Simple Series Double Header: Motorbike King and Snowboard Racer 2

Game: Motorbike King
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Tamsoft
Release Date: September 2004

Just as I feared that Simple Series reviews would end up becoming basically the same complaints repeated over and over again, D3 Publisher found new ways to disappoint me. Presenting Motorbike King; what can only be described as an anime inspired low budget racing game. Single player mode consists solely of 1 on 1 and Time Attack modes, and the only other play mode included is Two Player split screen racing.

Upon starting single player mode there's a choice of 3 "chicks" and 3 "dudes" to pick as your character, as well as 11 bikes which all seem to be basically the same thing, save for small design and stat changes. The only real option available to players after picking a bike is to start challenging opponents in the 1 on 1 race mode.

Upon starting the first race there's many observations that new players will make. The first is that the default viewpoint is horrendous and hugely impacts the player's ability to see anything of the road ahead of them (it also resets after each race), the second observation is that the handling on the bikes is pretty awful and getting around tight corners is almost impossible without coming to a near stop, and the final one is that in addition to racing the opponents, the game also expects you to do "tricks" which either slow your bike down or require a long stretch of straight road. Worst of all your opponent doesn't have to do any tricks.

If you can manage to win three of the 1 on 1 races, then three more will unlock with more difficult opponents, who have better skills and bikes. There's the option to upgrade your own bike which helps speedwise, but tends to make controlling them far more difficult than it already was. The opponent designs are pretty shoddy, and there's no storyline or reason as to why you're racing them. There's next to no depth in the one player mode, especially since there's only 6 tracks in total and the 1 on 1 races are literally all there is to do besides time trials.

(Mondo Oowada on the right anyone?)

Graphically Motorbike King could probably have been on the original Playstation. The textures and details are all pretty low resolution and unimpressive. The game sometimes slows down to around 10 frames per second when there's too much going on, and this makes for an even worse experience. The music included on the game can best be described as "general rock". It's uninteresting, uninspiring and about as average as the game itself.

Overall I can see no reason why anyone would want to play this game. The racing experience is bad, the character designs are poor, the bike and track selection is tiny, there's no depth to the game, the graphics are nothing special, there's various places where you can get stuck completely, and you're probably better off playing Hang On on the Master System for a realistic bike racing experience.

Rating: 14/100
Grade: F

Game: Snowboard Racer 2
Console: Sony Playstation
Developer: Atelier Double
Release Date: 7th November 2003

Snowboard Racer 2 is a game of very limited options. There are 4 game modes, 8 tracks in 4 locations, 4 characters with a couple of bits of clothing to unlock each, 12 tricks (4 of which don't even work) and 7 choices of music to accompany your gameplay. The controls are less than intuitive with the triangle button being used to accelerate and no option to crouch before jumping. Tricks are very basic and take a long time to initiate, if the game even detects your button presses at all.

The four game modes are Race, Trick, Chase and Halfpipe. The first three take place on the 6 mountain tracks, and require players to go as fast as they can, get as many trick points as they can, and catch a snowboarding snowman respectively, and the Halfpipe mode takes place on one of the two halfpipe courses which are fairly similar.

(Excuse the picture quality there's hardly any evidence of this game existing)

Controlling the snowboarders is a little difficult at times although they'll never fall off their boards entirely, no matter how hard you smack them into a cliff face. The AI players in races and trick contests often perform far better than players could ever dream of doing, and not only are the tricks listed in the manual assigned to strange button combos, but 4 of them don't work, and the other 8 take a good second or two to actually start doing, by which time your snowboarder has landed.

Chase mode is a nice addition in that it gives players a break from the other 3 gameplay modes, but the Snowman you're tasked with chasing after is pretty fast and can be difficult to catch, and the concept as a whole gets old fast. A two player mode where one of the players controls the snowman would have been interesting, but instead both players chase the snowman.

The graphics of the game actually warrant it being on the Playstation 2, with some nice snow effects and better human models than in other Simple Series games, but there's still a lack of interesting objects or features in the landscape. The music of the game is pretty much all mediocre rock, which doesn't seem too out of place, but doesn't add too much either.

Overall Snowboard Racer 2 clings to the heels of games like SSX and tries to offer some of their fun, but fails to do so due to its controls, game modes and lack of options as a whole. There's very little enjoyment to be had on any of the game modes and gamers would be better off picking up any of the SSX games if they're into snowboarding.

Rating: 22/100
Grade: F