I’m opening this review by confidently noting this – to at least one major degree, this game is not what you think it is.
was released exclusively in Europe, for the two entirely similar platforms – the PS2 and the Game Boy Color. Oh, and also it’s based on The Fifth Element.
…the finest film ever made about boron. Or love, or whatever. Multipass.
As you might expect, the GBC version of New York Race is a bit barebones – you drive what appears to be Korben Dallas’s taxi cab for a few laps around a handful of different race courses.
I’m gonna keep this pretty brief – What New York Race does best may be its overall pace – especially for a game on a portable console, it feels decently fast-paced (but not so much so that it’s impossible to tell what’s going on). Speed feels essential to a game this ostensibly futuristic, so that’s a nice thing to see. For a portable game, it also controls decently – it feels a bit like RC Pro-Am, but with larger levels. It is, for lack of a better word, functional.
What it doesn’t do well is, well, most other things. The game’s levels and vehicles aren’t especially varied or interesting, and it’s difficult to know where and when to turn at times. In fairness, a lot of these things are limited by the Game Boy Color hardware, but it’s still really disappointing to see how little variety the game has. The game’s AI is also extremely punishing, meaning that if you briefly hit a wall or otherwise slow down early on in a race, you probably aren’t catching up.
For a game based on something with a vibrant aesthetic like The Fifth Element, it’s also pretty disconcerting how drab and unexciting this game is. I didn’t expect a whole lot, seeing as how this is a Game Boy Color port of a PS2 game, but I thought there’d at least be something. That PS2 version, by the way, nails the aesthetic:
If there’s any random old racing game that really shouldn’t have a boring color palette or general vibe, it’s probably this one. This would be like releasing a game based on Reservoir Dogs that contained no violence or Stealers Wheel. Lots of shovelware sorts of games end up being lifeless and unimpressive, but this one seriously stings. What do you get when you take all of the glam and weirdness out of The Fifth Element? As it turns out, not much. I was pretty excited to learn about a Europe-exclusive racing game based on one of my favorite dorky sci-fi films, but the end result was a huge bummer.
Our next game is, thankfully, not going to break my heart quite so much. It’s a lesser known game in a genre that got pretty darn big in the early 90s – how well has it aged? You’ll have to check back to find out.