Wacky Wheels

I have a soft spot for kart racers that just commit to being absurd, and Wacky Wheels commits hard. Eight animals have broken out of a zoo, strapped themselves onto ride-on lawnmowers, and decided the best way to spend their freedom is lobbing hedgehogs at each other across 42 tracks. That premise alone tells you whether you are the target audience. The racing itself is a pseudo-3D, point-of-view kart game that cribs generously from the Super Mario Kart playbook. Pickups include hedgehog projectiles, oil slicks, bombs, and fireballs, and the game is fair enough that the AI follows the same rules you do rather than pulling power-ups from nowhere. Difficulty scales across Amateur, Pro, and Champion classes, with a Kid Mode that hands throttle control to the computer entirely, so even young or first-time players can steer their way to a finish. Time trials strip out all the chaos for clean lap-chasing, and the duck shoot mode drops you into an arena to hunt motorised ducks on wheels, which is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds. Fail to place in the top three or wipe out three times in a Grand Prix and you restart from scratch, which gives the later cups a genuine bite. The multiplayer is where Wacky Wheels punches best for a game of its age. Split-screen local two-player works, there is a versus combat arena mode for pure hedgehog-shooting brawls, and the old modem and null-modem serial options are present for history's sake. On the couch, the split-screen is perfectly serviceable, though the reduced viewing area does make the game tighter and somewhat scrappier, which honestly suits two friends trying to ruin each other's race. The Steam version has partial Xbox 360 controller support, so plugging in a gamepad and getting straight into split-screen is realistic without digging out an old keyboard layout guide. The honest caveats: the tracks are all flat with no elevation, which keeps the racing feeling very one-dimensional after a few cups. Drivers have no stat differences, so choosing between the tiger, the shark, or the panda is purely cosmetic. The minimap is functionally useless at a glance. And if you have zero nostalgia for this era of DOS gaming, one user review put it bluntly enough to echo here: the lack of modern polish shows, and the game does little to ease new players into its slightly awkward pseudo-3D handling. It is a relic, plainly. Steam also flags compatibility issues with macOS 10.15 Catalina and above, so Mac users should double-check before buying. For retro fans or anyone hunting a cheap, low-barrier local multiplayer racer, the bones are solid and the chaos is real. As a serious solo racing experience in 2025, though, the depth runs out faster than the novelty.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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