JAHK Team Racing

The cover for JAHK Team Racing (2022)

*JAHK Team Racing* was a video game for the PlayStation 2 that featured the various personas of JAHKula and the rest of the Halloween Album Universe. The game released in 2020 and would be praised by critics for its new and engaging race mechanics, leading to a 2022 sequel titled *JAHK Team Racing 2: Jahk goes Wack!*, which added characters from the Christmas Album into the fray.

## Game Mechanics

*JAHK Team Racing* is a kart racing game in which the player controls characters from the Halloween Album universe, most of whom compete in karts. While racing, the player can accelerate, steer, reverse, brake, hop or use weapons and power-ups with the game controller's analog stick and buttons. Two distinct forms of crates are scattered throughout the tracks and arenas of *JAHK Team Racing*. Crates with question marks on them hold power-ups and weapons, which can be obtained by driving through and breaking apart said crates. When the player collects a weapon or power-up, it will appear in a box at the top of the screen. The player can activate the weapon or power-up to wreak havoc on the other racers or supplement the player's own performance. Purple crates with the menacing kanji carry "Malevolent Energy Capsules" that increase the speed of the player's kart and strengthen the player's weapons and power-ups if ten of them are obtained.

A crucial maneuver in *JAHK Team Racing* is the power slide; the player executes the slide by holding down one of the shoulder buttons to perform a hop, and steering before the kart lands. While sliding, the "Turbo Boost Meter" on the lower-right corner of the screen fills up and goes from green to red. At the same time, the exhaust gas from the player's kart turns black. To get a speed boost, the player quickly presses the opposite shoulder button while the Turbo Boost Meter is red. The player can execute three speed boosts in a row during a power slide, with the third speed boost being more powerful than the previous two. If the player waits too long into the power slide for a boost, the kart back-fires and the chance for a speed boost is lost; power sliding for too long causes a spin-out. Aside from power slides, speed boosts can be obtained by gathering hang time when leaping over gaps in the track. The longer the player is in the air, the bigger the speed boost will be when the kart lands.

### Modes

*JAHK Team Racing* features 5 racing modes: Adventure, Time Trial, Arcade, Versus and Battle. In each mode, the player selects 1 from 8 characters to control. A PlayStation multitap can be installed to allow three or four-player games. The "Adventure Mode" is a one-player game where the player must race through all of the tracks and arenas in the game and collect as many trophies, Relics, Boss Keys, JTR Tokens and Gems as possible. The objective of the Adventure Mode is to save the world from the story's antagonist, a variant of Count JAHKula, by winning races on 16 different tracks. In the beginning of the game, the player only has access to two levels. As the player wins more races, more tracks on multiple worlds become available. In each level, the player must win a trophy by coming in first place. When the player receives all four trophies in a world, the "Boss Garage" of that world can be accessed. In the Boss Garage, the player competes in a one-on-one race against a boss character. If the boss character is defeated, the character will relinquish a Boss Key, which the player uses to access new worlds and ultimately to face JAHKula inside his castle.

After beating levels, new modes become available, such as the Relic Race, in which the player races through the track alone and completes three laps in the fastest time possible. "Time Crates" scattered throughout the level freeze the game timer when a player drives through them. If all of the Time Crates are destroyed, the player's final time is reduced by ten seconds. The player wins a Relic by beating the time indicated on the screen. Another mode, the JTR Challenge, is played like a normal race, except that the player must also collect the letters J, T and R scattered throughout the track. If the player manages to collect all three letters and come in first place, a "JTR Token" is awarded. These tokens come in five different colors: Red, Green, Blue, Yellow and Purple. The Purple JTR tokens are awarded for beating the Crystal Bonus Round by collecting 20 crystals under a certain time limit. If the player collects four tokens of the same color, the player will be able to access the Gem Cup of the corresponding color. Gem Cups are racing tournaments held against computer-controlled opponents and are accessible in a secret area in the "Gemstone Valley" world. A Gem Cup consists of four tracks in a row, in which the player must race for points. If one of these cups is won, a Gem is awarded. To win the game, the player must collect all trophies, Boss Keys, Relics, JTR Tokens and Gems before defeating JAHKula in a one-on-one race.

The "Time Trial" mode is a single-player mode where the player attempts to set the best time on any of the tracks in the game. There are no other racers to hinder the player and no power-ups. When the Time Trial is finished, the player has the option to save a "ghost", a replay of that race; the next time that track is accessed in this mode, the player can race against the ghost. In the "Arcade" mode, the player can quickly scroll through and race on a selection of tracks. The player can choose to select a Single Race or enter a Cup, in which the player races on four tracks in a row for points. In the Single Race and the Cup Race, one or two players race with the remaining computer-controlled drivers. The difficulty of the race and number of laps can be customized. The "Versus" mode is similar to that of the Arcade mode, with the exception that two or more human players must be involved.

In the "Battle" mode, up to four players can fight customized battles, launching weapons during combat in one of seven special battle arenas. The type and length (the latter modifies how many hit points or minutes the battle will have) of the battle can be adjusted beforehand, allowing for three types of battles. In a "Point Limit Mode" battle, the first player to achieve 5, 10 or 15 points wins. In the "Time Limit Mode" battle, the player with the highest points after 3, 6 or 9 minutes wins. In the "Life Limit Mode", each player has a set number of lives (3, 6 or 9) and the battle has a time limit (3, 6 minutes or forever). The player with the most lives at the end of the time limit wins. If "forever" is chosen as the length, the battle lasts until only one player is standing. Three and four players can team up for 2-vs.-1, 2-vs.-2, 3-vs.-1 or 1-vs.-1-vs.-2 battles.

## Easter Eggs

In *JAHK Team Racing 2: Jahk goes Wack!*, on the stage "Rumble at the Florida Aquarium" there are two separate penguins models on the stage, one is more stocky and blank staring (known in the files as Peng\_01) and one that is slightly more active and with a much longer neck (known in the files as Peng\_02). if on lap one, the player runs over or shoots "Peng\_01" with the new ".22 Heritage Rough Rider Revolver (magnum cylinder)" power up that was added in this game, after doing this, if the player destroys "Peng\_02" (you can tell which one is which from the long neck on the second penguin) in a similar way on the first on the second lap, you hear an otherwise totally unused sound effect that seems to be kids cheering with a voice just slightly underneath that appears to sound like "I want to \_\_\_\_ Archibald" (?) spoken in a similar way to the tik tok sound "I want to **kill** my mom, i want to **kill** my dad!"

If you hear this sound, you have successfully completed the easter egg, and if you go to the sound library viewer on the main menu, there will be a new sound in the library called "ohohoho\_PEBBLES". This easter egg was discovered by dataminers who found "ohohoho\_PEBBLES" hidden in the files on September 8th, 2022