Motor Toon Grand Prix

"Great Fun Racer, Complete with Appalling Handling"

Motor Toon 2, a rare as gold dust sequel to an even rarer game. Right. I'd better get on...-
The game was released in the UK in September '96 along with Jumping Flash! 2 as part of their first anniversary or something.

Graphics: 6 (Back Then: 9)
The graphics are nice enough, not great by to day’s standards by no means. They're very, well, spaccy now and angular. Still look past the spacciness and the angular-iness. They’re quite nice. The eleven courses look reasonable (Apart from that M.T.G.P.R. Course). The characters look okay, although the extra animation is extremely irritating. Thankfully you can turn it off. Oh, yes and the way the cut-scenes have been done is odd. They switch between .str music played over in-game graphics and .str cg, weird.

Sound: 5

Well, the music suits the game; it’s that nasty cartoony music mind you. As such it’s dire, with that mash of orchestral instruments that comes of really badly. Oh, there’s an announcer, with an annoying voice. He blurbs out what weapon you got on the item roulette. He has a rough accent, which is all the worse, d’oh. The only saving grace are those songs which are likeable, although I have no idea the singers on about (aside from ‘Go, Go, Go, Motor Toon’ in the intro) due to the fact I can’t speak Japanese. If it weren’t for them it’d have gotten 3 or 4 in this subject.

Gameplay: 8

I found myself playing it a lot, because among other things, it’s fun and has some good track design. That and it has a reasonable difficulty level. There’re a ton of secrets as well. One more nice thing, it’s easy to pick up. That’s good. Now the bad: The handling, it is HEAVY! It’s easier if your using the Negcon, but it’s still tricky. Onto the Negcon again, using the default controls with it I found really uncomfortable, in the end I had to change them. It comes from the time when Sony were REALLY pushing the link cable, there is no split screen, only link up. So you need two Playstations, two TVs and two copies of the game. The Japanese version came with a second disc especially for link-up, no such luck here though. The game also seems a tad slow, but that may be more down to its age than anything.

Lifespan: 9

The game has a fair bit to do, even if two secrets were cut out (Look at one of the FAQs). But getting the secrets there are should take a while, that and there are built-in records for you can beat. Those records should last you a while. Oh, there are mini-games too, but I won’t go into them.

Overall: 8
This is a good game and well worth a purchase, unless of course you despise cartoon racers, then you should avoid like the plague. Otherwise snap it up as soon as you find it.

Peripherals: Negcon,
Memory Card (1 block – Game Data)
(1-15 blocks – Replays)
Distributor: SCEE
Publisher: SCEE
Developer: Polyphony

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/17/01, Updated 08/17/01