LEGO Racers

• NA release: 12th October 1999
• PAL release: 1st December 1999
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: High Voltage
• Publisher: LEGO Media
• N64 Magazine Score: 70%

LEGO and racing is a combination that really works well together. The various LEGO themes (especially before they got into licensed stuff) provide a lot of different settings, and the customisable aspect helps give a bit of personality. In LEGO Racers, you can create your own driver, and also customise your car, starting with an available chassis and adding some bricks on top, unlocking more as you progress. The builder is a bit fiddly and limited, but does a good enough job.

For the racing, the courses are nice and colourful (although could do with more LEGO elements), featuring 13 tracks overall, with three mirrored cups, and one final race against Rocket Racer. The driving itself is a bit twitchy, but gets the job done, with coloured bricks for weapons (different colours are for certain items, like Diddy Kong Racing). The biggest issue with LEGO Racers is that each race has a runaway leader, and if you use all the various items and race normally, you’re likely going to be in a distant second place.

Really, the only way to succeed is with the white bricks. These attach to your items to power them up. But even with these, there’s only one that will actually help you: the green boost. When attached to three white bricks, you’ll get a wormhole boost that will warp you significantly ahead in the track. This is really the only way to win, so it’s generally best to ignore all the weapons and other racers, and just gather the white bricks and hope a green one has spawned.

It’s really a bit of a shame, as the game changes into more of learning which route have the white bricks and warping ahead, and the game turns from ridiculously difficult to immensely easy. The idea behind how the weapons work is a nice one, and should add an element of tactics on when you use the weapons, but the wormhole boost being so vital just reduces the tactics to only one valid method.

Fun

The handling is twitchy and imprecise, so it’s annoyingly difficult to adjust your line to grab the right power-up, and the results of the three-lap races are usually determined at the start. If you mistime your turbo, it’s often impossible to catch the leader – you can race like Schumacher, but you’ll finish third or fourth, with the race winner almost a full lap ahead.

Martin Kitts, N64 Magazine #36

Remake or remaster?

I think it’s time for a new LEGO Racer. As long as they include some retro LEGO themes and stay away from the licensed stuff.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get LEGO Racers.

Europe

Japan

North America

lego N64 racing