So I got this back early this year, but barely played it before putting it aside as frustrating and not fun. Well, for some reason, yesterday I went back to it, and started enjoying it a lot more. It's not the game is should have been, certainly, but it is actually a pretty good, and I would say underrated, kart racing game.
The first problem with the game is obvious: Simple interface, real-world-style design. This is disappointing for Mario Kart style kart racing fans who probably want more fantastical environments and more thrilling tracks than you get here. And as a Rare and Disney game, there's no excuse for the environments being so bland. It's definitely a big disappointment. This game has no overworld to drive around in, no missions aside from winning, no bosses, no boats or planes to drive, none of that. Just kart racing. Also, most of the first 12 tracks are somewhat bland in design; the later tracks get more interesting, but I bet a lot of people won't play it that far... I almost didn't.
The later tracks do get pretty interesting and challenging, though. They also start to fit the themes better; though Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Seattle, etc. are very bland and generic tracks, courses like The Everglades, Hawaii, and Texas are much more interesting and fit their themes much better. Some of the later tracks are still weird, like Oregon, which is like a giant forest or jungle or something, but those others really are quite good. They're much harder too, but that's fine, there should be challenge somewhere in the game. It's well worth getting through the less interesting earlier parts to get to the later, better tracks! :)
The controls in this game are fantastic. If one thing pushes this game towards greatness, it's the controls. You have great control over your kart; you won't be skidding all over the place, but going where you want. Sharp turns may require braking or 'powersliding' (brake then hit R to jump, I think, to do it best), but that's easy to do. Really, the controls in this game are about as good as any kart racer I've played, and better than many.
Also, in each difficulty the karts go faster than the last. This is particularly noticeable between Beginner and Intermediate; the speed jump is large. Going from Intermediate to Professional is a bit less. On the upper two difficulties this is a pretty fast moving game and those karts really zip along. The framerate is solid throughout however, and the game has a minimum of slowdown, in single player mode at least (I have not played it in multiplayer yet). This is probably why the graphics feel somewhat simplistic in design, they were trying to focus on keeping up the framerate... it definitely isn't 60 fps, but it's solid, smooth, and helps keep the game completely playable, which is great. I mean, I wish the game had more visual effects, like dynamic lighting, etc (that lack is really noticeable in the Chicago track, which looks like something straight out of DK64, except without the awesome dynamic lighting, just static stuff...), but given that this game sadly does not support the expansion pak, the effort to keep up the framerate is appreciated. That's probably also why there is a bit of distance fog, though at least it is well off in the distance.
Still, I very much do wish that they HAD supported the expansion pak and pushed a bit more, particularly in those blander early tracks. This game was released in 2000, it should have had expansion pak support. That Rare left it out of this game, Banjo-Tooie, Jet Force Gemini, and Conker's BFD really makes no sense and is pretty disappointing. I can understand not REQUIRING one, in order to maximize your audience, but they should have supported it for the enhancements it would allow! Still, the game has a very smooth, clear look and looks beautiful if you look at it, with nice textures, no pixelization, and all the things you expect from better-looking N64 games. Despite the somewhat simple and understated looks in many parts of the game, it actually is a pretty nice looking game.
As for the characters, the ones that are there are great but there aren't enough of them. You start with just six, and there are only four more to unlock, one of which requires Mickey's Speedway USA for the GBC and a transfer pak to get. The unlockable characters have better stats than the standard ones, so the game is not balanced. This is another problem... but anyway, the default characters are Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Daisy, Goofy, and Pete. The unlockables are Dewey, Louie, Ludwig von Drake, and, via transfer pak and GBC copy, Huey. Yeah, three of the four unlockables are pallette swaps and there are only six defaults. Definitely a bit weak. However, all of them do speak, and quite a bit. This leads to the audio category.
The game has solid music, with a different song in each track, I believe. It's background-music stuff, but works well. The sound effects are mostly decent, but as I said, the characters speak, I lot, from a very small library of voice samples. This means that you hear the same things many, MANY times. Every time they finish a lap, each character says something about their position (whether they're doing well and happy or badly and sad, pretty much). Whenever one shoots another, both the attacker and victim say something. This is generally specific to the character that they're interacting with, but each pair of characters has only ONE interaction line -- so every time Mickey shoots Minnie you hear the same thing, pretty much. I can easily see this really annoying people... somehow I don't mind so much so far, probably because the voice quality is great and the characters all sound exactly like they should, though. Mickey sounds just like Mickey Mouse, Donald has that spluttery anger unintelligible thing, the nephews sound just like you expect... it's entertaining and charming. Repetitive and annoying, but also entertaining and charming, so overall for me at least it cancels out. I'm sure this is something that will vary from person to person though. :)
Mickey's Speedway USA is broken into five racing championships of four tracks, plus a practice course and one hidden track for timetrial/multiplayer only. You start with three championships unlocked. You get the fourth by getting golds in all three of the first, and the fifth by finding the four hidden parts hidden in four of the levels from the first sixteen. There are also Platinum medals to get if you wish, which you receive by finishing first in all four races of a circuit. You also unlock cheats and three of the hidden characters as you progress and win championships (one hidden character for getting golds on the first three circuits in Beginner, another for doing that on Intermediate, and the last for beating everything in the game). The most useful cheat is the infinite-continues one, which fortunately you get before the fifth circuit...
When I first played the game, I started on the middle difficulty. It was really hard and I lost badly every time, not finishing in the top three in multiple tries. You only get two continues in the circuit by default, so it's tough. Finally I gave up and played the Beginner difficulty, and won fairly easily... but by then was tired of the game and quit playing.
So, that's where I picked up, with one gold medal in one circuit and that's it. By the end of the day, I had everything but the golds in Intermediate and Professional in the fifth circuit, meaning I won 13 circuits in one day (three platinums, 10 golds, I believe). Um, yeah. :) I definitely had fun... and, playing with the first unlockable character once I got him and then the second one once I got him, the difficulty level definitely got easier. Their stats are better, as I said, so if you want a better chance using them is definitely recommended... which is a problem with the game, in a kart racer really everyone should be balanced! Here they aren't, you have to choose the better ones to have a better chance at winning. :(
Well, I will say that the fifth circuit is MUCH harder than the first four. Much tougher designs, much trickier layouts, more traps and obstacles, narrow roads with pits on the side... I beat it in Beginner, though it definitely took several continues to get the later tracks down (thanks, infinite continues cheat!), but the higher two difficulties are much harder thanks to the high speeds. Trying it a bit today, I can't get better than 5th in the first track of the circuit, Hawaii, in Intermediate... stupid coconuts! :)
Oh, finding those four car parts is definitely a pain. I used a guide to look up where the three of them I didn't run into while going through the tracks the first time were, and don't regret it at all. Just look them up and go find them, spare yourself the pain and frustration of wandering around looking...
Oh, and the game does have a battle mode, called "Challenge Mode" here. There are four arenas, all flat and quite bland Super Mario Kart style designs, with no height or layers like the arenas in Mario Kart 64 and DKR have. However, the game does have bots, so you can play battle mode in single player too, which is nice; battle modes like this only rarely have bots, it really is a great feature for them to put in. The AI's definitely suspect (I've only played one battle and managed to win despite doing no damage to any of the other three cars... ), but it's a nice feature to have regardless. :)
Anyway, overall Mickey's Speedway USA is a decent game. It deserves better than it got from reviews like IGN's 68%. It's a very 'safe' game, pushing no boundaries and breaking no new ground, but it's fun to play and has a decent, if not overwhelming, amount of content. I'd definitely recommend it for kart racing fans, I imagine many passed it up, given how many mediocre to poor reviews the game got. I know that's a good part of why I didn't buy it for so long...
Click this link.. It is my IP information for a post...
Check out the host name... :))
Also check out this DNS Record....
Check out the Registrar Contact Name Record (RNAME) under state of authority (SOA) Can anyone spell free DNS? I'll give you a hint... there's a toven in there followed by a couple of bitchens...
Warning -- there are spoilers here. Just to the beginning of the game, I imagine, but if you want to go in knowing absolutely nothing, maybe don't watch...
... That was interesting, I definitely wasn't expecting that (plotwise, what is shown in the trailer)... shocking maybe, even, considering what series we're talking about. Huh.
I know, no major elections. But there might be some local stuff...
Maine, for instance, has FIVE major ballot initiatives, all pretty important.
1 - Gay marriage. 'Yes' is to repeal the law that the legislature passed earlier this year to allow gay marriage, 'no' is to keep it. Obviously I'm very much hoping No wins... This is, obviously, getting the vast majority of the attention, both locally and nationally. Most people outside of Maine probably haven't heard of the rest of these, but might have heard of this one.
2 - A stupid tax bill. Lower the new-car tax! Have towns make up for it by raising everyone's property taxes! Awesome!
3 - Question to repeal a school consolidation law passed recently. I'm sure noone else here cares about this, but this is an important issue here... local control matters a lot, and this harms that by merging districts. But on the other hand, Maine evidently has some of the smallest average school district sizes in the country, in terms of number of students per district, and all those administrators cost money that this reform is supposed to save. I'm really unsure about how I'll vote this one, myself... I've been skeptical about the whole school consolidation thing all along, but it might ultimately be good... I'm not sure.
4 - TABOR II. This, I think, is the most important question to defeat on the entire ballot, even more so than #1 I think... TABOR (the acronym stands for "Taxpayer's Bill of Rights") is another tax idea, that has a hard spending cap based on this year's budgets. Then you can only increase spending at a set, very low rate per year, 3% I think. This can only be changed by BALLOT ISSUES. Town meetings are bound by this as well, so it rips apart local control of tax spending for all towns that have town meetings (which are many of the smaller towns in this state). Horrible, horrible bill! It'd absolutely destroy education funding in Maine... look at what happened to California after their stupid Proposition 13 property-tax-limiting law, several decades back -- their schools went from first in the country to right near the bottom. The only state with a TABOR-like law is Colorado, who think so much of it that they recently voted to suspend it. Awesome.
Oh yeah, and this is the third time they're trying to pass this; things very much like it have failed twice already. I really, really hope that this one fails too... and maybe, someday, hopefully, they'll give up on trying to destroy our state government and accept defeat? Please?
5 - Expansion of medicinal marijuana. Set up state dispensary system to get it to patients, etc. I'm opposed, but I'd bet this passes. If someone could show scientifically proven studies that show actual benefits I'd consider voting the other way, but as is, no way. The issue only exists as a major issue because druggies want marijuana legalized in general anyway, and I'm very much opposed to that...
Anything going on in this election in any of your states? :)
... Nintendo, hasn't that huge profit cut you got in the first half of this year taught you ANYTHING? The "We failed to release anything new that really caught consumer interest in the second half of 2008, and that hurt us" or whatever?
But no, it's business as usual, release lists with no dates, lots of games with improbable release dates on them, seeming plans for more games that get announced just weeks before they are released and then are never marketed (shocking the world when they don't sell well!), and lots of titles currently not scheduled for a US release? Awesome.
Wii:
Japan
Wii Fit Plus 2009/10/1
Sin and Punishment 2(Temp.) 2009/10/29
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games™* 2009/11/5
New Super Mario Bros. Wii 2009/12/3
NHK Kohaku Quiz Gassen 2009/12/17
Cosmic Walker(Temp.) 2009
Kensakusu(Temp.) 2009
Span Smasher(Temp.) 2009
Dynamic Zan(Temp.) 2009
100 Go de Start! Eikaiwa(Temp.) 2009
Hoshi no Kirby(Temp.) 2009
Line Attack Heroes(Temp.) 2009
Monado: Beginning of The World(Temp.) TBA
METROID: Other M(Temp.) TBA
Super Mario Galaxy 2(Temp.) TBA
The United States
Wii Fit Plus 2009/10/4
New Super Mario Bros. Wii 2009/11/15
Sin and Punishment 2(Temp.) CY2010 1st Quarter
Endless Ocean 2(Temp.) CY2010 1st Quarter
METROID: Other M 2010
Super Mario Galaxy 2(Temp.) 2010
Span Smasher(Temp.) TBA
Line Attack Heroes(Temp.) TBA
Monado: Beginning of The World(Temp.) TBA
Europe
Wii Fit Plus 2009/10/30
New Super Mario Bros. Wii 2009/11/20
Endless Ocean 2(Temp.) 2010
Sin and Punishment 2(Temp.) 2010
Spring Super Mario Galaxy 2(Temp.) 2010
METROID: Other M(Temp.) 2010
DS:
Japan
Mario & Sonic At the Olympic Winter Games 2009/11/19
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks 2009/12/23
Famicom Wars DS2(Temp.) 2009 (Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, which we got early this year)
Golden Sun DS(Temp.) TBA
The United States
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky 2009/10/12
Style Savvy 2009/11/2
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks 2009/12/7
Pokémon HeartGold Version 2010 Spring
Pokémon SoulSilver Version 2010 Spring
Glory of Heracles 2010
Golden Sun DS(Temp.) 2010
WarioWare D.I.Y. TBA
Picross 3D TBA
Europe
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story 2009/10/9
Nintendo presents: Style Boutique 2009/10/23
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky 2009/11/20
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks 2009/12/11
Pokémon HeartGold Version 2010 Spring
Pokémon SoulSilver Version 2010 Spring
WarioWare D.I.Y. TBA
), but it's a nice feature to have regardless. :)
