 When you think of 16-bit era racing games, it's usually pretty simple. You drive, you try and win a race, and in the case of stuff like Mario Kart or Battle Racers, blow some stuff up along the way. Uniracers, or Unirally as it was named in PAL regions, try something completely different. This is a one-on-one 2D side-scrolling racing game where you race as an unmanned unicycle on a track that's laid out like something you'd see in a Sonic game. It's pretty weird at first glance. And this is a good example of a game that people may quickly write off because, well, it's pretty wonky. Uniracers is one of those games where you really gotta read the instruction manual first to get a good sense of what the game expects of the player. This is not your ordinary racing game. First, there's how your unicycle controls. You simply press forward to accelerate and press B to jump, which you have to use to perform stunts, and a successfully completed stunt results in a burst of speed. This can be very tricky though because it operates kind of like an excite bike where you have to land squarely on the ground after a jump, so you don't lose any momentum, and that'll take a little bit of practice. Some stunts are pretty easy where it's just a matter of jumping and holding a shoulder button to roll or flip and making sure that you land properly. You not only get a burst of speed, but the game will tell you the name of the stunt you just pulled, like Dude or Radical or whatever. What is this, the special bonus world in Super Mario World? Anyway, you can also press the A button to twist and the X button to perform a higher difficulty stunt called a Z, but you need a lot of speed and a lot of air to pull that stuff off. Again, if you're just playing this for the first time, it's tempting to just mash buttons and try and pull off absurd stunts, but if you do that, you're gonna have a bad time. These stunts take practice. The other huge aspect that makes Uniracers stand out are the tracks themselves. There's nine total circuits that each feature five tracks, and among those five tracks are different styles of courses. There's sprints, loops, and stunt courses, so that's a massive amount of variety. But here's where it pays to read the instruction book. In order to win races and progress through the game, you have to be paying close attention to the color of the track itself. The colors are meant to signal what's coming up. For example, red and blue indicate that some kind of loop or jump is coming, yellow indicates a hazard is nearby, and green and blue usually means that it's okay to try and hit some stunts to increase your speed. The thing is, after a while, you build up so much speed that it becomes so tricky to try and keep up with what the track is asking of you that it gets really hard. There are times when it seems like the track hits a dead end and you have no idea which is the right direction to go. So yeah, like in any other game predicated on Twitch controls and precise timing, Uniracers is going to make you fail and rage quit at least a few times before you're able to progress through the game. It can get really frustrating at times. A few other things I should mention quickly. There is a two player versus mode and split screen, and there's 16 different unicycles you can choose from. But as far as I can tell, there's no difference in them in terms of speed or weight or acceleration or anything. It's pretty much just 16 different colors. Also, the music here is worth pointing out. There's only five tracks, but they all sound great. It's got kind of a rock and roll racing vibe to it, only with original tracks instead of covers. So that's pretty impressive. The graphics here are also to be commended. They kept it simple with some rather plain backgrounds, but I think that's for the better because there's more than enough here they have to try and concentrate on. Some random trivia I should mention as well. Uniracers was developed by DMA Design, who later became Rockstar North, who of course later went on to make the Grand Theft Auto series. After this game was released, DMA Design was sued by Pixar of all people. They claimed their unicycle design was stolen from an old Pixar short titled Red's Dream, which really seems ridiculous. I mean, how many ways can you digitally create a unicycle anyway? The judge ruled in favor of Pixar, so production of Uniracers cartridges had to be stopped after its initial run of 300,000 copies. Hey, if anything positive came out of that, it's that Uniracers is one of the few cartridges where we actually have hard data on how many copies are out there. You can't say that about too many other games. Anyway, Uniracers is a pretty good game, but it's made for a certain kind of player. I give it tons of credit for putting an entirely new twist, figuratively and literally, on the racing genre. The visuals are great, the music is well done, and it's got a lot of personality. For example, if you try and rename a unicycle, Sega or Sonic, the game will tell you that that name isn't cool enough. All right, that's pretty funny. The thing is though, Uniracers is definitely not for everyone, the difficulty and steep learning curve are gonna turn some people away. It's pretty tough to get used to the ever-changing tracks and keeping track of the color changes. And the final circuit where you have to race the final boss, Anti-Uni, is where the game gets laughably difficult because he can throw hazards at you like slowing you down to hedgehog speed. Wah, wah. But yeah, Uniracers is definitely a game for a cult audience. The people who like this one really like this one, but as with all cult games, it's a cult game for a reason, for better or for worse. And I wanna thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.