Freaky Flyers | DJcube

Feelin’ Freaky?

NA release: 8th August 2003
JP release: N/A
EU release: N/A
Developer: Midway, Point of View
Publisher: Midway
NGC Magazine Score: N/A
Mods Used: Widescreen Hack

One thing I’m starting to dread from games like this are the characters, as they’re often obnoxious and unlikable. However, while the characters in Freaky Flyers are rather bad stereotypes, they also somehow have a charm to them. Each one also has fully CGI cutscenes for the story mode (where you go play though each race and minigames), which is enough to need two discs.

The races are airborne kart style races (a bit like Diddy Kong Racing) with power ups. The controls are a bit funky, as your plane constantly wants to go downwards, meaning you have to keep pulling back on the stick to go in a straight line. The tracks have some great designs and are very active and busy, with lots to collect and interact with.

A lot of these elements are also extra objectives you can complete for bonuses. Each level has collectables, and killing all your opponents is another, but then there are more unique ones, like helping a giant robot defeat an attacking kaiju, putting out fires or freeing a damsel in distress that’s attached to a western train track.

During races, though, the reward for completing these objectives is quite poor, such as getting a second item slot. None of it helps as much as just taking the shortest racing line. The only reason to complete them is if you really want to unlock all the characters (most unlockable ones can’t be used in the campaign). I feel like these objectives would be much better if the story mode gave each character a different objective to complete in each race. This would give you more reason to do the objectives and also make each playthrough different.

There’s also some minigames such as a rather difficult one where you have to defend a fort, and one where you’re shrunk and have to fly through veins, avoiding white blood cells before making your way to a nose to escape the body. It’s all wacky and fun, although bugs (a few times I could suddenly fly through walls, but couldn’t interact with anything) and the poor rewards for objectives let it down.

Fun

Overall, Freaky Flyers is a fun game, but fans of this type of game might be best to either break out their dusty Super NESes or N64s and play one of the Mario Kart titles or wait until Mario Kart: Double Dash!! comes out for GameCube. However, if taking to the air holds some interest, do as the marketing material says and “get your freak on.”
Chris Talbot, Game Over

Remake or remaster?

A smoother version would be nice to see.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Freaky Flyers.