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Mickey's Speedway USA - Printable Version

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Mickey's Speedway USA - Dark Jaguar - 8th October 2021

After two decades, I finally got the last of the big three cart racers on the N64 and the last Rareware N64 game I didn't own.  Long ago, I recall a lively discussion on this game and questions on it's quality especially compared to the likes of Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing.

Graphics: Visually, this game looks great, for an N64 game I mean.  In fact, I'd say as far as graphical prowess, on a technical level it looks better than Diddy Kong Racing.  This is to be expected, since it was such a late release.  Rare knew how to really push the N64 by this point, and it shows.  Mickey and the gang are nice and big and detailed and the animations are well done.  The carts themselves show a lot of that "billboarding" technique that other cart racers on the system used, but that's no mark against it since the visual trick is done well.  Beyond that, the house of Mouse are all lively, animated well and reacting to things happening around them.  The animations of impact and item use are well done, and the details of the levels are nicely done too.  The big criticism here is on an artistic level.  I'll return to this later, but the decision to set this game in various US locations hurts the level of creativity they could have shown.  The levels are just kind of dull and a bit too realistic.  I'll give props to a few choices like turning the statue of Liberty into a mouse but otherwise they certainly could have done better.  Mickey's Speedway Disneyland would have been far more interesting.

The game keeps a very solid 30FPS which keeps the racing smooth and responsive.  F-Zero X managed 60FPS famously, and in that regard this one falls short but what it does manage it does well and the tradeoff in graphical fidelity may well have been worth it.

Sound: The music is fine- but hardly exceptional.  Nothing is all that grating, but most of the tunes feel like they'd fit a platformer better than a racing game.  There's just a lot of energy missing from a number of the tracks.  A few of the tunes are memorable, and they're all competently done, but I can't even credit the composer because the game's very short list of credits omits the composer or simply doesn't put them in their own category.  The sound effects are well done and have a good sense of impact or speed when needed, but then there's the voices.  Let me be clear here.  They used Disney's own voice talent, so every one of the characters are extremely well acted and the banter between them comes off entertaining.  That's what I would say, except as we all know by now this was the start of a long era where constant "banter" was becoming an expectation in games.  Mickey's Speedway is no exception.  The banter is CONSTANT to such a degree that for the first cup, I could barely even hear the music.  It's so bad I have a compliment to the game's option menu.  You can turn off the character chatter without shutting off other sound effects.  Do this.  The game and the music become a lot more enjoyable without the voice samples.  It's a shame.  Had they just scaled things back a heck of a lot, we could have enjoyed the samples a lot more in the rare moments they did appear.

Controls: This is a Rare game, a Rare racing game, coming at the tail end of a pedigree that started with R.C. Pro Am on the NES.  The controls are absolutely amazing and smooth like butter.  Every single input you put in is reflected as you intend on screen.  I'd even say the controls manage to beat out Mario Kart 64, but for one thing.  There's no turbo boosts.  Now, this doesn't kill the game at all, but sliding turbos as innovated by Mario Kart 64 added so much to the sub-genre that this is the only one since then I can think of that forgoes the convention.  As a result, the skill cap is lower than it could be (nearer to Super Mario Kart than Diddy Kong Racing).  You'll master this game quick, but then there's very little room to grow.  To break it down, there's acceleration, braking, using an item, and the "power slide" button (no hop).

Gameplay: Everything you need is here, but nothing more.  There's multiple cups adding up to a standard number of tracks.  There's a time trial mode complete with developer ghosts and racing your own ghosts.  There's a battle mode complete with CPU opponents (something I don't think I've ever even seen outside Mickey's Speedway), and there's solid 4 player multiplayer besides.

Much like Diddy Kong Racing, the items are the standard set lifted straight from R.C. Pro Am.  You've got oil slicks, missiles, nitro boosts, and a shield to temporarily protect yourself.  Beyond that, there's additional items inspired by the things Mario Kart brought to the table, like a homing missile (remote control car) and an invincibility powerup that also makes you more responsive and powerful for a limited time.  Like Super Mario Kart and Diddy Kong Racing (but unlike Mario Kart 64) the track is littered with a golden collectible (in this case medals instead of coins or bananas) that boosts your max speed by a small amount for the duration of the race for each one you snag (maximum of 20).

Tracks are relatively straightforward, but again come off as a little dull visually with very few gimics.  There's a few shortcuts, and enough twists turns and obstacles to allow you to plan an ideal route that shaves the most time off.  Beyond that, nothing that stands out.  None of them are designed for different vehicles, because there are only carts in this one.  They didn't provide the variety of Diddy Kong Racing.

The game is incredibly easy at low difficulty, but quickly scales up becoming that special breed of "Rare Hard" at the highest level.  Without drift boosts, you'll really need to learn every last aspect of each track to win by that point.  It's challenge is "mostly fair", but it does use AI rubberbanding like many racing games do.  An understandable necessity, or the game wouldn't be challenging at all.

Completion: This game is a lot closer to Mario Kart 64 in terms of completion and unlockables than to Diddy Kong Racing.  That said, there's a few things of note.  Firstly, while the game doesn't track your "end score", completing every track in first place on a cup grants you a rainbow trophy over and above the standard gold.  Full completion means getting first in every race in every cup.  This becomes especially challenging at higher difficulties.  There are also a few simple unlockables.  They're all done by completing cups, and include a few unlocked characters and cheats (the cheat codes are standard Rareware classics like "Rainbow goo").  One character in particular is locked behind the transfer pak.  This is that "DLC unlock" stuff that frustrated back then.  While Perfect Dark gave you in-game ways to unlock everything, there is no way to unlock one of the three duck nephews without linking up the GBC version of the game.  To date, the only game that used the transfer pak as more than a way to "gate" content behind an additional purchase were the Pokemon Stadium games.  That still remains the sole good use of the accessory.

Story: The Weasels dognapped Pluto for his diamond collar and e-mailed Mickey and the gang bragging about it.  Mickey gets his scientist goose friend to lend him and his friends carts so they can follow the clues and rescue Pluto.  So... the plot makes no sense.  Not since Mr. Burns kidnapped maggie just to get the diamond she was sucking on (in the Simpsons Arcade Game) has a villain been so pointlessly evil.  Just take the collar/pacifier and go!  Why add the extra headache of dealing with a dog/baby on top of it?  What's worse is this plot does a terrible job of setting up a reason of any sort to actually race.  Just- get where you're going then hop out and grab those weasels.  Why are you racing each other?  On tracks that just go in a circle?  There are so many well established tropes to get this thing underway.  Aliens invade and threaten the earth into a racing competition because they're THAT obsessed with sport.  Races are magically tied to ancient powers in whatever strange location you're in and that's how you defeat some evil wizard.  Everyone just felt like racing and even the bad guys want to win out of pride.  Literally any of those do the job just fine, because racing games don't need a plot!  In short, there's really no point at all because this game doesn't have a full on single player campaign like Diddy Kong Racing or Crash Team Racing.  It's just a set of cups with no connective hub world, so why even bother with a story?  You don't even get to race the Weasels.

So that leads to the final verdict on this one.  Mario Kart 64 was and still is an amazing kart racer, and as far as multiplayer is concerned it still is the best on the N64.  However, for single player Diddy Kong Racing set an entirely new bar that Nintendo STILL hasn't matched with their own series since then.  Diddy Kong Racing had three completely different vehicle types and tracks that were specialized for all three, but usable with all three types anyway!  It had bosses, unique creative challenges like coin hunts, all kinds of unlockable cheat codes, and a truly incredible and addictive sound track to match all of that.  Both it and Mickey's Speedway are impossibly adorable and- (to use a term I haven't heard since the late 90's/early 2000's) "kiddy", and they make that work for them well, but Mickey had the misfortune of coming years after Diddy Kong Racing, and thus it sadly lives in it's shadow, and heck back on Playstation we had Crash Team Racing which took everything Diddy Kong Racing added to the genre and expanded on it even more, with a unique boost mechanic that still feels amazing to this day with it's recent remaster (available on Switch if you please).

Here's the thing, it's entirely understandable.  Diddy Kong Racing and Crash Team Racing were both made by much larger teams than Mickey's Speedway USA.  It's a common phrase these days (especially talking about Dark Souls development), but this is a distinctly "B Team" endeavor.  I hate that term (and in Rare's case it's not even fully accurate, since they actually had more than two projects going at any one time), but what else do you call a team that's intentionally limited in scope and spending making use of talent that weren't exactly Rare's "rockstars" (another term I hate).  Fact is, this was the team normally relegated to Rare's Gameboy offerings at the time, and this was their fist shot at an N64 title.  Considering how much more work goes into developing a 3D game than a 2D one- especially in the art department- that they managed to churn out such a beautiful looking game that also played so well is a testament to their skills.  Maybe if they'd been given a bigger team and a bigger budget (and more time), we really could have seen what they could do.  As it stands, I can say this.  If Diddy Kong Racing didn't exist, or if this game had come out first, it would have been much better received than it was.  It isn't a bad game.  It's a good one that deserves to be counted, but it forever lives in the shadow of Rare's earlier masterpiece and the likes of Crash Team Racing.  It just can't stand up to it when compared.  It was also marred by a few bad decisions, like not including power slide boosts and the odd decision to make the tracks a tour of America rather than of the Disney-verse (if I want to race across America on my N64, I have Cruis'n USA).

Do I recommend it?  I do with that caveat.  If you really want to see all that Rare had to offer, it's still a very well done game.  Approach it the same way you would any of Rare's portable renditions of their properties from the time and I think you'll enjoy it.  Just don't expect it to outshine Rare's eternally wonderful Diddy Kong Racing.


RE: Mickey's Speedway USA - A Black Falcon - 15th October 2021

Most of my game reviews on this site I ended up posting as threads and not in the review forum, which is kind of dumb perhaps I admit, but ... well, it's what I did.

My review of the game is on my site here: https://blackfalcongames.net/?p=149  I also posted it on this site in a thread, but it looks like I added a bunch to the version on my site some years later that I never did to the forum version here.  My review of the game is here on this site here: https://www.tendocity.net/showthread.php?tid=5446

Comparing the two reviews, mine and yours, is somewhat interesting.  I think my number one takeaway is that you care a lot about the sliding turbos while I do not care about them much at all; I never mention that the game doesn't have them, and don't think I care at all that it doesn't.  They aren't something I consistently use in kart racing games anyway.  Mickey's Speedway USA is a fairly simple game for a kart racer, certainly, but the drifting mechanic adds plenty of depth to the game.

What I think I emphasize more than you, though, is just how fast this game is in the highest difficulty!  I know Mario Kart games also increase in speed as you go to the harder cups, but Diddy Kong Racing didn't do that, I'm pretty sure.  In this game the speed increase is present and dramatic; the final parts of the game are very, very fast, and very tough.

Indeed, and I don't entirely make this connection in my review either (you probably get closer than I do due to mentioning the game more), but in the final cup I think this game is almost more a modern R.C. Pro-Am game than it is a kart racer.  I mean, it's a very fast and challenging memorization-heavy racing game about drifting around corners.  It's also a kart racer, but ultimately I'm not sure if the focus is actually on the kart racing as much as it is the 'RC Pro-Am but in 3d' driving elements.  When you say "everything you need is here, and nothing more" to describe the gameplay, I think you pretty significantly understate the challenge and skill required in the top difficulty; the high speed and drifting mechanic combine to make this a good racing game which certainly requires skill to beat.  You do later say that the game is hard though, so this is confusing... is it hard, or isn't it?  I don't understand why you care so much about drift boosts but the mechanics are a good match for the challenge.

Regardless, I get why the game was considered disappointing at the time, and it isn't as great as Diddy Kong Racing certainly, but still it's a pretty good game which I definitely like.  I'd certainly take it over CTR any day, but I've never understood why people (mostly Sony fans) overrate that game so much... but anyway that's another issue.


RE: Mickey's Speedway USA - Dark Jaguar - 16th October 2021

If I gave the impression that I care some huge amount about drift turbos, I didn't intend that.  I went into a little detail on it but I felt I barely mentioned it.  It was still definitely worth a mention though, so I did.

When I said "everything you need is here and nothing more" that wasn't a comment on the game's challenge.  It was a comment on what the game offers.  It's easy at first and gets very hard, which I did mention.  I wasn't attempting to write a combative review, just my observations.  I'll put together a review of Crash Team Racing some time.  It's one of my favorite cart racers and I think it might be worthwhile to explain why.


RE: Mickey's Speedway USA - A Black Falcon - 16th October 2021

Thanks to how much PS1 fans wildly overrate that decent but unexciting game, CTR is probably one of the most overrated games of its generation.  But anyway, that's another subject.
Quote:If I gave the impression that I care some huge amount about drift turbos, I didn't intend that.  I went into a little detail on it but I felt I barely mentioned it.  It was still definitely worth a mention though, so I did.
It's probably the thing that stood out the most to me because other than that it's a good review that summarizes the game pretty well... but it's a fairly significant 'other than that'.  It's nice ot know that you don't care a huge amount about drift turbos, but you you sounded pretty negative to me.  I know, drift turbos and such add skill to games.  I just probably don't like drift boosts enough to consider not having them a negative... heh.

On a related but much higher skill note, snaking in F-Zero GX and such?  Yes, I theoretically know that it makes the game much easier if you learn those techniques, but I never have learned how to do them.  Drift turbos are generally easy enough and can be fun -- most recently, they're in Cruis'n Blast and are satisfying and fun there -- but I don't know if I've ever said 'that game is less good because it doesn't have them'...
Quote:Now, this doesn't kill the game at all, but sliding turbos as innovated by Mario Kart 64 added so much to the sub-genre that this is the only one since then I can think of that forgoes the convention.  As a result, the skill cap is lower than it could be (nearer to Super Mario Kart than Diddy Kong Racing).  You'll master this game quick, but then there's very little room to grow.
I don't think this is true.  I know you meant to only talk about controls here, but I would say that difficulty is a part of how much skill a game requires.  Certainly the game is simple, but mastering the Professional difficulty and its speed requires quite a bit of skill!  You may think you'll master the game easily while playing it in the slow speeds, but it's a very different game once it's fast.  It isn't DKR hard, thankfully (Diddy Kong Racing is probably too hard at the end...), but it's a good challenge and mastery will require a lot of practice.

 
Quote:When I said "everything you need is here and nothing more" that wasn't a comment on the game's challenge.  It was a comment on what the game offers.  It's easy at first and gets very hard, which I did mention.  I wasn't attempting to write a combative review, just my observations. 

I agree of course that the game is fairly simple, but I thought that with the way you say that, you wish the game had more complex controls and boost drifting or something like that... but while more budget might have been good in this definitely not top-tier-budget game, given how it only has one kind of kart, no hub, fairly bland tracks for the most part until the very last ones, and such, I don't think the driving needs any more mechanics than it has.  Features, sure, but not game mechanics.  Just a difference of opinion clearly.


RE: Mickey's Speedway USA - Dark Jaguar - 17th October 2021

Well I'd certainly prefer to have them rather than not, because as I said it raises the game's skill ceiling.  When I talk about skill ceiling, I should clarify what I mean because I think this led to a misunderstanding.  "Skill ceiling" is how much room for improvement is available to a player, not a measure of the game's inherent challenge.  Past whatever challenge the game itself offers, how much further is there to go?  This matters for the longevity of the game's multiplayer and also things like speed runs.  A low skill ceiling simply means that once one has mastered the skills and learned the tracks, there is very little room to improve from there.  The difference between a player that has beaten a course's developer ghost and the theoretical best possible time for that course will be very small.  A high skill ceiling means that even past all the challenges a game has to offer, there is a vast set of tricks available that allow for one's capabilities to far exceed what the game has to offer.  This would mean that the developer ghost time can be beaten on the order of minutes, not just seconds.

This is a rather fuzzy concept of course and it is dependent on a LOT of things that are outside even the developer's full control, like discovered glitches and unintended methods of play (and emergent gameplay), but as a general rule, the more tools and tricks a game provides and the more flexible the controls allowing for how one uses those capabilities, the higher the potential skill ceiling.

For another example, there's Quake 3 compared to Doom's deathmatch.  Quake 3 has so many unique tricks and tactics added to it far above what Doom does that the max skill set is completely alien and beyond anything people of average skill will ever play as.  If you compare that to the absolute best of the best in Doom deathmatch, there's not nearly as much difference between the best of the best and an average player.

Real world sports also have skill ceilings, which in the case of older sports we're already starting to see people reach.  In the case of things like beating best sprinting times, what one will often see is a period where new "high scores" are being reached year after year for a few decades, and then a plateau is reached.  Past that point, new records get set maybe once a decade, then once every couple decades.  Why?  The absolute pinnacle of human performance has already been hit.  There's far little left to attain that hasn't already been done.

For speed runners, a game with a high skill ceiling draw far more interest than one with a low one.  A game has to have a LOT of room for potential growth past merely "above average" to make it interesting to watch.  That's why games like Super Mario Bros and even Spongebob Squarepants have survived as speedrunning darlings long beyond Marble Madness.  Marble Madness has no place left to go at this point.  Theoretical maximums have already been hit (as far as we know).  Super Mario Bros however doesn't have much time left in the sun itself.  It took some time, but we've finally hit that theoretical maximum over and over again there too.  New games have to take their place.  It's the breaking of previous limits that draw interest, not just reaching the same record over and over.

So, when I say that Mickey's Speedway has a lower skill ceiling, it has nothing to do with how hard it's higher difficulties are.  It's that point where there's nowhere left to improve and my interest wanes.  Now, Mickey's Speedway doesn't have what I'd call a super low skill ceiling.  The drifting is buttery smooth and well designed.  However, it's simply true that adding boosts would add an extra potential for speed, an extra skill check the player has to be aware of, and finally an extra set of considerations on just what makes for THE fastest lap time.  Is it better to just make the turn sharp, or to try and work an extra turbo in there?

You're right, the game is still fun without it and no racer NEEDS drift turbos to be fun, but it does add something meaningful enough that it would have made the game better.

Anyway, beyond that yes the game is much harder on higher difficulties but I hope I've clarified the confusion behind just what I meant by a skill ceiling enough to make it clear I never was disparaging the game's challenge.


RE: Mickey's Speedway USA - A Black Falcon - 17th October 2021

I went back and just played a little of the game.  Looking at it, when I played this game for my review back in about 2010 I only ever beat Frantic Finale on the lowest difficulty, Beginner, and the reason why became immediately apparent: as I said in my review, the ending part of this game is insanely hard!  Frantic Finale is crushingly difficult and requires a great deal of practice to get even remotely close to competitive in.  I finished far, far behind in last almost all of the time.

I'm sorry, but calling a game this hard something with a "low skill ceiling" is ridiculous.  Difficultly is one of the most important elements that determines how much skill a game requires.  I'd say that really the exact opposite is true -- the absence of boost drifting makes this game harder and require more skill to master!  Instead of being able to rely on those, you instead have to memorize the tracks more and race really well to win.  It's one of many factors that combine to make this feel perhaps more like a conventional racing game than is usual for the kart subgenre.  I can understand why one would play this and wish for boost drifts because you expect them, and it might be interesting with them, but I do not think it loses much for their absence.

(As for the effect on speedrunning, I couldn't possibly care much less. I don't like speedrunning much and rarely watch any.  While I can theoretically get the appeal of trying to break Mario Kart 64 and finish laps in five seconds, as people have done, I'd never want to do that or watch people try much.  That kind of thing is not at all my idea of fun.  I would much, much rather play a game correctly than try to cheat and exploit glitches.  No thanks.)

However, playing the game again it did remind me of several important ways that this is indeed a pretty weird kart racer, a game which is every bit as much RC Pro-Am and Super Mario Kart as it is Mario Kart 64, really...

- It doesn't seem to have much catch-up at all!  While in many kart racers the AI is designed to keep the race close, that seems to be not very true here.  No, the AI just zooms ahead, leaving you miles behind in the dust.  Git gud I guess.

- The very high speed of Professional mode takes some serious getting used to and amplifies the challenge significantly.  This is one of the fastest kart racers around, if you even count it as a kart racer.  Mario Kart games all have speed increases too, but it's only in its more recent entries that I'd say it reaches this level of speed.  Learning tracks and taking corners correctly is important as it is in an RC Pro-Am game.

- The game has a drift system but not any boosts other than those from items.  This gives it a pretty different feel from other kart racers and makes the game more about your core driving skill than is the case in a game like Mario Kart 64.

And in several other ways, this feels more like Super Mario Kart for the SNES than Mario Kart 64 or Diddy Kong Racing:

- You lose almost all of your speed when you go off of the track, and the tracks in the later races are narrow.  This strongly emphasizes the importance of memorizing each course through lots of practice.  Super Mario Kart is somewhat like this, but not Mario Kart 64 or most games in the genre in the N64 generation...

- Weapons exist and you do get better weapons in the back and worse ones in front, but they aren't as overpowered as Mario Kart 64's.  Items can help but you will need to race well to win.

- This game has narrow tracks with no walls in places.  It's very easy to fall off the side and have to be reset on to the track.  This reminds me more of Super Mario Kart than its N64 sequel.

And there might be more as well, it's kind of odd indeed.  It's frustrating but rewarding once you actually learn tracks  enough to do well at them.

Overall the game is definitely not as great as Mario Kart 64, but it's pretty good.  I actually have it at a higher score in my collection spreadsheet than Diddy Kong Racing, though I'd need to play both games again for a while to know if it should stay that way.  (Both of Rare's N64 kart racing games get too hard at the end, they have that in common.)


RE: Mickey's Speedway USA - Dark Jaguar - 18th October 2021

Please understand what I mean by skill ceiling and don't take what I meant by that as a statement the game is easy in any way.  It isn't.  At the highest difficulty, professional, it is VERY hard to beat.  That has absolutely nothing to do with the popular understanding of the term "skill ceiling".  The game's own difficulty has absolutely no bearing on it's skill ceiling.  In fact, paradoxically, having a low skill ceiling makes the game HARDER rather than easier.

Let me try one more time to explain.  Skill ceiling defines how good YOU as the player can potentially get at a game, NOT how hard the game is.  If a game has an extremely high ceiling, you will eventually leave all the in-game challenges in the dust.  If it has a low one, you will only ever, even under the most ideal circumstances, be able to just barely squeak out a win.  In the worst cases, rare as they may be, the game's skill ceiling being too low can make the hardest challenges unwinnable.  Most games never get this bad, but if you want a real world example look at the Donkey Kong "kill screen".  The skill ceiling in that game is by no means low, until you reach that level where it becomes impossible to win or improve your skills in any way that could even potentially let you win.  At that stage, the skill ceiling is lower than the game's built in challenge.

Again, I never said the game was easy.  Saying the game has a lower skill ceiling than Diddy Kong Racing or Mario Kart 64 should not be construed to mean that.


RE: Mickey's Speedway USA - A Black Falcon - 4th November 2021

If speedrunners want to create some alternate reality where the difficulty of the elements of a games' skill ceiling doesn't matter they can do that, but I strongly disagree.


RE: Mickey's Speedway USA - Dark Jaguar - 4th November 2021

(4th November 2021, 5:49 PM)A Black Falcon Wrote: If speedrunners want to create some alternate reality where the difficulty of the elements of a games' skill ceiling doesn't matter they can do that, but I strongly disagree.

Please try to understand.  Skill ceiling and game difficulty are two different things.  One can be high and the other can be low.  I honestly am not sure where I'm failing to communicate this but you are still conflating the two ideas.