Chocobo Racing

"When it comes to racing game, Square is only an amateur!!!"

The most popular character in Final Fantasy finally enters into a whole new game genre, and it is none other than Square's adorable chocobo. Debuted in the most popular RPG series, Final Fantasy, it has gained enormous fame and popularity and has become the main star in Square's chocobo dungeon and now chocobo racing.

Square may be the RPG leading developer in this industry, but when it comes to racing game, Square is just an amateur. Overall, Square's Chocobo Racing is just another average game. I am not sure about you but that's what i think that the game deserves.

One look of the game course will immediately tell you that it bears a lot of resemblance to Mario Kart. The graphics are quite good, with highly detailed sprite-based and very cartoony, perhaps with the exception of some 'pop-out'. Simplistic enough, the characters are all in great looking sprites. As for the FMVs, they look really awesome.

Unlike any other normal racing games, powers-up are scattered throughout the course, and each racer are allowed to select a special ability. These powers-up and ability will come in handy during the race. For example, if you select dash ability, when the gauge bar is full, you can pres L1 to boast your acceleration. Powers up include magical spells like fire, thunder etc. For example, if you use fira, you will shoot fireballs at your opponent and if it hits your opponent, all goes well. To add to the challenge, you can actually power up your magics.

The music is really excellent and there are quite a number of tunes from the Final Fantasy series. The chocobo theme really rocks! Despite that, the control is very weak, and slowdowns are inevitable. Turnings can sometimes be quite hard, especially in the difficult stages, which goes to show how well the courses are designed. Talk about Chocobo Racing, it's not about speed and realistism. Not Gran Turismo nor Ridge Racer territory.

Well, this isn't the end of chocobo racing yet. The gameplay is generally quite good. It contains five main mode: Story, Grand Prix, VS, Time Attack and Relay, enough to keep you busy.

The story mode is very innovative, and the presentations look great. The story is being narrated by Cid [another famous Final Fantasy character] and begins on a day, when Mog challenges Chocobo to a race. As expected, the story mode is kind of an RPG, and the story unfolds through a story book. The dialogues are really humorous in some ways. At each chapter, you are expected to race against a foe, and usually by winning him, he or she will join you. To add furthur to the replay, secret characters will be unlocked when you complete the story mode, plus a feature, which allows you to edit your racers' parameters. [Hmm...it's normal for a Square game to have many secrets and having secret characters in a game is quite common actually.]

Another interesting mode, which i thought was the relay mode. Players can choose up to a total of three racers, and just like a relay, the characters will switch during each lap interval. But, one additional point to take note, Chocobo Racing does not have multi-players support, which means it is definitely going to be less fun than Mario Kart or Crash Team Racing. If Square could add in multi-player support, the game would be much more better, and for the relay mode, hopefully, we can have some team work too. Not just one player sticks to three characters, but perhaps three team up in a relay race against the computer or whatever.

The look of it may appeal more to young children than mature gamers. Chocobo Racing is generally quite fun but it lacks multi-player support to compete with all other top similar genres like Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing. The story mode is indeed very well done and offers very immersive gameplay. The humorous dialogues will definitely make you laugh, and the sheer number of secret racers enhances replay.

Justifying the purchase of chocobo racing is the non-playable interactive demo of chocobo's dungeon 2. And from the preview, Chocobo Dungeon 2 seems to look to be quite a promising game.

If you are a Square or Chocobo fan, Chocobo Racing might be the right game for you, while waiting for Crash Team Racing. The best part of it is that it has the ''RPG'' feel, thanks to the story mode. However, i won't really recommend Chocobo Racing to those who are a diehard fan of Mario Kart. Even with all these so-called ''creative'' power-ups and ability, Chocobo Racing fails to excite players the way that Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 etc are able to do. Besides, it's very unlikely for you to touch the game again once you have completed the story mode and unlocked all the secret characters.

Story : 8.5/10.0
Graphics : 7.0/10.0
Concept : 2.0/10.0
Control : 2.0/10.0
Music : 8.0/10.0
Sound : 7.5/10.0
Voice : 7.0/10.0
Gameplay : 6.0/10.0
Replay : 4.0/10.0
Challenge : 7.0/10.0
Presentation : 8.0/10.0
Overall : 6.0/10.0

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/25/00, Updated 12/16/02