Nickelodeon Kart Racers

Don't let the gameplay trailer fool you. Here we'd be joining a nowhere near elite roster of champions in a nowhere near ultimate race against slime.

### Release

NA: October 23, 2018EU: October 26, 2018AU: November 2, 2018

### Series

*Nicktoons*

***Nickelodeon Kart Racers*** is a 2018 racing game developed by Bamtang Games and published by GameMill Entertainment. It was released on October 23, 2018 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

## Why It Doesn't Win

1. It is just a blatant *Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed* rip-off, due to having similar mechanics of transforming your car.
2. No voiceovers at all. It was 2018, and there was no excuse for lack of voices in non-retro styled video games. It's obvious that Bamtang couldn't get a hold of the characters' original actors, but couldn't they at least have similar-sounding replacement actors from their country provide the voices for their respective characters?
	* **False advertising:** In the trailer, there were noticeable voiceovers for the characters. In the final game, however, there are no voiceovers, as stated above.
	* The game resorts to using text boxes next to the characters, which results in awkward one-liners.
3. Short roster, as there are only 12 characters, and there's a lack of any other Nickelodeon characters other than ones from *SpongeBob SquarePants*, *Rugrats*, *Hey Arnold!*, and *Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles*.
4. Speaking of the characters, *Rugrats* (currently one of Nickelodeon's most popular and well-received shows) isn't really represented well in this game. For example:
	* Of all the characters from that show who appear in the game, Tommy, Angelica, and Reptar are the only playable ones.
	* The character models and CGI for Tommy and Angelica have only sixteen fingers, four on each hand.
	* The track set in Tommy's house features the house in an L-shape, but in the actual show, Tommy's house is in a perfect square shape save for his garage.
5. Awful graphics which look like an Xbox 360 or a Wii U launch title instead of an eighth generation game.
6. Controls are stiff which makes the driving hard to control.
7. Unlike the three games that this game is a rip-off of, there is no online multiplayer, which is unjustifiable since this was released in 2018 (sure, you had to pay for a membership, but at least *S&ASRT*, *MK7*, and *MK8* had online multiplayer).
8. The game has bugs which crash the game or briefly lock up the game on loading screens.
9. Menus are rather unfinished and lazily done:
	* When you select Next Race after completing the last race in a cup, there's actually no race after that. Instead, the final results show up.
	* After selecting a track in Time Attack, you can set the speed, but there is no AI, even though the AI options are shown.
10. At launch, the game costed $39.99, which was way too high for the quality of the game.

## Redeeming Qualities

1. The soundtrack is tolerable.
2. The CGI versions of the normally 2D characters look really decent.
3. Some of the courses are fun, such as Glove Universe/Glovey Glove's Festival of Lights.

## Reception

The game received "generally unfavorable" reviews on all platforms according to Metacritic.

*Nintendo Life* gave the game a 3/10, criticizing it for the lack of voice acting, and the roster size which lacks characters from other Nickelodeon shows such as baby shows (the Nick Jr. category), live-action shows, *The Fairly OddParents*, *The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius*, *Invader Zim*, *Avatar: The Last Airbender*, *The Loud House*, *Back at the Barnyard*, and others.

*PlayStation LifeStyle* gave the game a slightly higher score of 5.5/10, stating that "while [it] provides plenty of content and has smart references that integrate well with some very solid racing, the poor visuals and botched battle mode leave plenty to be desired. If you accept the game for what it is there’s definitely some fun to be had but its shortcomings are jarring enough to require some substantial blinders."

*DualShockers* panned the game with a 2/10 rating, calling it "a sin masquerading as a video game, and now we must all wish for forgiveness."

## Trivia

* This is one of the last Nickelodeon-related video games to be released during the lifetime of Stephen Hillenburg, the creator of *SpongeBob SquarePants*.
* It was thought that characters from twelve different Nicktoons were to be in the game, but the press release was later corrected by Bamtang to say it was only going to have twelve characters.
* Bamtang also said they might release DLC after the game releases to add more characters. However, as of now, no new characters were added. But on June 10, 2020, a sequel, *Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix*, was leaked by Target, and was announced the next day. The sequel was released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on October 6, 2020, and for Microsoft Windows on December 1, 2020, and includes characters from other Nickelodeon shows such as *The Loud House*, *Danny Phantom*, *Avatar: The Last Airbender*, *Invader Zim*, etc. A third game in the franchise, called *Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway*, will be released on October 7, 2022.
* *PAW Patrol: On a Roll*, another Nickelodeon-related game, was released on the exact same day as this game's North American release.