You might have known that I participate in the DOS Games Club. The Podcast itself is...okay. I listen to it occasionally. But it's not really enough to make me check out every episode. It's mostly just guys kinda hanging out, talking about games. But like, talking about them at a surface level. There's not a lot of deep dives in to anything. So far, I haven't listened to all of them, so maybe I got a more casual ones.
But one thing I really enjoy that they do is the DOS game of the month. Basically, every month, they pick a new game to play.
This is a bit late, and I will be talking about June's game of the month: MDK. But right now, I want to talk a bit about May's game of the month: Wacky Wheels.
The Game
Wacky Wheels was developed by "Beavis-Soft" which, okay. But it was published by the famous Apogee Software, a publisher I have a lot of memories with and I'm sure a lot of people in this sphere of gaming also do.
Wacky Wheels is best summed up as "Mario Kart at Home". It was released in 1994, two years after the SNES Classic. Booting it up, you can see their inspiration for their game's art direction.
Now, calling it a simple Mario Kart ripoff isn't really being fair. The Game itself is a very average kart racer from the mid 90's and we should be looking at the game with the lense that this is 1994 and we have an MS-DOS Computer to play games on.
Beavis-Soft
Doing research in to this game lead me to the actual Developer: Beavis-Soft. Trying to dig up any information about that lead me do a whole lot of nothin'. On their Moby Games Page we can see that Beavis-Soft released two games. Phylox and Wacky Wheels. It was composed of two guys, Andrew "Andy" Edwardson who handled the Programming, and Shaun Gadalla who did the graphics.
Andy, who was studying Super Mario Kart (lol), specifically trying to recreate their "Mode 7" graphics mode in his own custom game engine, had been working for a company called Copysoft. Copysoft's claim to fame was a Squirrel named Skunny which...is probably the reason nobody hears of Copysoft. But apparently Andy had been talking to the higher ups at Copysoft, who were impressed enough by his work to begin promoting it. Screenshots posted to Compuserve (wow) got the attention of Scott Miller, president of Apogee Games.
Apogee wanted to publish the game, but Copysoft wanted a cut, an agreement was made between the two companies where Apogee paid some undisclosed amount for royalties on the game. But apparently the parting of ways between Andy and Shaun and Copysoft was...rough. However, Andy left behind a demo disk of his engine at Copysoft after doing his pitch, which made it's way (allegedly) in to Skunny Kart.
If you check out the Moby Games Page for Skunny Kart you can see the similarities to Wacky Wheels. It's very clearly a rip-off of Wacky Wheels. But to be fair, you can see a lot of similarities between Wacky Wheels and Super Mario Kart. So, can you call Wacky Wheels a Mario Kart rip off?
Now all of that is from the Moby Page, there isn't much more than that on the company. But at the end of it all, they released their two games, declined an offer to work with 3D Realms and eventually became an animation shop where Andy continues to not be in the games industry and I've no clue where Shaun has gotten off to.
However, there's a bit more to these developers and their story. During the Apogee Legacy Interviews they actually tracked these guys down, to interview them. Andy appears to be the only one who was okay with an interview. I can't find anything from his partner, Shaun. (Shaun! If you're out there, email me!). But Andy had a lot more to say on his time at Copysoft.
He describes working on this Engine imitating Mode 7 on his own time, with Shaun helping him draw up some art. Showing it to their company and accidentally leaving the disc behind. However the spat of royalties and who owned the actual work was quite clear: Andy and Shaun never sold the rights to Copysoft. With all of this work apparently being done on their own time. However, it seems like Copysoft may have given them/owned the equipment used to develop the game so...it's a bit hazy. But with the images on Compuserve getting the attention of Apogee, it appears Apogee paid anyway just so they could publish it.
I'm not going to go through the whole Interview and even FAQ that Andy wrote, but I highly recommend giving the whole thing a read. Andy talks about the development of the game and the issues they faced. One thing that was really interesting is him talking to how they had to include Online Play because it was just how games were going, but also "Remote Ridicule". Wacky Wheels did it first, before Rise of the Triad! Pretty innovative stuff!
But for real, go read the Legacy Interview!
My Review
So, all of that being said, Wacky Wheels has a little bit of history behind it! It's a cult classic to be sure. I personally remember playing this one as a kid. I never actually had the Registered copy of the game. I always wound up with the shareware version. My favorite character was Razer, of course. Being the badass shark among a group of, what I thought at the time were "sissy" animals. Like, why would I pay money to play a Panda? lame!
But getting back in to the game, the first thing that hits is the music. It has some [Rockin tunes](https://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php/Wacky_Wheels_(DOS) thanks to the work of Mark Klem over at Apogee, who's got a pretty long list of great music on a lot of games you've probably made fond memories of.
To give the game a fair shake, we have to take ourselves back to 1994. Now, Super Mario Kart had come out 2 years prior and it also is rather basic, however it has a few extra bells and whistles that make it a touch more interesting than Wacky Wheels. Which kind of sucks, because Mario Kart really set the standard. If both games had released kinda-sorta close to each other, it would be more understanding. But two whole years? That's a lot of time to get things right and I feel that they really dropped the ball.
Now to note: I'm not comparing Wacky Wheels to Super Mario Kart because I think they're in the same bracket as each other, it's just an easy comparison to make.
Good Kart racers need three things: Good Controls, Good Tracks, Good Modes
Wacky Wheels has Okay Tracks, some of them are great, some of them are...tracks. Wacky Wheels has some GREAT modes. Local AND Online Multiplayer? Duck Shoot? Battle Modes? Sign me up!
Controls? I mean, it has controls absolutely. But they aren't...great. Here's the problem with them; there's no real mechanics to get "good" at.
So, you have drifting, right? Well Wacky Wheels has a handbrake that will shunt you nigh instantly in a 90 degree angle. Cool for making some of the hair-pin turns that exist on these tracks but drifting this is not. It requires a lot of finesse to hard turn to get around an obstacle, but not slam directly in to the wall or environmental hazard. There's no easing or momentum. It's just WHAM you're facing this way now. That really cuts in to the game and it really does not feel good to play today.
Plus, there's no variation in the various opponents. Each racer is just a different sprite. There's no mechanical difference between them like in some other kart racers from this time. AI is split between "Fast" and "Slow" AI, either they go fast, or they go slow. They don't use items, they don't have any real driving style. They do the entire track perfectly just at a fixed speed between 1 and 10. At harder difficulties, the rubber banding is quite obnoxious, where your opponents simply go faster than you and you just have to accept that.
To make another comparison to Mario Kart, there existed some rudimentary AI in the different Racers. Some would be more aggressive, some would use more or less items. It wasn't a lot and probably not incredibly noticeable, but it made the game feel just a tad different each go-around. Wacky Wheels shares no such feature. When a race starts, you see one racer go Faster than everyone, one go slightly slower, another yet slightly slower, and so on and so forth until they make a neat little line.
Finally, something I thought was always a thing with kart racers is the timed boost at the beginning of a match. As you wait for the count down, hitting the gas at just the right moment usually gives you a pretty decent boost! Well, not in Wacky Wheels. There's no benefit in not simply holding down the accelerator when the countdown starts which is a small thing, but really feels like it's missing.
What stands out though is their "Kid Mode" which just makes all the other racers slow as hell and even stop sometimes. Meant for younger kids who are probably just learning how to play and don't quite have enough fine motor control to hang with the big kids. I gotta say it's a cute addition that I like and would like to see more games incorporate.
The Graphics are nice, after the music, the most recognizable part of Wacky Wheels. They're bright, colorful and everything really shouts "90's PC Game". I like them a lot. Everything just feels like you're playing a fun, light hearted arcade racer without any high stakes. It can get a little blurry and when doing the Duck Shoot mode, the short draw distance is noticeable mostly on that mode. But otherwise, they're cute, fun and really stand out as being unique.
Other Reviews
Wacky Wheels had a few reviews from back in the day. A lot of talk about the Remote Ridicule System which is really nice to see. But they're mostly positive. Except for one that's written in Norwegian and is rather scathing, with a 33% or a 2 out of 6. But overall it looked like the scores were rather positive.
The only review in English I could see on the Moby Games page (Again, that's where...all of my research happens) is that it was recommended as a great Car Game for Kids and I wholly agree with that statement.
Conclusion
So, with all of that being said, it's probably no surprise that I totally and absolutely recommend picking up Wacky Wheels.
Look, is it the best Kart Racer? No. Is it the best on the PC? No. Is it the best from that Era? Also no. But what it does have is so much charm and fun behind it. The Music, The Graphics, everything about it screams "Apogee". It's one of those games that I have a lot of bias over. But grabbing the Shareware version, loading it up on the ole' Pentium and give it a go. It won't blow you away, it probably won't really even impress you. But it's still an Apogee game and it still has a lot of charm left to give.
However, if you're immune to the charm, it's not really worth your time I don't think. It was definitely worth the few hours I put in to it, just playing around, enjoying the bittersweet nostalgia and getting back behind the wheel with Razer after so many years.
Whelp, that was Wacky Wheels, DOS Games Club Game of the Month. I'll be back hopefully before the end of June to talk about June's game of the month, MDK. But if you're interested, definitely check out their website and participate. A lot of these games are being sold on GOG, Steam or are abandonware so they're easy to find and load right there on the Archives.
As an aside, I should mention that there's a fan project, Wacky Wheels HD that's on Itch.io. It has...reviews, bad ones. It looks like a fan project but it's cute and I appreciate the effort gone in to "modernizing" a cult classic game. I don't think it needed modernizing but hey, not my project.
With that, Aloha and and Mahalos for reading my review of Wacky Wheels.
This is Dad, going to bed.
