Mickey's Speedway USA

History, and several nasty road accidents, have proved it: animals can't drive. No-one's ever been held up at the lights by the gerbil in front who's just stalled his Cortina, or been cut up on the motorway by a Springer Spaniel in a Subaru. Until now.

In Mickey's Speedway USA, (screeching onto an N64 near you just in time for Christmas) animals do all the driving. In fact, this new cartoon racer lets you choose between all of your favourite big-eyed Disney regulars, including Donald, Goofy, Daisy and of course, the mighty Mickey.

If you've ever played Mario Kart (and if not, why not?) then you'll know what to expect, as this title is basically the same, gameplay-wise. The levels include trips around various colourful locations including icy caves, the Grand Canyon, and even (our personal favourite) a Las Vegas casino! There's also a "homage" to the Mario Kart 'Battle' level, where you get to shoot or ram up to three other players, in order to burst balloons that are attached to their cars.

Thanks mainly to the fact that this game uses the Expansion Pak, the graphics looked superb, with lush backdrops, detailed animation and no slowdown, even when four players battle it out over the winding, shortcut-ridden tracks!

Given that this title is winging its way to us from the boffins at Rare, you'd expect the final game to be quite impressive... and it is! We got the code in just too late for review in this issue, but rest assured there will be a mammoth review heading your way next month. Will it improve on the legendary Mario Kart 64? You'll just have to wait till next issue to find out!

There are certain games that you just know are going to be good. Games from top developers like Rare, starring cool characters like the Disney crew, in a groovy format such as cartoon racing, for example. These are games that set your heart racing before you’ve even slotted them into your Game Boy… and in the case of Mickey’s Speedway USA, there’s not an inkling of disappointment!

Hey Mickey You’re So Fine!

From the word go, this is clearly a game that oozes quality. Okay, so it may not be an original concept, but when it’s been done as well as this, we can put up with that! Like the N64 game of the same name, you are offered a choice of six characters to race with, each of whom has their own unique attributes, including our mate Mickey and pals Minnie, Daisy, Donald, Pete and Goofy.

There are a number of different play modes to choose from. In addition to the bog-standard one-player mode – which takes you through five levels each comprised of four races in various different locations – there’s a driving school and time trial mode too. In addition to this, the game also offers a two-player link-up mode and some cool extras, like an infrared link for transferring data and, of course, the built-in rumble pak!

Underhand Tactics

If all that choice isn’t enough to get your head spinning, the action on the track certainly will. The courses range from the heat of Texas through the frozen wastes of Colorado to the splendour of Washington, and with stacks of quirks and twists, like race-winning short cuts, you should have plenty of fun charging around!

But of course, this race is all about winning (hey, the weasels have kidnapped Pluto, so you need to be as quick as you can!) and to do that, you’ve gotta be mean. The tracks – which you view from an overhead perspective – are littered with pick-ups, like bouncing balls and oil slicks, which help you get one over on the other competitors, although a spot of good old-fashioned barging doesn’t go amiss either. Watch out in the later levels though, because the little Disney devils use the pick-ups against you as well!

With a variety of difficulty levels and some seriously challenging tracks, even budding Michael Schumachers won’t tire of Mickey’s Speedway USA too quickly. This is cartoon racing at its best, and even if you already own a similar title, it’s well worth checking out – after all, poor old Pluto needs saving, and how could you possibly turn away from a dog in distress?

Hey Mickey, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind, hey Mickey! Er... sorry. This game has just got to me in a big way! I need to calm down a second, hang on...

Right, that's better, phew. You know that movie where they go on about speed all the time? What was it again? (Speed? – Alex.) Er... no, that wasn't it. (Speed 2? – Alex.) Nope, no, that wasn't it either. You know the one... had that bloke in it... you know... the one that's in... er, all those movies? Um... had planes in it? (Oh... Top Gun? – Alex) Yes! That's the chappie. The one where they went on about feeling the speed. (I think you'll find that they 'felt the need for speed' actually – Alex.) Oh... well, feel it, feel the need for it – what's the difference? Anyway, I'm writing this review, so naff off! (Well, really! – Alex) Has he gone now? Good. Sub Editors, I don't know...

Er... anyway, the point I was trying to make was that if the people in that movie had really 'felt the need for speed', then they could have just played this game! It really is that fast. (So couldn't you have just said: 'it's fast?' – Paul) Oh good grief, who let you in here? Right... everyone is to stay out of this review from here on in, or heads will roll! Everyone understand? (...) Good. On we go...

"Graphically this game is just beautiful."

Top Gear Goofy

Now, it's fair to say that a good racing game doesn't really need a plot. After all, if you're sitting down with the intention of driving really fast around a track, then you don't really need to know that the reason you're doing this is to 'rescue Princess Squiffy', or to 'uncover the legendary Lost Toilets of Lavatorium'. At the end of the day you just want a fast and exciting race, or – if you're a little dull – a slow and boring one, but I digress. As this is a Rare game (and as we all know, Rare likes its stories) there is a plot. Which goes something like this...

Mad Max Mickey

Apparently the Weasels (who are the bad guys, because Weasels always seem to be the baddies in anthropomorphic cartoons, which is a shame, because in real life they're really rather cute) have kidnapped – or dognapped if you want to get all pedantic – Pluto, Mickey's canine confederate. Supposedly this is so they can gain possession of his new diamond collar. Which is a bit daft really, because you'd think it would've been much easier just to lift the collar rather than pinch the pooch. Particularly since Mickey and pals – as they work for Disney and thus must take home an absolutely huge pay-packet at the end of each month – probably then wouldn't have bothered to do anything about it. Still... they're Weasels, so they're probably not all that bright. This is proved by the fact that the daft old Weasels then send Mickey an email postcard telling him of their crime (the fools!)

Driving Miss Daisy

The result of all this criminal capering is that Mickey quickly contacts all his cartoon pals and shouts 'Pluto's been kidnapped by the Weasels! Quick, we've all got to go and get karts and race after them!' Ah... yes. We were wondering how the whole racing angle was going to be shoehorned into an apparently unrelated story. Seemingly blended into the plot, we're sure you'll agree...

So, before you can say 'call the FBI you fool, or at least take the train!' Mickey and pals are off across the good old US of A in search of the poached pooch, Pluto. And that's where you come in...

Your task is to track down the Weasels (which isn't actually that difficult as they keep emailing postcards from the various locations they stop at on their travels – doh!) and to do this you must take part in a number of different races. Initially there are three race series' available, 'Traffic Troubles', 'Motorway Mania' and 'Freeway Phobia'. Each of these consists of four tracks from various locations in the US, including San Francisco, Alaska, Seattle, New York and the bright lights of Las Vegas. Each series also has three difficulty levels, represented by different race classes: Amateur, Intermediate and Professional. Each difficulty level gives you a slightly faster kart to drive, but the speed and skill of your opponents also dramatically increases to compensate.

Minnie Cooper

Just like Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing, this game doesn't just rely on straightforward racing to keep you coming back for more. If you've played one of these cartoon-style racing titles already, then you'll know that they usually have various track features and pick-ups to add a little variety to the gameplay. In this case you get boost arrows, gold tokens, and special barrels.

The boost arrows are pretty simple – drive over one and you get a temporary burst of speed. Each gold token, when collected, increases your overall speed for the duration of that race, and you can hold up to 20 of them. The barrels though, are the fun bit. Pick one up and Gyro (the brainy inventor duck) supplies you with a one-shot item.

Last Mouse Standing!

The Battle Mode in Mickey's Speedway USA pits four of the characters against one another in a large arena filled with pick-up barrels. Each kart has three lives, signified by three large Mickey balloons floating above each vehicle. Each time you take a hit, you lose a balloon – lose all three and you're out. Last player remaining is the winner!

This might be a huge baseball, a shield and speed boost, an oily sludge puddle, a homing toy car or model plane, or even a mini-thunderstorm that hovers over each of your fellow cartoon racers!

As you play through the various tracks, Gyro pops up and gives you hints and other information. Finish all three series' on Amateur level for example and he unlocks a special cheat for you, tells you that Dewey (one of Donald Duck's nephews) has joined the race and advises you to try and complete the next race series.

And that's basically the size of it. As you complete races you get clues as to the Weasels' whereabouts, and each race series you finish unlocks certain things, be they characters, features, or... more tracks.

For if you manage to come first on all three classes of each series, you unlock a new collection of tracks: Victory Vehicles. This series is supposedly more difficult than the other three, and takes you to the more exotic locations of Yellowstone (not to be confused with Jellystone, which doesn't actually exist), Washington DC (through the White House, no less), the Everglades (complete with shuttle launch facility) and Malibu (Er... which offers good surfing).

Animals In Automobiles

The tenuous storyline is fairly redundant as far as the actual gameplay goes, and it doesn't actually make much sense. For instance, why is everyone who is supposedly working together to rescue Goofy suddenly competing against one another? And why are they driving round and round looped tracks instead of speeding cross-country in hot pursuit? Okay, since the story isn't really an important part of the game, it's probably not fair to pick holes in it, but then it wasn't our idea to have a story in the first place, was it?

In addition to the straightforward racing modes, there are also a few others. Time-trial mode is fairly self-explanatory and lets you take on any of the tracks you have managed to unlock thus far, racing against the clock to get the best time. A nice feature of this mode is that in addition to the – by now standard – 'ghost' option, which allows you to race against a ghostly car of your best time, you can also go to the options menu and switch on the 'staff ghost'. This lets you race against the best times of the guys who developed the game – once again in the form of a ghostly vehicle – and it's great if you fancy finding out whether you're half as good at the game as the people who actually made it!

A Better Class Of Kart

There are essentially four different karts in the game, although two of them actually look identical.

• Amateur Class: This kart is very small, fairly slow and not actually all that maneuverable. It's a good kart to get you started, but seems very sluggish if you go back to it later.

• Intermediate & Professional: These two classes look the same, but the professional out-performs the intermediate. Both are very fast and highly maneuverable.

• Battle Kart: This little baby is a little less streamlined than the other karts, but a lot tougher. It looks almost like an off-road vehicle and handles extremely well.

Battle mode is another fairly self-explanatory part of Mickey's Speedway USA... er, but we're going to explain it anyway. Four players (any combination of human and CPU – well, there's got to be at least one human player, obviously) face each other in one of four different arenas and basically blast hell out of one another with the various weapons until one person remains.

One mode which isn't quite so self-explanatory is 'Practice'. Or maybe it is... we're not actually that sure. You see, select this and you get taken to a strange, barnyard level with nothing in it but a variety of ramps and corners and a bunch of chickens. Now we're assuming that all that this level is for is to get you used to driving your carts, but this being a Rare game, we kind of expected that perhaps there might be some hidden secrets... if there is though, we didn't manage to find them.

Motorway Mouse

So... that tells you a bit about what's in store, which means it's probably time to tell you a bit about the game. You know, like whether it's any good, that sort of thing. It's inevitable really, that any game like this is going to find itself being compared to both Mario Kart – the racer that came out what seems like a lifetime ago now and which wowed all and sundry with its ultra-addictive gameplay – and also to Diddy Kong Racing, one of Rare's early N64 titles which did for karting what Goldeneye had done for the first-person shoot-'em-up genre. We could go on at length comparing the various vital statistics of the three games, listing the pros and cons and ultimately coming to a decision as to which is the best... but we're not gonna. Those other games were great, so's this one – on with the review. There's just too many people living in the past these days...

So, where can we start? Well, the first thing that hits you about Mickey's Speedway USA is the look of it, so that's as good a place as any to begin. Graphically this game is just beautiful. If it was a painting it would be... erm, one of those really good ones that you find hanging in one of the famous museums. You know, like the... er, 'Moaning Lisa', or one of those other well-known ones. Quite simply: it's gorgeous to look at. The presentation is outstanding; beginning from the moment you turn the console on, and get a tracking shot of a cartoon N64, through to every aspect of the gameplay. All the menu screens are animated, situated in a virtual room where toys litter the floor and the different modes are represented by a child's building blocks, perched in precarious formations on the floor. Choose a mode and the block you've selected causes the whole lot to come tumbling down. And all this is even before you get into the main game.

Duck Truckin'

In-game, everything is just as aesthetically pleasing. Each of the Disney characters has been studiously recreated and is beautifully animated with a whole range of little attentions to detail which you only really notice when you step back and properly study the game, but which all add to the experience.

The audio is similarly polished. The characters each have a number of different phrases and exclamations – all done by what sounds like the original voice actors – and the music in the game manages to be light and bouncy without at any time becoming annoying (unlike, for instance, the music in Pokémon Puzzle League, which has you wanting to track down and kill whoever composed it... very slowly). The audio is actually very amusing. In other games of this type, the characters would traditionally be lobbing insults at one another. In this title though, because the characters are all such great friends (and – presumably – because it's a Disney license) instead of insulting one another when they use weapons, the characters here actually apologise! It's very surreal, and very amusing!

Victory Will Be Mine!

Once you've sorted yourself out, mastered the kart handling, and kicked the other cartoon animals' respective asses, you get to witness the victory lap. This is where the top three drivers visit Gyro's... er, observatory to collect their accolades and witness a pleasant fireworks display. Very nice... but shouldn't they all be off searching for Pluto?

Practice Makes Perfect!

Choose Practice mode and you are whisked over to a corner of the virtual room where a little Scalextric car is whizzing around a track. This mode allows you to drive around an arena which is totally deserted apart from some very grumpy chickens and seems to serve only to let you practice your driving... or does it?

So graphically and aurally, Mickey's Speedway USA is just great. And it doesn't half handle well too. The kart handling depends on whoever is driving, with each character having a certain top speed, acceleration, handling and weight and the quality of karts improves as you move up through the classes. However, even the slowest, most sluggish kart handles extremely well and it's just a case of getting used to each of them and how they perform during the races.

Weasels At The Wheel

One complaint we do have with this game is the difficulty level – it's just a little on the easy side. Oh... it might not seem like that at first, because if you try and take on even the Intermediate class with just the original characters then you're going to find it hard going. However, because you unlock new characters as you play through, it gets easier and easier. In fact once you've unlocked Donald's nephew Louie, who has terrific speed, handling and acceleration, you can't really go wrong – it's just a case of hitting the accelerator and hanging on! Even the hidden Victory Vehicles mode doesn't present much of a challenge when you've got Louie behind the wheel! Of course, there are a few other things hidden in the game that are going to increase the longevity, but even so, the fact that you can get all twelve of the first tracks and the bonus four finished in under five hours is just a little bit worrying...

Overall though, Mickey's Speedway USA is one hell of a good game. All the different game modes (aside from Time Trial) can be tackled by up to four players, which is nice because often games of this sort won't let you take on the championships in multiplayer. The whole look of the game is one that cries out for you to sit down and watch it, never mind play it – it's that gorgeous, and the variety of game modes guarantees that there should be enough gameplay to keep you coming back to it for quite some time. If you're looking for a top-of-the-range racing game, then you can't go far wrong with this one. Nip down to your local Nintendo dealer and drive away a Mickey's Speedway USA today!

The story for this game goes something along the lines of this: the weasels have stolen Pluto's diamond necklace and it's up to you to get it back! Quite frankly though - who cares? It's a Disney karting game from Rare so if that doesn't get you excited then nothing will! Surely Mario Kart can feel the impending doom as Mickey's Speedway USA rounds the corner.

As the title suggests this game is set in the good old United States of America. Of the five grand prix circuits on offer in the game each one is set in a different part of the US, for example, one of the tracks takes in the Grand Canyon. Like Mario Kart and Diddy Kong Racing the emphasis in this game is very much on having fun. The courses are littered with power ups and yes, you will be able to scupper your mates with projectile weapons in a four-player bout! Mickey's Speedway USA isn't due out over here until November but it's definitely going to be worth the wait.

First impressions

Another Rare classic? Well kind of... but the one thing that hits you in the face as soon as you start playing is that this is basically Diddy Kong Racing with different graphics and a few tweaks. Having said that it's also fast, fun and a good challenge. We jumped straight in at the start racing as good old Mickey Mouse himself. The Disney graphics and sound effects really boost what is already a very playable game and take it to another level. If you're a cartoon racing game fan - it doesn't come much better than this - start getting excited now!

just what the N64 needs-another Mario Kart-like racing game. This one, created by Rare, follows the same action-adventure formula used in Diddy Kong Racing, their previous kart venture. The cast of characters is different, obviously--this time you choose from Disney mascots like Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy and Goofy to race on 15 different tracks. This me-too racing game will probably arrive in the fall.