RUSH RUSH RALLY RACING is a 16-bit styled topdown racer made in Holland. The game was originally released for the SEGA Dreamcast in 2009 and has quite a cult fan following. Content wise this is a great package: You get 3 singleplayer and 3 multiplayer modes, 8 playable vehicles, 19 race courses, 21 achievements, 4 difficulties and 7 endings! Gameplay wise Senile Team succeded in trying their best to port over the original Dreamcast experience. Not only that, they even added WiiWare exclusive features. Fans will love this version for sure, newcomers will find to appreciate it for its smoothness and speed as they learn the simple controls, spot-on driving physics and challenging course designs. A few multiplayer matches should seal the deal.


Let's start with the game modes:

1P Grand Prix - Race on the 10 Grand Prix tracks against up to 8 cpu drivers. You get 3 credits and you have to be in third place to advance. Select one of the five regular cars and one of four difficulties. If you want to find hidden secrets and shortcuts you need to do some exploring. You can also try and win achievements, and unlock endings. At the end of the game you can enter your name in the local Top 5 GP leaderboard.

1P Time Trials - Select one of the 19 courses and race alone for infinite rounds. Each time you set a lap record a ghost car appears and copies your best time. This is a great way to improve and lots of fun to play and practise. You can enter your name for the record lap on each course in the TT leaderboard.

Challenges - There are 18 challenges against 4 different characters. This is a frantic versus mode where you need to be fast enough to hit the edge of the screen. You score a point when you leave your opponent in the dust. The first one who scores 5 points wins. A secret waits at the end. This unique and fun mode can also be played with 2 players.

2-4P Race - Up to 4 players select one of 8 vehicles (3 need to be unlocked), one of the 19 tracks, and score points against your friends in your own little local tournament. You can repeat and select stages and change vehicles between each round if you want, or just choose 'next course'.

2-4P Item Race - The name says it all. If normal racing action isn't enough  now items like nitro boosters and bullets are lying around.


You drive through city streets, deserts, highways, tunnels, pro racing tracks, speedways and other locations. While most of the background graphics are static and solid there are several objects like parking cars, roadblocks, and other obstacles you can ram into and out of the way. But the one thing that breathes life (and death) into the game are the tiny spectators who are watching the race, simple passengers walking the streets. Even cows stray along. Needless to say you can kill them, so drive carefully!!

The game has a neat dance soundtrack. Some pieces actually growed on me, but I think you need to be a bit into this kind of music. If you can't stand it there's the option to change the volume of music and sounds. Personally I liked the effect when you drive through a tunnel: The music changes to high bass and low treble.

There are 21 achievements for gamers who want to get most out of the single player mode. Try driving a GP without ever killing someone, or try driving a GP and killing at least 25 people. Other achievements include "always get into 1st place", "find all secret cars", "win the game with vehicle x", "hamburger! - kill 5 cows", "win the game on difficulty x", "win the game in under 18 minutes", etc. You can also unlock endings that you can watch in the cinema option.


Now on to the odd things. One thing that felt wrong is the use of the minus-button to go 'BACK' instead of the 1-button which is usually the action when you hold the Wiimote sideways. Another thingy is that a few lines of the bottom screen are cut off in some of the multiplayer modes, so you can see only the upper half of text. There's not much down there, but when there is it's just hard to read. Now to go into more detail, there's a secret called "Pink Bullets". When you find it it's activated permanently and can't be switched off. It's just a minor thing for the Item Race (the bullets turn from white to pink). This secret leaves room for another question: Are there any more? There are no indicators. And finally, a positive one: the horn. You can spam it to annoy your friends!

RUSH RUSH RALLY RACING is like the classic Micro Machines, just with normal sized cars in a normal sized world, being more serious, and with lots of speed added. Unfortunately it has no online multiplayer or leaderboards. And the graphics could be a bit more detailed. Yeah, there are cool light effects in the night stages, and the camera zooms out when you get faster, and there are also some bridges and jumps, but I'm missing water, rain, ice, maybe the shadows of clouds on the ground, a wind animation in the trees. I think they could have done more with it graphically, but hey, after all it's a retro racer. It needs good controls, a high sense of speed, fun levels and multiplayer. And it provides all of it and more for just 900 Wii Points.

Good news for everyone from North America: It's in the test phase at Nintendo of America at the moment and is supposed to come out soon.



8 = Great
This is a great game that might have a few flaws or could have been better, but is still a game we highly recommend!