Racing games for the PC have always tended to strictly adhere to the core concepts of improving graphics and the physics engine to create as realistic an experience as possible. Games such as Nintendo’s Mario Kart, designed purely for the pleasure of playing have traditionally been the domain of console gaming and for the most part, this continues to this day. Apogee’s Wacky Wheels, released in the mid-nineties was one of the first attempts to bridge the gap between the formats, providing the “Mario Kart experience” to a new audience.
Racing games for the PC have always tended to strictly adhere to the core concepts of improving graphics and the physics engine to create as realistic an experience as possible. Games such as Nintendo’s Mario Kart, designed purely for the pleasure of playing have traditionally been the domain of console gaming and for the most part, this continues to this day. Apogee’s Wacky Wheels, released in the mid-nineties was one of the first attempts to bridge the gap between the formats, providing the “Mario Kart experience” to a new audience.
Graphics 5/10 – I remember playing Wacky Wheels when it was released, and the graphics could hardly have been called cutting edge even all those years ago. While good gameplay is clearly the desired object
with this game, graphics are still important for all the racing genre and sadly Wacky Wheels looks very dated, but for its time they were cool. The influence of Mario Kart is plain to see, with the same behind the car camera angles and essentially 2D flat structure to all tracks, barring some psudo-3D jumps which lift your kart off the track for a second or so. There is little variation in scenery at all around the tracks, with different coloured clouds providing the only change in backdrop. The characters themselves are just bitmap animations and don’t really do much or interact with the parts of the track or each other at all.
Music 6/10 – Music was a pretty standard and pretty repetitive midi soundtrack. Although this can be a bit annoying now, at the time I really don’t remember it being out of place at all.
Gameplay 8/10 – Apogee clearly knew its target market, and extremely childish entertainment is the order of the day. All the characters are cuddly animals and race around in little go-karts which can have 2 different sized engines, determining the speed of the race. The power-ups and abilities you could collect on the track also followed this trend, with the main projectiles in the game being rolled up hedgehogs and Mario style bombs. Also, an extra extremely childish feature was introduced whereby pushing certain keys would cause comic devils to appear on the opponents’ side of the screen trying to distract them in a variety of ways, including waving their behind at their face.
Two main game modes were available- racing and battle, with the former being the traditional “go as fast as you can” gameplay, and the latter being a “last man standing” hedgehog dodge fest. Both gametypes were entertaining, but nothing original.
Controls 6/10 – The choice of controls was between the keyboard and any pc supported joypad/stick. Two players could play at once with up to 6 computer controlled players who, while not exactly geniuses, would provide decent opposition while the two humans battered each other about. More players would be nice, but very few PC games of that era supported more than two, which was one of the major limitations of PCs over consoles for a long time.
Overall 6/10 – This is not the greatest racing game ever, or even the greatest game of its type at the time, but it if you are a fan а genre and classic games in general, you can try it.
