BC Racers Review by: Totts - 9/10
Sure, Mario Kart is a great game, but after all of the bad knock-offs one wonders if it is worth it. One of the earliest knock-offs was BC Racers, a kart racers set in the world of and starring Core's Chuck Rock. Released the year after Mario Kart, BC Racers was a forerunner in the ocean of functional and interesting character kart games (they call them bikes in the game, but come on, it's a kart game).
The game sports a good pseudo 3D look, the other kart/bikes and tracks scale and rotate nicely if not at a 100% perfect frame rate. It doesn't necessarily slow down, but it tends to get "jumpy" from time to time which tends to take away from the decent appearance. Artistically the game is not all that different from the Chuck Rock games, which, if you are unfamiliar, has a tropical prehistoric theme. Certain levels are set in the dark and your kart gains headlights and illuminate the area just around your front end, while the rest of the track remains nearly black. It's an interesting effect, but it's a hassle to race when you can't see at all. Also, like any racing game from the era, the tracks are lined with easy to hit obstacle which bring you to an instant halt and are difficult to get off of.
The racing itself is decidely enlightening and attractive. My first (and biggest) point on this is how remarkable the combat is, your main weapon is some sort of a club, or a guitar if you play as the Jimi Hendrix tribute character. It has a good but extremely short range, and when you hit it doesn't do much of anything. Interestingly though, you can have a second player control the weapons. Interesting, but it's not fun with such combat. Secondly the driving feels as if you are on ice, you slide around every corner wide, and this frequently means crashing into the dirt on the sides of the courses. Digital controls compound that problem as you can't really be as precise in your maneuvering as you would like.
The audio is suitably functional. The sound effects, from clubbing to drifting around corners are just horrendously uninteresting. I find this to be a reoccurring theme on the 32X: Throw away audio for a retro system. I'm sure the developers knew the add-on was probably coming to its functional end, but that shouldn't have stopped the team from putting forth some sort of effort. This like I said is congruent to the rest of the game, and it's this amazing detail throughout the game is why this game get's an even 9. It's the very definition of a functional game that is absolutely a perfect example of what the 32x is capable of.
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