Game: Toy Racer
Console: Sega Dreamcast
Developer: No Cliche
Release Date: 22nd December 2000
Nowadays the concept of a multiplayer only game is fairly common as single player campaign modes are paid less attention and online gaming enjoys continued popularity. Back in 2000 however, online home console gaming was in its infancy, making the release of Toy Racer notable. While there was an offline multiplayer mode to go alongside the online aspect, anyone attempting to play the game alone could only drive around the tracks by themselves in training mode, without any AI opposition.
While I'm not a huge fan of games which exclude the single player element entirely, I have to consider the multiplayer merits of this game or there'd be nothing to consider. Like many games released in the late 90s and early 00s, Toy Racer is in many ways a Mario Kart clone, with elements of Micro Machines thrown in for good measure. As a sort of spin-off from the Toy Commander series, this isn't particularly surprising though it's a shame that so little effort went into developing original gameplay ideas.
The handling of all vehicles is fairly slidey, as you might expect from miniature cars. It's something that's easy to get used to and on the whole, racing is pretty fun with a good sense of speed. Conversely the track design is pretty poor, even considering circuits which find their way up walls and onto the ceiling. Add this to a mediocre selection of cars, with nothing left for players to unlock and without seeing the £5 pricetag, you'd know that this is a budget title.
The multiplayer experience is perhaps one of the weakest parts of the game. There's no way to access the official online multiplayer for the Dreamcast anymore, so online play isn't an option, and local multiplayer causes a lot of framerate issues with the game, making all movement and animation incredibly jerky and inconsistent.
Graphically the game isn't particularly bad, which is surprising considering just how budget other aspects of it are. While some of the textures on the tracks leave a little to be desired, the vehicles are all nicely designed and presented. The music that plays behind races is pretty generic, but not in a bad way; it's almost exactly what you'd expect to be featured on this sort of game.
Overall Toy Racer could have been a fairly average budget racing game with the small addition of some CPU opponents and a single player mode, but instead it sits firmly near the bottom of the Dreamcast rankings thanks to framerate issues and the lack off access to Dreamcast servers for the game, rendering it even more useless than it once was.
Rating: 37/100
Grade: E
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