Grand Prix Mania

Ever heard of Grand Prix Mania, an unlicensed game that was both developed, & published(or at least they seemed to self published it. I mean, who ELSE would publish this game?) by Speedy Games Ltd. in the United States in 1994? Heck, do I even want to talk about this game? Seriously, this game is not worth talking about at all, & I don't even feeling like giving it to even my worst enemy. Do you want to know why I don't want to talk about this game? Well, I'll tell you why.

Before I do however, I'll tell you how I found out about this game. I was browsing around some 90s gaming magazine scans when I then found an interesting piece of text on a GamePro June 1994 magazine scan. The text read:

"And also coming soon, an NES exclusive video game by Speedy Games Ltd. called Grand Prix Mania will be released this August. Speedy Games Ltd. has said that the game is 100% complete, but from what was shown at an unknown convention at their home state of Arizona, you'll see that for something that's said to be '100% complete' it doesn't really look like that, or at least that's what some people say."

Apparently, despite being 100% complete, it didn't seem to look that way. I then saw a piece of text from a fellow person who saw it. He described the game as "something barely passing the alpha stage, & boy do I mean barely". This, sounded like it was really poorly produced, but maybe this was done just to make it much more rare, but I digress. I decided to stop looking at the scans, & go to a flea market near me. This flea market had no name what-so-ever, but was filled with lots of sellers. One of those sellers believe it or not had a copy of that game.

I was actually really surprised to see that I managed to find a copy of this game in the wild, especially about after looking at a magazine that mentioned it. Even more surprising is that it had the box too, so it made this a big wow for me. So, I bought the game which was for $5, & went back home, & opened the box up to reveal the cartridge, & manual, or what I assumed to be the manual for the game. In reality, it was actually a piece of paper saying that we had to release it unlicensed as LJN apparently rejected the game after playtesting despite Nintendo of America approving the game.

I thought nothing of that piece of paper at that time, & went to get my NES, plug in, & drag the cartridge inside of the console. When I turned the console on, it went straight to the title screen. No logos at all, no fading to it, just the title screen accompanied by ear bleedingly loud music that was insanely high pitched. This made me get my remote, & turn down the volume before my ears start gushing out blood. Then I saw the title screen itself, & it was literally just a screen saying, "Grand Prix Mania", & it was in plain black text on a gray background. Nothing else.

"Huh, looks like they didn't finish the title screen on time. Maybe they just looked at the title screen?", I said. However though, once I pressed start, I realised why they said it didn't seem to look 100% complete.

When I pressed start, I was then put into the car selection screen, & WOW did it look unfinished. They were all just squares, with the only differences being that they were in different puke awful colors. Yup, not just any kind of color. I said, PUKE AWFUL. They were all in the most disgusting, puke inducing, vile colors on the NES I've ever seen. I went to turn up the volume to see what the music was like, but to my surprise there was no music at all. In fact, there were no sounds throughout my selection. So, I decided to select "Dragster" because I like Dragster for the Atari 2600, & I was immediately put into a race.

Before the race itself started, an awful 20 second piece of music played, & somehow even worse than the last. Not only was it super high pitched, & ear bleedingly loud, but it sounded horribly off-sync. Now, you might say that the cartridge must've been damaged, but I opened up BEFORE putting it into the console, & it was in near perfect quality. The only smidge of damage I saw was that the paper on the cartridge was a little torn off. Once the race started, oh boy did it become awful. The race track was a simple circle, but it was really hard, & for all the wrong reasons!

The controls? Freaking atrocious. You have to wait about two seconds just to get your action to work, & even then, it only goes ONCE, so you're gonna have to repeatedly press all over the D-pad. Not just that, but in order to accelerate, you had to press both A & B at the same time. How are you supposed to guess that without mashing the buttons!? Oh, & you move SLOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW as it goes 1 pixel at a time. Sometimes, the waiting goes up for four, or even five seconds just for your action to happen. To make matters worse, left goes right, & right goes left. Yup, they reversed the controls in this game. Talk about being a bunch of dumb developers who didn't even know what's left, & what's right!

The gameplay? Are you sure about that? It's just the exact same race over, & over, & over again. I counted, you race it 20 TIMES in this entire game, & after that, that's it, the game is over, there's nothing else to do besides pick a differently colored version of the exact same square, & race them again. Oh, & you think that they could add some scenery to the races, but NOPE, it's just the track itself. No fence, no house, not even an audience! Just a boring race track that is played 20 times. Why would the developers decide to just copy, & paste the same track instead of making new tracks is beyond my concerns. It's like these developers didn't even care about the quality of the game itself!

Oh, & since I talked about what the gameplay was like, you could easily guess that there is no reason to replay this game, or "game" as I should write it as because I'm virtually questioning if this can even COUNT as one. I already mention the god awful music, & the graphics that barely pass for even a home made ZX Spectrum game, what freaking else is there to mention? Maybe the fact that once you race the same darn track 20 times, it just sets back to the title screen with no credits, no ending, not even a simple "THE END" screen?

Oh wait, that piece of paper. After 3 HOURS of trying to complete this piece of crap(yes, I had the patience to actually complete this garbage pail game), it actually made me question. Was the quality of the game the reason why LJN, the subsidiary of Acclaim Entertainment rejected it? Was this game so awful, so udderly putrid that not even the LJN logo will describe how bad this game would be? Whatever the case, I am very glad that Acclaim rejected the game because this game is now what I consider to be the WORST NES game. Worse than Terminator 2, worse than Back To the Future Part 2 & 3, worse than Dr.Jekyll And Mr.Hyde, worse than even Action 52. This game tops them all when it comes to terrible quality. However though, this is simply my own personal opinion. If you disagree with me, that's fine. Like what the Shadow Reader said, "We are all entitled to our opinions". Overall, I give this absolute pile of tragedy of a game a 1/100. See you guys later, & have a great rest of your day. Bye!