief portion of the map with the position of all the other racers. The control pad is used for power-ups: speed up, cause things to be damaged in front or behind the car, flying, and a draw attack. Sounds decent so far, right? Actually, no, it is not decent. The draw attack is horrid because it does not properly recognize where the player draws the attack to. But, what makes it decent, along with the flying power-up, is that the game will perfectly maneuver the car for the duration. While each power-up is “unique” for each character, all of them ultimately boil down to the same thing. It feels like they were ripped straight out of Mario Kart. Also, if one runs into objects and hit by the other cars too often, then the car will fall apart. At this time, all the pieces must be placed in their proper places in order to go forward. When this happens, it is somewhat punishing as I often found myself at the end of the line.
Skill is an important aspect of racing games, but Wacky Races disregards this by placing high emphasis on speed. Heavy racers are disregarded as unusable and unwinnable, while lighter racers are decent. Sadly, the game makes it look like all of the other racers can win. But they can’t. The traps, as previously mentioned, can influence where one will be after it takes place. In order to escape one of the six or seven traps that are used ad nauseam, one must use the touchscreen. Some are ridiculously simple, such as dragging a picture of your racer around a “canyon” or tightening loose screws on a tire, to the asinine such as “cutting” clouds or connecting the dots. The former uses the touchscreen a tad too loosely, while the latter has issues with properly connecting the stylus to the clouds or dots. At first, I thought it was the touchscreen. But after I recalibrated it, the issue remained. The same is true when a race started; it did not always recognize that my stylus was on the screen. The sad thing is that the intro FMV and the trap FMVs with Dick are really the best parts of the entire game.
The audio does not fair any better than the gameplay. The Announcer has been replaced by a man who does not even fit the role nor properly ground the game, and Dick’s voice has been changed as well. Instead of doing the job well, they are grating on the ears. At least Muttley’s snide laughter was kept intact. Furthermore, none of the characters’ voices are even in the game. This gives the game a stripped down feeling. Everything else about it is downright forgettable except for the theme song, which is perfectly emulated. Also, make certain that some headphones are nearby because the game is quiet — even when the volume is at max. Ironically there are not more sound effects from in the show in the game. In the intro credit screens, they claim that they took sounds out of the Hanna-Barbera vault. Somehow, I doubt it. .
There is a hard mode, but there is really no reason to play it because the game is highly unbalanced. Also, there are no wi-fi capabilities of any type. Granted, the game is barely fun, and if played with others, they might suspect they are hated by the host. But it feels like a feature was completely missing.
Overall, this game deviates from what made the cartoon show so much fun to watch. It is a horrid mess that feels less than half finished. At $30, this is not even worth the admission nor is it worth a rental. Just pretend this game does not exist and spend the 30 bucks that one might be tempted to spend on the game on the complete series instead. This makes me want to ask a very important question: What happened to you guys? I remember back when the PlayStation 1 was popular, you guys were the developers to watch thanks to the original Tomb Raider and Soul Reaver. But it seems ever since Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness was released, the quality has slowly gone down hill. I have to know, what happened that would cause such a great license to suffer and escape company doors as it is now?
