February 1st, 2010 by Benj Edwards
“The Blue Bomber takes to the road…”
By the way, I’ve been posting a Retro Scan of the Week every week now for four years straight. It kinda blows my mind. That’s over 200 scans. Is there anything left to scan? You bet.
[ From Electronic Gaming Monthly, April 1997, back cover]
Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s the best Mario Kart clone of all time?
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February 1st, 2010 at 12:46 pm
I haven’t played very many Mario Kart clones, but my favorite was Diddy Kong Racing. It wasn’t very good, but I liked it better than others, like Krash Bandicoot Racing.
February 1st, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Diddy Kong Racing “wasn’t very good”? Oh man, that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s the ONLY kart racer that can hold its own against the Mario Kart series!
February 1st, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Diddy Kong Racing was a great game. I cleaned it out entirely. Forwards and Backwards. Every Balloon, Every Gold Coin, Forwards and Backwards. You don’t spend that kind of time on a game unless it’s good.
The only other MKart clones I can think of that I played at any length were Wacky Wheels (Splitscreen Hedgehog Deathmatch FTW) and Sonic Drift (Eight Bit Goodness for Game Gear).
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:44 am
Crash Team Racing by Naughty Dog for the PS1 – been playing it regularly since 1999 when it came out – even on the PS2. Smooth controls, well balanced powerups to keep things even – nearly perfect. No other cart game I’ve played even comes close to this classic.
February 6th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
Wow. I never thought Capcom went as far as making an ad page layout and publish it in magazine for a game they had not come to release in our region.
Cool find and scan! As favorite SMK clone, I say SD F1 Grand Prix on the SFC.
February 7th, 2010 at 6:28 am
Throwing in my vote with Ed — for the original PS1 Crash Team Racing. It plays like a Kart game should. The controls are good, with just the right amount of lax and forgiveness in them. Sometimes Kart developers seem to forget that they aren’t building a racing sim and make the controls too finicky. Here everything plays just right. The sequels always had something off, but this is the perfect package. Great racing and a really fun battle mode.
March 8th, 2010 at 11:36 am
Keep the scans coming I love them! Every now and then one triggers a flood of memories from my youth. My 3 boys have been brought up on not just the latest games but all the retro gaming I can introduce them too. Only yesterday we were all playing Ghouls ‘n Ghosts on no less than a PSP Megadrive emulator, PC Megadrive emulator and a DS Megadrive emulator! It was a race to see who could finish the game first with the invincibility cheat turned on as this game was insanely hard!
March 21st, 2010 at 6:53 am
I’ll expose myself as a niche gamer, but I loved Atari Carts for the Jaguar, and Merlin Carts for the Nuon.
April 28th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
skunny kart for PC.
November 7th, 2014 at 5:50 am
Nice to see this ad. Shame we Americans never got to play this game until Mega Man X Collection for the Gamecube and PS2 because Sony rejected it for being a Mario Kart clone.