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Mario Kart and the Crash Team Racing might be the cream of the cart racing crop, but there are certainly plenty of alternatives if you're looking for one. Now, we'll head off at the past that a lot of these sound so far-fetched and ridiculous that we forgive you if you want to Google after you've watched this video to see if they actually exist or not.
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00:00The plumber and the bandicoot might be the cream of the kart racing crop,
00:04but there are certainly plenty of alternatives if you're looking for one.
00:08Now we'll head off at the past that a lot of these sound so far-fetched and ridiculous that
00:12we forgive you if you want to google after you've watched this video to see if they actually exist
00:18or not. So fire up your engines and grab your appropriate power-up because we're diving head
00:24first into some of the most obscure and bizarre kart racing games ever made. And just from what
00:30culture and here are 10 kart racers you won't believe exist.
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00:52Number 10. Mega Man Battle and Chase
00:56We start with a game so obscure that it actually didn't reach the US after almost a decade from
01:02when it was first released. Mega Man has been delighting gamers since the late 80s. Alongside
01:08over a dozen games, Mega Man's also appeared in TV shows, comic books and a bunch of other bits and
01:14bobs. One of the Blue Heroes lesser known spin-offs came in 1997 with the release of Mega Man Battle
01:21and
01:21Chase. The game featured 10 playable characters from the series and players could win special items and
01:27customisation options if they defeated certain characters or won certain races. Originally the
01:34game only released in the Japan and PAL region but that changed in 2006 when the game arrived as part
01:41of
01:41the Mega Man X collection. While this was the first time that American audiences were able to enjoy the
01:47race, if they read the reviews beforehand they probably wouldn't have bothered to boot it up,
01:53with a lot of people calling it a simple Mario Kart ripoff. So probably not worth that nine year wait.
02:00Number 9. Cartoon Network Speedway
02:03Cartoon Network has featured a plethora of what would become iconic kids' TV characters along its tenure,
02:10and in this particular game you could play as 12 of them. Released in 2003 for the Game Boy Advance,
02:17Cartoon Network Speedway allowed players to take to the track as characters from shows like Ed,
02:23Ed and Eddie, Cow and Chicken and Johnny Bravo. If you don't know what any of those shows are then
02:28you're probably not a millennial. Sadly even with all the nostalgia this game apparently just wasn't
02:35particularly good. On the higher end of the spectrum the reviews were pretty mixed and on the lower end
02:41you get outlets like IGN who absolutely hated it. They gave it a 3 out of 10 and labelled it
02:48quote
02:48one of the sloppiest and most generic kart races released on the Game Boy Advance. Obviously someone
02:55was annoyed they couldn't play as the Powerpuff Girls, which fair enough. Despite IGN laying into this game,
03:01a second title, Cartoon Network Racing, was released in 2006 for the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS.
03:08Despite being developed and published by completely different studios, this title also reviewed very poorly.
03:15Number 8. Ant's Extreme Racing
03:18Despite only being remembered as the Bugs Live ripoff, 1998's Ant's spawned not one, not two,
03:25but four spin-off video games. Ant's was the first movie released by DreamWorks Animation and was only
03:32the third ever fully computer animated movie. Despite the controversy, Ant's continued to be mined for
03:39content long after it came out, specifically with the game Ant's Racing that came to the Game Boy Color in
03:462001. Very little about this game exists online, but there's much more written about its sequel,
03:532002's Ant's Extreme Racing. This game, released over four years after Ant's first hit the cinemas,
03:59gave players the choice of just two characters to begin with, Woody Allen's Z and Sharon Stone's
04:06Bala, with the opportunity to unlock four more characters throughout the game. It's safe to say the
04:11game reviewed about as well as the movie did. The ratings tended to be around the
04:1630s and 40s on the generous side, and so the series of Ant's races would end with Extreme Racing.
04:23If it makes DreamWorks feel any better, A Bug's Life only got one spin-off game, so we clearly know
04:29who
04:29the real winner is. Number 7. Pac-Man World Rally
04:33Considering this game came out in 2006 and Pac-Man debuted back in 1980, interestingly this makes Pac-Man
04:42probably the only character on this list that is actually legally able to drive.
04:48Pac-Man World Rally, or just Pac-Man Rally if you live in Europe, is available on PlayStation 2,
04:54PlayStation Portable, Nintendo GameCube, and PC. The game combines tropes of the cart racer with
05:00signature elements of, what else, Pac-Man, including fruit-based power-ups and the ability to turn your
05:07opponents into ghosts and eat them as a gigantic Pac-Man-shaped car. There are 14 playable characters
05:14and 15 tracks you can check out, and there's a battle mode that's a bit similar to the coin and
05:19balloon mode in Mario Kart. Metacritic gave this game 54 out of 100, though the user reviews were
05:26much more generous. Clearly nostalgia is more powerful if you grew up in the 80s.
05:30Number 6. Woody Woodpecker Racing
05:34Just when you thought things couldn't get any more esoteric than ants, we've got Woody Woodpecker.
05:38Now if that name doesn't mean anything to you, we're talking about a cartoon star from a series
05:44back in the 1940s. Like every other property in animation, Woody is no stranger to the world of
05:50video games, with his most recent appearance in the medium being in 2012. Twelve years before that,
05:56though, some bright spark decided what really needed to be done in the world of video games
06:01is to have Woody Woodpecker collide with the world of kart racing. And this happened to mixed results.
06:09The game tried to innovate the genre by introducing different types of vehicles and giving each character
06:15a unique attack. Sadly, this didn't really bring much that was new to the genre and each of the nine
06:20characters felt way too similar in order to generate any sort of attachment from players.
06:26Also, for a game aimed at children, this title is supposedly really hard to play, meaning it kind
06:32of seemed like they had no idea what the audience was. Number 5. Muppet Race Mania
06:37The Muppets have been entertaining audiences worldwide since Jim Henson first invented them in his brain case
06:44in 1955. Or if you're me and you watch The Dark Crystal way too young, you have a lifelong fear
06:51of Muppets.
06:52But we'll keep talking about this one anyway. In their time, they've conquered the world of film,
06:57TV, music, Christmas, and have occasionally ventured into the world of video games.
07:02One such game was the PS1 exclusive Muppet Race Mania, which hit shelves in the year 2000.
07:08The game features a stacked roster of 25 different Muppet races, including classics like Kermit the
07:15Frog, Miss Piggy, and Fozzie Bear, as well as lesser known Muppets like Link Hogthrob and Bobo the Bear.
07:22The game features tracks inspired by Muppet movies like Treasure Island and Christmas Carol,
07:28and also there's six different bosses that you can go head to head with in unique battles.
07:32It's hard to find reviews for this game online, but from the looks of it, it's a total blast.
07:38The Muppets lends itself really well to this sort of game – a huge cast of characters,
07:43a wide array of locations, and ready-made power-ups and special abilities.
07:47But if you tried it for yourself, then let us know down in the comments.
07:51Number 4. Banjo Pilot
07:53Everyone's favourite bear and bird combo came to the Nintendo 64 in 1998.
07:58And then in 2005, they joined the Game Boy Advance exclusive racer Banjo Pilot,
08:06which, as you can probably figure out from the title, saw our heroes take to the skies rather
08:11than to the track. The game was originally supposed to be called Diddy Kong Pilot and serve as a sequel
08:16to 1997's Diddy Kong Racing. However, the rights to Diddy Kong and other Nintendo characters were lost
08:23when, in 2002, Microsoft purchased Rare. This inevitably led to Diddy and his pals being replaced,
08:30and then three years behind schedule, we got this replacement game.
08:34Sadly, all that extra development time didn't result in rave reviews. As we've seen many times
08:40on this list, this game was tarred with the Mario Kart clone brush, averaging just 68 on Metacritic.
08:47Still, if you do want a little bit more variation in your karting games, then this one has planes
08:52instead of cars. So that's something, right?
08:56Number 3. South Park Rally
08:57When it comes to TV crossing over with video games, few shows have been as consistently good as South Park.
09:04However, not even South Park can be great 100% of the time, and that was absolutely proved
09:10with 1999's South Park Rally. The game, developed by Acclaim, was released on the Nintendo 64,
09:17the PlayStation, and the Sega Dreamcast. The story mode saw Summer South Park's more notable residents
09:23competing in a rally championship, and featured such power-ups as Mr. Henke and Saddam Hussein.
09:31This is a South Park game, after all. The title received mixed reviews, with sites praising the
09:37humour and tone of the game, but lambasting pretty much everything else. This led to Parker and Stone
09:42Denouncing their relationship with Acclaim, who had also published the two previous South Park games.
09:48The show's creators had nothing to do with the development of the games, aside from lending
09:53their voices to some of the characters, and these poor reviews were the final nail in the coffin of
09:58their relationship with the publisher.
10:01Number 2. Digimon Racing
10:03Digimon and Kart Racing, together at last!
10:06In 2004, Griptonite Games and Bandai combined the worlds of Karting and not Pokémon to bring us
10:13Digimon Racing for the Game Boy Advance. Players started with 8 playable Digimon and then could
10:19ultimately unlock 3 more, leading to a total of 11. You could have done that math yourself,
10:25but I did it for you, it's all good. However, utilizing the Digivolve mechanic,
10:30players could evolve their characters into their various different forms to give them an advantage.
10:35This takes the total number of playable characters to over 40,
10:39which is pretty good for a Game Boy release. Sadly, the title once again suffered from poor
10:44reviews because of its similarities to existing kart races. However, critics were eager to praise the
10:50game's graphics, mechanics and controls in spite of the comparisons to pre-existing titles.
10:56If you're a big fan of Digimon though, this one is definitely worth a look in. Yeah,
11:00it's not Mario Kart, but if you're into the existing franchise, then you might enjoy it.
11:071. M&M's Kart Racing
11:09We've seen spin-offs, we've seen TV and movie tie-ins, but now it's time for the nauseating world of
11:17product-based video games. Somehow, someway, there's been not one, but eight M&M's video games. M&M's as in
11:26the
11:26chocolate M&M's. This began with the first game that came out in 2000 called The Lost Formula.
11:32Fast forward seven years and we arrive at M&M's Kart Racing for the Nintendo Wii, a game that does
11:38exactly what it says on the tin in the same way that a tin of kitten poison does what it
11:43says on the
11:44tin. Players can choose between five different colors of M&M's to race as. What's the difference,
11:50you might ask? No idea, but at least they put some effort in with the character models. Now the actual
11:56gameplay of this title leaves a lot to be desired and that's largely because there's really nothing
12:01to do here except for drive your car around the track. There's no shortcuts, there's no power-ups,
12:08there's no drifting. Just holding the accelerator and turning the Wiimote when you want to go around
12:12a corner is sort of the sum of it. But hey, at least you have five different colors to look
12:18at while
12:18you slowly go mad. It's no surprise that this game holds an actual Guinness World Record for,
12:24and I quote, lowest rated kart game. If you were looking for alternatives to Mario Kart and Crash
12:30Team Racing and decided to turn to this one, then probably in what would equate to eating way too many
12:37of its eponymous little chocolate guys, this will ultimately leave you feeling queasy and probably regretful.
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