"Remind me again why I used to like playing with slot cars?"
Before I get down to brass tacks and begin my upcoming insightful
and thought-provoking review of Hot Wheels: Slot Car Racing, I
have to add a few quickie comments about my last review, Ski
Resort Tycoon. I was away last week enjoying a turkey day apart
from the hustle and bustle of the gaming scene, and my mailbox
literally filled up with people telling me that I was incorrect in my
observation that ski resort workers in Ski Resort Tycoon could not
be grabbed and moved in the same manner as park workers in
Rollercoaster Tycoon. They are right, I was wrong. You can, for
example, grab a ski patrol guy and drop him near an injured
person on the slopes. Doesn't change the fact that they're dumb as
dirt in their search routine for injured skiers, but it does let you at
least cut down on the number of injured people on your slopes
dying of hypothermia, which I'm all for. I'm not certain how I
missed it. In my defense, I have no defense, and throw myself
upon the mercy of Angelina Jolie. She can be a stern mistress,
that one. Ahhh yessss. Where was I again? Oh yeah, the other
thing people wrote to me about was to ask why I hadn't mentioned
the steep system requirements for Ski Resort Tycoon. I had kind of
tacked a mental post-it note in my head to that effect while I was
writing the review, and then apparently lost track of it while I was
ranting about how much Ski Resort Tycoon is like Rollercoaster
Tycoon's retarded half brother. Anyway, Ski Resort Tycoon does
require a system with some serious horsepower to play it. Even on
my P3-500 it gets a little sluggish as the mountain fills up, and I
have no idea why because all the little skiers and the very simple
economic model I wouldn't think could be that difficult to process.
But there it is, yet another reason not to buy it. On the island of
mediocre games, Ski Resort Tycoon rules with a snow-crusted fist.
Slot Cars on the other hand - what to say about that one (which is,
after all, the reason you tuned in here)? When I was a kid, just
after the invention of electricity but before the invention of any
videogames whatsoever, even pong, slot cars were pretty cool.
What was cool about them? I haven't the slightest idea. We used
to have bottle rocket fights and hang posters of Farrah Faucett
Majors on our walls and listen to Supertramp, and we thought all
that was cool too, so clearly our cool detection circuitry wasn't all
it was cracked up to be. But slot cars are especially a mystery.
You put the car in the slot, and mash the controller down with your
thumb and the car runs around the track. Yipee. I'm not even
talking about loops and jumps - those came later. What the hell
was I on? I remember right after I got my slot car set I built the
largest layout the set allowed (like a figure 8 with an extra circle
on one end). The set came with a counter and each time the car
ran by it a little switch in the slot was flipped and the counter
would count down. I challenged a friend to a 1000 lap race (which
took some doing because the counter only went up to 100), and off
we went. It took over 4 hours to complete and the wall
transformer got really hot, and the hand controllers got sweaty and
started to smell like something was burning inside them, but I won.
The little steel pads that contacted the wires on the track to power
his car wore off at about lap 850, and I was home free to the
checkered flag (I should add that the motor in my car seized up
during my victory lap). Sure, it's more wholesome entertainment
than jabbing yourself in the eye with a pointed stick, but what's the
point?
I continued to dump my allowance into more cars and more track,
and then came the granddaddy of them all - the slotless race track.
Your car could change lanes, and there was a ghost car that sort
of drove around behaving like a one-man traffic jam. Now that
was cool. Way cooler than Farrah (who had been replaced with
Valerie Bertinelli) and Supertramp (as only Billy Joel would then
grace my genuine diamond stylus). We were still admittedly
having bottle rocket fights, though there was a rumor that Jimmy's
second cousin dated a girl whose brother lost an eye doing just
that - maybe that made it even cooler. I never got a set of slotless
slot cars though, as pong and the Atari 2600 came along. Can you
even buy slot cars of any variety anymore? If I were a
conscientious game reviewer, I'd stop by a toy store and find out.
Turns out I'm not, and I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
What I do know is that you can buy is a videogame of slotless slot
cars, from Mattel no less - seller of fine die cast Hot Wheels cars
made in Hong Kong years before exploiting underpaid overseas
workers became vogue. It comes with 8 tracks, a track
construction kit, and a selection of cars rated by speed and a sort
of ubiquitous 'performance' whose effect is not quite clear. Pick
the fastest car you can. You race around the track against other
cars controlled by the computer (or, I believe people in
multiplayer, which I didn't try). Win the race and unlock the next
track and a new car. Fail to win the race and you're stuck racing
that track over and over again until your thumb cramps. That's
pretty much it. There's no damage model for the cars, no
economics in buying, trading, or repairing them, and no driver
career or anything like that. Force the joystick (or controller of
your choice) as far forward as it will go and hope to come in first.
As with slotless slot cars, you can change lanes, mostly to avoid
things on the track, but also to pass, and to bump other cars off the
track. A car bumped off the track appears again where it was
bumped off. The rules for which car loses when bumping are a
little unclear. Most of the time the car in front wins and the car in
back is pushed off the track - so you go from side to side to bump
off cars that try and pass you. I have, however, bumped a car off
the track from behind and had it done to me, so I dunno. Maybe
it's somehow related to the 'performance' rating.
Multimedia-wise the game is OK - lots of colored lighting and stuff,
jazzy sound effects. The 8 tracks are varied in environment and
road hazards, and the videogame does allow you to have tracks
and obstacles you can't have with a real slot car set. Still, not
enough to keep you playing, and I can safely say that in an hour I
played all I ever wanted to. The track construction kit is as well
insufficiently engrossing. I made up a track or two, and I'd had
enough. Maybe this game is meant for young kids, the kind of kids
who still have bottle rocket fights on a lazy, summer afternoon.
The kind of kids who would buy real live slot cars if they were still
sold, which they might be. When considering the game from that
perspective, I can't help but feel there is a fundamental mismatch
between the excitement level of this game and the skill level
necessary to win the races and unlock the later tracks. What I
mean is that my nephew, who is 6, might like the game, but would
quickly become frustrated because he would get stuck unable to
win some track; he's still mastering Legos, which require no
hand-eye coordination or reflexes at all. Meanwhile my other
nephew, who is 11, could easily beat the game, but wouldn't have
any interest to; he's busy playing Goldeneye on N64.
So, there you have it. Too simple for adults, too difficult for
children; I can't think of an audience that would find slot cars
enough fun to play for any length of time.
By: 
