Mickey's Speedway USA Preview

Nintendo has historically shown it has no compunction about mining established franchises and their respective game engines for all they're worth: Diddy Kong Racing is to Mario Kart as Banjo Kazooie is to Mario 64 as Perfect Dark is to Goldeneye, etc., etc. As sure as you have fingers on your hands, there are as many variations on the Pokemon theme. It's pretty much a guarantee nowadays that if you like a Nintendo game enough the first time, they're bound to give it to you a second time, and a third time....

So with that reasoning firmly established, Nintendo's logic behind creating yet another Mario Kart clone - Mickey's Speedway USA - makes a lot more sense. Take a tried-and-true Nintendo game engine and genre (the Mario Kart engine and kart racing), put an established developer (Rare) behind the project, and throw in some of the world's most recognizable characters (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the gang), and you have a gaming recipe you can take straight from the oven all the way to the bank.

If you keep in mind that the "plot," in this case, serves only as a reason to get a bunch of Disney characters together to race in wild locales on outrageous tracks, then the lack of any semblance of a sensible storyline probably won't seem like such a big deal.

Apparently, a group of devious weasels (evidently found in Disney's vault of B-grade villains) have pilfered Pluto's diamond-studded collar. This act of unadulterated treachery arouses the will of our cartoon compadres (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Daisy Duck, and Minnie Mouse) to unite in an effort to defeat the heinous weasels by any means possible. For reasons unknown, our heroes agreed that the easiest way to accomplish this would be to repeatedly race the weasels around circular tracks in high-powered, miniature automobiles, snagging power-ups while vying for first place in a series of grand prix circuits.

Strange, nonsensical story aside, this iteration of Nintendo-style kart racing will thankfully move faster and smoother than the kart racers that preceded it. Rare's familiarity with the N64's hardware has gone a long way, and Mickey's Speedway USA shows its mastery of the system by offering an experience that's much more consistent (at least graphically) than what either Mario Kart or Diddy Kong Racing provided.

In the gameplay department, Mickey's Speedway offers the typical assortment of varied locales you've come to expect. There are a total of five grand prix circuits, each made up of four races. Three of the circuits are available the first time you boot up the game; the fourth and fifth must be unlocked by completing assigned goals in the other circuits. Like in Mario Kart and Diddy Kong Racing, emphasis is placed on acquiring power-ups as you race around the track, as well as on maintaining a high place among your competitors. In a bit of a spin on the typical assortment of fictional racetracks, Mickey's Speedway attempts to give a Disney feel to some real-world sites. You'll find tracks are situated in various American tourist spots. Yellowstone Park, New York City, and the Grand Canyon (among others) are featured in exaggerated, Disney-style form as backdrops to the racing action. Four-player action will also be included. Though details for four-player racing are unknown at the moment, it's a safe assumption that Mickey's Speedway probably won't stray too far from Mario Kart's battle mode precedent.Though many actual game specifics are still currently unknown, Mickey's Speedway USA will probably be one of Nintendo's biggest releases this holiday season. With master programmers, Rare, behind this one, the biggest threat to Speedway's sweeping the holidays like a storm is market saturation. This marks the third Nintendo kart racer to grace the system. Whether that's one N64 kart racer too many will be determined when Mickey's Speedway USA ships this Christmas.