"You're allowed to race in a Golf Cart? How is this possible!?!"

For the past 31 days, I've grown to become a huge fan of racing games. They normally take in a lot of action and speed, which are (for me) necessary goals for a racer to become a winner. This game has neither. And why does this game have neither speed nor action? Well, it's because this game is not that fun.

First off, you need to choose what tournament you need to enter, and then race those tracks to the finish. But right before even entering the races, I have to choose a car, which are very unpleasant to look at and are probably going to be very hard to see while racing, which is bad.

Next, we're off to the races!!! (I think...) After carefully looking through the tracks, they really looked much worse than the cars that we have to drive in. And they are designed rather horribly. What a rocky start to what could have been a great game.

But there were some points in the game where you would drive on something you wouldn't be allowed in the real world, even if a nationwide race is held. They were fun to ride on them at times, but those parts of the races were too far away and too scarce. It really made this game boring to play.

Next up is the radio. For the first two races I've been in this game, the music wasn't that bad. But my racecar keeps getting bad tunes on the subscription I had with that car while racing in some of the later races. It irritated me so badly that I muted my TV just to try and complete that race.

And even if those problems aren't in your way, the controls for this game are extremely loose, even to a point in some of the later levels that would be considered "broken". You need to steer your ugly-looking car through plain and boring landscapes and beat the other racers. I found them to be a constant battle over each tight turn and whatnot. And it's also unresponsive at times. That really made the game very unfun to play.

If you can tolerate the wonky controls, bad graphics, and a horrible listing of songs, then you might complete everything in 5 hours. But if you ever want to have a race ever again, this title might not be for you.

Presentation: Have a whole ton of races in California and make it a Midway game.
Graphics: Terrible. The cars are ugly and the tracks are plain and unpleasant to look at.
Music: It has a bad selection that keeps on playing while you race.
Announcer: Very annoying to listen to a lot.
Controls: Broken for the most part. I found it to be a constant battle of trying to win races with bad response times and bad course collision effects.
Gameplay: Racing is one of my favorite aspects of core gameplay. And this game in general made racing a chore.
Replayability: 5 hours is the average completion time to complete everything in this game. And with all the badness floating around in the races, there's no real reason to ever play this game again.

Final Verdict: Skip. There's no other way to say this, but I found this game to be drastically horrible in every possible way. And it doesn't have a single good thing in this title at all. That's why I found this game to be a skip.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 07/28/10

Game Release: California Speed (US, 02/28/99)