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 1/360th 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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