Chocobo Racing (PS1) Retro Review

Birds, Behemoths, Bahamut--oh my! It's time for a retro review of the racing variety with Chocobo Racing. This take on the Mario Kart-esque racer in the world of Final Fantasy from 1999 saw a successor on the Nintendo Switch with Chocobo GP. But, how does the original hold up after all of these years? Let's take to the track to find out!

"Kweh"-zy racing in the realm of Final Fantasy

I previously took a look at Chocobo GP, which I ended up enjoying even with its various issues, which you can read about in my review from a few years ago. However, despite playing Chocobo GP and liking it, I never played the original game in the series: Chocobo Racing. Back in the PlayStation 1/Nintendo 64 era, no doubt every major franchise wanted a piece of the Mario Kart pie--or at least wanted to expand outside of their typical genres. Final Fantasy was no different, and thus, a racing game starring the cute, cuddly, golden Chocobo sped onto the PlayStation 1 and into many owners of Sony's console's hearts.

Chocobo Racing features ten characters to race as. As you play through the story mode (recommended for first-time players), you unlock new characters, slowly get introduced to the Magicite system (more on that shortly), and learn the ins and outs of the game while experiencing cute and charming cutscenes in a children's pop-up book-like presentation. The story mode, effectively a tutorial, isn't a lengthy endeavor by any stretch of the imagination, taking about an hour or so to complete. Though playing through it multiple times (and no worries--you can thankfully skip cutscenes on repeated playthroughs) unlocks new characters to race as, including the then-most current Final Fantasy protagonist: Squall Leonhart. 

That's no chicken on wheels--it's Chocobo!

Each character introduces a different ability that can be utilized while racing: Chocobo has a turbo to grant a swift boost of speed, Moogle can fly over terrain that would otherwise slow any other racer down, White Mage's Shield will absorb most magic, and Goblin can pilfer another player's magic with his Mug ability, just to name a handful of abilities each character possesses. Understandably, different characters contain unique stats in numerous categories, as well, from acceleration, to handling, to top speed.

Rather than use basic items to cause chaos on the track, competitors within Chocobo Racing utilize magical crystals known as Magicite, which serve as the various items in the game and give an additional Final Fantasy touch to the game. These can either help you or hinder other opponents. If you've played Diddy Kong Racing, Chocobo Racing's Magicite uses a similar system of collecting up to three of the same colored Magicite to strengthen your magical moves to unleash all kinds of craziness onto your opponents. 

"Mini" thanks for this particular magic used on Black Mage,
as it causes him to shrink in size and slow down in the process.

For example, Fire simply shoots out a flame without any homing capabilities, while Fire2 ends up homing in on the character directly in front of you--red shell-style--while collecting three Fire Magicite in a row enables you to use Fire3, which takes on Mario Kart's blue shell and homes in on first place to cook their proverbial goose. 

While the abundance of Magicite and this upgrade system are both novel approaches to the kart racing genre and perfectly fits in with the Final Fantasy realm, it also causes maybe too much chaos on the track. When you have multiple magic that can affect everyone in and out of the running, you're constantly getting pelted and hit with something while racing. This can be greatly annoying, understandably, and makes for moments where you can be ahead by a large distance only to have magic be the deciding factor in losing your lead in a frustrating fashion. That said, the many methods to get back into races means that they stay exciting and anyone can win.

With so much Magicite and magic on the track, races can become quite chaotic in a hurry!

Unlike something like Mario Kart or even the aforementioned Diddy Kong Racing, the amount of tracks is nowhere near as large. You won't have sixteen unique circuits to race and blaze a trail on. Instead, about ten total tracks are on offer in Chocobo Racing. That said, the variety of the tracks and what is available is enjoyable. You have your tutorial track: Cid's Test Track, what is essentially a basic oval with some easy curves to learn the ropes (or the turns of, I guess, in this case). Things get more interesting with races through the serene Moogle Forest, the industrial, mountainous paths of Goblin Mines (and sadly one of the only tracks in the game with what I would call an actual shortcut), and the tight, right angles and tricky turns of the haunted rooms and corridors of Black Mage's Mansion. By the last tracks, you'll need to be a master of both cornering and turning, or else you'll find yourself repeatedly smashing into walls or worse yet, tumbling off the track.

Go, go, Golem! The fun has just begun at the Goblin Mines, so it's anyone's race!

A lot of kart racers don't really encourage the use of braking. Generally, you drift around corners to maintain your speed. Chocobo Racing isn't one of these types of racers. Instead, tapping (note: not holding) the brake button around tight turns and corners is absolutely mandatory for success. If you're skidding around turns while maintaining speed, you're doing it right. That notwithstanding, that's easier said than done, and it took a ton of forgetting muscle memory and how to play other kart racers to become somewhat skilled with Chocobo Racing. Be prepared to bash your head into a wall (and quite literally within the game) as you try to unlearn how you played other racers! 

Outside of the story mode, which players who wish to unlock all characters will want to spend the most time in (as repetitive and somewhat tedious as that can be), there is Grand Prix mode, which works differently than most games with such a feature in it. Instead of choosing a cup with preexisting selections of tracks, you choose your difficulty, and then you choose four tracks ahead of time for your own personally constructed cup. It's a novel approach, and makes sense for this game to use, as again, Chocobo Racing isn't exactly packed with tracks. There are also Time Trials to take on, the ability to customize characters after completing the story mode, and versus play for local (duh) multiplayer fun.

Squaresoft certainly took advantage of the PlayStation hardware, much like it did with practically every other release it developed and published on Sony's freshman system. Right from the starting line, the impressive prerendered cutscene opening that is as cool to watch as it is humorous, greets prospective players. From there, everything from the Magicite used to the Bombs that count down the start of races give a uniquely Final Fantasy touch to them. While draw distance is a major bummer, with clear signs of backgrounds and geometry popping in the closer you approach them, everything else about Chocobo Racing looks great for the hardware. 

Each character has their own mode of transportation, which adds to their personality and charm.

Of course, what would a Final Fantasy spin-off that gives a nod to the games that came before it be without incorporating Nobuo Uematsu's legendary themes? Fortunately we don't have to find out that answer with Chocobo Racing, as the arrangements from Kenji Ito do more than their fair share of making Final Fantasy fans feel at home. From the Mysidia track's ending theme from Final Fantasy V to Goblin Mines' Mt. Gulg theme from the OG Final Fantasy, the versions of Nobuo Uematsu's utilized compositions were given proper tender, loving care and the respect they deserve. 

Overall, Chocobo Racing does deliver competent arcade "kart" (for lack of a better term) racing action. The Magicite system, while novel and appropriate for the Final Fantasy franchise, does lean heavily on the spammy side, making for some truly frustrating races against the more fiendish CPU opponents. Really, I'd like to say that was improved in its Chocobo GP sequel, but... At any rate, if you're able to track down a copy of Chocobo Racing, or if the game ever arrives on PSN via a PS Classic release, it's worth checking out for either a Final Fantasy fan or enjoyers or cartoony racing games. Just make sure to tell your opponents to get out of your kweh! ...I mean, "way". Sorry. Ahem.

[SPC Says: C+]

Seafrog (PC) Review

May is here, and with it, we're now less than a month away from two special occasions, both occurring on June 5th: the Nintendo Switch 2's launch and SuperPhillip Central's 17th anniversary!

Before we dive into a new Nintendo console generation and celebrate 17 years of gaming together on SPC, I do have lots of content coming your way.

Let's start off with Seafrog, a recently released Metroidvania with a super-cute visual style and some sick tricking potential. Here's the SuperPhillip Central review.

Stick to the pond, Froggy.

The indie space has no shortage of clever concepts and meshing of genres and gameplay types. Seafrog fits the bill marvelously here. Combining the gameplay stylings of something like OlliOlli World meeting Metroid, Seafrog is a 2.5D platformer that takes players along for a seafaring adventure. While the game has a ton of heart, charm, and creativity to it, Seafrog's execution is unfortunately where it stumbles quite a bit.

The story behind Seafrog sees our protagonist, a wrench-wielding frog who uses said wrench as a makeshift skateboard, and his companion--the hologram head of a pirate captain--are adrift at sea. Suddenly, they go topside over a giant waterfall into a mass of water, something of a ship graveyard with various vessels in close proximity. Fortunately, refashioning and fixing up one of the ships allows our heroes to jettison themselves to each vessel remaining, via cannon. The catch? The cannon on their ship can only fire so far, so massive amounts of gold nuggets need to become acquired to power it up so it can shoot them to further away ships, and thus, eventually, a cannon to blast them out of the ship graveyard itself!

Ridin' on a wrench--the only way to travel!

Seafrog's gameplay has you skating, grinding rails, leaping up halfpipes to get big air, and performing tricks while you do all of it. Bailing isn't a thing, as like a cat, our frog protagonist (...frog-tagonist, maybe?) automatically lands on his wrench even if he's upside-down with only an inch between him and the ground--he always lands right-side up. That said, it's quite easy to get frustrated with the physics and platforming. For one, taking damage while in mid-jump/in midair results in the seafaring frog's body to become totally limp and for the player to completely lose control of the character as he falls. This means you're stuck watching this, getting increasingly more annoyed the higher you fall down from--seeing all the time, effort, and energy it took to get up there--wasted. It'd be great to be able to maneuver and try to course-correct, but sadly, this is not a thing.

That notwithstanding, Seafrog does otherwise feel and play nicely. The Zen-like flow you can get from chaining together combos, jumps, and wallrides is as feverishly addicting as something out of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater or OlliOlli World. The areas in the game are set up in a way that feel natural to explore and keep a combo going. Really, Seafrog doesn't bail when it comes to the controls or feeling as if the game has a good flow to its gameplay. It succeeds here.

Platforming challenges like these abound within Seafrog's four ships.

There are four main ships within Seafrog, and the game is designed as a Metroid-structured game. The more new abilities you gain, the deeper inside the various ships you can go and explore. The gameplay loop essentially has you exploring a ship you enter, tightening up loose bolts that serve as your means to get into the next hull, or hub of rooms. The deeper you go in each ship, the more challenging the platforming and tasks become, but the more rewards in the form of new abilities and those ever-important gold nuggets are there for the taking.

"Bawk" at its name all you want, but the Chunky Chicken is one hazardous place!

However, rather than automatically learning new abilities you stumble across, most of them you're required to equip via MOD chip. Not only do you have precious few slots for these chips, which replace other helpful functions like gaining additional health or boost speed, but every time you need to switch the chips out, it's a drawn out process of equipping and un-equipping them from the inventory menu. 

Regardless, outside of this niggling annoyance of futzing around with equipping MOD chips, they have their uses. and thankfully, not every new ability that you learn throughout the game comes in the form of a MOD chip either. Whether it's a midair boost that thrusts Seafrog forward to cross otherwise impossible gaps, riding along the sides of specially marked walls, or bouncing off of circular bumpers, there is quite a bit to teach our hero. I guess it shows that you can teach an old frog new tricks. ...Ahem.

Being a Metroidvania, as you can imagine there is some backtracking to be found in Seafrog. In fact, I would argue there is way too much of it by virtue of only being able to hold one item at a time, whether that be a key to unlock a door, a gear to activate a mechanism, or what have you. Understandably, this gets quite frustrating when you stumble upon item after item, but can't carry them without dropping your currently held one. A pocket system of some kind would have worked wonders and brought down these "moments of tedium that quickly into long stretches of obnoxious backtracking" immensely.

Furthermore, perhaps feeling the need to take something from Hollow Knight, death is punished by having all of our skatin' and thrashin' frog's current stash of nuggets stolen from what is essentially his corpse by a gremlin character. You, upon returning to the land of the living, must track this creature down, chase his goofy butt down, and attack him enough times to have your nuggets returned to you. This feels like a shoehorned inclusion to the game that serves no real purpose but to annoy the player. If you want your gotten gains back, the process of tracking down the gremlin means you must return all the way back to where you died. Fine enough, but seeing as every time you die, you start back at your ship, instead of a more convenient spot--it adds up, both the tedium and the irritation.

Our froggy friend grinds on this rail with perfect eggs-ecution!

The map isn't necessarily the most helpful to look at, just being a bunch of squares and rectangles depicting concepts of rooms, and not the actual shapes of the rooms themselves. With how "samey" a lot of each ship can seem, it's easy to forget where certain points of interest are. There is fast-traveling, which is very welcome, though the issue with the map really shows how difficult it can be to know and remember where to transport yourself to.

On the presentation side of Seafrog, we have graphics reminiscent of something out of the PS1-era, chiefly resembling something like Mega Man Legends. You can't go wrong with that kind of art style, and Seafrog doesn't go wrong with it either! It's fluid and it looks fantastic. The same goes with the frame-rate, which held up while playing Seafrog on my Steam Deck. The game is currently, as of the time of this review, listed as "Unknown" with regard to its verification status, but it truly runs well on Valve's portable. While the visuals look fabulous in Seafrog, the sound design is simply serviceable at best and completely forgettable otherwise. It's merely "there".

I entered into Seafrog with high expectations, but in the end, no matter how creative and charming this game presented itself could belie as anything else but a frustrating experience. Between moments of severe backtracking (whether because of repeated deaths or fetching items), the confusing map system, or the camera locking up, preventing me from seeing my character as he was far off screen--requiring quitting out--there are too many downsides to Seafrog to wholeheartedly recommend. That bums me out, as I really wanted to love this game. Instead, Seafrog threw a wrench into my plans, and not the fun kind that he skates on, either!

[SPC Says: C-]

A code was provided to SuperPhillip Central for the purpose of this review.