The various LEGO games that have been released over the years, particularly the ones in the 90s and early 2000s, are all pretty much the textbook definition of "games-for-kids". Essentially, they were all about taking already established genres, both simple and complicated, and making them easy for anyone to understand and get into, whilst also being filled with tons of love and charm. LEGOLand was a tycoon game, LEGO Rock Raiders was an RTS, LEGO Chess…There's a reason that despite being nothing but a collection of below-average minigames, the original LEGO Island is still beloved by 90s kids worldwide: It oozes charm and personality from every crevice in a way that its sequel – the game I myself grew up with, for the record – doesn't really match. You tend to get exactly what you expect with LEGO games, and they tend to only really stick out from the crowd thanks to their personality. Which is what makes 1999's LEGO Racers so fascinating to me, because even though it very much is still a simplified game of its genre like its ilk, it goes the extra mile in a surprising amount of areas. There's so many small little things that still keep this game in my thoughts all these years later, and I feel like it doesn't get enough credit for it all.

But we do still need to unpack that personality-topic before anything else, because it smacks you in the face right as it starts. I think LEGO Racers is the closest any video game has come to having actual Penis Music make up most of its soundtrack with complete confidence: Everything is loud and insane, the speed boosts make the cars rocket away like they're being launched from a slingshot of chaos, the game makes the harshest sounds imaginable with every drift and cars bounce around like they're made of rubber. Yet its not some floppy ragdoll-physic nightmare, everything is chaotic and zany in a way that feels completely expected. The best way I could really describe it, really, is that it’s like a group of kids frantically playing with toy cars, swerving them around a racetrack whilst making obnoxious sound effects as they go. Okay, sure, that sounds on-the-nose, but I dare you find any other comparison that truly captures the game's style, the feel of ridiculousness still kept controlled by a fun-loving basis. When a child gets invested in the game they're imagining in their heads, no corners will be cut to make it more pleasant for others. Its their ride, and you're just along for it.

There's of course also an inherent kind of childish wonder to the game's main advertised feature, you get to build your own car! Its a surprisingly easy to understand system, you get pieces from different famous LEGO sets and the more of the game's bosses you beat the more pieces you're given access to. Its a little clunky, designed with a controller in mind which means you can't just mouse-drag-and-drop pieces to your car, but the simple shapes and plain templates to work with meant even as a kid I could try a bit of artistry, in a way I barely even did with my own LEGOs in my room.

That childish whimsy I feel also extends to just how intuitive the game is, truly succeeding at its goal of being a "kids game" in ways other than being simplified. For being touted so often as the ultimate family game, Mario Kart to me really doesn't succeed in being intuitive in a lot of areas despite its simplicity. There's the obvious talking point, "why do I have to accelerate halfway through the countdown for a speed boost to go fast", but I would argue that the drifting system is pretty poorly communicated to new players. Different vehicles drift in different ways, the vehicle jumps in an offputting way that doesn't really convey "start of a turn" at all...its the kind of system you need someone more experienced to explain to you to really get, and thats always bugged me given drifting is essentially the game's core mechanic. Now yes, LEGO Racers has drifting too, and while it IS a lot snappier and easier to immediately understand comparatively, it's also not nearly as fundamental to being good at the game as in Mario Kart. No, the real core of the game is in the items, and how you “build” them as you race. Just like Mario Kart’s item boxes, every track in LEGO Racers has colored bricks strew about in formations to be picked up, usually in horizontal lines. The difference here is that the item you obtain isn’t randomized, Red bricks always give you the cannonball projectile, Blue bricks always give you the barrier which protects against said projectile and so on. To then make these items better before you use them, you build upon them by collecting the smaller White bricks, which are a third of the size of the main colored bricks. The end result is a fascinating system that rewards those holding on to items for longer with better results than just using items as soon as you get them, which makes the dynamics of damaging other racers even more interesting as each hit from a Red brick item makes the hit player lose one white brick. This in return makes it easier for players in the back to get better items, as Reds only attack ahead and the Yellow brick items which do attack racers behind you don’t make them lose White bricks. That’s a lot of words, but the player experience is beautifully understandable: Red means danger, Blue means protection, Yellow means reassurance, Green means speed, and White is an enhancer to all of them. Its simultaneously unique, intuitive, and has the potential for endless amounts of depth.

Which, yeah, that is where the game does start to lag behind. Item enhancing is a fascinating system, in large part because enhancing isn’t always optimal: The unenhanced Red brick item is is easier to hit and use than the grapple hook it turns into with one enhancement, but the grapple hook in return can give the player mayor speed alongside its offensive power by slingshotting off of the grappled player. The problem comes with how most items sadly just aren’t balanced in this way, and that the Green brick in particular is absolutely busted in power. Get one Green brick, get all three White bricks to fully enhance it, and then use it to essentially Bullet Bill-skip one quarter of the racetrack through warping, from any position in the race. Including first. Not to say it isn’t satisfying to do, the warphole visual effect looks fantastic and its endlessly rewarding to build up to this power move with each White brick collected, it leads to a form of play that can only be countered by doing the exact same strategy back. Yet as a kid, I could only find this awesome, especially after realizing that the track of the final boss - Rocket Racer - was specifically designed to allow both you and him to chain together several Warps in succession. Replaying the game now as an adult, I even found a new piece of tech using it that I’m dubbing the Collectwarp. Because of the slight delay between using the item and your racer entering the Warp hole, by using the item right as you’re about to collect a new brick, you’ll both warp and get that brick at the same time, letting you start your next build with a head start.

I think it speaks a lot to just how fun the game is at a conceptual level that I was able to come up with new things to do with such a dominant strategy, rather than simply settle for victory with using it. I think the track designs also help with that, simple as they may be in some ways all twelve tracks are still made up of a lot of interesting shortcuts and item placements that make each one feel different to play on beyond their setpieces. On Magma Moon Marathon, the player needs to drive through colored gates in a specific order to unlock a big gate that saves a sizeable chunk of time, wheras on Desert Adventure Dragway a well-placed cannonball shot opens up an extensive secret route through the pyramid the course otherwise runs around, also containing three white bricks to collect in its sharp 90 degree turns. It’s not all winners, but it has a level of interactivity with the environment and rewarding exploration that a lot of tracks in the more recent Mario Karts just don’t really reach.

But let me be clear: for as hard as it tries, with as many ideas as it has, LEGO Racers does not manage to be as good as Mario Kart. If you’ve read this entire review seeking that to be proven otherwise, I’m sorry. For whatever small faults I could accuse Mario Kart of having, its still a thoroughly polished, well crafted, balanced-enough experience, that LEGO Racers can’t really seriously compete with the same way a game like Crash Team Racing can. And, yknow what? That’s not a bad thing in my eyes. LEGO Racers still had its own audience of kids in love with LEGO, and it succeeded eons better than many other racing games aimed at an even younger crowd than Mario Kart. Just because a game isn’t the biggest success in the world, or much of a champion in any field, doesn’t mean that it’s lacking purpose! This game’s style and presentation still occupies a very special place in my mind to this day, and I’m constantly taking reference from all aspects of the game’s design to further my own design work in games and more.

Never write off any game you play. Every game is a learning experience, both for the developers, and for you. Because that's what it means to grow up.

[Playtime: 5 hours]
[Key word: Influence]

Curiosamente a versão de 64 desse jogo é um dos mais difíceis de se emular do console (se você estiver utilizando um dispositivo muito fraco ele não roda não viu)

A gameplay em si é um jogo padrão de kart da época

A soundtrack varia bastante tem umas músicas bem chatinhas viu

Com certeza o que faz ele se destacar dos outros jogos é a criação e customização do piloto como também do veículo

A customização do piloto tem uma variedade grande até de roupinhas e tudo mais

Mas nossa você consegue fazer o seu veículo DO ZERO com as pecinhas de lego com um sistema de montagem e customização, que algumas pessoas comentam ser complicado demais pra uma criança mas eu acho até que bem intuitivo.

Mas po jogar com algo que você mesmo criou é com certeza algo legal

É um bom jogo foi o primeiro da franquia lego que joguei, bem nostálgico pra mim.

Tenho vontade de jogar a versão de gameboy color caso isso aconteça atualizarei essa review