GamesNostalgia

Retro games, abandonware, freeware and classic games for PC and Mac

iten

Wacky Wheels

Available Platform: DOS

Wacky Wheels is an arcade kart racing game released by Apogee Software in 1994 and released for MS-DOS only, where you can play any of eight wacky animals.

Year1994
GenreRacing
Rating3.5

65/100 based on 4 Editorial reviews. Add your vote

PublisherApogee Software
DeveloperBeavis-Soft
OS supportedWin7 64 bit, Win8 64bit, Windows 10, MacOS 10.6+
Updated2 December 2020

Game Review

Wacky Wheels is an arcade kart racing game released by Apogee Software in 1994 and released for MS-DOS only, where you can play any of eight wacky animals. The game is strongly inspired by Super Mario Kart.

When you think of kart racing games, what game do you think of? Depending on the console you grew up on, most will say Super Mario Kart. I know there will be many who also thought of Crash Team Racing. But even though they are the most well-known (and undoubtedly the best), many other games took a similar path.

Wacky Wheels is one of them. The game was developed by Beavis Scott and was published by Apogee Software in 1994.

A curious fact is that after the developers created Wacky Wheels "inspired" by Super Mario Kart, they sent a copy to Copysoft. Believe it or not, they included the source code too. Copysoft rejected the game, but the company lived up to its name and soon after released Skunny Kart, an almost identical game. Naturally, the developers of Wacky Wheels got angry, but they did not file legal charges. In the end, if you sent your source code to a company called "Copysoft", what did you expect?

The adventure is about different animals getting into go-karts and racing each other. Do you think there is a plot? Well no, deal with it. The adventure has many game modes suspiciously similar to Super Mario Kart. If you have any doubt about this, compare the Wacky shoot-out mode with the Battle Mode of the Nintendo game. During races, players can also attack their rivals by throwing hedgehogs or bombs and receive other items to gain an advantage in its multiple tracks. Nevertheless, the game has some interesting details, such as a very complete instruction manual in the menu or a cameo of Dopefish from Commander Keen. Also, although it is an obvious feature of these games, it has a multiplayer mode that is always welcome.

Graphically it looks quite nice, the colors are very lively and vivid. The tracks are all the same and the subtle color change in the different tracks is not going to change my mind. The map was not to my liking either, you can't see the characters well and since the camera is very close to the character, you can hardly see the other competitors. However this didn't bother me too much, the game itself is short enough for me to get bored of the maps. The music is okay, a bit too loud for my taste, but it fits well with the title.

Despite the criticisms I may have with Wacky Wheels, I can at least say that it is entertaining. As time went on I found more and more things to criticize, but always playing the races and trying to win them, and that's very positive. Want to give it a try? Don't waste any more time! You can play it now, at least it's more original than Skunny Kart.

Review by: Gustavo
Published: 13 March 2021 9:08 am



You can purchase the game on GOG or Steam following the link below:

Get the full game on GOG

Wacky Wheels

Including manual + soundtrack (MP3)

Price: $5.99

GOG Buy this game

Back to Game Review

Get the full game on GOG

Wacky Wheels

Including manual + soundtrack (MP3)

Price: $5.99

GOG Buy this game

Latest Comments

  • ZIq Shh - 2019-04-17 - Reply

    Memories!