Nintendo - http://maxpages.com/supern/Mickys_Racing

Figure Mickey's Racing Adventure on the Game Boy Color as developer Rare's apology for the atrocious Conker's Pocket Tales released earlier this year. Mickey's Racing Adventure heads back to the roots of the company's original racing title RC Pro Am while adding a few quest-style elements into mix. It does have a few slightly annoying quirks, but Rare has put together its first real quality Game Boy Color-exclusive title.
Features

20 courses
Play as Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy, and Pluto
Hidden mini-games
Infra-red port support to transmit data
Only for Game Boy Color
The game is separated into two main parts – the adventure section and the racing section. You start out as Mickey, wandering the land in search of tokens and money, each serving a purpose to advance you in the game. If you want to switch between the six characters, all you have to do is find their home and switch places with them. Each character has his or her own racing levels, and they can only be accessed when you've acquired enough coins to get there – coins get you a ticket on the train that takes you to the different racing circuits. There are also some cool mini-games, like the classic railroad tile-shuffle game. And when you control Pluto, you can find hidden games much like the classic Boulderdash computer game where you have to uncover bones without getting buried under an avalanche of stones.
The racing portion, the game's main deal, is where the game shines. If you like RC Pro Am or Micro Machines, you're going to find lots to like here. The race is against three opponents, and you only earn tokens if you come in first. Some tracks are on land (a car), others on water (a speedboat), and others are dual terrain (your vehicle changes to a car or boat on the fly). On land, you can pick up boost icons, and on sea you can hit the currents to speed past your opposition. You can also utilize "magic" powerups that can be acquired in the adventure portion of the game – but they can only be purchased if you collect enough cash in the race or while wandering around the adventure map.

You'll see quality right off the bat in Mickey's Adventure Racing – In the adventure, each character walks with extreme fluidity thanks to the amount of frames of animation given to them. The cars and boats also have very solid controls since they've been modeled at minute angles in a 360 degree turn – if one thing sticks out, it's the silky smooth animation.

The adventure elements are a nice touch, but they tend to break up the racing a bit too much. You can't advance through all the Mickey levels at once – you have to play through the first two tracks, then go back to the adventure game, get Minnie, go back into the racing game, play two tracks, go back to the adventure mode, get Mickey, head to the next few races, etc. You also have to leave the racing portion and wander to the garage or the castle on the map if you want to upgrade you're vehicle or add special weapons to the car. It's tiring and annoying to have to constantly wander the overhead map all the time when all you really want to do is race. The only other real complaint: no link-up mode. The racing element is excellent, but it could really use the option to challenge a friend using another system through the link cable.

Comments

There's enough here to keep you busy for weeks – but it's obvious the designers extended the playability by forcing you to wander around the game map to do all the things that could have been handled through a decent menu system: car upgrades, weapons, character changes, etc. The game would have been bumped up a point had it not required all that tedious exploration between races – but as it stands the racing element and minigames are reason enough to pick up this game.

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Page Updated Sun Dec 31, 2000 9:12pm EST