Big Red Racing is a very little-known relic from my junior high days that provided hours of quality entertainment. To put it very bluntly, the graphics could be much more beautiful. This is an old game circa 1996. As you may be able to guess from the cheesy title, this is not a racing simulation. It is simply a racing game and succeeds very enthusiastically in the most important element of gaming: fun!
In this game, you choose a very blocky-looking, wannabe-cartoon-like, sometimes crazy-looking character, stick him in a blocky, strange vehicle (from bull-dozers to monster trucks or even inflatable rafts!), and head onto a wild track in one of several unique environments.
Though the vehicles themselves (and the variety therein) are quirky and fun in themselves, it's the track environments that make the game shine. You can race in a futuristic spacey kind of environment, a desert, through waterways, and my personal favourite: the arctic! The game gives you a globe from which you get to pick your track (and corresponding environment) which adds a nice perceptual sphere (pardon the pun) to the game. Somehow the designers managed to portray a good deal of personality in the graphic arrangement as opposed quality and quantity of pixels.
The racing itself is challenging without often being frustrating because, quite often, you're too busy having fun and the game makes it hard to lose outright,
but you can always feel like you have a chance even when you're not doing well to begin with.
I've never been a big fan of racing games of any kind, but I still remember Big Red Racing. This game, like many old time classics, harkens back to a day when a game had to truly be fun to sell, as opposed to our present time when it seems the most important criteria for a game is its quality of graphics.
Perhaps modern developers need to get back in touch with some of these classics and realize that quality of play can trump graphic quality and retain that rare, unforgettableness that so many of the classics possess. If you're looking for a simple, FUN racing game, check this one out...it's quirky, bad-looking, goofy, and definitely hard not to like!
