Before today I was only vaguely familiar with Street Racer. I knew it as a SNES release, but apparently it went on to be ported to just about every other platform at the time. Including the Game Boy. I bring this one up in particular because it’s not only my first direct exposure to the game, but also the topic of today’s review. Street Racer was known for it’s heavy use of mode-7 on the SNES. The Game Boy had no such capabilities. You’d expect it to be a train wreck, right? I did. It actually surprised me. Street Racer is the only halfway decent kart racer on the original Game Boy. Let’s take a look at what makes this one special. Let’s go!
So as I mentioned this is a kart based racer. It’s a behind the racer viewpoint with scrolling backgrounds and ground which work to simulate movement in 3D. This is a tall order for the Game Boy, but it actually kind of works. The game uses all of the main buttons on the console. A is gas, B for brake, and left/right steer. Up on the directional pad actually makes your kart hop which can help to avoid some hazards, but rarely comes in handy. Down activates your turbo boost, but I’ll get to that later. While I haven’t played the console iterations yet I can say that this game feels pretty well featured for a portable racing game from the 90s.
From the start you have eight playable characters to choose from. Each has ratings in acceleration, speed, handling, attack and defense. That’s a lot of different categories on paper. In practice however I never noticed drastic differences between each of them which is a bit of a bummer. Maybe it’s because the graphics can’t convey them due to the low framerate. The cast itself is very strange. Street Racer is an original IP so there aren’t any familiar characters here. Instead they’re all based off of cartoon stereotypes. You’ve everything from some old prospect looking elderly guy, to a stereotypical greaser, beach babe, sumo wrestler, and crusty pilot. There’s more of course, but I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with them or the motif the developers were going for.
To be perfectly honest the characters are ugly, and kind of off-putting. Thankfully the Game Boy’s limited graphics make them basically unintelligible during actual gameplay. So I won’t knock it too hard for that. The track designs are pretty basic with only flat surfaces, occasional hazards, and turns of varying degrees. Now the biggest difference between this and typical kart racers is that there aren’t really special items. You can pick up boosts, and health replenishing items (you take damage each time you’re hit) but that’s about it. There’s also a hazard that slows you down temporarily. Instead you have a generic melee attack your character can perform. Unfortunately they can only swing directly right of them. It kind of reminds me of Road Rash or BC Racers in this respect.
As I mentioned earlier the racing engine is surprisingly good for the Game Boy. Street Racer actually somehow emulates some of the mode-7 functions. Basically the floor looks like it uses this graphical technique and animates surprisingly smoothly. Unfortunately everything else is handled with the hardware’s scrolling, and the results aren’t as nice. Basically environmental elements kind of jump in at you which can make it difficult to judge their distance. This is more in line with what I expected to be honest. Another problem is that the screen really struggles with rotating. The developers compensated for this a little by keep it mostly straight forward when turning in slight angles. Unfortunately this leads to you drifting too close to the screen’s edge in these instances.
Most impressive though is the sheer amount of content in this game. Street Racer is might just be the most fully featured racing game on the original Game Boy. As if eight racers wasn’t impressive enough there are 16 different courses. Unfortunately these tracks are kind of boring though. There’s a lot of empty space, and not many obstacles. The biggest change you’ll see is when the track shrinks or widens, but even this feels insignificant if I’m being perfectly honest. I’ll chalk the lack of diversity in courses up to hardware limitations.
There’s also a veritable ton of different game modes. It’s mind blowing just how many different options you have for play. The first few are pretty basic. There’s a practice mode where you can set the parameters of the race to hone your skills. Next up is a head to head which is pretty much the same thing. We’ve also got the typical grand prix mode which is the basic competition mode. These are all pretty basic and function just like you’d expect. There’s a decided lack of multiplayer which is surprising. I think playing this version of the game with a friend head-to-head would have been fun.
Now for the weird ones. While battle modes are not uncommon in the genre the fact that they included one here on an 8-bit portable device is absolutely impressive. Unfortunately it’s implementation is absolutely haphazard. They threw this together with little regard for quality. You compete against seven other foes in a circular course to drain each other’s life bars using the attack. What’s so bad about this is the viewpoint is an isometric one for some unfathomable reason, and the single course is basically a disc with a hollow center. It’s just not very fun if I’m being honest. The isometric perspective makes control unwieldly, and the graphics are so small it’s hard to make out which character you are sometimes. It’s neat that it was included, but it’s so bad it’s not worth playing.
There’s also a soccer mode, but it only fares slightly better than the battle. This is a basic game of soccer, but in karts. Unfortunately the camera only ever faces the opponents goal. You can however back up. It’s just not very fun either. This one is more fully featured however. You can choose to a time match or score based one, and there are four different courses to choose from. Unfortunately it’s almost unplayable. The framerate is much worse than in the races themselves. The fact that you can’t turn around and can only back up is also really off-putting. I kept trying but could not play the soccer mode with any level of accuracy. It’s unfortunate that both of these bonus modes are implemented so poorly, but because they’re optional I can’t really knock Street Racer too hard for them.
Game Boy games are best held to low standards when it comes to graphics. Especially 3D titles. With that said Street Racer is one of the best looking ones. As I’ve already mentioned there’s some fantastic floor animations, and the parallax scrolling in the background looks amazing. Unfortunately the scrolling of objects is choppy. In addition it’s tough to make out the items on the track. This wouldn’t be so bad except one is a hazard that stops you. The character models are also pretty messy. It’s tough to tell who you’re even playing as. Street Racer does have a really nice soundtrack though. The audio is bouncy and has it’s own signature appeal. Even long after turning the console off I had the title theme stuck in my head.
