Street Racer Collection Review

Street Racer is another kart like game which was originally released on a handful of platforms back in the 1990s. This game was marketed as a cross between Mario Kart and Street Fighter; karts from Mario Kart and characters look like variants of Street Fighter characters. That would be my guess behind the marketing.

The collection includes four iterations of the game: Super NES, Megadrive, MS-DOS (why) and Game Boy versions. Each game feature the same characters and tracks, for the most part. The Game Boy version does have a few circuits less than the other versions. The package totals up to 27 race tracks and 8 quirky characters.

Akin to Mario Kart, you can use power-ups for a quick boost or pummel your enemies. While you can punch your enemies by default using RB and LB, you can pick up such as turbo or stars. Each driver also has a unique power move to bump off riders. Repair kits can give back health.

However, unlike Nintendo’s flagship racer, Street Racer characters have a health bar; meaning you have to avoid damage from other racers at all costs. Even just being rammed into will make you lose health; and it can go from full to empty in a fraction of a second.

One of the games’ strong suit is the additional modes. Across the four games, you’ll come across five game modes: Practice, Head to Head, Championship, Soccer and Rumble. While the first three are pretty self-explanatory, Rumble mode requires players to bump the opponents off the area whereas Soccer it’s basically playing soccer (football) with cars. This mode however isn’t available on the MS-DOS version. If you can gather three friends, you can play up to 4 players locally for the SNES, MegaDrive and MS-DOS version.

With each game being a restored version of each platform, they look decent. But unfortunately this game’s visuals, no matter the version, have not aged well. Game Boy’s four shades of grey makes it hard to discern everything on screen. Power-ups are also hard to spot and indistinguishable from the ground. And the other versions do look a bit better, but considering when these released (mid to late 90s), it’s baffling to see how muddled they look. There’s a decent variety of colors with unique racers/tracks, but it doesn’t look right. The soundtracks are forgettable chiptune scores; with the Game Boy version being an ear-gratting affair.

The game’s main nuisance is the controls. If you expect tight controls like Mario Kart games, do I have bad news for you. Controls are incredibly slippery and it feels like you’re racing on ice. While it is expected that some games do a bit of getting acclimated to the controls, these ones will take a while. Ironically enough, the Game Boy version is the one that controls the best.

To be honest, just before Street Racer Collection released, I was on the hunt for a Super NES or PS1 copy of this game. Let’s just say that I’m not anymore. This is another scenario that the memories are better than the real thing. I remember having blast on the Super NES, but playing this collection made me realized that this game has not aged well. It can be good fun with friends, but this is another example of a game that should’ve stayed in the past. Unless you were a diehard fan of this series, this is an easy pass.