With this proper old-school mechanic, you’re running two races at the same time. On the normal difficulty, I had great fun chasing the other racers and rushing to the checkpoints. It’s not necessarily deep, nor required, but it’s nice to have something to be playing for once you’ve finished the GP races, which isn’t an easy task on the harder settings. There’s a roster of playable characters, too, and each of them come with four car classes which can be changed up to your liking, using the money you’ve collected.

While you can’t spend this money on upgrading cars, you can use it to alter their appearance, if that’s your kind of thing. Progression is tracked through money that you earn from races. Again, this is great fun and adds a bit of tension to an otherwise jolly game.Īnd finally, there’s Time Trial mode, which is exactly what it sounds like. Go too slow for too long, and you’ll be blowing up out of the race. You have to keep your finger on the trigger and stay above a certain set speed, otherwise, your car will lose health over time. This mode is great fun, and my little boy and I have spent far too much time playing this mode together.Īnother mode has you racing until you explode. Cops and Robbers, where you’re either running from the law or working as one of them. You can play the classic GP events where you’ll race across four themed levels to try to win the trophy and get rewarded with a little character cutscene at the end, or you can play the mini-game modes. And yet I still enjoyed every second of it.

Racing isn’t easy, mind you, and while the game definitely looks like the video-game embodiment of an approachable friend, it’s deviously tricky and at times frustrating. It’s like Ridge Racer and every SEGA arcade racing game have been melted down and rebuilt using the gooey goodness. It takes away the pretension and just dumps 1998 right onto your screen with polygonal graphics, a high-tempo electronic soundtrack, and a very cheery fella doing the in-race voice overs. Hotshot Racing is an ode to the golden era of arcade gaming. My favourites are rooted in my childhood, and Hotshot Racing has managed to bound right into that happy place and come out with everything I adore. As any regular readers/watchers will know, I’m a big fan of colourful, bright, and friendly games.

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