August 2000 || Volume 01, Issue 01
Review by Marc Messer

4 Smileys - 1 Smiley Poor, 5 Smileys Excellent

Title: Kawasaki ATV PowerSports
Version: 1.1.2
Developer: Monkey Byte Development, LLC
Price: $24.95
Contact Info: http://www.mbyte.com
Genre: Racing Game
ESRB Rating: None
System Requirements: Mac OS 8.1, 180MHz 603e, 32MB RAM, 50MB free disk space, 3D Video Card w/4MB, Apple Game Sprockets 1.5
Platforms: Mac OS and Windows 95/98

Introduction

There's nothing quite like kickin' the dirt up into your opponents face as you cut them off going into a turn. Of course, they're often wearing protective helmets so you merely make them mad. And it only takes one tight corner for you to suddenly be the recipient of that dirt when you're on an all terrain vehicle. Nevertheless, when I saw the opportunity to test drive Kawasaki ATV PowerSports, the latest from Monkey Byte Software, I jumped at the chance to teach those AI racers a thing or two.

Gameplay

Kawasaki ATV PowerSports acts with similar game physics that you've come to expect from racing games - with the primary difference being that you are off-roading on All Terrain Vehicles. ATVs are smaller and lighter than regular vehicles, of course, so they accelerate faster and take sharper turns. This means that you need to be prepared for things to happen - upcoming turns and obstacles. This leads to a unique blend between what you'd see in normal racing games and those that would cater to motorcycles or jet skis - enough to challenge even the most experienced gamer.

OK, now that I've warned you about the racing style, lets move on to the fun part, actually getting started. Loading up Kawasaki ATV drops you into a modern yet rough interface, matching the metal meets dirt atmosphere of the actual racing environment (see picture to left). You have a ton of options right out of the gate, from jumping straight into the circuit race to selecting tracks, your character, circuits, controls and more.

Select your Racer!

Like any great racing game, you need a personality behind the throttle, so, it's key that you choose the ideal character to represent you on the track. Chose the "Customize Character" option and get started. From here (see picture to right), you can modify the racer, the type of ATV, and of course, your name. In my case, selecting this devious character and slapping him with my name just seemed the most appropriate. Mileage may vary for you.

Pick a Race, Any Race

Kawasaki ATV PowerSports isn't just another racing game. There are five different types of games that you can play:

• Circuit - a set of 34 races. In order to advance to the next race, you must place both in the top three in total points and the top three places in the race. Points are not directly connected to place, so it is possible to be disqualified from the circuit even if you continually place in the top three. The importance of racing the circuit is the ability to unlock up to six new ATVs for use in other races.
• Rally - a time limited race. The track is chosen at random unless you specify one yourself. Race up to five opponents.
• Derby - you have three minutes to pass through as many checkpoints as possible. However, all racers can "steal" checkpoints from their opponents. This turns the race not into a mad scramble for checkpoints but a survival match... strategically choosing which checkpoints to defend and steal. Race up to five opponents.
• Treasure Hunt - 75 diamonds are scattered throughout the course. You have three minutes to collect as many diamonds as you can. In this case, you have no opponents.
• Finders/Keepers - this is the same as Treasure Hunt except with up to five opponents.

The Tracks!

You'll never fall short of tracks to race in this game. All of tracks are based on six types of terrain: salt flats, desert, meadow, strip mine, badlands, and island. Each terrain has it's own unique qualities. In the Course Selection screen (see picture to left), you first select what type of terrain you want, and then you choose what course you want from that. Also in this screen is a "Random" option which will generate a random course in the terrain that you've chosen. At this time, you can also choose the number of opponents you face in the race.

The Editor

If the courses made for you just aren't enough, make your own! Kawasaki ATV has a built in course editor. You can choose any of the six terrains, or even open existing tracks and modify them. The course editor works like many of the of the others available for other games with the exception that you can really only modify the location of the checkpoints and where the race lies on the track... you can't add obstacles or modify the terrain in any way.

A great feature of the editor, however is the invisible waypoint. Since you are off-road racing, there really isn't a road to follow. As such, most of the races have a built in navigation arrow telling you the general direction you need to go to get to the next checkpoint. An invisible waypoint essentially is a way for you to lead all of the racers from one checkpoint to another via the same path. For an example, look at the course in the picture above right. On this course, there could be a dozen ways to get from one point to another. By putting invisible waypoints in the "ideal" path, you will lead the racers that way with the directional arrows.

Controls

By default, Kawasaki ATV uses the keyboard and mouse for controlling your ATV. This of course, adds to the difficulty of controlling yourself, because key strokes don't allow for sensitive steering, and the mouse can be a pain too. Using just the keyboard, I didn't have much of a chance to hit the checkpoints when in the faster races. However, Kawasaki ATV does support game sprockets (Game Sprockets 1.7 is included on the CD), allowing you to use any sprockets compatible controller in place of the keyboard. Of course, anyone who has actually spent any time playing racing games, would tell you to install a controller right off the bat, and to not even bother with the keyboard.

Graphics and Sound

Kawasaki ATV is RAVE enhanced and you have the option of loading the game using the RAVE drivers or using software to render the graphics. Just about everyone with a G3 on up will have the necessary RAVE hardware to take advantage of the acceleration. Those who will be burned are the people who have the minimum processor speed, but have a slower ATI on motherboard chip with less VRAM. I tested ATV on a G4 400 (with ATI Rage Pro 128) and a 6500/300 (ATI Rage IIC). The graphics were extremely smooth on the G4 (see image to the left) but results were varied on the 6500. The ATI chip on the 6500 was 2 MB short of the minimum, so I got odd errors trying to run the game. I was able to run in software mode with the rendering Plane and Texture Quality turned all the way down, but that made the game difficult to play, because obstacles wouldn't be rendered until they were right in front of you. I wouldn't suggest tackling this game without a good graphics card. Note: there are optimized versions of the game for 604e, G3, and G4 processors.

Kawasaki ATV also features it's own soundtrack: 7 tracks to add the funk to your race. While the songs were pretty good, I found myself often playing without the CD in the drive, and I really didn't notice anything missing without the music. It's a nice addition, practically required in today's games, but the soundtrack didn't make or break the game.

Miscellaneous

A note for you whacky programmer types out there: Kawasaki ATV reads all of its config data from external text files in the "config" folder. This allows the craziest among you to experiment with modifying the vehicle properties, physics, race order, etc. Of course, this is dangerous and may end up crashing your program, so have at it with caution. You've been warned.

Off to the Races

I really did enjoy Kawasaki ATV PowerSports, despite the fact that it has a very long name that is a pain to type :) It differentiates itself from other racers by its unique choice of craft, and randomly generated track options. While the dismal performance on an older machine isn't great, it's also not unexpected given how games of this type are so resource intensive. You can give it a test drive yourself by downloading the demo (6.8 MB). Updates are also avialable there for those of you who already have the game. So give it a try. For me, the entire package weighs itself pretty well and is worthy of a 4 Smiley rating.

Marc Messer - marc@macosjournal.com
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