0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - ATV Racers

        

ATV Racers as you have probably guessed by the title is arcade ATV Racing game with Vehicular combat, rather than having human racers however a selection 10 animals take their place and compete for the ATV Racing Championship.

Developed by Miracle Design and published by Mud Duck Productions who are part of Zenimax Media the game released in North America and Europe towards the end of the Playstations life, releasing in June of 2003 in Europe and December of 2003 in North America.

The game would also receive a re release with the game releasing on both the PSP and Playstation 3, the game released for both pieces of Hardware on the 24^th of November 2010 via the Playstation Network.

The game consists of three main modes the first is time trial which is a solo mode with the player trying to set their fastest time of the chosen track, Arcade mode lets the player compete on any of the tracks in the game. The main part of the game though is the tournament mode.

The tournament mode sees the player face off against five other competitors for the ATV Racing Championship, the player can choose one of eight characters to use for competing, the remaining two characters must be unlocked in game.

One the character has been chosen they player they will have the choice of three cups, the Cross cup, the Dune cup and the Rock cup, each of these cups consists of three racetracks Underground, Red rock and Atlantis, these tracks are altered depending on which of the cups you are currently competing in.

Also in the games options you can modify some race option such as the difficulty easy, medium or hard as well as the race distance with a minimum of 3 laps for a race up to a 50 lap maximum. On to the actual races though, races consists of a maximum of five opponents with the aim to beat them all.

 

You have access to weapons to aid you in your quest for championship glory these include the likes of mines, homing missiles as well as speed boots, these weapons are aquired via pickups around the track with an icon showing in top centre of the screen showing which weapon you have at your disposal.

Points scoring is awarded for all finishing positions with the winner of each race receiving 9 points, 6 points for finishing second, 4pts for a third and all the way down to 1pt for finishing last of the six racers. After you have raced the three races for each cup you will be awarded a trophy if you finishing in the top three overall, either a gold for first, silver for second and bronze for third.

No real story to the game, but the overall premise of the game is a variety of animals are competing for the ATV Racing Championship through a vehicular combat tournament.

This being a late release in the original Playstations life critic reviews are none existent with them moving on to the Playstation 2, as a result her have to head over to GameFAQs for their user ratings, with the game currently sitting at an average rating of 3.17/5 from a total of 9 user ratings.

Taking a closer look at those user ratings we find a good spread from as low as a 0.5/5 from one user, up to a full 5/5 from another. The majority though which totals 4 of the 9 users either rated the game at 2.5/5 or an above average 3/5, the remaining users rated the game between a 3.5/5 and a 4.5/5.

Moving on to the games difficulty we find a total of 6 users have rated this category, with 3 of them rating the game as having just the right difficulty level, another two rated the game as being on the tough side, while the remaining user rated the game as being easy, overall the game rates as having just the right difficulty level.

Lastly we have the game lifespan with only 5 users rating this category, with one solitary user spending just 4 hours with the game, the other four users are spit evenly between 8 hours and 12 hours with the game, averaging out the game has roughly an 8 ½ to 9 hour lifepan.

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 Racers, Gamedude would be willing to pay just $2 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 $6.

Retrogames.co.uk up next who have one copy of the PAL version available, this copy is in excellent condition with a 10/10 disc quality rating and can be picked up for just £5, please be aware this copy will only work on PAL consoles and not North American or Japanese consoles.

Next on to eStarland.com who have two used copies of the game currently available, the first is an incomplete copy missing the manual and is priced up at $3.27. The second used copy on the market is a complete copy and can be picked up for $5.95.

There is also a trade in offer for this game with eStarland.com willing to pay up to $2 for a copy of ATV Racers, this price will fluctuate depending on the completeness of the copy, with a disc only copy worth 70 cents when traded in.

Finally on to Amazon.com where we find a good supply of the game available with prices for a good quality or better used copy of the game pretty cheap. With a good quality used copy available for $4.48 while a like new copy can be picked up for just a little more at $5.65.

If you are in the market for a new copy of the game then the cheapest currently on off can be picked up $8.96 once shipping has been added in, a couple more copies are available for $9.10 and $9.13 both of these come with free shipping but a shipped by Amazon so the free shipping only applies to Prime Users or those spending over $25.

Written by

P J Gibbon