Choro Q Park

If there was ever a series of highly mixed quality, Choro Q is it. Some of the Choro Q games are among my favorite racers, while others are among my most hated games. It's no wonder the series always gets a bad name from gamers. It just so happens, the worst game in the series was the first one to make the trip stateside, further hurting the series' reputation. After all, if they released the game in the Us, it must be the best the series has to offer. Only seems logical, right? At least, that is how the general mentality thinks. Choro Q 64, AKA Penny Racers, is an abomination and does not deserve the Choro Q moniker. The fact that it received a Us release while games like the original Choro Q and Marine Boat were left in the cold makes me wonder what people were thinking. In this review, I will be talking about the lone Saturn version of Choro Q, entitled Choro Q Park. Does it deserve the Choro Q name, or is it just another bad sequel?

Upon playing Choro Q Park you will notice two major differences. If you do not notice them, chances are you drank too much as a kid. Either that or you've never played a Choro Q game before. Most of the Choro Q games, are straight forward racing games. You choose a car and race against your opponents. While Choro Q Park is still a racing game, there is something a tad different about it, and it lies in selecting a car for a race. You see in Choro Q Park, you do not choose just one car to tackle the race, you can choose up to four! "Who drank too much?" you say. "How are you supposed to drive four cars at once?". That's just it, you don't drive them at once. Placed at key positions on the track are little "change" points. Riding over these magically changes your car into a new vehicle. Before the race, at the car placement screen, you can set which car will spawn at which change point. This can add quite a bit of strategy to the game, you have to make sure you pick the right car for the right section of track. Such as picking a sprint style car for straight sections and a car with good handling for curvy sections. Picking the cars can spell victory or defeat. Make a wrong choice? You are not forced to change at change points, simply beep the horn to disable the change point for yourself. Beeping again will re-enable the change point. Disabling the change point will allow you to continue to race with your current car rather than switching to a car that isn't up to snuff.

However, be wary of not changing as each car features what I call "Turbo" gas. When you start driving, the turbo gas starts depleting constantly until empty. Once empty, your car moves about 30km/h slower. Changing cars gives you a refill of "Turbo" gas. Some cars burn more "turbo" gas than others, so this is something else to take into consideration when choosing vehicles. It would be a bad idea to choose a vehicle that burns "turbo" gas quickly for a large section of track. So, while your car with good handling may be better on those curvy sections of track, it'd be a bad idea to pick it if it will run out of gas halfway through the section. These two new bits are quite cool and make the game quite a bit different from it's predecessors.

Unfortunately, missing from Choro Q Park is the simulation aspect of previous games in the series. Rather than buying different bodies for your car and tweaking the parts like in the other games, you simply buy pre-made cars. Sure, you can still go in the garage and tweak the engine and tires, but it is a lot more shallow then the original game. I suppose this is due to the fact that you need multiple cars for a race and it might've gotten rather tiresome for some to have to keep switching parts on multiple cars. Instead of all the tweaking, you've now got different style cars for different situations. There are Slalom cars which are good at slalom, off road cars which go off-road with less of a speed decrease and quite a few others. Every vehicle comes pre-tuned for a certain condition, which means you have a lot less input on the "inside" of your cars. Thankfully, you are still able to paint your vehicle. While it is only a cosmetic change, it is still a nice feature. Each vehicle comes with a set transmission, either manual or automatic. However, if you aren't fond of a particular vehicle's transmission, you have the ability to change it. You have three choices, allow the cars to retain their original transmission, change all cars to automatic or change all cars to manual. This choice is made before every race at the Car Placement screen. Simply press L and R triggers to toggle through the choices. Sadly, you can only switch all to manual or all to automatic. There is no way to keep one or two at manual while changing all others to auto.

Like many non-serious racers, Choro Q Park features a few weapons to spice the action up. Actually, it only features two, an oil slick and a tire. The oil slick leaves a slippery puddle of oil behind your vehicle that causes whoever hits it to spin out of control. The tire is a basic projectile that you can fire forward in a straight line. It disappears if it flies for too long without hitting an opponent or upon impact with a wall. I usually do not like weapons in racing games because it lowers the skill needed to win, and opens the path for sadistic cheating CPU players. I like the emphasis to be on fair racing and skill rather than good item use.
Thankfully, there isn't as big an emphasis on weapons in this game as there is in most. I'd still refer to this game as a racer and not a battle racer, so that should give you an idea of how little a part the weapons play. The CPU opponents don't really abuse them so they aren't much of a problem. Just the occasional hit from a tire. The oil slicks are easy to avoid, so they shouldn't be a problem. It still would've been nice to play without them though.

The main point of this game is to simply win races, collect cars and open up new areas on the map. You'll be unlocking and buying cars for a while as there are 80 of them in total. All of them look different and handle different. You can buy them from the shop with money that you collect from winning races and snatch during the race. To unlock them you have two methods: winning races and finding Q cards. Winning races is rather self explanatory. As for Q cards, they are little items hidden throughout the various tracks. When found, you can redeem them at a place on the map for new cars. To unlock new areas all you have to do is come in first on the tracks of previous areas. After taking your driving tests for on and off road, the first two areas are opened up. They are, as you may have guessed, on and off-road areas. Each of these contain three tracks. The on-road tracks consist of raceways while the off-road are mountainous and forest landscapes. You can unlock more areas including a nifty city area. Also of note is weather, before entering a race, you can check the weather outlook on the main map. Weather varies from sunny to rain. Rain doesn't seem to have much of an effect on your driving other than slightly obscuring your view, but I could be wrong.

I'd have to say that out of all the Choro Q games I've played, this one handles the best. Choro Q Park is definitely the game to give to players new to the series. They will get used to the handling in a snap, unlike Choro Q 1 where beginners will often times spin out due to their "virtual lead foot". Powersliding is very easy, simply tap the break while turning and holding in gas. For long time Choro Q fans, it will take some time to adjust to the new handling, but it is an extremely easy adjustment. Much easier than trying to adjust to the control of the haphazard Choro Q 64. Generally, I'd say the control in Choro Q Park is great.

Strangely, I find that Choro Q Park looks slightly better than the other games in the series on Playstation. Maybe it is because the environments are bright but the game just looks a tad better. Pop up, while still present, was toned down. The polygonal break up and flickering of the stages in the Playstation games are now gone. Slowdown is pretty much limited to the race replays, which is strange since most game's replays usually look better than actual gameplay. I was really impressed with the graphics of Choro Q Park, it really surprised me. I was starting to lose faith that Saturn could produce quality 3D visuals from non-Sega developers without massive slowdown and frame rate drops. Also, for those of you who haven't seen Choro Q game before, rather than realistic cars, it uses small Super Deformed cars. This gives the game a nice cartoon look while retaining serious gameplay, barring the weapons of course. Some, like me, are a fan of the style, while others are not. Oh, and something I noticed about Choro Q Park, the stages are much more serious this time around. That is a shame because the somewhat wacky stages were one thing that originally drew me to the series.

One of the main things I love about the Choro Q series is the music, and Choro Q Park doesn't fail to deliver in that respect. Basically, the game contains the usual upbeat tunes present in just about all of the games in the series. So if you didn't like the music before, you won't like it now. Maybe I am crazy, but I just love the music in these games. Though none of them can top the original in the soundtrack department. Luckily for me, Choro Q Park features redbook audio! Yeah, I may be a geek, but I love listening to game music, especially good game music. Sound FX are sound FX. Nothing special. the game features more realistic sounds rather than cartoony sounds like you might expect from a racer featuring SD cars.

Something good to note for you potential importers, the language barrier is a lot smaller in this game compared to past games in the series. This is mainly due to the lack of vehicle modifications such as adding new tires, horns, engines and things of that nature. If you know katakana, this game will be a piece of cake. If not, it'll still be easy, but you'll have problems figuring out what some areas on the map are. After a little trial and error, you should have no problems. Pretty much, if you've imported before, Choro Q Park will be a synch. Well, as long as your other imports weren't in complete English that is.

The replay value is there, provided you want to unlock all of the cars and races. As I stated above, there are 80 cars for you to try and get. You can also try to beat your records and all that fun stuff. The game will keep you busy for quite a while. It just all depends on how important getting all the cars is to you. It can be great fun searching through the stages for Q cards, but if you simply don't care, than the game, obviously has a lot less replay value.

Overall, Choro Q Park is definitely fitting of the name. This is a great game in a sketchy series and is completely worth your time and money, especially if you are a Choro Q fan. The whole "four different cars per race" aspect really adds a lot to the game and makes it more than just a rehash. The strategic elements really add to this game and make it stand out in a sea of "go in circles" racing games. At the time of this writing, Choro Q Park could be had for $30 and under, which is a steal in my opinion. If you are a fan of racers, and you're looking for something a bit different, Choro Q may just have what you are looking for.

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©2002 Ed Finnegan

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