When I asked for new ideas for weekly blog topics, a good friend of mine gave me the idea to start posting some of my favorite retro games. I know it's usually not a good idea to take your favorite oldie but goldie and put it right in your first post, but when someone asks me what my favorite games from yesteryear are I usually think of one game: Uniracers for the Super Nintendo.
Uniracers (Unirally in Europe) was a game that pitted you against either the computer or one other player in a 2D race. Think of it as that cool mode in Sonic 2 but without enemies, powerups, or water, and instead of Sega's mascots you're unicycles. Just moving wouldn't be fun, however, and so you can do tricks along the way to speed yourself up (or slow down if you screwed up). It's an incredibly simple concept, but it worked so well that even today the game remains fun and challenging.
One of my favorite memories with the game was when, for one reason or another, I brought the game over to a friend's house. The game had a "League" mode that paired people up together and awarded points based on your time after everyone in that league raced; up to 8 players, two at a time, could be in a league, and your stats were saved. Somehow, this random game that no one else had heard of became a regular evemt when hanging out over there, and we even filled the league up to its 8 player maximum. We were all in our late high school years or early college years and it was pretty rare when we could all agree on a game to play or keep everyone on task in that game, so to have everyone willingly playing this goofy title that I didn't even think anyone would like was a pleasant surprise.
There are few games I wish had WiiWare updates, and this is one of them. Sadly, thanks to the stupidity of Pixar's lawsuit back in the day (the only bad thing I think I've ever said about the company), Uniracers will probably never see the light of day again, either as just a Super NES Virtual Console title or a potentially awesome WiiWare remake. It makes me a little sad that this game never got the chance it deserved to take off, as it's easily one of my favorite titles from my younger years and a game that's still fun today.
Here's to you, Uniracers.
*Pours one out for Uniracers*
ReplyDeleteIt would be a beautiful online play, and would be positively orgasmic with a level editor. And I just gave my old SNES away to my brother. Sad.
Dude, some of the absolute best memories of ANY game come from playing against you in Uniracers. Such good times.
ReplyDeleteThis game NEEDs to come back. It doesn't even need many upgrades, just online play. New tracks aren't even needed, but a level editor would definitely be as awesome as Jason said above.
ReplyDeleteThe only upgrade I'd add to this wishlist would be for a way to get the Triple Mega and Mega City tricks; I've seen it confirmed that those tricks didn't actually exist.