A really creative concept and some great gameplay decisions weighed down by mediocre level design and lackluster bosses.
+Several levels show imagination in a genre that was growing stale by this time
+Several of Muttley's abilities show real creativity
-No actual ending, instead giving the player three mini-endings and then credits
-Feels more like a generic platformer than a cartoon adventure
-Bosses are simple compared to the stages
-Lack of difficulty as the game progresses hurts replay value
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From the mid-1960s through the late-1980s, the animation company Hanna-Barbara could almost do no wrong. They could copy their own franchises repeatedly with small variations (Jabberjaw, for example, was Scooby Doo with a talking shark underwater while Fangface was Scooby Doo with a werewolf) and no one would complain. Their animation was never the best, but it always got the job done – and they never shied away from trying out new things each year. Sometimes, these ideas would utterly flop (the 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo, for example). Other times, they'd hit gold (the Scooby-Doo Movies, where Scooby Doo and company would team-up with celebrities of the day is an excellent example of this). Wacky Races, though, was actually somewhere in the middle.
Creating a bunch of random original characters (23 total), several of whom would eventually wind up in their own spinoff shows, the show was basically a no-rules race from point A to point B through several unique areas with crazy items and vehicles providing much of the onscreen action. Furthermore, the show actually focused on the villains – Dick Dastardly and his dog Muttley… but they never won any of the 34 different races animated by the studio.
However, after the show ended in 1970, Wacky Races essentially fell into obscurity outside appearances on the Cartoon Network in the early years when the Network lacked original programming – but the characters of Dick Dastardly and Muttley would show up again over the years… but it appears to have been rather popular in Japan, even being spoofed in a comedic adventure of the insanely-popular anime franchise Gundam.
Either way, as the years went by, it was a little shocking to see a video game created off of a rather obscure Hanna-Barbara cartoon that was well over 20 years old without any new entries featuring the characters. But… was it a good game?
Well… not entirely.
You see, rather than craft a racing game like others who took the license and ran with it would do, Atlus games decided to make a platforming title out of the Wacky Races license. This is not a bad thing in itself, because racing games on the NES never worked out that well aside from a few rare examples. However, making a game based on a racing cartoon without the racing is almost like making a Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon fighting game rather than a NASCAR game: it rather misses the point.
Much like the cartoon, the game is based around the idea of Dick Dastardly and Muttley racing against the other 10 racers in an effort to reach the finish line first. However, rather than a racing game, the entire game is based around Dastardly's dog Muttley running errands to repair their car.
What makes the game initially unique is the initial decision of letting the players choose where to go. There are three gameplay paths – each one stretching across a different section of the world. Path A (nicknamed 'Hip Hop') stretches across Europe and Africa, while Path B (nicknamed 'Splish Splash') goes from Australia and reaches its way up through Asia into Japan. Path C (nicknamed 'Go Go America') is the longest, starting off in the snowy areas of Canada and eventually twisting down into the jungles of South America.
Each path has three main stages (although Path C has four), with three sub-stages and a boss area per stage. The sub-stages are all united in their path's theme – Stage C-2, for example, stretches from a proverbial New York down to the desert of a proverbial Texas. Each stage boss comes right from the Wacky Races cast, though. From the Slag Brothers in the Bouldermobile to the Ant-Hill Mob in their Bulletproof Bomb, each character who isn't Dick Dastardly can be found as a boss character in this game. However, their patterns are rather plain – and each boss is the same difficulty of hard, meaning that the game doesn't really get harder as the player progresses.
When the player completes their chosen path, there is a mini-cutscene showing that Muttley has finished his task, and the two other paths are left open. The same occurs with the second chosen path, leaving the final route unplayed. Once the final route is finished, however, there is no grand cutscene – instead the final chosen path's cutscene plays and then the game jumps right to the credits. This in itself is understandable, as the original show never had a 'final race,' but it does wind up removing much of the fun of completing the game.
Gameplay on the whole is a bizarre dichotomy of unique and bland all at the same time. While each stage and sub-stage has a rather generic design that seems to blend in with the other platforming titles released at the time, the character of Muttley is a rather bright star of creativity. By collecting bones strewn throughout the game, the player can unlock different weapons and bonus abilities for the character. Starting off with a simple bite, a few bones can instead give Muttley the ability to hurl bombs at his enemies or send a hypersonic bark at them instead. Muttley's jump can be enhanced as well, allowing the snickering dog to use his tail as a propeller for longer jumps. Furthermore, unlike other games at the time, Muttley has a life bar – which can be increased by collecting bones from 3 hearts up to six hearts. And each time the player chooses to extend the life bar, the life bar is also replenished (and if it can't be extended, it will at least be replenished anyhow).
The visuals are actually rather rich and look great for the NES. Vibrant colors that look great together can also be found – and the enemies are pretty good looking as well. However, for a game based on a cartoon like Wacky Races, the enemies are overly generic and bland… but at least they fit the stages well.
Music in Wacky Races is actually extremely well-done as well. Despite having a limited number of tracks, each musical score is unique and fits the sub-stages they're applied to. Luckily enough, each tune is also catchy and entertaining, each one having been stuck in my head more than once over the years. The sound effects are also passable for the time, but could have been better. A special note must be made for the 'bark' attack sounding like an actual dog's bark, and Muttley's immortal snickering laugh is also preserved in an 8-bit form somehow, which is rather interesting.
The only real problem is that there's a complete lack of replay value to this game, aside from wanting to play levels you enjoyed again. It's a fun game, but without a high level of variety in the game, it gets hard to justify a second play through. If you can find a copy of this game, go ahead and check it out – it's not that bad a game in the long run. Just don't expect much from it, and you'll be pleasantly surprised.
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Gameplay: 6.5
Visuals: 8
Audio: 7.5
Replay Value: 4
Personal Tilt: 6
Final Score:
6.5 out of 10. Not a bad game, but the level design hurts the score.