The stylus is also used for avoiding collisions with other racers as well as repairing the vehicle after an attack or encounter with an opponent’s weapon or booby trap. But wait - there are more bells and whistles. Blowing into the microphone will boost your speed during the final lap. Hopefully you’re not far-sighted, or you won’t be able to see what’s happening on the screen while it’s directly in front of your face.

It just doesn’t make any sense to have to do this other than to exploit the DS’s features. I’ve always heard you should never directly blow into a microphone, as it will damage the sensitive diaphragm. For whatever reason, more games seem to require blowing into it rather than talking into it. So, if your mic stops working one day, you’ll know why.

Power-up widgets are collected along the course by driving over them. These give all the vehicles identical abilities, which makes it more difficult to tell them apart. Power-ups include speed boosts, damage shields, and the ability to fly over the pack by being picked up by a pterodactyl. Other specialty power-ups allow you to launch various assaults on your opponents including turning your vehicle into a huge rock and literally rolling over the competition. You don’t have to use the power-up immediately. You can collect two and use them at your discretion by using the D-pad to select the appropriate icon and then deploy it.

The game is colorful and looks every bit as good as the original cartoon did some 40 years ago. The characters, vehicles, and tracks are cel-shaded, giving it a very professional look. There are 24 different tracks in all, but in true Hanna-Barbera style, some sections repeat as though they are on a loop. Perspectives continually change, making it more difficult to keep track of the track when using the stylus. These varied camera angles are indented to replicate the visual aspect of the TV series, but they are not suited for such an interactive game. The tunes and the voiceovers are largely forgettable. The sound effects are pure cartoon, and were obviously culled from the “universal cartoon library” of boffs, skids, thuds, smacks, and crashes.

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Wacky Racers is still a better cartoon than a game. Crash and Dash is proof of that.

By Cole Smith
CCC Senior Writer