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It's for Choro Q64 2 on the Nintendo 64 the sequel to the game Penny Racers
Format: Nintendo 64 Publisher: Takara Developer: Takara Release year: 1999 Genre: Racing
Randomised Gaming reviewed the Japanese NTSC release Choro Q 64 2 on an original Japanese NTSC N64. Choro Q 64 2 :Hacha-Mecha Grand Prix Race was not released outside Japan. Note this game also supports the GB link feature with the Gameboy Color game Choro Q Hyper, however we are unable to test this feature due to not owning the GBC game. The game requires a controller pak with 123 blocks spare blocks on it in order to save your progress.
Driving games have never been my foray so you will have to forgive me if I don’t cover this as in-depth as I normally do. Based on Takara’s real life toy range, Choro Q 64 2 is just one of a series of games that brings them to the digital world of gaming, with the earliest entry I could find appearing to date from 1984 and was released on the MSX home computer.
It’s fair to say the series has had its ups and downs along the way with games in the series ranging from the very good, to the so bad you will want to have your memory erased of the experience. In Choro 64 2 case it falls into the category of not bad, but there are better racing games out there on the N64.
Choro Q 64 2 itself is little more than an upgrade to it’s prequel game Penny Racers, which did receive a western release. Meaning if you enjoyed the first game you will quite likely enjoy this second outing.
The start of any race is always a bit of a position battle
The format of the game is fairly simple with players competing in Grand Prix or single races to win or steal car parts from the other players. Players get to choose the chassis of their first car and are given a basic selection of car parts, but that’s it everything else has to be won from races. So it’s a bit like Gran Turismo on the PlayStation only with toy cars. Grand Prix winners get to choose one car part after scoring 1st, 2nd or 3rd in the overall leader board, where as in single race the top three players get to take or give a part to the players in 4th, 5th or 6th place. There’s also a Time Trial mode if you want to improve your best lap time or just practice on a particular course.
You start the game only able to race in the C class which restricts the number of modifications you can apply to your car. Winning Grand Prix and Single Races allows you to unlock further classes, though I found this to be rather slow going.
Some of the impressive scenery from the eastern themed stage
Choro Q64 2, features nine different tracks each with their own theme to them, with one being set in a forest temple and another in a spooky ghost town. Each track has its own music and all feel and look very different from one another. On top of this each track has two different weather variants and the option to race the course in reverse on both of the weather variants. On the downside, however, these variants are preset so only certain tracks have rain while others feature snow. Unlike some games these weather variants do affect the control and handling of your toy car, so don’t think that you can accelerate round the track when it’s covered in snow.
The big game mechanic behind Choro Q64 2 is the ability to heavily customise your car. With players being able to unlock around 30 different car chassis, including some unusual designs like fire engines or a ramen seller truck added in for comedy value. Each one also come with a range of colours to select from and you can also rename your vehicle to whatever you want, it even includes the English alphabet in the renaming section.
The customisation menu, even in Japanese it’s not that hard to navigate
The more advance parts allow you to tweak the handling, acceleration and maximum speed of the car. On top of that you can also add accessories to your car as well, including things like police sirens, taxi signs and even a suitcase stuck to the top of the car. Accessories don’t just look pretty either they can also improve the stats of your car, so are well worth adding to your Choro Q. Finally, you can also add one special power, these range from defensive moves such as making your car invincible to attacking power that allow you to fire or slam into your opponents during the race. While you are limited to a set number of uses per race, you can replenish these and even upgrade your special power during the race to give you that extra advantage. But be warned as you won’t be the only player who has a special move during a race and the other racers will try their best to take you down during the race.
With well over a hundred car parts to unlock, players will be spending quite a bit of time out on the race course in order to obtain them all. You will also need every advantage you can get from the unlockable car parts, as the default car handles like a lead balloon.
Well maybe not quite that bad, but the handling is very slow, it might explain why the game includes a special move that allows you to turn your car 90 degrees. Holding down the R trigger and double tapping left or right on the analogue stick, performs what I can only describe as a barrel roll flip. It’s the only way you can navigate a number of track corners at any speed as you certainly won’t be turning around them, well at least not without ramming head long into a wall or sliding off road and watching everyone else pass you. The winter track was almost impossible to win without using the barrel roll technique as you just can’t turn around any of the corner in that track fast enough.
It may well be that Takara had plan the games design to be like this, but if so it was a poor decision. As some tracks are less about racing and more about knowing at what moment to barrel roll your car to avoid the oncoming wall. While later car parts improve the turning circle of the car you won’t be unlocking the higher race car classes until you can win every race.
The rain and mud not ideal driving conditions for the jungle stage
Grand Prix and Single Races have you racing five opponents around the track. The CPU is fairly decent and does require some level of skill to beat, so don’t expect to win races until you have a decent idea of the track layout for each course. The CPU also likes to ram into you a lot, but luckily the default spin attack power up you start with is very good for getting rid of the opposition fairly quickly.
Camera wise the game offers three angles, the standard 3rd person behind the car view, which is a little to low to the ground for my liking as it makes some track turns a bit hard to see. A far distance car view, which is the best angle in the game for seeing the track and last, but not least there is the front of car view. Which is the worst angle in the game as the camera moves with the car in this view, which makes this camera angle only usefully if you want to make yourself dizzy or discover if you suffer from motion sickness or not. As certain moves like the barrel roll turn or certain special powers, spins the car around or upside down in a 360 motion, which the camera duly follows in the front of car view, disorienting the player at the same time as you watch the camera perform three quick 360 degree spins. So while the game has three camera angle to select from only two are actually usable in races.
Do not adjust your set, the first person camera during the barrel roll turn, upside down fun!
As for the design of the tracks themselves they are fairly impressive for the 32bit era of gaming. Each track feels very different from one another, and while some of the easier courses you can floor the accelerator on, others require a lot more planning on when to turn or barrel roll the corners. Added to this, many track’s feature traps for the player to avoid, the Halloween stage features swinging scythes and Guillotines. While the Japanese castle stage features giant homing ten ton weights and while the winter stage has snow drifts and avalanches for the player to deal with.
On the downside however a number of these traps are almost unavoidable which can be a bit frustrating from time to time. Fortunately, the CPU tends to also fall for many of the traps on each course slowing its progress, so it’s not all bad news. Added to this the CPU cars also have an amusing habit of running over their own mines and traps they have placed on the course. Annoyingly in Choro Q 2, most mines take the form of grey colour pins and small bricks, which also have a nasty habit of blending in a bit to well with certain tracks.
Take evasive action, snow boulders from the the winter stage.
As with any good Nintendo 64 game, Choro Q64 2, supports up to four players via split screen and includes versus races, but this just boils down to players racing against one another without the CPU controlled cars. You can also choose to do single races that include CPU cars in multiplayer, but Grand Prix and Time Trial modes are both unavailable.
The jewel in the crown of Choro Q64 2 is the ability to create your own tracks via the in-game editor. Which helps make up for many of the game’s short coming as it adds almost infinite replayability to the game. While your limited to what you can do with it, the editor is easy to use and has a good mix of track parts to choose from including tunnels, hills and split paths. There’s also a 3D view in the editor which allows you to adjust the height of the track. Once you’ve finished you can save your track and either time trial it or races your friends on it, sadly you can’t race the CPU on any homemade track.
The track editor in action
The only real draw back is that you need a controller pak in order to save your in-game progress and with it taking up 123 blocks you will need one just for this game. Choro Q64 2 does have an internal cartridge save feature ,but it’s only used for saving course and lap times. So if you do want to pick this up I highly recommend you buy a controller pak to go with it, else you won’t be saving your progress.
Toy racer or cheap imitations?
Choro Q 64 2 is a hard game to sum up, it’s not a terrible game in anyway, but neither does it set the world alight. It’s one of those above average games, that has some nice mechanics and features, but just can’t compete with the big hitters. It’s not the worst game in the Choro Q series or the best either putting it in the uneasy middle ground in all aspects. Nintendo 64 fans and gamers would do better in tracking down copies of F-Zero X or Diddy Kong Racing. Sadly for Choro Q64 2 there is quite a few better N64 racing games than it, which makes it hard to recommend and if you are a Choro Q fan, then you would be better off with the excellent Saturn game Choro Q Park.
Doing a test run on a homemade track
That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy Choro Q64 2 and if you can pick it up cheaply and don’t expect it to blow you away and revolutionise gaming then you will likely have some fun with it. If you did like the first game Penny Racers, then this is worth owning as it improves over the first game in every way. That then, begs the questions why are you playing Penny Racer in the first placed when games like Diddy Kong Racing exist?
Still if you fancy making up your own racing tracks on the N64 then this might be the game for you. Unless by chance you happen to own a Japanese N64DD Drive and the special release of F-Zero X for it which featured a track editor on it. Which for most of us mere mortals is highly unlike due to the cost of owning this very expensive add on these days.
Review by Random Gamer Riven.
Twitter: RDGamerRiven
E.mail: [email protected]
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It's for Choro Q64 2 on the Nintendo 64 the sequel to the game Penny Racers
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