Micro Machines

Everywhere’s a race track. Get ready to roll!

EU release: 17th January 2003
NA release: N/A
JP release: N/A
Developer: Infogrames Sheffield House
Publisher: Infogrames
NGC Magazine: 57%
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

While Micro Machines games are usually developed or published by Codemasters, this one was published by Infogrames and developed by their Sheffield House studio (better known as Gremlin Interactive), who had an interesting history, temporarily owning DMA Design but encountering issues due to the poor sales of Body Harvest on N64, with Sumo Digital rising from their ashes when they were closed down in 2003.

Micro Machines is a game about racing toy cars around, with the original games being a lot of fun. This one is a “reboot” that was promptly ignored by the next game. The levels all revolve around some creepy looking guy (who appears to be a mad scientist and murderer) across a bunch of locations. While there’s a decent variety on show, the most iconic part of Micro Machines is missing: just racing through regular parts of a house. There’s also not much sense of fun in the levels. There’s a temple where you drop down onto drums and there’s no sound effect, which was just extremely noticeable.

Each theme has three levels: two regular tracks for the main modes, and a longer one for the “GP” mode, which is a checkpoint-based race which changes your vehicle depending on what part of the track you’re on. The water levels look rather nice, but there’s just something missing. Also missing is the speed, as the game feels fun, and the camera is quite bad, being disorientating when it turns around. It does have some enjoyable multiplayer modes, but the bland tracks makes those a step down from previous games.

Poor

The track design – even on the supposedly more difficult courses – is simplistic and predictable, going where you expect it to go and never going where you don’t. Worse, the weapons – rockets, speed-ups, magnets, flamethrowers, frying pans – become almost entirely redundant, as you streak ahead in races, never to see the other three competitors again. At points, we found ourselves slowing to a halt just to inject a bit of excitement into the game. It’s that bad.
Tim Weaver, NGC Magazine #78

Remake or remaster?

Only in a complete Micro Machines collection.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to get this Micro Machines game.