Throwing its retro gaze back to the NES era, SG Racing is a simplistic kart racer for one or two players to compete locally against three or four AI competitors around tracks made out of square blocks. Those square blocks are made out of different terrain types, and it is this gameplay nuance that SG Racing invests its time in.
First things first, this is an isometric racer. Steering takes place from the character’s perspective, not the player’s, so when driving down the screen, left is right and right is left. I was raised with these views and controls, and so they feel natural to me. Players can also switch between a zoomed-in camera view and a panoramic view that places the whole track on a single screen.
The tracks themselves are rather simple, to a fault at times. There are 36 tracks across 6 worlds, and each world has its own terrain theme. In the forest, mud tiles reduce your top speed. The beach levels have waves of water that lap onto the track, slowing you down and reducing your grip. The ice cream world (yes, that is a thing) has a chocolate scoop that runs faster than the vanilla areas. The space world has jet streams that boost you, whilst the ice world has slippery areas. As each track in SG Racing is built on blocks, you’ll naturally want to fight for the narrower strips of terrain that boost your karts’ performance. Sometimes this is the crux of victory, because you can bash another driver out of the way and they can’t recover. There is some odd rubberbanding with the AI to try and keep up some pressure, but its usage is hit and miss.
Thankfully, steering is tight and consistent. What SG Racing lacks in complexity, it makes up for in approachability with its driving physics. If you want an arcade kart or RC car racer from the NES era, this game does get the feeling right. There are power-ups to collect, but they aren’t too plentiful, and they rarely decide the outcome of a race. The homing attack is by far the most powerful, but if you get it more than three times in a race, you’ve been lucky. Races are over in 70 seconds in most cases, with each world hosting a championship. Winning is just for honour only. There’s nothing really to unlock, and that feels like a missed opportunity, especially when each character has slightly different base stats.
SG Racing does have some interesting side modes that make it unique, even if the additional modes have limited staying power. The first is a stunt mode. Players choose how many buses they want to jump over, and with balance controls similar to a very basic Trials game, you’ll have to stick the landing at top speed. Next up is a chase mode, collecting as many coins as possible as the AI tries to ram you off the road. This mode could have staying power, but because the game is so simple and easy, I found myself unable to lose and just quitting out of the mode from boredom. The final mode is the strangest one. Players drive off a platform in the sky and steer towards a finish line, opening their parachutes and floating as close to (or on) the finish line as possible. The closest player wins. It feels like a lost minigame from a collection, but again, it lacks staying power.
Lacking staying power is my overarching feeling with SG Racing. There’s a competent racer here, but it is very simple and lacks the edge that top-tier racers have that draws you back for one more race. I’d place SG Racing in the category of an officially licensed kart racer for kids. It is fine for an hour or two, but when you’ve played every track, you’ll feel empty because there’s a lack of grit or challenge to keep you coming back. One of the retro fans who must try everything only.
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