One of the first Shrek movie's primary messages is to not judge people by superficial qualities like their appearance. In this sense, Swamp Kart Speedway fails tremendously as an adaptation, because for looking past the ugly exterior of its graphics and sound design, you are rewarded with far, far worse gameplay.

Playing this game feels like spending your retirement funds on a slot machine. Sometimes you'll pick up an item and have it disable your controls and send you careening down a pit. Sometimes you'll hit a wall you weren't actually all that close to and end up stuck in it for a good like 7 seconds until either the game decides to let you out or you decide you've lost enough time to reset the race. And sometimes; nay, ALL the goddamn time; you'll end up colliding with other racers and getting sent back a few feet while their momentum remains undeterred regardless of your velocity or positioning, as if you are nothing but a fly on their windshield.

And maybe there's some truth to that. Maybe we are all flies drawn to a dumpster fire. We see the familiar, inviting faces of Shrek, Donkey, Fiona, the three pigs I definitely didn't forget were in the movie, and we think, hey, maybe this game won't be that bad. Maybe this'll actually be an alright Super Circuit clone with a bit of Shrek flair. Only for we, the metaphorical flies closing in on the fire, to subsequently burn to death.

Shrek is love, Shrek is life; but in Swamp Kart Speedway, I see naught but hatred and death. Begone, false prophet.

It physically hurts my eyes to watch this game for more than 5 minutes. Every track is not good - absolutely imperceptible obstacles, angular curbs on turns that you will constantly crash into, turn-ups that do literally nothing and pits, falling into which you can be thrown back to the beginning of a long straight or thrown FORWARD over this pit (or, how I had once, literally in the pit). Often the turn arrows can show the WRONG direction, just how?! Opponents simply ignore almost all obstacles, and when you crash into them, you and ONLY YOU slow down for a second, and it doesn’t matter if you crash from the side or from behind. Sometimes opponents simply overtake you in some area and it becomes almost impossible to catch up with them (and judging by my observations, they absolutely do not care about their own characteristics of the characters). The soundtrack consists of two tracks at best, which are easier to imagine in modern indie horror than in a karting game.

Ultimately, this is a product to be avoided at all costs. Shrek doesn't deserve this kind of game. No film deserves such an adaptation. Not a single child deserved such a game in 2002. But for some reason it exists.

This is a meme that you had to pay for. Everything about this game is bad, sound design is the worst I've heard from Game Boy Advance, the graphics are poor and inconsistent, and the gameplay... well, it's interactive I guess. The powerups don't make sense, the rubber banding is awful, I breezed through the first two races, but the last two were pretty much impossible, it's easy to get stuck in shit, or fall into pits or water, or get pushed by other racers that all use the same "Bye Bye" voice clip. The framerate... it's not very high to begin with, but it manages to lag pretty bad on occasion. The bar for Shrek games is pretty low, and this game manages to smash though several floors with its existence. Needless to say, avoid this one.