If you saw these, you run a triathlon just to get away from them.

It was a neat idea to make a bunch of wacky characters go running, sledding and swimming to be the fastest penpen in the world but it makes the player the most frustrated player in world.

The character designs are horrific. It's like they slap the troll face on a penguin and gave it a helmet. none of the characters have different stats so basically, you're playing the same character. there are only 4 racetracks sweet, jungle, toy and horror with jungle probably be the worst running stage of the four. there is a part in the level where you must enter a small cave when the floor is spinning, and the floor spinning so fast it's frustrating to get through

You'll probably have more fun training for a real triathlon then to play this game.

This shit's wack, and i mean that in a very specific flavor of wackk
PPT is a racing game unlike most others ive ever seen in that it's probably the only one to be a (somewhat) functional relay race where youre only playing as one racer for the base mode
which is like....okay.?
The level selection is kind nice! The aesthetical prowess of this shit is great it OOZES that hinging y2k future-esque stylized stuff with the load screens and how color placement is used for the inbetweens of this game. The music aint that bad either, unfortunately while this game is definitely a unique moment in the dreamcast's catalogue and has a certain degree of bathsalt cartoon charm
it also plays it V e r y safe. Like. there is virtually no skill here youre just kind of hitting the same button over and over again at the right press duration, over and over, maybe eat shit on a bumper and take a few seconds to recompose yourself??? but idk the more "Difficult" shit in this game just boils down to the AI tapping you a centimeter too much to the left and ruining the entire thing for you

exhale
okay yeah lets talk abt the designs bc there's a lot to unpack, and i promise u its an important aspect babe be patient
PPT has a nice little bit of customization and little fits you can give your racers, you get like a COUPLE to start off with but it's a nice bit of personalization that would otherwise be kind of Impossible in a non-kart or car related race setting

Races in general are segments of three things of running, swimming and belly sliding and i dont think picking whatever design scratches your brain more matters because it's a very shallow skill threshold and there isnt THAT much to shake each map up after youve played on one of them
not really any craaazy items or anything
just like
there
race
win
also the race officials are interesting.. most of them,, in particular i was compared to ms cream when i posted a pic of her so naturally i like her even more in retrospect in a bashful sorta way and I think that the one dude thats clearly a human with an animal mask on is creepy cool...
Unfortunately this is also a game from the late 90s early 00s in the certain humor way where there's a full blown racist caricature, im Not letting that shit slide and this would-be 3.5/5 is gettin a 2 for me, fuck yourself lol

Bruh

With that out of the way, this game continues the search for >2P multiplayer games Nowhere and I have set out on, and as usual for anything non-Nintendo I find myself mostly disappointed.

Pen Pen Trilcelon (mostly just referred to as Pen Pen) is a Dreamcast exclusive racing game and launch title for the system, it lines up with a lot of other DC games in their oversaturated colorful and Quirky presentation, though the character design of Unga Pogo is bewilderingly racist and had us taken aback for a bit; after we recovered I half-joked "watch his track be randomly lined with stereotypical tribesmen", hoping to be proven wrong but nah the track has half-naked, spear-wielding, wood/skin-mask-wearing tribespeople flailing about the sidelines... Idk I don't find this shit particularly endearing.

The actual gameplay is surprisingly not dogshit tho Unga's level has this awful on-foot section where you have to jump into a cave past a spinning platform, but the collision is trash and missing it is a massive time loss as you wait to pray you slip in. The rest of the tracks were just okay at best.

The breath of this game's content is finished in about 20 minutes or so, of which 4-5 of those is unfortunately spent on Unga's course.

I'm just tired of being recommended games that are filler for a woozy night of drinking at best, or as research pieces for a console's library. I don't drink, I just want a good 4P multiplayer game that has a little more going on than hold one or two buttons and doesn't spike the ball into the ground in the process of adding a third.

(This is part of a series of party game reviews for party games that I messed around with alongside a good friend in a weekend. I'm writing them with time inbetween each review to avoid flooding so I can still have friends after this.)

Bubbles, you've done it again you absolute mad-man.

Pen Pen Trilcelon is one of the wackiest racing games I've ever experienced. As mentioned by MagneticBurn, it's basically a very over the top retro Fall Guys where you have to navigate these strange race courses and get to the end while dodging all these obstacles. The controls aren't amazing but they work well enough, and the graphics actually hold up surprisingly well for 1998. The loud game-show carnival music and the goofy courses and characters really sell the cartoony party game vibe that I'm looking for when I just want to mess around for a half hour or so. It's super, super short and can get a little overbearing if exposed to for too long, but it gets the point across well and I'd say it's held up shockingly well. Give it a shot if you're looking for something a bit off the beaten path to blaze through with some buddies on a drinking night, I think this is definitely a gem.