0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - ATV Mania

    

ATV Mania is an Racing and Vehicular Combat game focussed around off road ATV’s, the game was developed by Deibus Studios and published by the short lived Gotham Games.

 The game was released exclusively in Europe and North America for the Playstation. The game released first in North America, coming out on the 23^rd of July 2003, the European release coming a couple of weeks later on the 8^th of August

The player has the option of three game modes the first time attack allows the player to try any of the tracks in the game and try and set the quickest time they can, The second mode is the single race mode this mode allows the player to face off against the AI on any track, two human players can also face off against each other in this mode.

 

The main meat of the game though is the Championship mode, the player chooses one of the six available competitors each of which has their own individual ATV, this mode is also available for two players. When choosing which racer you want the game will bring up information about their ATV, with each ATV having strengths and weaknesses.

Take Natalie Lupien who’s ATV is the Banshee, this ATV specialises in Speed at the expense of grip and some armour, the game will also give the player a short bio on each of the racers. Once the player has chosen the character they want they can name them before starting the championship.

The championship consists of a total of six races with the player facing off against three other riders, during the course of a race pickups will be available around the track, these pickups contain weapons which can be used to damage and slow down your opponents weapon pickups include the likes of land mines and homing missiles.

Once a race is complete points are awards for the races finishing position after the race the player is interviewed depending on the players answers they may gain additional cash to use to buy weapons for their ATV for the upcoming race.

Set in the French Alps a group of extreme ATV racers compete to become the best by any means necessary in this highly illegal off road combat racing defeat your opponents while avoiding the law and the local press

This being a late release on the Playstation reviews are a little light in number but I have been able to find a few, starting with the best which comes from Official Playstation Magazine who rated the game a 4/5 sadly information on what their review said is unavailable.

The same goes for GamesMaster UK who rated the game a 61/100 sadly no information on this review has been found so we head to the lowest review score received by this game which comes from Game Chronicles who scored it at a lowly 21.

The review opens with concerns about new releases and the rule of you get what you pay for, which holds true with ATV Mania according to the reviewer, he continues in not wanting to insult the French but as long as Deibus Studios are developing games like this they will have to put up with some amount of ridicule.

His review beings by tearing into the games controls which the review found miserable, clunky and counter intuitive, with the review feeling like they were wearing gorilla gloves while trying to control their rider. They were also critical of the games acceleration and breaking with the former non existent according to the review while braking is much too touchy.

The reviewer was critical of all three game modes available the single race mode was sleep educing, the time attack mode is the most fun single player mode, but still not much fun to be had here, while the championship mode the flesh and bone of the game is by far the worst mode of them all.

Graphically the review found the riders and quads to be small and uninspired, with graphics overall definitely last gen but passable for a budget title, things are made worse though due to the poor texturing of the courses. Concluding the reviewer contemplated the dull games they have previously played with ATV Mania being one of them.

The reviewer was bored within five minutes and had seen everything the game had to offer in around thirty minutes, with a combination of ancient graphics, dull sound and largely crappy gameplay this game is best left on the shelf it fails on all counts.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four 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, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude where if you are looking to trade in your copy of ATV Mania, Gamedude would be willing to pay just $1 for a copy. If on the other hand you are in the market for a copy of the game from them you could pick one up for $5.

Retrogames.co.uk up next unfortunately they currently do not stock or list this game so moving quickly on to eStarland.com, who have one complete copy of the game available, this copy is priced up at $4.50. eStarland also offer a trade in for this game and are willing to pay up to $1.50 for a copy, this price may change on the completeness of your copy with only 53 cents paid for a disc only copy.

Finally on to Amazon.com where we find a plentiful supply of copies available with several practically being given away if it were not for the shipping costs with several copies priced at 1 cent including a good quality complete copy, with shipping the price does go up to $4 but still cheap.

A very good copy of the game can be picked up for $5.98 with a like new copy available for just around $1 more, plenty of copies available in very good or like new condition around this price point, overall used prices remain pretty cheap reaching a current high of around just $11.

If you are looking for a new copy of the game though there is a good supply available and price wise it could well be worth picking one of these up with prices at around the $8 mark with a good number priced between this and around $15 with prices largely not getting above this with the exception of the odd copy.

Written by

P J Gibbon