TrickStyle

I'll be straight with you: if you walked into a Saturday night gaming session waving this one around expecting a deep sim, you'd get laughed out of the room. TrickStyle is a late-90s Criterion arcade racer wearing nostalgia like a jet-powered hoverboard, and the sooner you accept that framing, the more fun you'll have with it. Originally a Dreamcast launch title from 1999, it landed on PC via Throwback Entertainment's 2017 re-release, and it carries both the charm and the rough edges of that era intact. The core loop drops you into the Velodrome, a hub arena where you pick one of nine riders and decide your next race or challenge. Each rider has a specialisation: some lean toward raw speed, others toward physical contact with opponents (the Bully archetype is exactly what it sounds like), and the stunt-focused characters build score through chained trick sequences. Races take you through futuristic versions of London, Tokyo, and Manhattan, each with distinct visual identities, clever shortcuts, and tight gate-based challenge runs. The hoverboard physics have a floaty-but-grounded feel that takes a couple of sessions to click, but once it does, weaving through oncoming traffic in a neon-drenched future Tokyo is genuinely satisfying. Tricks are executed by button sequences, and landing them cleanly rewards you with speed boosts, though the trick system is disappointingly disconnected from the main races, where basic jumps and a boost move do most of the heavy lifting. Here's where I have to be a realist. The campaign is short - a focused player can see credits in three to four hours. The AI rubber-bands heavily, which keeps races close but also deflates any sense of earning a lead. Difficulty is inconsistent: most events are breezy, then a final race will hit you like a wall. There are no online modes at all, and the split-screen two-player mode is local-only. The soundtrack is a loop of techno beats that wears thin fast, and reviewers back in 1999 were already reaching for the mute button. For a casual couch crew, though? Actually decent. Split-screen head-to-head on a big monitor, controller in hand (this was built for a pad and feels right with one), rounds that end in under two minutes each - it has the bones of a good 'one more race' loop. The character roster is wide enough that four people arguing over who gets Shin versus King at least makes for lively pre-race trash talk. Just do not expect meaningful online PvP or any post-launch content updates. What shipped in 1999 is what you're getting. If you have a Dreamcast memory attached to this one, the PC version is a reasonable way to revisit it. If you're coming in cold, treat it as a time capsule curiosity with a fun hour or two in local multiplayer and not much beyond that. The hoverboard physics still hold up well enough to make a few runs worth the time, but nobody should be clearing their weekend calendar for this.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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