When an industry veteran gets to work on their genre of game that they’ve flexed their muscles on for decades, you know it’s time to get excited. Mr Quak has been making arcade racers since the 80s, with Amiga classics like Nitro. I’ve also seen some online discourse that new developers just can’t make arcade racers like the old developers. Whilst I don’t personally subscribe to that theory, Mr Quak certainly puts up a point to that argument as Retro Racing 2 plays like a dream.
Retro Racing 2 is a game of two distinct halves. There is a single-player campaign mode that takes the player through bespoke challenges. Each challenge is a race across the different tarmac-first, environment overspill second tracks to win the race and get the fastest overall time. Each challenge has its own leaderboard, and if you have a competitive nature, this is where you’ll spend plenty of your time. The leaderboard shows your Steam name, time, and the car you chose. Whilst all cars fundamentally handle the same initially, each one has its own unique upgrade path that takes place during the race. There are (thankfully) no weapons in Retro Racing 2. Instead, there are three upgrade collectables off the racing line or in various hidden alternative routes that upgrade your acceleration, tyres, and top speed. A yellow boost pickup is also available. These power-ups stay with you for the entire race, but if you unlock the most upgradable cars, they become faster but trickier to handle. It’s all very well having great speed if you can’t steer around the hairpin!
This brings me to the handling. Retro Racing 2 is nimble, grippy, responsive, and pixel-accurate. It just feels right, and not like some cheap arcade games where the car feels like it’s turning from a centre point in the graphical asset. There is no obvious brake, meaning you need to release the accelerator to take tight bends. That works most of the time, as most of the track will be tarmac, but each area has its own additional surface to contend with. Water is slippery and runs you wide. Oil stays on your tyres for a few seconds after driving through it, and if you make a sharp turn on the oil, you’ll spin off like a tiny toy into the grass, barrier, or trees awaiting you. Sand slows you down, whilst snow speeds you up whilst in a turn. The tracks are designed to make straights and corners have optimal routes through these hazards, but it may be that taking a wider line is safer in the long run. It’s good fun to work out your best route, and up to 15 AI cars are on track with you. Some are painfully slow, becoming lapped cars to contend with, whilst a few will be speedy enough to provide some challenge and penalise your mistakes. Happily, they take shortcuts and alternative routes too, and they aren’t afraid to make a move on you. Anything you hit will cause you damage, meaning a trip through the pitlane for repairs. The more challenges you complete and the more cars you lap, the more cash you earn to unlock the “better” cars.
With a substantial single-player offering, we also get the party mode for the second half of Retro Racing 2. Here you can race 2 or 4 player splitscreen (I couldn’t find a 3 player option, oddly) across all the tracks in the game. You’ll have three levels of upgradable car to choose from, and you can choose to turn off AI cars, or the upgrades and boosts altogether. The upgrades can be static on the track or rotating around the screen. Multiplayer is smooth and fun. You can have two players sharing a keyboard, and a mix of controller and keyboard, too. I must commend how consistent the handling and drivability are between using the analogue stick, the d-pad, and the keyboard. None feel worse than the other, so no one is disadvantaged. Put simply, this is good old arcade racing at its finest.
My only critique, besides the omission of a 3-player option, is that I want to be able to run custom races. Let me pick a track, set up a 50-lap race, and go to town with it. Everything is 4-6 laps long, meaning most races are over in 2 minutes. Being able to set up races, or multiple races into a championship, would help Retro Racing 2 feel a bit more personalised. I love a leaderboard challenge, but I’d also like some offline customisation in there too. The same applies to multiplayer racing. Everything is singular. There is no session tracking, for example, to see whose won the most this time around. These are just tiny niggles, but they would help smooth out the gaming experience with some added quality of life features.
Ultimately, Retro Racing 2 gets it right where it counts, and that’s on the track. Fun, frantic, exacting, and responsive, this is a throwback to earlier gaming and a great love letter to arcade racing. If you enjoyed arcade racers of the 80s to mid-’90s, then this is a sure-fire hit for you.
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