When I was a little boy in my neighborhood, all the cool kids had electric slot car racing sets; naturally, I had a model train set. Granted, I was still the coolest kid in my 'hood rocking my Lionel Union Pacific railroad...of course, the festival of wedgies, noogies and random dog chasings I was the victim of didn't back that theorem up. I've since grown up into a fine young citizen, able to easily savage those heartless, car-racing bastards with broken beer bottles, pool cues and such nowadays. However, developer King of The Jungle and publisher Encore Software have given me another, shank-free method of rectifying the material flaws of my childhood. Grooverider: Slot Car Thunder for the Nintendo GameCube is a budget-priced rendition of the slot car racing you grew up with, in videogame form; all that's missing is the grip controller and the screams of rival racers. Seems sort of cool, huh? Indeed, on paper this is a pretty good idea for a game, but the execution calls for that old adage, "things aren't always what they seem"...

Much like the real thing, the racing in Grooverider couldn't possibly be any simpler. Players select one of the many different slot cars, and race them against the computer or other players around increasingly tricky, obstacle and stunt-laden tracks. That's pretty much it, really; at first, this might be very unnerving, but it soon becomes apparent that this faithfulness to slot car racing and its simplicity lends the game an arcadey, easy-to-pick-up style of gameplay that comes off nicely, so you learn to accept it, just like that cat-throwing lady on your block that tries to make you rub her back. (Everyone has one of those on their block. EVERYONE.) However, the simple gameplay design is a double-edged sword...

Control is as frustratingly limited and flaky as it is simple. Players accelerate and brake with the Control Stick; that ends all control functionality for the stick. Why? Because there are no real steering options, no real maneuverability, and no real turning; the only thing you can do is "strafe" left or right across the track into other lanes with the L or R Triggers. Mind you, when you're doing this with real slot cars on real slot car tracks, that's a bad-ass technique...unfortunately, it doesn't translate well to games, especially with games nowadays being all about options and freedom of motion. When you're racing though, such control qualms will be the least of your problems with the game.

You'll break your time on Grooverider into equal portions of cursing at the obligatorily messed-up game camera, which enjoys making it impossible to see an obstacle on some tracks until its right in your face; hunting down the people responsible for the ultra-touchy physics model, which has you flying off the track if you so much as look at the Control Stick too much; or just straight out bawling incessantly as a result of the cheap AI. The AI is a particularly sore spot for me. I've played more games than most normal people are proud to admit, and I've seen all manner of AI designs. In all honesty, Grooverider's AI is cheap enough to make Mario Kart's AI look like Pong's; no foolin'. In light of all those deficiencies, Grooverider doesn't totally do wrong on the videogame side of things. There are a healthy number of unique tracks, a lot of slot cars to choose from and a multiplayer mode to take your buddies on with. With the effort that King of The Jungle put into adding extra stuff to the game and staying true to real-life slot car racing, it's a buzzkill to see the gameplay be so fundamentally broken, videogame-wise.

The visuals are dull and devoid of much color, which is sad considering that this is a digital representation of a normally vibrant childhood favorite hobby. The cars, tracks and structures are comprised out of an almost N64 amount of polygons, and the texturework does its best to back that up with blurry, grainy and repetitive textures. The "special effects", or more aptly, “the array of crappy particle things and pseudo-lighting stuff that the game does occasionally”, are lame. On top of all that, the framerate stutters and sputters regularly in gameplay. The sound and music aren't even worth talking about; it wouldn't even be fair to refer to them as "SNES quality", because that'd do a disservice to the innumerable great tunes that the SNES produced.

Grooverider: Slot Car Thunder is definitely worthy of its budget price, because it's definitely a budget effort in every way you can think of. It's a nice shot at recapturing some of the excitement of slot car racing from youth, but as a game it couldn't lack in any more ways than it already does. If you're looking to do some racing on GameCube, there are tons of better racers to try. If you really have to do some slot car racing, you'd be better off to dig in your attic for your slot car set. As for me, I'm going to go beat up some of my old neighbors and take their slot car sets...and then have my trains crash into them. That's a better use of time than playing this game anymore, unfortunately.