"Quite Possibly The EASIEST Racing Game in Existance"

California Speed is in a long line of arcade racers ported to the N64. Games like Cruis'n USA, Cruis'n World, Cruis'n Exotica, San Francisco Rush, and many others were released in roughly the same time period. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that with so many driving games competing for shelf space, it takes a special game to stand out in the crowd. Unfortunately, California Speed fails to do so.

If there's one word that best describes California Speed, it's mediocre. From the graphics to the music to the gameplay to the variety, it's pretty bland. I'll go through them one by one.

1) Graphics. N64 has always been hampered with inferior graphics compared to the Playstation, and this game is the prime example why. Textures are blurry, the framerate is uneven, the edges of objects are way too jagged, and the ever-present fog is... well, ever-present. Cars are made up of a simple gradient which doesn't look very pretty at all.

2) Sound. The music in California Speed consists of about five tracks, and of those, only two (the rock songs) are very engaging. The rest are very forgettable and sound like they were put together in five minutes. For a racing game, the engine sounds sure are minimal. You can barely hear them! I'm not saying I like games where the engine noises are so overpowering that you can't hear anything else, but a nice blend of music and SFX would've been nice.

3) Gameplay. There are a good dozen or so cars to choose from, and they all pretty much behave the same. So the only difference between them is the different look, which doesn't matter either because the jagged edges and the low gradient equal ugly cars. And the stupides thing is, a GOLF CART has a higher acceleration than a HOT ROD! Realism went out the wall with that one.

In terms of controls, they're competent. There's little lag time in pressing a button and the action on screen, which is good. Of course, a few cars are super sensitive to the joystick movement, so you best be careful. But where the game falters is in two areas: -The sense of speed and -The environment interaction.

Unlike Cruis'n USA, which managed to pull off the sense of speed fairly well (not GREAT, mind you, but decent enough so that you had to be on alert quite often), California Speed doesn't. The cars feel like they're driving in slow motion, which doesn't make sense, since they're going 170 MPH. And there is literally no challenge in the gameplay whatsoever. None. The courses are uber easy, with the exception of Yosemite, which had a fair share of sharp turns and dips. But every other course is painfully easy, because the path is relatively straight, with few turns and surprises. You feel like you're sight-seeing instead of racing for first place.

And speaking of first place, the AI is terrible. They make little effort to thwart your plans for goal; they mostly drive straight ahead and let you pass them. And because most of the courses are fairly wide, there's little chance of getting smashed against the wall while trying to make a tight fit past them. I hate to keep comparing this to Cruis'n USA, but the non-opponent cars in this game are really easy, too. Not only are they more infrequent than C USA, but again, the wider courses make it easier to avoid them.

Now we come to the environment interaction. There's no tension in the gameplay, because the interaction with your surroundings is almost non-existant. Let me give an example. Let's say you are driving in the grass (which doesn't slow you down, BTW), and you hit a tree. You won't crash, and you won't even slow down! You plow right through it, like the tree didn't even exist and was just a programming error! Another example. Let's say you turn a corner too slowly and hit the wall. In other racing games, this would slow you down quite a bit, allowing the AI to get a good lead. Not so here! It's like the walls are made of rubber- you can bounce off them and keep going like nothing happened. What Midway has to understand is that for racing games to have tension, the speed of the vehicles isn't important (even though the speed sucks here), but how a car interacts with its environment.

4) Variety. There are, I believe, ten tracks in California Speed. They all start off as normal, with driving through a forest or city or country road. OK, nothing special. However, what saves this game from bottom ten material is that every track has a section where everything gets really loopy. In one track, you'll suddenly be driving on a rollercoaster, which has a lot of sweet jumps and pitfalls. In another, you'll actually drive up the Golden Gate bridge's arches, avoiding the congested traffic below. In another, you'll suddenly drive through an Area 51-style section, complete with alien autopsies. In another, you'll drive through a psychedelic trance. In another, you'll drive on top of a Naval ship. I must admit, those areas were cool, and broke up the monotony of the regular parts of the tracks.

The regular sections are so mindlessly generic that you'll wonder if you're playing a similar game. The typical racing archetypes are all here- desert, city, forest, mountain, and nothing special is done to liven them up. These courses (aside from the aforementioned special sections) have no personality, so it's difficult to tell them apart upon repeated plays. And there's nothing to unlock, so you've got the ten tracks and that's it.

Overall, California Speed is a very disappointing racing port of a fun arcade game. If you want a better port, try Cruis'n USA. It may have its share of flaws, but it atleast captures the sense of speed, environment interaction, and obstacle cars better. Only buy this if it's $5 or less and you NEED a racing fix. Otherwise, don't bother.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 06/06/05