PlayStation Basement #37 - FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on May 11th, 2019.

It’s Saturday, so it’s time again for PlayStation Basement! PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of an odd or obscure game for the original PlayStation. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Now, let’s go!

Though last week was a bit of a disruption with Star Wars: Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire, today we’re going back on track, continuing from Spin Jam’s early 2000s art style, here is FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing. This game was released in both North America and Europe in October 2000, the latter without the ‘FoxKids.com’ prefix or the ‘Racing’ suffix. It also had a Japanese release as Denkou Sekka Micro Runner the next month, and there was even a Game Boy Color version. This game is a spiritual successor to the Micro Machines games and also developed and published by Codemasters. Though the miniature superhero characters do have the likeness of something that might have been on Fox Kids at that time, the network does not seem to have been that involved with this property besides showing some cartoons on their website. It seems that Micro Maniacs may have been intended for more.

Both North American and European regions have cover art showing the characters V4, Twister, and Vortex running and fighting. The North American cover has a bright, purple background with a racing flag and the characters coming towards the viewer. The European cover shows the characters running in profile with Twister attacking V4 and Vortex looking worried. The background is light blue with some blocks in white. The Japanese release looks more like a bootleg game – it’s all white with a blurry, running V4 and Twister. The characters are basically running over the viewer. It’s kind of neat except for the white background.

The in-game graphics of FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing are pretty good. The locations all look nice with an assortment of colors and objects corresponding with the aesthetics and location of each level. It’s a great assortment of household locations such as bedrooms, kitchens, workshops, garages, bathrooms, and more. The characters are varied in terms of how well they are rendered. Some, such as Pyra, look very much like they are displayed in the game’s artwork. Other characters, like Twister, look much blockier and sort of smooshed.

The sound design has to be the least successful element of Micro Maniacs. The sound effects range from ineffective to annoying, and the music is barely noticeable. The sound of little feet overpowers much else. The music itself isn’t that great; it’s fine but mostly just electronic dance pieces that aren’t that memorable.

It’s fun to race in FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing. It’s a lot like the Micro Machines games on NES, N64, or Game Boy with that style of twitchy, top-down racing in cramped environments. The key difference here is that Codemasters designed, hopefully, iconic characters to control. I get the sense that these characters were meant to go further than this one game, probably as a cartoon on Fox Kids. Each character has their own stats and weapons. With the addition of weapons and characters, Micro Maniacs seems a bit like Mario Kart. Characters include V4, the hero; Vortex, a woman who can utilize black holes as weapons; Twister, a clown; Maw Maw, a mutant that looks both like a dog and a goblin; Mesme, an insomniac child with an exposed brain; Beatbox, a mysterious sound-based character that might be an android; Pyra, the assistant to Dr. Minimizer; and Waldo, Minimizer’s rival. See, Dr. Minimizer shrunk all of these weirdos to test out his minimizing technology and see how best to create a world for people 1/360^th the size of humans. He plans to shrink the human race to prevent problems related to a shortage of oil and food.

The design of the different races makes the game fun to play, and the controls are sharp. The game is for up to eight players, too. If you are good at the game, you can unlock more characters and play hidden levels. I’m not very good at this game – the handling is too precise for me without practice – but it is still fun. Each level feels unique. You might need to jump over a saw, bounce on a Jello mold, or even pilot a vehicle. Most races are on foot. One track even includes a short segment where you play an Atari 2600-ish game to get past a short section. It’s all very creative.

My only criticism is that some races can be unclear, as the tracks are only laid out with chalk or gumballs and other soft barriers. These barriers don’t stop you from going out of the track; sometimes they are hard to make out. The tracks take some getting used to, but that’s no big deal.

FoxKids.com Micro Maniacs Racing receives a Good.

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