Indy 500

"You can't get a worse racer for 5$"

---INDY 500 for Tiger Game.Com---

Good and exciting games did not really overpopulate the Game.Com. Most, or all of them, where short lived, awful looking, awful sounding and awful playing miniatures of games. Actual released titles were always nothing short of well packaged travesties, that Tiger called games. If anything, the Game.Com did fail for a reason.

This game is no exception to the rule. It's one of these games where you wonder if anyone played the game before giving it a retail price of 34.99 $ when it was released. Actually they should put a huge sticker on it with the writing ''Don't buy if price exceeds 0.99 $''. Luckily that's the price it goes around these days. And trust me, you should do a lot of considerations before you even cashed this much on such a cheap piece of plastic. Why you say?

Well, do you like racing games where you only need to turn left once in a while? How about racing games where even the most minimal impact will make you stop? And how about racing games which supposedly rely on realism, asking you to stop to the pits once you receive a certain amount of damage, while at the same time throw large boulders and huge lakes of mud across the ''professional racing'' stages? I know what you are already thinking about. Welcome to 80s Commodore 64 gameplay, on the grasp of your awful looking, sounding and playing handheld. Luckily, things could get worse...

Let's get specific.

---GRAPHICS:

The Game.Com could do better graphics than the black and white Game Boy. But it's processor could not handle complex graphics and sound at the same time. So while it had more layers running at the same time, and could theoretically process more 2D sprites on screen, and even perform basic 3D operations, it's biggest problem was that every single thing was moving slower than a turtle. I would be surprised if it could decently run almost any Game Boy game without slowdowns. But I was surprised that Indy 500 actually runs with minimal slowdown while at the same time offering pseudo-3D graphics, decent 2D-sprites car models, and offer a minimal hint of realism on the track. Well that's the initial impression, if you play the game for some seconds. Because soon you will realize that there's actually nothing but 2 2D-sprites cars at the same time and a series of looping screens that make the stage. The graphics do change from time to time, as boulders and mud (or is it oil?) lakes appear on the road, and you hate to avoid them. But really this is nothing that would make you say ''holy crap this is amazing'', even if it was released in early 80s. It's not like most crap we are served on Game.Com, but it's far from actually being anything decent.

GRAPHICS SCORE: 5.0/10

---SOUND:

We don't need to say anything here. The Game.Com sound capabilities were on par with the early 70s arcades, if not worse. It was something that no developer could fix, as it was a mistake by Tiger themselves. No matter how hard they would try, Game.Com would only produce 2 channels of mono sound, or a single channel of speech. And if more than 2 sounds were needed at the same time, they could not overlap each, but one had to stop so the other could be heard. That resulted in crap sound in 99% of it's entire game list. And Indy 500 is not a difference. Your car sounds OK, and so do most of the sound effects, and voices. But it sounds sparse, as you can only hear one sound effect at any given time, and they also look to be digitized waveforms, further exploiting your ears in the end. Like most Game.Com games, play for some seconds just to see what it actually sounds like, then mute sound by pressing the magic ''Sound'' button on your console. You really won't be losing anything.

SOUND SCORE: 3.0/10

---CONTROLS:

This is yet another category where you can not go much better than average, given to Game.Com's bad button placement and feeling. Luckily the Game.Com featured a nicely crafted and steady D-pad. Steering in the game is really hard though. Not because it is unresponsive. Actually the game follows closely your every finger move, unlike most Game.Com games. But it's the actual gameplay that hinders fluidity and movement, to the point where you can no longer feel like you are driving at all. If a car, or boulder, or mud lake is coming to you (you never have the feeling that you are moving), you have to press the left or right for as long as it takes to avoid it. Most times you cannot really avoid it, but at least you can try to. Braking is useless, as you can reach better results by simply leaving the gas, and there is not a handbrake (not that it would be of use). Generally, like most Game.Com games, you never get the feeling that you are playing. It's not that the controls are really bad. But it's the overall experience that makes you feel worthless in the very end.

CONTROLS SCORE: 4.5/10

---STORY:

This is a racing game, and has no story.

STORY SCORE: N/A

---GAMEPLAY:

Wow, now we reached the most important factor of all in a videogame, and one most Game.Com's games don't even minimally touch. You have 3 cars to choose from, and each is supposed to handle, accelerate and reach top speed differently. But it is not really that deep once you realize that each and every car plays the same. You also have to race in courses where you have to steer left 99% of the times, while avoiding cars, boulders and mud lakes. And it is not even nearly as playable as other Tiger Racing Handhelds. You will just find yourself yawning after a couple of laps, and wonder why you even thought that you would be playing this game. Not fun at all.

GAMEPLAY SCORE: 3.0/10

---OVERALL:

Indy 500 is simply bad, and only marginally escapes from being one of the worst Game.Com games. You really are losing nothing if you never play it at all. Just steer clear away.

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PROS: Decent graphics.

CONS: Pre-Game Boy gameplay.

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FOR: Sega collectors (as this game was developed supposedly by Sega).

NOT FOR: Everyone else.

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OVERALL SCORE: 2.5/10

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 01/24/04, Updated 05/29/04