CART Fury: Championship Racing

The Good
The things that make CART Fury fun are the Midway-style driving, slick graphics, and fantasy locations and cars. Besides which, it's the only Midway racing game I know to take a page out of NBA Jam and utilize a "Turbo" meter--except it's called "Boost." You drive an F1 vehicle trying to (of course) pass the other cars, using your finite Boost meter to get yourself ahead. This game's races are in laps, and when you complete a lap in less than the designated time, you get "Superboost," which allows you to leave behind a trail of fire and leave the other drivers way behind. High speed or road rage can lead to crashes, though, and when you crash, it's really something! The scenery on the courses is quite enjoyable, and if you have the stuff to take on harder tracks like a construction site or the Moon (they call the tracks "Hard" and "Expert," but really, it's the CPU rating), it could be your arcade racing fix.

The Bad
Now, you know how I explained the basic gameplay? That was practically the entire gameplay--the game is very mindless. Your Boost Meter is refilled at every checkpoint, and there are no special stunts you can pull off as in the Cruis'n series and Arctic Thunder. The game doesn't have enough reality to make it a sports game, nor does it have nearly enough surreality to make it stand out. It's mediocre. The audio is not that great either. On each track, the music is randomly-selected, and it's often angry hip-hop--sometimes, the repetitive song that plays on the menus. And you've got your crew chief (who doubles as another annoying female Midway announcer), who offers Nobel-winning advice like "Stay off the walls!" and Pulitzer-winning observations such as, "I can't believe you're still in one piece!" PS2 developer Gratuitous Games has also brought a notable absent coolness to the game's presentation, as they did to the initially cool Cruis'n Exotica when it was ported to the N64. The new, hidden cars are very weird, but not cool at all, including a crude wooden Viking car, a retro toy vehicle, and a soapbox derby racer. And any automobiles that could have been cool, like the Alienmobile and the Future Car, lack the shine and detail to look special like the real CART cars. And then, you've got your menus. There is actually a loading period between the mode, track, driver, and transmission-selecting menus! Criminy! So, as you can see by how many more words I used, the bad outweighs the good.

The Bottom Line
CART Fury is fun for nostalgic Midway fans, but it's not enough to add to their list of spectacular (if stupid) driving games. Try it, yea; buy it, nay. I like the team who made the original game, because they went on to do Blitz 20-02--but unless you're a serious arcade racing junkie, don't spend too much time with this one. Only a quick play to the arcade is worth your cash.