Crazy Chicken: Star Karts (2009) (2025)

Oh no! I think I’m getting sucked up into a vortex of

games! I need to pull out before I start a Journey Through

Games or something.

Anyway,

actually surprised me. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I mean, it’s still bad, but it could’ve been worse.

The biggest elephant in the room is the game’s performance. During racing gameplay, it typically runs at 20FPS or even lower. As a result, it looks quite sluggish in action. But, uhh… did I mention I have low standards when it comes to performance? Yes, I did, in my

review, which I also said in my

review that I’ll have to redo at some point, again. So… yeah, I wasn’t actually as bothered by the framerate as some other people may. It's certainly playable in my book. That's why I don't have a book. Obviously, I don’t approve of poor optimization. Perhaps the game should’ve cut on the detail due to DS’s normal limit on the amount of polygons it can render and thus you’d have to chop framerate to increase fidelity… or git gud at coding.

Once you get past the supposed “slide show” of a performance, you’re greeted with… a fairly janky racing game. The controls are pretty standard, accelerate with A and steer with D-Pad. You can hold L for better turning and R can be used to activate a weapon. There’s also a bar that fills on the bottom-left that can be used to activate a speed boost by pressing up on the D-Pad. Interestingly, you don’t get slowed down by walls, you usually just bounce off them or glide along, which means holding acceleration button all the way through is a viable strategy. However, there are obstacles like rocks or such that can slow you down and even damage you. There are also speed boost pads and slow down ones, as well as ones that stun you, reversing steering for a little bit and also slightly slowing you down, all in best traditions.

There are only 4 racers in any given race except for rival races where you race 1v1. Each racer has health that can be depleted. To be honest, I still don’t understand the mechanics of losing health in this game. From what I can understand, the health is displayed on the top screen along with character placements and the track’s map. However, when that bar is depleted, you can get stunned for a while before getting back up, so it’s not clear when your health actually runs out. Running out of health is an instant game over. The idea isn’t bad, there are combat racing games like

. The execution is not that amazing. Though to be honest, I didn’t upgrade my strength stat at all, so I could barely damage anyone.

If there’s an enemy behind you, you typically have a crosshair over you, which indicates that the enemy can shoot you. There are rocket items that can lock onto opponents with said crosshair and mines that can be placed down and slow down your competitors. There are also orbs that you can pick up, and I’m not entirely sure what they’re for, red ones seem to alter the property of the currently equipped weapon, for instance, mines turn into sort of shells from

- you launch them forward and they bounce about. As for blue orbs… shrug. The game could’ve used a tutorial of some sort to explain some of this stuff.

The track design is nothing to write home about. You’re definitely supposed to make use of the map, because some of the tracks don’t have clear readability for turns and stuff. I was fully expecting the game to have 5 tracks, because… I mean, I can’t imagine the game having high budget. To my surprise however, I was half-wrong. There are 5 themes but 10 tracks, so each theme has two unique tracks. The very last tracks is quite obnoxious, with lots of rocks and a few slow down pads placed in the most inconvenient places. And there are tracks where some of the rocks or rock-like objects are even placed after an incline, and you can’t actually float over them – their hitbox extends up indefinitely and you can’t see them until you bump or pass by them, which is poor design in my opinion. At least the AI can also bump into them, giving you an advantage, though it seems random. I even had a situation where my rival got stuck so severely, I won by pure luck.

As I hinted earlier, there’s an upgrade system. You earn star points for racing, even if you lose the race, which means bashing your head against tough obstacles is a valid strategy, though you’re probably better off getting good for better rewards. You can upgrade one of the five attributes: Velocity, Thrust, Strength, Stability and Defense. Once again, I am not entirely sure what does what. Velocity is probably your overall speed and how fast you accelerate, but what does Thrust actually do? What does Stability do, make you better at turning? These are important questions.

The music is pretty mediocre. I don’t think

games and “good music” should be mutually exclusive. The music tracks are a bit generic, and it’s obvious when they loop. The sound effects are hilariously bad, picking up items sounds like farts, and bumping into other cars gives out a loud metallic bang. When you hit an opponent with a weapon, your character cheers, which also sounds stupid, at least with Moorhuhn at the helm. The graphics aren’t too bad, but as I said, the performance is not great. I wouldn’t have minded if they scaled them down if we had a more consistent framerate.

If the framerate issues were fixed and the level design was tweaked, I could see this as a FINE racing game. Not gooooooood, but not bad. Ultimately though,

is not a very high quality game. The technical side is pretty poor, and the presentation is mediocre. The racing mechanics are pretty standard if a little janky with some frustrating level design or AI. I have to say though, I might unironically like this more than the infamous

. At least this game ends quickly, the story mode is only 10 levels + a few rival races and the AI doesn’t feel so cheatsy.