By Drew Wilson
Multi-Racing Championship is a racing game released on the N64. It features customizability and a variety of race track environments. We look at whether or not this makes it a good game.
Multi-Racing Championship, releases in 1997, is a game that allows you to earn cars and trophies. One aspect of the game is that the different cars start off at different parts of the track which forces the player to try and catch up and beat the opponents before three laps are up. The courses have multiple routs (unless the player uses the option to close certain roads) so there’s more than one way to tackle each course.
This game suffers more pitfalls than positive aspects. While the graphics were decent, there’s not much else going for this game. This game works on the basis of either you win first place or you lose altogether. The difficulty is set very high and, perhaps, is because track selection is very limited. You spent a lot of time practicing on one track to try and unlock the next track, then it’s lather, rinse and repeat until you discover that there is only three tracks available. Yes, three tracks with various weather patterns and a mirror mode for each. That’s it. It’s like the designers made the overall game harder to make it more difficult to blow through it all in less than a half an hour.
The strongest point for the graphics is the nice way changing weather patterns were made. Beyond that, the game’s graphics are average – some of which were covered up by foggy weather patterns.
Some reviewers said the audio was anywhere between good and great, but I say the music is, at best, average on the first play through. Most of the music is covered up by the engine revving, the tires squealing and the voice overs telling you what is happening and what is coming up next on the road. With a few effects of the music that manage to leak out to the player in all of it, there’s nothing to the music that makes it really memorable. There’s plenty of sound effects to give the vehicles you are driving that realistic feeling. The voice overs are OK if they are not annoying after a while.
At the end of the day, the game is an interesting concept to get in to, but you quickly realize there isn’t much game in this game in the first place. It’s like the developers had a number of good ideas for a game on the drawing board, then the development process fell apart for the most part which resulted in this somewhat poor execution. At the end of the day, there are better games to play out there.
Overall
Furthest point reached: Unlocked all regular mode races and unlocked all but the last car.
General gameplay: 10/25
Replay value: 1/10
Graphics: 5/10
Audio: 3/5
Overall score: 38%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85
