Car Battler Joe Review (Game Boy Advance, 2002)

Car Battler Joe is truly a one of a kind type of game. In my opinion it’s one of the big GBA hidden gems. This title released on the GBA to very little fanfare. It didn’t have a big name franchise attached to it, and the game blended very different genres in a way that few had tried before it. I mean a vehicular action game with heavy RPG elements? You’re not alone if you don’t believe this would work. Somehow it does though. Normally a quirky title like this would have stayed in Japan. Thanks to Natsume North American audiences were able to enjoy it a year after it’s debut. The game was good back then, but does Car Battler Joe stand the test of time? Let’s dive in.

The story here is that you’re a teenager named Joe living in an alternate reality in the future. It is here that the biggest sport is car battling. These events are televised, and have more than their fair share of fans. Joe’s father is one of the most famous of the car battlers, but he left his family years ago to seek fortune. What a loser. Regardless, the adventure begins as Joe is gifted a G-com unit. This is a little android like figure that plugs in to a car and controls the weapons. Oh, and he can talk. That’s pretty important because Joe is a silent protagonist. Along with the G-com he’s also gifted an old car. For what purpose, you may ask? So that Joe can live out his dream to become the best car battler in the world, of course. Unfortunately this is not an easy path.

While inside town areas you guide Joe around on foot from a top down perspective. It looks like a classic RPG in this sense. He can interact with NPCs, buy items, manage his vehicles, etc. Traveling around outside of these town areas is a different story. There isn’t a traditional world map in Car Battler Joe. Not like one you would find in an RPG anyway. Instead you have a map from which you select destinations. Upon making your choice you’re given the option to skip travel. Should you choose not to you’re thrust into a driving sequence where your goal is simply to make it from one side of the area to the next. Unfortunately you’ll be attacked by enemies along the way. That’s where combat comes in to play.

These driving sequences make heavy use of the system’s mode-7 graphics engine to simulate three dimensional gameplay. The action is viewed from a skewed overhead direction and A drives forward, the directional pad steers, and the R button fires your default weapon. Combat occurs completely in real-time. As you drive you’ll encounter enemy vehicles and fire your weapons to destroy them. The thing is they tend to fight back. Your car has two meters on the bottom of the screen. One represents your HP and the other is for SP. As you take damage hit points are depleted. When they run out you lose and have to start the run over. SP is a little different in that it’s for special maneuvers. I’ll cover those later.

So how is the combat? It’s fun, but a little clunky to be honest. It also really depends on what kind of weapon you have equipped. These vary in range, power, and firing rate. Some are a little awkward to use such as the short ranger saws, but others like the homing missile require more planning. While they were all fairly easy to use I could never find out that felt just right. Shooting down other cars and obstacles just doesn’t feel quite as good as in something like Twisted Metal. Shots often don’t go where you would expect them to. I think this has to do with the mode-7 rotational effects. I learned to compensate so it wasn’t that bad, but it never feels truly intuitive. Sometimes it feels like the game struggles to register inputs, but I think that’s more a limitation of firing rate than anything else.

The car you start out with is kind of a clunker. Thankfully you have several options to upgrade this potato with wheels. You can spend money to increase the stats on various parts. This makes you faster, lets you take less damage, etc. What’s also cool is the fact that you can build additional cars. You need to collect three parts; a chassis, engine, and body. Unfortunately these all have to be compatible with one another but there are only a few different types to be found. As I mentioned earlier you can also switch weapons. There’s a fair bit of variety here. There are long range missiles, short range guns, and saws that require you to get up close and personal. Three different weapons can be equipped at once, but you have to manually change which of these you’re using via the menu.

But wait, there’s even more to upgrade. Joe himself gains levels like in a traditional RPG. You’re awarded experience points after completing each run. These increase his various stats like defense and accuracy. Furthermore your garage can also be upgraded. This process involves retrieving items found in the various stages and bringing them back to Joe’s mom. She tells you exactly what she needs which takes all of the guesswork out of the process. This allows you to store more vehicles and items as well as participate in higher levels of car battler tournaments. There’s a lot to manage here. It makes the experience all the more rewarding however.

Thankfully there’s quite a bit of content packed into this game. You have a main story to follow (it’s not particularly compelling though), tons of side quests, and of course the battle tournaments to complete. Side quests are jobs you pick up at the shops. These include things like transporting items, collecting specific articles within the stages, and even defeating enemies. Of course all of these are completed via the driving sequences. Some have strict time limits as well. Completing these nets you precious money as well as experience points. The tournament battles are unlocked as you level up your garage. These are basically the main events where you face off against a variety of opponents to come out on top. Even though the game is all about driving there’s a fair bit of variety.

Level designs have a few issues however. Generally they’re all pretty similar. There’s not a lot of variety in terrain, and you’ll get deja vu because it feels like the same angles of turns are used over and over again. You’re always pointed forward by an icon showing you the route’s direction at the top of the screen which is pretty helpful. This also indicates where nearby enemies are incoming from. Some of the story related stages do manage to introduce a few interesting gimmicks however. One area in particular does away with the radar for the most part leaving you to follow tracks to reach the end. There are special cards you can find that temporarily restore the navigation, but for the most part you have to keep an eye out for the foe’s skid marks. There are also a few boss battles which are pretty neat.

Unfortunately the AI leaves quite a lot to be desired. I found that in most instances I could dispatch foes using long range weapons and they wouldn’t even figure out I was there. In other cases I could trick the CPU opponents into getting stuck on the environments and simply take them out with ease. Other times they would get stuck endlessly circling my car trying to line up a shot but failing miserably. Car Battler Joe is pretty easy to exploit as long as things aren’t too chaotic. The game itself isn’t terribly difficult though. I was only knocked out a couple of times throughout the adventure. This was mostly due to the somewhat awkward handling which made it a chore to loop around to destroy enemies attacking from behind.

Car Battler Joe is a decent looking game with some strange graphical choices. Outside of the driving sequences the characters are large and oversized. This doesn’t look particularly good in my opinion. There are some still shots in specific story sequences that show what the characters are supposed to look like. It doesn’t match very well. The driving sections however look pretty good. The mode-7 effects are as charming as always, and the framerate holds very steady even with a lot of chaos. The enemy cars are mostly digitized sprites. They look good until they begin rotating. The animations aren’t particularly good for that. The soundtrack is also just okay. There are some good tracks, but nothing really stands out particularly strong.