Dash to a crash

A car racing game for the Nintendo DS based on a 1960s cartoon show! Players join Dick Dastardly (what were our grandparents thinking??) and the gang, racing across a variety of action-packed and colorful cross-country rallies...


IGN
by Daemon Hatfield

Wacky Races, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon from the late '60s featured a bunch of, uh, wacky racers competing in road rallies. I would assume most DS owners would rather have a Ben 10 or Hannah Montana licensed racer. But that's okay, because the developers have crafted a fun, engaging racing game that isn't just another ho-hum cash-in on an existing property, right?

Wrong. Wacky Racers is about as shallow as they come. Players steer their vehicle with the stylus, like Link was controlled in Phantom Hourglass. Speed is supposedly determined by how far the stylus is from the car, but experimenting with different lengths produces little to no result. Power-ups are collected along the way, of which two can be held at a time. Your goal is to be first across the finish line in a series of arcade competitions.


If the controls weren't already simple enough, some power-ups put your vehicle into auto-pilot and all you have to do is attack your opponents by tapping the touch screen. There are four categories of power-ups, and each racer has a unique widget for each category. There are 11 racers in the game but only 10 are playable -- the 11th is our villain, Dick Dastardly.

Dick Dastardly might send mosquitoes after us and we have to "swat" them with the stylus. Or we might have to drag our car left and right on a 2D plane to dodge falling boulders. If we win the mini-game we'll receive a boost in the race. Fail, and we'll fall behind.

If there's anyone out there that considers themselves a Wacky Races super fan, I suppose some enjoyment can be gleaned from reliving the cartoon and racing as your favorite contestant. But even for the die hard fans, the enjoyment will be short lived. The simple controls and childish mini-games don't provide enough stimulation to keep the mind occupied. Wacky Races achieves what it sets out to do, but it didn't aim very high.