A playthrough of Konami's 1994 license-based racing game for the Super Nintendo, Biker Mice From Mars.
Played through the "Normal Race" mode with Vinnie on the hard difficulty level.
As excellent as Konami's arcade games based on cartoon licenses tended to be, their console output was arguably just as impressive. Biker Mice From Mars is a good representative example of that.
We had seen plenty of turtles, bats, and rabbits at this point, but Martian mice? Sure, why not? The cartoon, blending animated sci-fi violence with 90s attitude, was fairly popular and saw three seasons produced before it was cancelled in 1996.
Unlike the beat 'em ups and platformers that Konami typically created for their licensed properties, Biker Mice From Mars is an isometric combat-racing game in the vein of Galaxy 5000 and Rock 'n Roll Racing.
You can choose to play as any of the three mice (Throttle, Modo, or Vinnie) or three villains (Limburger, Karbunkle, and Grease Pit), and similar to Mario Kart, each racer handles differently based on stats like acceleration and grip. They each have their own special moves that can be used, and there's even a between-race upgrade shop a la Top Gear 2 where you can buy parts to improve different aspects of your bike's performance.
And what is even better is that Biker Mice takes the best parts of those earlier games and mashes them together to create something that's fast, exciting, and thoroughly satisfying to play.
It's a console-exclusive game, but Konami threw everything they had at this one to make it feel like an arcade game on the SNES, and sure enough, it worked! The graphics and sound are real stand-outs for the SNES. The sharp backgrounds fly by at sonic speeds without any hiccups in the silky smooth framerate, and the racers are all about as well detailed as they could be at this resolution. Everything pretty much explodes with bright colors (especially when everything is actually exploding!), and the menus and the UI all do a great job of giving the game that classic, extravagantly overblown 90s arcade-style presentation. Throw in some flashy cutscene sequences, a heavy rock soundtrack, a heap of enthusiastic voice samples, and you've got yourself an arcade machine ready to plug into your SNES's cartridge slot.
(Unless your playing the PAL version, because while that one is still excellent, it's more like sticking a Snickers bar in your console. Seriously, they went soooo overkill with the in-game advertisements!)
Biker Mice's gameplay is as careful to adhere to the arcade spirit as it's presentation is. The mechanics are simple enough to allow anyone to jump in, but there's enough complexity beneath the surface to keep your attention for a good few weeks, at least.
There are a couple of game modes, including the standard championship that features six circuits with five races each, as well as a mode in which you can win by destroying all of your competitors. You won't get to see all of the courses, though, unless you play it on the hard level
Things get pretty chaotic and difficult in the later circuits, but the difficulty curve is reasonable if you put in some practice, and the controls are excellent. The steering might take you a few races to get used to, but once you've found a character you like and spend a bit of time playing, the controls feel about as natural as RC Pro-Am's ever did. That's a good thing
So once again, Konami + random license with talking animals = must-play game. I should've just said that at the beginning. I would've saved myself the time it took to write all of this.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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2 окт 2024
