 The gaming world is rife with combat racing games, everything from the Mario Kart series to Need for Speed, and even smaller lesser known titles like Konami Crazy Racers. But here's another Game Boy Advance game that takes combat racing in a different kind of direction, with Car Battler Joe, which combines combat racing with roleplaying game elements. It's not the first game to do this, for instance the PlayStation alone has stuff like Ridge Racer R4 and Racing Lagoon just to name a couple racing RPGs, but this is still a pretty unique game. You might know the developer, Ancient, who's made games ranging from Act Razor 2 and Robo Trek on the Super Nintendo to Beyond Oasis on Sega Genesis all the way to Shenmue on Dreamcast. In other words, they tend to specialize in games that can be tough to pin down to one specific trait or genre, and sure enough, Car Battler Joe fits that motif, and this is the only game that they ended up developing on the Game Boy Advance. Joe is a 16 year old kid, and this guy's really into combat racing, or just generally smashing into things. His friends recognize his talent for this unique skill, to the point that Joe even receives a gun vehicle control module for his birthday. Joe is obsessed with combat racing to the point that he wants to find his dad who apparently ran off to become the biggest baddest combat racer in all the land or something, so you go around talking to people collecting clues and entering races all with the ultimate goal of trying to find your dad. The racing in combat takes place from an overhead Mode 7 viewpoint, where you fire at enemies and obstacles using all sorts of weapons, everything from bombs, napalm, lasers, even saw blades, but you're mostly using your default machine gun. Unfortunately, the game got a little too cutesy with the weapon system here, sure all the different weapons are fun to have, but the game automatically switches between them depending on how far away the enemy is. In other words, you have to stop shooting for a moment to get the right weapon equipped for the right situation, it's pretty awkward. Anyway, your car itself can gain special abilities, everything from jumping and speed boosts, and these are cool because they allow you to go back to previous areas and find new stuff, like upgrades for your vehicle. The thing is though, as far as the mission structure here goes, it sounds a lot more interesting on paper than it is in practice. The meat and potatoes of the gameplay boil down to just running fetch quests for people, completing missions, and get from one point to another faster than another person. For instance, one job has you driving a pop singer to a concert. Sure, okay. Also, the beginning of Car Battler Joe is really gonna turn some people off, because as you might expect, since this is an RPG, you get to level up your car and build it up from scratch. Hey wait, that's actually kinda cool, right? Well, it is, eventually, but the problem is that your car absolutely sucks when you first start out, the handling is bad, it's too slow, your weapon's kinda flimsy, it's a total bummer. I get what they were going for here, but I think they went a bit too far, and as a result, I think a lot of people put this one down pretty quickly. Still, once you run a few jobs and get some basics to fix up your car, the game gets a lot better. One interesting facet here in Car Battler Joe is this kind of simulation element. Enemies or obstacles can drop resources after you make them go boom, and you can choose to take back what they drop and use what you find for a variety of different purposes. You can sell it for money, you can deliver it to someone or exchange it for something else, or you can use it to build up your own garage. This gives the game kind of an open-ended feel to it, which is kinda cool. Speaking of open-ended, as far as the story goes, things start out in a linear fashion, you win your first tournament, but pretty much after that, you're on your own to really go out and find the story, so to speak. Whether that's doing jobs for people, exploring towns, building your garage, or just, you know, fighting. You also meet characters like Marion, Joe's love interest, and Ken, your racing rival. But I'll admit, the story here isn't all that compelling, it's pretty generic stuff, in fact, but to its credit, Car Battler Joe isn't the kind of game that holds your hand. To the point that it allows you, the player, to control the pace, to a certain extent, so I appreciate that. The thing is, once you do advance the story toward the end of the game, it really feels thrown together and almost incomplete at times. The point is, while I appreciate how the story is laid out, I don't think it's a good enough reason to play this one on its own. The combat is what carries the show here. So yeah, Car Battler Joe is a great example of a hit or miss game. For every good quality or interesting gameplay mechanic, there's something equally as bad or annoying. The combat is fun, but it should have been streamlined to be a bit more player-friendly. The resource collecting is interesting, but the menu system can really get clunky and cumbersome. The music is really good, but the visual presentation falls kind of flat, with a lot of settings getting repeated. Still, I do think there's more good than bad here. I like just about any game that allows you to explore for stuff, find rare items, and then level them up, almost like a mech strategy game like Front Mission. And I do really like this game's use of the Mode 7 perspective. Once you've built up your card of something usable, it's fun to drive around and just blow stuff up. But still, the flaws I pointed out are going to be deal breakers for some of you out there, so I have to point them out. Despite the flaws, however, I do think Car Battler Joe is worth trying out. And I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.