Another journey back through the cloying sands of time this week. Join me in an era when Justin Bieber, One Direction and other such craptacular, pop-warbling ballaches were yet to be expelled from the depths of Satan’s sweaty underpants and thrust upon us poor mortals. 2001, to be precise, the year of the Game Boy Advance’s inaugural appearance.

Konami Krazy Racers was a launch title for the chunk-tacular purple behemoth, another entry in the Middle-Finger-To-Mario-Kart, Hey, We Can Do That Too! With Significantly Less Competence, We’ll Concede, But Still! If You Want Toon-Tinged Driving Shenanigans, We’ve Got Them Right Here! kart racing genre. Oftentimes with such affairs, the appearance of the word crazy or mayhem or lunacy -or even phrases such as This Racer is Such a Cornucopia of Lunacy, You’ll Probably Urinate Involuntarily Before Even Reaching the Main Menu- in the title is a sure sign of impending tedium.

Fortuitously, though, this title is not about as ‘zany’ as giving your saggy, octogenarian grandmother a sponge bath (unlike some nefarious mascots that strode into the genre and defecated on its face. Hey, Crazy Frog! You still suck!). The plot, such as it is, is introduced and concluded in the space of about three-eighths of a nanosecond in an introductory cutscene. Herein, you receive a letter proclaiming that a Konami mascot racing championship is impending. You must opt for a character from among the lunatic menagerie, and the kart-racing frolics we’re all intimately familiar with ensue.

There is quite an ample array of content for the single player within Konami Krazy Racers. License tests to bolster your rank proffer a small crop of challenges, which are intrinsically tied to your progress through the Grand Prix mode. Time trials, free runs, battle and versus offer a full complement of Mario Kart-aping chicanery, but it’s a rather more consequential package overall.

Most pertinently, though, the gameplay is splendid. With a relentlessly endearing cartoon aesthetic, deft handling and drift mechanics and music and racetracks that are salutations to some of gaming’s most prestigious franchises (Castlevania and Metal Gear Solid), it’s a great game that proved a worthy purchase in lieu of Mario Kart: Super Circuit (which was, presumably, otherwise occupied combing its ludicrous facial hair and wouldn’t release for another few months).

In a manner akin to PlayStation’s Crash Team Racing, this superb entry in the genre has but one primary shortcoming: the cast. Konami’s effort boasts Metal Gear Solid’s Cyborg Ninja and Castlevania’s Dracula as playable characters, lofty standards indeed to uphold. Alas, the barrel-scraping then begins. Are you clamoring, positively eating your own hair to play as Power Pro-kun from MLB Power Pros? Or Bear Tank of Rakugakids fame?

No. No you aren’t. Nuts to them.

Source of Images: www.gamersup.blogspot.co.uk