Konami Krazy Racers

"A fun little Kart racer"

One of the original line-ups for the Gameboy Advance release in the UK on 22nd June 2001. Essentially a Mario Kart clone and had been released to satisfy those people who are anxious for the Mario Kart: Super Circuit game. For what it is worth, Krazy Racers manage to hold its own ground and features a variety of different characters from various Konami games.

GAMEPLAY

Krazy Racers plays smoothly with an nice array of power-ups to accompany your aim for that first position. A nice feature involves having to pass a series of Licence tests in order to gain access to the later cups. These tests intends to make you a better player and assesses your ability to perform well against the time, against 7 other opponents or 1 other opponent. However, if you expect to get anything from passing the 4 tough tests in the S-Class, prepare to be disappointed.

There are two mini-games that your could play - Chicken and Bomb Chaser. Chicken involves you trying to stop your kart as close to the edge of the track without falling into the lava/water/hole. Bomb Chaser is a much tougher mini-game and what you need to do is to survive the time limit without holding the bomb. For the single-player mode of these games, you get nothing for performing well which is a bit of a shame and so it is within the multi-player option that you can get most satisfaction out of the mini-games.

There are 3 difficulty levels that you may choose from - Easy, Normal and Hard. The greatest disappointment is that completing the cups on hard mode will give you nothing special except with the satisfaction that you beat the game on the most difficult setting.

MUSIC

Cutesy tunes that you may or may not recognize depending on how familiar you are with Konami games.

GRAPHICS

Smooth and well-presented. Like the music aspect, the sprites and the graphics may be recognizable depending on your familiarity of the various Konami games. The main menu screen has a nice computer interface presentation to it.

REPLAYABILITY

Once you've completed the game and achieving the 4 hidden characters, there's not any particular reason why you should return to the game except maybe the Time Trial mode. The mini-games are fun only for a limited period if you're playing on your own because there's no charts or records to aim for in the mini-games.

OVERALL

Krazy Racers is a solid enough kart game on its own. Probably the worst offending thing about this game is that your rewards are at best, meagre and most of the time you won't get any reward for working so hard to beat the more difficult settings. It would have been a decent filler back in June 2001 when Mario Kart: Super Circuit wasn't yet available but now that the Mario game is here, this game takes second place. Buy if you want some kart action after Mario Kart but don't expect as deep a game as that is.

BUY OR NOT?

If you can find this game at a cheap price, then by all means buy the game. But don't pay full price for it though.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/02/02, Updated 03/02/02