Looney Tunes: Space Race Review (PS2)
This Dreamcast port on the PlayStation 2 is an apparent rarity, so I'm going to look to see how well it turned out!
Developer: Infogrames Melbourne House
Publisher: Infogrames
Release Date: 8th February 2002 (EU) 27th May 2002 (NA)
Platform: PlayStation 2
While Circus Freak Studios was working on the PS1’s Looney Tunes Racing, another Looney Tunes racing game was being spawned for the Dreamcast by the Australian studio Infogrames Melbourne House. Looney Tunes Racing was a traditional kart racer affair, but down under they were making a more arcadey F-Zero/Wipeout inspired racer. After the unfortunate demise of the Dreamcast, many of its games were ported to other consoles and two years after its release Space Race saw a port by the same developers on the PlayStation 2. It recieved quite the overhaul from the look of things with a completely different set of menus, brand new music, and updated interface.
Space Race is exactly that. The Looney Tunes gang are racing across space on jet powered vehicles over 14 race tracks in eight worlds. They range from the Pyramids of Mars, to the Acme planet, to a wild west planet and a north pole planet.
Compared to Looney Tunes Racing there are only nine racers in this game starting with six characters; Bugs, Daffy, Yosemite Sam, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester and Wile E. The other three are unlocked in the galleria which are Porky, Marvin the Martian, and The King, king of the instant Martians. While Lola and Foghorn Leghorn were playable in the PS1 game, here they are delegated only to commentary through the races. It adds a little flavour to the races nicely but it limits the availability of racers to choose from.
There are a good handful of modes available to play through. There is a tournament mode with four tourneys to race through varying in difficulty, a time trial mode, single race, and additionally Acme events. The tourneys have four further events within them with the standard tournament cup and three further challenge cups to race through with varying stipulations to race against such as one lap over seven tracks, no gags at all to use, and completing Acme events within the tournament. And of the Acme events there’s all kinds of challenges to do such as trying to avoid Granny as she interferes in your races and trying to mow all of you down, and racing with an overabundance of gags which makes things so chaotic.
For ever race and tournament and challenge completed you’re awared with Acme points which can be spent in the galleria. As previously mentioned you can use these to unlock more characters, but you can also unlock movies, concept art, gags, and animation models.
Happily, this is a pretty fun racing game that plays quite nicely. As it’s an F-Zero/Wipeout inspired racer, the controls and vehicles can be rather floaty what with being hovering jet-powered vehicles, but it doesn’t take much getting used to when grasping how to use the vehicles. Interestingly, you use R1 for accelertaion and L1 for brake, R2 and L2 to swerve right or left, X is to use gag, square is to discard it, triangle to look back and circle to boost. To be able to boost you need to collect five canisters of boost throughout the track and when boosting, especially off a ramp, you can go soaring off so be careful not to use it at a turn or anywhere else precarious.
For the most part it doesn’t seem like any of the racers feel any different to one another unlike other kart racers. No one handles better than the other or has higher acceleration than the other, which kind of removes some challenge. Instead it comes down to how much better your skills are at using the same vehicle over the AI and luck and strategy with gags. Of which there’s a good handful to use. When busting open an Acme box there’s the disintergrating pistol, bombs, rockets, buttons to drop safes, pianos, and elephants on other racers, portable holes, extending boxing glove, and lightning in a can that homes in on other racers. They’re all appropriately cartoony and effective, maybe too effective sometimes as when you get hit by one and you’re in 2nd place you’ll easily get bumped down to 7th. Though it isn’t too hard to work your way back up again. And nicely you get a choice to discard items you pick up, so if you grabbed one that’s otherwise a bit useless at the time you can throw it away and grab another just a little whiles ahead of you.
As for the tracks they’re interestingly designed too. There are two tracks on each world with the exception of Asteroid Belt and Nebula being singular tracks. The worlds themselves are creatively and vibrantly designed with Acme Planet being in abundance of crates everywhere and driving through its extensive factories and cities, Wild West Quadrant you drive through western towns and down mine shafts, the North Pole Star an icy escapade with giant factories making ice cream within, the Pyramids of Mars a purple and eery wonder. But for their layouts they’re a little offsetting at first with the loud colours and bizarrely laid out pinstripe road. It feels incredibly Dreamcast-like and almost like it’s set in a circus funfair (although there is a few tracks exactly like that anyway) and very arcadey and different to other racers and kart racers. The routes feel rather stretched out as well somehow. While the tracks on Looney Tunes Racing or even CTR feel tight and compact, these feel like you’re stretching along half a planet sometimes, especially in Pyramid of Mars levels, which can often make things seem sparce despite how decorative the backgrounds are. Suppose that’s appropriate I guess. Despite that there are some genuinely creative levels to race through.
Altogether, for a racing game it’s pretty good with fun, balanced enough gags to use and the AI providing a fair challenge that can make winning races pretty close. They handle pretty decently and while the tracks feel like they don’t have the best first impressions they grow on you eventually.
Despite some assaulting colours at first this is an impressive looking game that’s extremely vibrant and looks pretty good on the PS2. It bursts with colours and it’s wonderfully cel shaded making each character pop exceptionally well. Their animations are very nicely done with the required squashes and stretches when getting hit, the characters hanging on for dear life when boosting away rapidly and in general how they steer about. They also have uniquely designed vehicles as well. Marving of course gets a UFO to fly in, Bugs a carrot, Wile E. a rocket, Porky a flying tractor, Yosemite a hog, Daffy a sci-fi jet, the King his rocket scooter from the short, and Sylvester a moped. They’re very nice.
Adversely to how I’ve spoken about the tracks, they have really nicely done backgrounds and settings. The North Pole levels feel cold, the Pyramid of Mars levels feel very alien and distant, the Acme planets feel rightfully chaotic, and the Offworld City Limits feels overwhelmingly busy. There’s a lot of details to admire throughout these levels even with little gags such as ice cream trucks floating overhead with a tune playing on them and all. I appreciate them doing something different visually taking them out and away from their shorts and putting them in an entirely new setting that feels like a modern (at the time anyway) setting for them to exist in some new zany adventure. There are some particular details in the art style that are still very Looney Tunes but it’s taken in another new direction. And given the Dreamcast and how most games looked then it fit perfectly for that, even for a port as well.
It sounds ludicrously funky as well. The PS2 version has a totally different soundtrack to the Dreamcast version rife with slap bass and high-tempo beats, it’s a lot of fun to listen to and paints a very particular tone for the game. It’s really good. It makes the races more lively, it makes the menus more fun, it’s all very bouncy and upbeat and just funky. It doesn’t sound anything like Looney Tunes but in putting them in a completely different setting to what we’re accustomed to seeing them in it makes sense for it to sound so different as well. As such, its famous cartoony sound effects are stripped back just a bit for more sci-fi sounds, though they’re still in there. You get the traditional zips and zaps and thunks, but there’s also newer sounds like an Irish diddle when using a four leaf clover for protection, the gurgle and rumble of the vehicles engines, and warning alarms when you’re about to get hit.
And surprise, surprise, its voice cast is as splendid as ever bringing their absolute best to their characters. It would feel wrong to not have their voices adding that layer of flavour to the game. I mean, what kart racer doesn’t hire its voice cast for the game? (I’m looking at you Nickelodeon Kart Racers.)
So while Looney Tunes Racing on the PS1 was trying out new things with kart racing, Melbourne House was trying to make as uniquely a different looking and sounding racing game inspired by F-Zero and Wipeout. The end result became an incredibly funky, upbeat, and vivid looking game that’s a very fun arcade style racer. I haven’t played the Dreamcast version and only watched videos to see how different it is, but I think this was a pretty well done port of the game. They did good. It could have done with more racers available (told you I felt spoilt with Looney Tunes Racing’s cast of characters), it has some rather long load times and can even on occassion just crash and die, and I don’t believe it would be for everyone because of how the tracks look at first, but it’s an F-Zero/Wipeout clone with Looney Tunes characters injected with a whole lotta funk and a shit ton of sugar. Also, for its multiplayer, I imagine that to be extremely chaotic as well, especially if it had online availability. It is not a short game either and will have you busy for hours and hours and has lots of replayability to it, so I’d suggest being open to giving it a shot, especially if you’re a racing fan and Looney Tunes fan.
I do like this game and given its nature as a Dreamcast racing game it also reminds me of Wacky Races that was released on there (which also got ported to the PS2) and that shows to me that the Dreamcast were making some very particularly vibrant games and really stretching its visual splendor. I admire that. and from the sounds of things Space Race is considered one of the best racing games on the system. I do find the PS2 cover maybe a little misleading however. The Dreamcast cover was much more appropriate and accurate.
Where to Purchase (As of 21/09/2022):
eBay: £3.50-£38/$5-$180
Amazon: £2-£35/ $14-$80
Cex: £2.50
This is the point where I no longer read your reviews I’m afraid. I was hoping you’d start becoming a bit more modern with your games and reviews but they’re just not hitting the mark. These games are decades old and were at one point fantastic games that were highly rated even back then, so the likelihood of people playing this game is incredibly high. I’m not sure who these reviews are aimed at? The older generation appreciate and have played these games….the younger generation aren’t interested and don’t possess the ability to play these games.
If your hobby is to write about old games then cool, if you’re looking for a decent sized audience and people to pay and subscribe, you need to focus on what the people want. I appreciate the writing but me personally want to see the good stuff.