I feel like we're stuck on a racing game trend here on SuperPhillip Central lately--what, with Chocobo Racing, Mario Kart World, and yes, now Speed Punks for the original PlayStation. I must really have the need for speed, and while I'm on this theme of racing, let's take to the track with this oft overlooked PS1 kart racer!
Whether you know them as punks or as freaks, these folks sure have some speed!
Back in the 1990s, every publisher wanted a piece of the Mario Kart pie, and Sony with its then-newly established PlayStation were no different. Coming at Nintendo's prestigious Mario Kart franchise with not one but two karting efforts within the span of about a year: Naughty Dog's Crash Team Racing and the subject of today's review, Funcom's Speed Punks (aka Speed Freaks outside of North America), it's safe to say the latter is more forgotten in the annals of gaming history. That said, while CTR is definitely the more popular of the two, does that mean that Speed Punks deserved to slip through the cracks?
Well, yes and no, depending on what context you're approaching the game from. But, we'll get more into that in a teeny tiny bit. Let's go with an overview of what is inside the Speed Punks package before we delve any further.
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| The starting circuits offer gentle turns, wide tracks, and plenty of room to maneuver. |
The main single player content of Speed Punks is its Tournament mode. Here, players race against five other drivers in your standard Grand Prix contest, featuring four tracks. There are three batches of four tracks, beginning with the Easy Tournament. The tracks here showcase gentle turns, wide open straightaways, and little in the way of hazards compared to later difficulties. Successfully completing each tournament unlocks the next difficulty in an Easy to Normal to Hard progression. By the time you reach the Hard Tournament, tracks are much more windier, have intense and tight curves, plentiful narrow sections, easy spots to fall off via careless driving, and numerous hazards to evade.
Depending on the place racers achieve in the Tournament mode, they receive different amounts of points, with first place earning the most, and sixth earning the least. However, if the player hits fourth or worse in a race, they must use up one of their finite retries to start the race over and try again for a higher place. Races can also be restarted mid-lap, though also at the cost of retry. You might think this is a foolish maneuver, but there is a reason to do this aside of knowing you're probably going to place fourth or worse.
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| Life is a highway, and I want to ride it for five laps. |
Aside from that reason, what if you're in second place and coming in on the finish line? What possible excuse could you have to restart then, you ask? The main reason to do this is because you're awarded a chance to face a boss character for winning all races in a given Tournament in first place. Winning the trial against this boss character adds them to roster to race as.
In total, there are six characters in the base roster with three more as unlockable through winning each of the three Tournaments in first place in all races, and thus, beating the boss character to unlock them into the roster. Each character sports their own stats in three categories: weight, top speed, and acceleration.
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| Get first place in all of a given Tournament's difficulty, and you'll earn the right to face a boss! Win, and you'll add them to your repertoire of racers! |
Totaling just twelve tracks might seem like a bummer, especially compared to Mario Kart, which at the time sported 16 unique tracks, and that's because it sort of is! While it is a bit disappointing to see Speed Punks with a smaller number of tracks, what is available are fun and entertaining circuits. These are five laps apiece as opposed to the typical three seen in other kart racers, and they give you enough time to enjoy each circuit before moving onto the next. Even with five laps, they don't overextend their individual welcomes or grow tedious. Well, maybe that's less true of the final track within the Hard Tournament, as that one even if it were three laps is a test of the endurance, for sure!
Regardless, the tracks are well designed, and the shortcuts within them offer some smart design too. Whether that's driving through a bush within the opening of a fence to reach a whole new part of track within the speedway that is Silver City, or shortcuts that only appear later in a given race, like a cavern's opening within the volcanic Thunder Trail--these are cleverly hidden for the most part and offer great skips ahead of one's opponents.
Of course, a kart racer, especially one with a goofy aesthetic and unrealistic approach, isn't worth putting the pedal to the metal if its selection of items isn't worthwhile. Fortunately, there's plenty here in Speed Punks to sow strife on straightaways, cause chaos at corners, and tremendous terror on the track in general. There are of course green shell and red shell equivalents with missiles and homing missiles respectively, slime puddles that serve as Speed Punks' banana peel equivalent, and yes, even a pesky blue shell equivalent, as well. However, there are also other power-ups that don't necessarily take from the Mario Kart playbook, such as machine guns, shockwaves, and a tire pop that will inflate your tires until they burst (though this can be battled against by mashing on a specific button), for starters.
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| Excuse me, sir. You dropped this bomb! |
While the items and power-ups within Speed Punks add to the vehicular carnage and motor mayhem as one would expect, not everything brings chaos to the game in the best of ways. For one, Speed Punks' driving physics and handling constantly make you feel like you're driving on a Teflon surface. It's beyond slippery and frustratingly so. Secondly, the AI isn't the fairest of them all, let's say. They'll unload on to you with items, power-ups, and just make for an aggravating time on the track in Tournament mode.
Fortunately, what positives I can say about Speed Punks' racing action are more numerous than its negatives. The aforementioned items are enjoyable to use, races are generally incredibly thrilling and especially rewarding if and when you emerge victorious, tracks are well designed, and the boost system is helpful in cutting corners, making shortcuts, and otherwise navigating through and speeding back up after all of the item spam you will face.
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| Who's a good racer? Why, yes, you are! Yes, you are! |
That notwithstanding, content-wise Speed Punks is lacking. The twelve total tracks are a paltry amount for a kart racer, no matter how well designed they come across. The amount of modes is lackluster, and the inability to play the Tournament mode with a local player is disappointing to me at the very least.
Like the Speed Punks track Millennium Park's roller coaster is much like Speed Punks and this review, as we're constantly going up and down these last few paragraphs with criticism and praise. Here we go again, as Speed Punk absolutely nails its presentation. The colors are crisp, colorful, and vibrant. The characters exude enough personality and animate well for a PS1 title, and the environments are delightful to take in and look at as you speed past them. The D&B soundtrack won't everyone's cup of tea (or is it motor oil? Ew.), but it's certainly serviceable and complements the racing mayhem well.
Neither Speed Punks nor its developer Funcom may have survived into the present, but both their pasts offer plentiful amounts of entertainment. Speed Punks itself doesn't have the content to last most players an overly lengthy amount of time, and it can also be frustratingly difficult--sometimes for all the wrong reasons. That said, the game does deliver an all-around good time on the track, even if it's one that most players won't stick with for all too long. What it lacks in content and control, it more than makes up for in challenge and creativity.
[SPC Says: C+]
