Chocobo Racing and Crash Team Racing, 1999, PSX

I revisited Chocobo Racing because I had fond memories of playing it as a kid and because a kart racer with PS1 Final Fantasy aesthetics and music sounded like it could be fun pog-fish

I wasn’t prepared for how antiquated the game feels- it legitimately looks and feels like a 3DO game compared to Crash Team Racing. There’s minimal 3D used, the backgrounds and skyboxes are incredibly simplistic and all the tracks are basically flat with no ramps or jumps. Check out the draw distance in the screenshot michael-laugh

It’s surprising the game looks this bad considering this was Squaresoft who were famous for incredible-looking PS1 games. There were a bunch of licensed kart racing games from much less prestigious publishers coming out at the same time that looked miles better than this, like that one Muppet game I remember playing.

I can only assume Squaresoft was just using the original Super Mario Kart on the SNES as a yardstick

    • doublepepperoni [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      7·
      7 months ago

      The game isn’t completely without merit- there’s fun remixes of classic FF tunes, the chibi aesthetic is cute and the pop-up storybook style used in the story mode is cute too. If you really like classic Final Fantasy it might be worth checking out as a novelty

      Of course, us being PS1 kids we were all “Who’s White Mage? Where is Tifa? Where is Sephiroth? Where is Red XIII? Where is Vivi? Where is Zidane?” when it came to the roster. Me and my siblings completed the game and unlocked all characters back in the day because kids will play anything

      Looking up the game I was amazed to discover Aya Brea from Parasite Eve was apparently an unlockable character when I had no memory of her being in the game. Turns out it’s just a sprite of a cop car obama-sad