Pull up a chair and find out why a licensed racing game from the ‘90s is worth your time today.
What Is It? Beetle Adventure Racing is a 1999 Nintendo 64 game which has you racing exclusively in Volkswagen Beetles. The game was released in Australia as HSV Adventure Racing, replacing Beetles with HSV VTs. A ridiculous concept for a racing game? Yes. Does it still manage to forge its own identity and be a whole lot of fun? Also, yes.
The primary single player mode is Championship. A championship will have you playing all of the tracks you’ve unlocked so far followed by a new track. Finish top three in the existing track races and then win the new one and you will unlock the new track and a new set of cars for play across all modes.
The Beetles are unlocked in sets of three. Each car has three stats: acceleration, speed, and handling. A new set of three will provide a car with great handling, a car with great acceleration, and a balanced car. Each successive set of three bumps all of these stats significantly from the last. The final two super-Beetles don’t follow this pattern, for the record.
Beat the CPU to unlock more stuff, repeat a few times until you have everything. “Everything” in this case is a light six tracks and eleven total cars, although you will see the game credits before unlocking everything.
You can also choose to play a standalone race in any track you’ve unlocked in single player. For multiplayer, the game offers two player races and Beetle Battle. Beetle Battle allows up to four players and puts you in unique arenas where the goal is to collect six ladybug pendants and get out before your opponents.
Okay, we’ve gotten through the rundown of game modes and cars, but what makes this game great? It’s the tracks. There are only a total of six tracks in this game, so they better be good, and they are. They are long, with most laps taking two to three minutes and each race being three laps. Nine minute races could feel like an eternity if the game weren’t fun.
The standout feature of the tracks are how many different routes each has. There is always a main, intended path that is very obvious, but each track features many, many alternate routes. These are a blast to find, as some are very well hidden. The fun twist on these is that many of them are not shortcuts at all. Find a fun, hidden path in the woods and think you’ll gain some ground on your opponents only to find yourself having dropped a few places. It’s such a goofy idea that there will be completely useless, even detrimental, secrets in the game, but it is also a blast when playing two player races which is where the game shines the most.
Additionally, each track has you starting on a side path which merges into the main track as well as having the finish on a different side path. This means that none of the three laps in a race are identical. Sure, the diversions at the start and end are relatively small, but it feeds into the alternate routes the game offers by increasing the variety, even if it’s fairly subtle.
This is an arcade racing game and the cars handle as such. The controls are basic but work very well and the different stats the various cars contain make choosing between them an important decision.
Graphically, this is definitely an N64 game. Do not expect much, but they do a good job with a great visual variety both within and between the tracks
The Best Part: I’ve already spoiled this by admitting the tracks are the standout here, so I’ll use this space to talk up the two player races. This is such a simple, standard mode, but it sure does shine. I began playing this game a few years ago with my young son and being able to learn the tracks together, figuring out which “shortcuts” were actually worth taking and unlocking new tracks has been a blast.
The Worst Part: The Championships are required to unlock tracks and cars, but the setup for them is annoying. Basically, there is no saving. If you are trying to unlock the fifth track, for example, you need to finish top three in four races and then win a fifth. These requirements aren’t terribly difficult, the CPU isn’t amazing by any means, but if you have one slip up and finish outside of the required spots, you will lose all progress and have to restart. This is easy to do because the game makes catching up to CPU cars a long process, often taking a good portion of a lap, so a disaster at any point in the final lap can derail a whole run. I should note that you can earn continues by picking up enough points by crashing into boxes during each race. I should also note that focusing on crashing enough boxes to earn a continue is a fantastic way to ensure you will immediately need to use that continue because you aren’t winning that race.
The Verdict: Beetle Adventure Racing matches strong racing mechanics with a unique set of tracks and a goofy licensing agreement. It’s a very strange recipe, but one that absolutely works. There’s no logical reason why it should work, let alone be great. The developers from Paradigm Entertainment absolutely did not have to go as hard as they did with the tracks and their dozens of alternate routes, but I am sure glad they did.
Don’t expect Beetle Adventure Racing to convert you into a racing game fan or blow you away with innovation. Do expect a really fun time with a lot of secrets to discover, especially if you have somebody to race against.
How to Play: Nintendo 64
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