As the proud owner of a VW bug myself, this is essentially the perfect game for me. It fulfills my ultimate fantasy; what if my car could fly 200 feet into the air and had an explosive rocket launcher? Really though this game is super fun. You can pick from a few magnificent colours for your bug and play by yourself or against friends in a few different styles of races, or take them on in this game's best mode; beetle battle. Imagine the mariokart battle modes but on crack and you have a beetle battle. All of the items (yes, this game has mariokart style items.) are super fun and perfect for causing large amounts of chaos. Your car can shoot rockets, achieve super speed, and plant land mines among a few other things. Also this game has some surprisingly decent music, which adds a lot to its charm. I’m not kidding when I say Beetle Adventure Racing is one of the most fun promotional/licensed games ever made.

For a racing game with a grand total of one (1) playable cars, this has a hell of a lot of imagination and spirit. Tracks are long and packed with set pieces, shortcuts, easter eggs, jumps, and hidden boost lines that might make you forget about the race altogether in lieu of pure exploration. You could play each of them ten times (and you probably will, because there aren't that many) and still find new stuff.

The mechanics alone would make this great as a pure racer, but the surprisingly layered, thrilling track design make it really stand out. It's basically like if SAN FRANCISCO RUSH was good.

They never did put a Need for Speed game on N64, which always pissed me off back then. But they DID put this, made by the same basic people, and I'm glad they did. It's a very fun game, controls great, looks great, sounds great. Decent sense of speed, cool cars (even among the limited "one car type" set), very elaborate and imaginative tracks. They even managed to add a "battle" mode that is somewhat fun!

One of the N64's strong points, were racing games. That was one genre it definitely didn't lack. In fact, were it not for PS1 having so many Need For Speed and Ridge Racer games, I'd be willing to say the N64 was THE system to own for racing fans. And among such lofty company as Mario Kart 64, Diddy Kong Racing, Top Gear Overdrive, Extreme G, Wave Race 64, Cruis'n World, Star Wars: Pod Racer, etc., THIS is easily one of the very best on the console.

Beetle Adventure Racing punches so far above its initial impression as a “licensed game” through its inventive track design and terrifically fun multiplayer, even if the campaign is a drag. On the surface, it may seem like a meager package, with only Beetles to race and six tracks to race on. But the tracks that are there are wildly varied and dense with alternate routes and secrets. The joy of the game is finding all the different ways to veer off the path. In addition, the multiplayer mode, which sees players race around an arena collecting lady bugs, is a fun way to spend an afternoon with friends. Permeating the whole experience is a somewhat intangible good vibe, built through subtle, but mood setting music and sound design along with the artistic style.

It is a bummer, then, that the championships that must be beaten to unlock most of the tracks and multiplayer arenas are structured terribly. The four championships unlock one course at the end by getting first place. Each championship adds an new race onto the end, making the final one six races in a row against expert (cheating) AI. This gets to be infuriating when doing poorly in any race will make you start over unless you managed to nab a continue.

Even so, Adventure Racing is a hidden gem of the 64 era and still enjoyable to play today. The tracks are still clever and exciting to learn which carries the experience. Just maybe look for a way to play that involves save states if you want to unlock everything.

Fun lil racer. This game plays like a classic need for speed game (it is made by EA after all) except every car is a beetle and the tracks are way cooler. Like NFS, the tracks have very long laps but unlike NFS, each track has tons upon tons of secret paths to look for. Sometimes the secret routes in each course have their own secret routes within those secret routes. Exploring the levels to find all the secrets is definitely half the fun here. Unfortunately, the secret routes are usually not faster than the main road, so serious racers might not want to look around for everything. This game also has a rather bad case of rubber banding, where if you are in first no matter how fast you go second place will be right behind you. Alternatively, if you spend too much time bumbling around looking for secrets, the game will slow down the AI so you can get back in the race. If you like racing games with exploratory tracks, this one is definitely a keeper.

A bit ago I was thinking on my term "Car Game", which is a licensed racing game with no characters or real life people to sell you on it. Completely faceless, but we've got real cars! They tend to be the biggest cheapo shelf filler garbage you could find, the type of stuff I would buy for a dollar at my game store just to swap out the CD case art with something that's actually worthwhile, like Oddworld Abe's Odyssey or M&M's Shell Shocked.

I did think of one game though that's probably a subversion, and it was this one which I actually rented a decent amount back in the day. Beetle Adventure Racing (BAR!) is kinda like what would happen if you had a racing game crash into a Rare collectathon at the speed of light, resulting in ginormous tracks with a bunch of crates you hit for points. The points iirc are mostly used for continues during the championship races, but you also unlock a Beetle Battle Arena for grabbing all 100 points worth of them in a track in one race. There's also these flower crates you can find on the tracks which are pretty well-hidden, and they actually don't appear until you find the original one on Coventry Cove that's hidden in a random haystack outside a barn. I believe you unlock cheats in the cheat menu for each one, which I think is a cool and creative way to do such a thing. I wonder if anyone would've even found it without a guide, or by complete accident and wonder why the announcer randomly went "Groooooovy!".

I know I just bored you to death with all of that generic describing, but I'm more or less explaining what the "Adventure" part of BAR(!) is. After all, this isn't some Ford-ass racing sim, it's BAR! An adventure with some punch buggies!

punches you in the arm

No punch backs! Christ, do people even do that anymore? My mom was the only one who did it to me. Regardless!

The game is pretty darn fun, the Beetles drive pretty well with some meaty weight to them, and the tracks like I said are huge and most of them are designed rather well with a crapton of shortcuts to find. Unfortunately, I feel like the game's tracks peak pretty early. Coventry Cove is a good starting track, Mount Mayhem is awesome, and Inferno Isle is a neat Jurassic Park track. Sunset Sands and Metro Madness put me to sleep though, and Wicked Woods' potential for being the scary Halloween track I feel is a bit squandered by it being the shortest track in the game. Best of luck getting to see Wicked Woods too, because this game's CPU is absolutely woeful starting at Professional Championship, it's sad that I feel like needing to recommend using gameshark codes or a save file. "If the CPU is gonna be a cheaty bastard, then so shall I!" as I always say. The music's also a bit too on the laidback side imo and some are pretty repetitive, though I still really like the Mount Mayhem music.

I feel like I soured a teensy bit on BAR(!), but it's still a very fun racer on N64. I'm also a bit on edge about the fact that the cop car Beetle is the last unlock and that it's horrifically OP. You can blare the siren and make the CPU cars stop in their tracks and commit police brutality on them by ramming them into a bajillion pieces. Horrifying!

The multiplayer does look pretty fun though, shame no one wants to play with me despite having three controllers. One of these days....by the way, for a while I wondered what those helicopters on Mount Mayhem were looking for. It was apparently the UFO hidden in the cave underneath the first bridge. I dunno, I thought that was super cool back then, still do.

BAR!

Played this back in the day because a friend of mine bought it. Even back then, I scratched my head at the concept of a car manufacturer model-specific racing game.

The highlight of this game was the track design. Tracks were long and littered with secret routes/shortcuts that sometimes, in turn, had other alternate routes or shortcuts within them.

All in all, this game had no business being as good as it was. Definitely a rare but fun game released in the late life cycle of the Nintendo 64.