From war to race
Little Andy’s imagination doesn’t rest (Guthy’s in Europe), and after having a great time setting up the mother of all battles with his toys, he decided to opt for something less bellicose. A car race!
Naturally the participants were the same ones who fought without mercy in Toy Commander campaign, but this time running through circuits that defy gravity, in which they did not know if their were running on the floor or the ceiling. Of course the weapons were still a thing, so they forget about the idea of competing in a clean race.
They ran with friends and had a great time in their living room, bathroom, kitchens and then even taken the competition to new terrain never before explored… Cyberspace! (internet)
Real behind the game facts:
“NoCliché gives us its new title for the white Sega console, and it is not Toy Commander 2. Contrary to what many might think, the races for 4 players show how the Dreamcast online game evolves, little by little, in a positive way .” – Contemporary MeriStation
This game was one more ‘Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’, ‘Team Sonic Racing’, ‘Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled’ from the time (2000). Not entirely clean, but very fun.
There is no doubt that we live in a golden age for party racers, being able to compete against users from all over the world. Bot for the time of Toy Racer it doesn’t matter if it was in a kart or mounted on any other type of vehicle, these multiplayer competitions always brought us the craziest and most exciting races.
However, these festivals were limited exclusively to the local level until online gaming began to take over, a slow and laborious path that we barely remember today, but without which it would have been impossible to achieve all this. It is right at the beginning of this path where we find ‘Toy Racer’, a terribly modest game, which came and went almost without making a sound, but which laid the first stone for all this to be possible on our consoles.
And the Dreamcast was revolutionary in many things, and although it was not the first console that allowed online play, it was the one that managed to bring it to the whole world and reveal its infinite possibilities. However, when talking about online gaming for the Dreamcast, titles like ‘Phantasy Star Online’ or ‘Chu Chu Rocket!’ are usually mentioned, but not a word is said about others like Toy Racer.
The online game on the Dreamcast was quite green when it came to car games, since normally the online functions were limited to uploading our records to compare them with those of other players, or some other special event as DLC. In its final stages we would receive some titles with real online like ‘Daytona USA 2001’, but the subject would be left pending for other systems years later.
Careers in cyberspace
In the year 2000, several years before the Mario, Crash, or Sonic races made the leap to the Internet, ‘Toy Racer’ was able to offer a surprisingly solid online experience taking into consideration the precariousness of connections at the time. And it did so exclusively in Europe, since despite plans to take it to other parts of the world, the closure of “No Cliché” company prevented the experience from going beyond the Old Continent.
Being able to race against someone thousands of kilometers away, launch a remote-controlled missile at them just a few meters from the finish line, and win at the last moment, were common experiences for European Dreamcast users who opted to discover the possibilities offered by this new world. Of course, we are talking about something that is certainly limited, but we start somewhere, and this first step would serve to open the doors of what would come later.
And all this thanks to Toy Racer that was created specifically with the idea of it being as cheap as possible, in fact those at No Cliché recycled a good part of their work with “Toy Commander“, and the game is very far from the ceiling technical that was common in Dreamcast. Had it been released today, “Toy Racer” would undoubtedly have been a download-only indie game. But at the time it could be purchased in stores for the modest price of 12 euros, with its respective box and manual like any other title for Dreamcast.
This low price was intended to attract the attention of users, so that as many as possible would be encouraged to share the experience online. In addition, 20% of the proceeds from each sale went to charity, so we were not only supporting the great little project of a modest studio, but we were also helping those most in need.
But what can we expect from “Toy Racer” beyond online play?. The truth is that the game does not offer much more, since we can only compete online or offline against three other runners. It is not even possible to compete against vehicles driven by the console, since the development time for an efficient AI would have made the product more expensive.
Modest and at the same time ambitious
It is also possible to run alone in practice mode, in order to learn the controls, as well as the four available circuits. Yes, there are not too many of them, but their designs are quite imaginative, and they have shortcuts and small tricks that it is better to learn if we want to win. In the end, these four circuits provided much more gameplay than one would expect, and their increasing complexity increased the difficulty so that we could progressively adapt to the game.
The number of vehicles available is more generous, and in fact we can unlock a couple more cars. Each vehicle has its own attributes, such as resistance or speed. For example, the Formula 1 car will allow us to reach dizzying speeds on the track, but the slow Sherman tank will resist much better the damage inflicted on us by the rest of the players with the different attack objects.
On all tracks it will be necessary to constantly cross checkpoints, to prevent us from going off the track and taking more shortcuts than allowed. Skipping a checkpoint can be a serious problem, since we will have to return to the point where it is and cross it before being able to continue.
The technical section is logically quite discreet, but it still manages to convey a good feeling of speed, and the tracks have creative designs that will make us feel as if we were kids playing in their room with their toys. The music is made up of calm songs that simply accompany, but without standing out too much. All of this creating a modest, but surprisingly fun atmosphere.
It is worth remembering that just a few years before racing games were even more modest in content than Toy Racer, and they still managed to offer tons of hours of fun with just three circuits and a single car. In its day “Toy Racer” became the resting haven for many online Dreamcast players, who gathered to do the odd run to rest a little from so much adventure in “Phantasy” Star Online’.
Don’t play it alone
It was precisely thanks to the Dreamcast fan community that the game’s online features were restored a few years ago, but even without them, we can still spend a few fun afternoons playing local multiplayer with three other friends. The game manages to engage more than it seems at first glance, but as long as we don’t play alone.
Nowadays it can be easily obtained at really low prices, which will allow us to have some fun races around our Dreamcast. In addition, this way we can also have a small piece of history, not too well known, but endearing and worthy of praise. Maybe the good heart of the No Cliché guys cost them the closure of the studio, or maybe it was the crazy desire to want to be ahead of their time. But ‘Toy Racer’ is a title that every good Dreamcast fan should not be missing, if only for its meaning.
The best:
The local multiplayer is still very capable of getting us hooked along with three other friends. It is a good example that with little you can do a lot. Its low price made it very accessible at the time.
Worst:
Logically, it does not reach the complexity of other similar titles for Dreamcast such as ‘Wacky Races’. Don’t bother playing it alone, unless you’re curious.