0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - All Star Racing 2

       

All Star Racing earned a sequel a year in 2003, with once again Mud Duck Production taking the lead on the development side of things. Midas Interactive as with the first game handles the European publishing of the game, while ZeniMax handles the North American release. The game would release first in North America on the 24^th of April 2003, with a European release coming in July of the same year.

Like the first instalment in the series the game focuses on four different vehicle types, moving away from Stock Cars, GT racing, Supercars and Classic cars. The sequel instead focusing on Truck Racing, Kart Racing, Open wheel racing and Motorbike racing, each of type of vehicle has a changeable colour scheme and a total of five tracks to race on.

Like the previous game it has three difficulty modes easy, medium and hard, as well as five race length choices available starting with a 3 lap race, increasing by 3 laps each time up to a maximum of a 15 lap race. Each of the races has a maximum of 5 opposing drivers

A budget racing title no story or story mode present in the game.

This being a very late title in the Playstation 1s life cycle review for this game a next to impossible to find, with the exception of one review coming from PSX Nation. This publication sadly no longer exists only their review score has stood the test of time, with their review score standing at 59/100.

We move on to the GameFAQs user data next, with a total of 5 users rating this game, with the average user rating coming in at 2.50/5, so as average as you can get. Breaking that data down the game did not get any truly low user ratings, a couple of 2/5 as well as a a of 2.5/5 with a couple of 3/5 to even things up.

Difficulty up next and again 5 users rated this category with an even spread for the game being easy, just right and tough with the remaining 2 users rating the game as simple. On to the games difficulty with just 3 users rating this category with an even spread between the three. With one user each rating the games lifespan as 4 hours, 8 hours and 12 hours, with the game averaging out at 8 hours for its lifespan.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, where if you are looking to trade in your copy of the game you are looking at $1 for your copy. If you are looking to get your hands on a copy of All Star Racing 2 then it will set you back $5 with Gamedude.

Retrogames.co.uk sadly don’t stock this title new or used so we quickly head off to eStarland.com, where a copy of the game is available. This is a used complete copy of the game and is priced at $4.95 this is for the North American version of the game, eStarland also offer a trade in for you copy of the game with up to $1.25 being paid for a copy.

Amazon.com has a plentiful supply of copies available with a used very good quality copy available for $4.60 this is with the shipping fee added in, this converts to £3.60 in the UK, in Euro zone countries it will cost you €3.90 while in Latvia it will set you back 2.85 Latvian Lats had it not succumbed to the Euro in 2014.

A like new copy of the game is also available with prices starting around the $6.50 mark once shipping has been added in, New copies of the game are available with prices reaching around the $20 mark however you can easily pick one up for just short of $10, a couple of the copies on sale also come with free shipping as well.

Heading over to the co.uk version of Amazon next for the European version of the game, and copies for it a very limited with just four on the market at the time of writing this. Prices however are mostly reasonable with a very good used copy available for £6.93.

You may as well however opt for the new copy that is next in the list of available copies this one cost just 10 pence more than the used copy. Another used copy is on the market however is almost double that of the previous used copy and is a lesser quality copy as well. We also have a token overpriced copy on sale as well, this is a used copy and is priced at £129.99 with an additional £4.62 for shipping.

Ebay.com next with out shipping location set to the UK, just a disc copy of the game can be picked up for $2.89 this is for the European PAL version of the game, a complete copy of the game can be picked up for as little as $5.11, this copy as with the previous one comes with free international shipping.

As you would expect a North American copy does add a significant amount to the price via shipping cost, so we are going change out shipping location to California for the North American version. Where a complete copy in good condition can be picked up for just 99 cents shipping cost will bump the price up to $3.84 but still pretty darn cheap.

A couple more copies are priced at $4 and $4.09, both of these copies come with free shipping, quite a few used copies are available with most coming in under the $10 mark. New copies of the game are also very reasonable with a brand new copy with free shipping starting at $6.90, could well be worth forking out those extra few dollars for a new copy of the game.

Written by

P J Gibbon