Lego Racers (Game Boy Color) Walkthrough

Описание: Welp, if there were ever evidence I have no life, this is it. I have made a walkthrough of every version of Lego Racers in existence now. What is wrong with me?

And...hooooo boy, is this one ever a doozy. Now, given that it's already a watered-down handheld adaptation from the get-go, your expectations were probably low going into this. If you can believe it, it's actually worse than you might assume. The fact that they managed to fit a racing game on the Game Boy Color is a feat to be recognized in and of itself, but that doesn't mean it's a good game. The graphics are pretty bland for starters, and the music...oh gosh, what the heck happened here? There's like three music pieces in the entire game, and they're all very poor conversions of tunes from the console/PC versions. They seem to have especially loved abusing "vibrating" instrumentation, which gets grating really fast. The way I've described it in the past is that it feels like they threw the tunes into an 8-bit blender. Oh, and they use one music piece for no fewer than three circuits (or 9 of the 19 tracks, so almost half the game!), and I guarantee if you play this game all the way through, you will never want to hear it again for the rest of your life.

And of course, the game itself is...well, think of OutRun on the arcade or Rad Racer on the NES, but way less fun. The first problem I have is that the weapons are stupidly unbalanced and overpowered -- the projectiles stop you dead in your tracks and it takes forever to recover, and the boost speeds you up by an insane amount. The other problem with the weapons is that you can never tell when one is going to show up, forcing you to rely on remembering where the bricks are. Really, it becomes a game of memorizing where the green bricks are on the track, which let me tell you, makes for one heck of a dull experience. Either way, if you're able to amass green bricks extensively and you don't get harassed with cannonballs, you never have to worry about losing.

In fact, I actually got so far ahead on a few tracks that it took nearly a solid minute after crossing the finish line before the final results were determined (I believe it won't show the results until the second-to-last racer has finished). Regardless, this is far from an enjoyable experience, and I wouldn't recommend it at all. The GBC doesn't have a lot of racing games to begin with, but I have trouble believing there aren't any better than this.

Circuits 1-3: Quite straightforward, a few gaffes here and there but it's nothing that exciting.

Note: In Circuit 3, the video goofs up for a bit. I have no idea how this happened, as my capture software wasn't showing any dropped frames. But it doesn't last horribly long and you get to see the track again, so no huge loss.

Circuits 4-6: Surprisingly, the difficulty shoots way up around this part. In fact, the game can actually get really frustrating if you're not prepared -- not the least of which is caused by the unpredictability of the cannonballs hitting you when you least expect it. It's doubly frustrating if you just activated a boost and a cannonball more than happily cancels it out. The shields are barely any help, as they don't last long and you don't know if anyone is behind you. Tons of this just boils down to luck. Thankfully, if you get first on two of the three tracks, you can still afford to come in second and win the circuit on the other. That doesn't mean the game is difficult, mind you, it just makes it frustrating to play at times.

Circuit 7: If I have to commend this game on one thing that it actually did right, it's making Rocket Racer a one-on-one match. The main versions of the game made it another six-player race, which I feel was a bit inappropriate for a final showdown. Oh, and there's no warp turbo to spam here, but as with the rest of the game, it boils down to more "remember which sides of the track the greens are on and follow it." Eh, it is what it is though. Also, why is his track based on Alien Rally Asteroid from the original game, rather than Rocket Racer Run? And why did they use an unfitting music track for this race?

Enjoy! For those curious, this was recorded using my newfangled Game Boy Player (I cropped out the border). You may potentially see more Game Boy stuff in the future now!