Chocobo Racing Review (Sony PlayStation, 1999)

Chocobo Racing was one of the more interesting kart games to come about in the golden age of the genre. Mario Kart was immensely popular at the time, and several developers tried their hands at something similar. Many of these companies had big rosters of characters, and some decent gimmicks, but nothing really caught on. Even Squaresoft got caught in the mix and made a kart racer based off of their Final Fantasy series of role playing games. This was Chocobo Racing, and by and large it suffered the same fate as the others. It was overshadowed and quickly forgotten. Today we’re going to take a look at the game and see if it’s still worth playing, or if there’s no fun to pluck from these feathers. Let’s give her a look.

As I stated earlier this game takes characters, locations, and even some gameplay mechanics from the Final Fantasy series and adapts them into a kart racer. Some of it works pretty well, and is fairly inventive. Chocobo Racing is a pretty standard and by the books kart racer. Basic gameplay has you competing against a set number of foes in a three lap race around 3D tracks. Like Mario Kart you’ll pick up items as you zoom around each course. These can be used defensively and offensively. What’s cool is that they’re all based on classic Final Fantasy spells. Some of these can be fired forward, others give you a shield or allow you to drop obstacles, etc. It’s not all that original, but at the same time Chocobo Racing wouldn’t really be a kart racer without these.

I do like the fact that you can pick and choose which item you’re going to pick up. It’s not random like in Mario Kart. Each power-up is designated a different color. Some are only available in specific levels too. Unfortunately I don’t find them all that interesting if I’m being honest. The fire spell is just your basic shot forward that’s hard to aim. Water just creates a temporary puddle that causes enemies to spin out. Shield just makes a boring, but sometimes useful barrier to protect you from attacks. Shrink unfortunately is the same as the lightning bolt in Mario Kart. There are a few which are better than others though. Ultima in particular does damage to all other players, and curse puts a timer above a specific player that counts down to them spinning out. All in all they’re all kind of derivative and/or boring.

Despite the game sticking closely to the formula it does bring a few new ideas to the table. For one thing you can stack the power-ups. When you collect them these trail behind your character which shows you what you’ve collected. You can stack up to three together. Generally the one next in line is what you’ll use if you press the R1 button, but the mechanic goes a little deeper. If you have two or more of the same item stacked they can be used in tandem for a more powerful effect. What’s also neat is the fact that you can steal an opponent’s item by banging in to them from behind. This makes the action significantly more frantic and it alone can determine the winner of a race. To this end I would say Chocobo Racing is more skill based than your average kart racer.

While the items might be a little on the boring side Chocobo Racing makes up for this with special abilities. These have effects similar to items, but are recharged via a bar on the upper left hand side of the screen. When it’s full you can use them, and it fills at a constant rate. What’s cool is you can pick which one to assign your character. They also have functions outside of the basic items. For example charge gives you a temporary speed boost, flap lets you fly over obstacles, grip up gives you better handling when activated, mug steals an item from the first place racer, and more. Among the most interesting are magic plus which increases your current item to the next charge level, megaflare rains down fire on all enemies, and gunblade sends your vehicle into top speed until you reach first place.

It is these abilities that really save gameplay. They generally have bigger effects than the items you collect, and the fact that they can be used infinitely (or at least each time your meter charges) is really neat. I also like how they are clearly based on specific characters, but can be used by anyone you choose to play as. The combination of abilities and items really enhances gameplay and can make matches extremely chaotic. Chocobo Racing will likely ruin friendships when you play in multiplayer. Speaking of which this is unfortunately very limited. Versus mode is all you get, and can only be played by two players. This really holds this game back. Some kind of battle mode is really what this game needed. Multiplayer is the bread and butter of any kart racer, and the developers squandered it here.

The character roster is also kind of poor in my opinion. You have Final Fantasy staples like Chocobo, Fat Chocobo, Mog, Bahamut and Behemoth. There’s also a generic black mage and a white one too. Others like Golem left me scratching my head. I can’t even remember which game he was in. On the plus side they threw Squall into the game. Despite not loving Final Fantasy VIII he was my favorite one to use here. Personally I would have loved more game specific characters. How did Cloud not make the final cut? It makes little sense. These guys vary in more than just aesthetics with different handling and speeds, and some even fly by default (which is useful for avoiding puddles). Unfortunately the roster is a little small especially for a disc based game.

In my opinion the real insult comes from the level designs. These are short, lack significant environmental hazards, and just feel really generic. They all kind of blend together in my opinion and nothing really screams ‘Final Fantasy’ to me here. While they do have challenging turns (made easier with the handy power slide) I found myself getting confused as to where I was supposed to go a few times. That’s because the graphics do a poor job of highlighting the route. Unfortunately the best one has to be unlocked by playing through the game twice. That’s right, you can’t even race on FFVIII Circuit until you’ve completed the story mode more than once. Even this one isn’t particularly special. I can’t even blame that hardware for the lack of interesting level designs because other games on the platform managed just fine.

At least the game has a lot of different options. There are five different modes of play here. First up is the story mode. This is told via pop-up book style cut scenes featuring characters from the Final Fantasy series (namely Cid). It’s not a very good story, but it’s charming I suppose. Completing this is how you unlock characters and courses. Next up is the Grand Prix. Here you can choose four courses (from the abysmal ten) and compete against CPU opponents to get the most points. What’s neat is you can even let the game choose the stages and order for you. Then there is the versus mode (I went into this one earlier). Time trials let’s you compete against your best times, and relay race lets you choose three characters and compete in a relay. Not all of the options are great, but there’s lots of them.

Chocobo Racing is kind of a mixed bag in the visual department. The character models are sprite based and look fine with subtle but decent animations. It’s also really easy to tell them apart which is a plus. The stages themselves look decent with a fair fill-rate of polygons as well as slopes and environmental objects that are easy to make out. Unfortunately the game uses that ugly rendering method for backgrounds that this generation is known for. Basically the barriers in each course are flat sprite textures that didn’t look good then, and definitely don’t now. With that issue out of the way I do like how colorful the game is, and the framerate holds surprisingly steady. The soundtrack is ultimately forgettable. Music ripped straight from the older games would have been perfect. While there are some new renditions of the classics they just don’t sound as good.