With the latest release, though, Nintendo did something I’m still chewing on. They took a racer and quietly reshaped it into a place to be. Less a game you conquer and shelf. More a spot you log into.

Mario Kart World arrived beside the Switch 2, and its banner feature wasn’t a new item or a faster engine class. Free Roam stole the show. Picture a single connected map, stitched so every track bleeds into the next, with no checkered flag waiting to boot you back to a menu. You drive. Nothing’s chasing you off a cliff. No timer breathes on your neck. Open road, your own mood, and however long you feel like staying.

Small shift on paper. In practice it rewires the entire reason you show up.

Consider how we actually use the things we love. Barbershops sell haircuts, sure, but nobody lingers an extra hour for the fade. Same with a cookout and the plate, or a group chat and the information passing through it. These are destinations. We go to feel something, to orbit our people, to soak in a vibe for a stretch. Nintendo looked at a competition machine three decades deep and asked a bold question. Could this be a destination too?

Cruise the open map and the answer creeps up on you. Pull up your overview and little icons dot the world, each one a friend out living their own session. Rather than parking in a lobby while some host fiddles with settings, you warp clean across the island to wherever they posted up. One second you’re alone on a ridge, next you’re idling beside your boy on a beach, neither of you racing, just deciding what’s next. Pulling up to the spot, basically. The function, rendered in karts.

And the spot stays loaded with things to do that have zero to do with finishing first.

Photo Mode is where the new energy hit me hardest. Tap a button mid cruise and the camera floats loose. Rotate it, strike a pose, layer on effects, frame a shot like a music video director with a budget. Push the result over to the Switch phone app and it’s out in the world for whoever. So a crew of four will pick a scenic cliff, coordinate outfits, line up their characters, and snap a flick with the same care you’d put into a graduation photo. Content, in other words. The exact instinct that has us posting from the function, except here the function is a cartoon island crawling with dinosaurs and turtles.

Once your eye catches that instinct, it shows up stitched through everything. Outfits unlock by rolling through Yoshi diners and grabbing food from the drive thru. No race required, no pressure, just a nudge to wander and refine how you present yourself. Accident? Doubt it. Self expression has been the heartbeat of every social platform that ever caught fire. Hand people a way to look how they want, then watch the hours evaporate. Whoever designed this understood the assignment.

GameChat might be the quiet MVP of the whole experiment. While you roll the open road, your crew can be live on voice and video, catching up like everybody’s on the porch. Driving slips into background noise, and the real event becomes the conversation. Ever called a friend purely to share a phone line while you both handled separate stuff? Same circuitry. Racing turns into the excuse. Kicking it becomes the substance.

Here’s the slick part. Nintendo never gutted the competition to build the hangout. Both live under one roof. You’re drifting through the mountains with your people, somebody catches an itch, and a Knockout Tour spins up where racers get eliminated round by round until one stands tall. Thrill of getting smoked, or doing the smoking, sits one menu away, braided into the social fabric instead of dominating it. Temperature’s yours to set. Mellow scenic drive, or a knock down brawl across eight tracks. Same session, same crew, no app hopping.

Even the welcome mat for strangers reveals the thinking. Room IDs let somebody off your friends list pull up to your space the moment you slide them a code. Difference between a sealed match and an open door, right there. Run your room like a private kickback, or like a block party where anybody with the address can roll through. Platform logic, plain as day. Borrowed from every Discord server and group chat invite link you ever clicked.

Collecting goes communal too, which caught me off guard with how much I enjoyed it. Peach Medallions, Question Panels, food items, all kinds of little treasures hide across the map, tucked on rooftops and ledges behind platforming you actually have to earn. Solo hunting plays fine. Hunting with three people shouting locations and racing for the prize hits a whole different texture. Open world flips into a scavenger hunt, and the hunting itself does the bonding, same way a real crew builds inside jokes out of nowhere.

Let me keep it a buck, though, because waving pom poms with no honesty in my hand isn’t my lane. A genuine stumble lurks in all this, and it stings exactly because the vision soars so high. Full open world play, every challenge and collectible switched on, refuses to run in local splitscreen. Parent and kid sharing one couch can’t roam that island together with everything active. Separate systems, online connection, before the complete thing unlocks. For a series practically built on couch chaos, on siblings throwing elbows for screen space, leaving that out lands rough. Families who’d cherish this undirected, low pressure playground most are precisely the ones handed a trimmed version. Beautiful place to be, with the easiest door into it bolted shut. A future patch could fix it, and the dream earns that follow through.

Set the gripe aside and study the overall shape of what occurred, though. We received a racing game where racing turned optional. Sit with how strange and daring a move that is. The activity the franchise was literally named after, the activity it moved a hundred million copies on, got demoted to one option among many. Buy this thing, boot it up, spend a whole evening never crossing a single finish line, just driving, snapping photos, dressing your character, hunting secrets, running your mouth on video chat with your people, and you’d walk away feeling like you used the product exactly right.

A tell, if I ever saw one. Proof the definition shifted under our feet while we weren’t watching. Old measure of a kart game lived in how it raced. New measure asks whether you want to hang around in it. Wholly different question. Identical controller, fresh soul.

I keep picturing the kids growing up on this version, and how their memory of it will split from mine. My nostalgia rests on a finish line, on the precise pixel where a blue shell connected, on the exact way my cousin’s face crumpled. Theirs lands on a beach photo, a warp to a friend’s marker, some dumb conversation that unfolded while two karts idled in a field accomplishing nothing. Place over podium. Richer kind of memory, honestly, the variety that keeps pulling you back long after you quit caring who finished first.

Nintendo could’ve coasted. Ship another polished racer with sharper graphics and a couple new items, and we’d all have bought it and called ourselves satisfied. Instead they asked what a kart game might become if it stopped being only a game and started being somewhere you go. Built a world, threw the gates open, passed everybody a camera and a phone line, and said do whatever feels good.

Whatever feels good, it turns out, remains the same thing it always was. Being around your people, in a space that belongs to y’all, doing a sweet little bit of nothing together. Nintendo just bolted wheels to it.

Staff Writer; Jay Baker

An older blerd with a lifelong love for anime, comics, manga, and gaming… Writing for fans who still believe great stories can come from a screen, a page, or a controller…

He can be contacted at JayBaker@AfroGamers.com.

For It’s Time Cruis’n USA and Cruis’n World Were Fresh

There was a time when some racing games were either 2D affairs that played from the rear or shoulder view and didn’t look that impressive. Well, a couple stood out and were impressive racing titles in the 1990s but I’m certain players believed there could be more visually.

There were also racing games that played from first-person perspective. These were often in play places or arcades but they would have a lot of success on console. The first group of games kind of crossed over into the first-person view realm via titles like Cruis’n USA and Gran Turismo which improved graphics and made for a more involved experience as far as including modes and the something similar to the accuracy of arcade racing games.

Since we had a Nintendo 64 early on, our first experience with this generation of racing games was via Cruis’n USA. I would later check out Gran Turismo at a friend’s house but I just wasn’t a fan of the first one at the time. I believe it was more that I didn’t care to learn the controls which could tie into my belief that Cruis’n’s controls were simpler.

Simply put, I just enjoyed playing the Cruis’n games for 1994 and 1996. There’s a lot of preference there, I’ll admit. There was something about how colors popped in Nintendo 64 games but looked closer to realistic on PlayStation and I noticed this between Cruis’n World and Gran Turismo. Of course, I always felt Gran Turismo was closer to simulation even in 1997 while Cruis’n World was an arcade port. It was tailor-made for the Nintendo 64 which didn’t feature many simulation games in the West.

However, for that period the game was innovative as far as the flash and accuracy that was expected going forward and how these games should look aesthetically for that period.

Ultimately, It Was Another Racer

The thing about Cruis’n is that in the 90s, you had a couple of fighting games of varying popularity, a glut of action games—expected—and a bunch of racing games. Like sure, Cruis’n USA was innovative for the early 1990s but you also had the NASCAR series which was top notch and Daytona USA which hit the Sega Saturn a year later in 1995 and was in arcades the same year as Cruis’n USA.

This was during the Nintendo-Sega rivalry as well and I’d say Daytona USA was the better example of how arcade racers should’ve delivered going into the 2000s. As a matter of fact, Daytona USA 2001 topped Cruis’n Exotica. Mind you, the Cruis’n franchise was on a severe decline as the games released on Nintendo consoles.

What other titles came out in that time and took the wind out of Cruis’n sails? You had Ridge Racer, Need for Speed, the Rush franchise started around this time, F-Zero, Sega Rally released in 1994 and kicked off a series, Midtown Racing, Mario Kart became popular in the 1990s and 2000s as did Diddy Kong Racing.

Eventually, the Cruis’n franchise just seemed dated and not as fun as the other arcade racers and it wasn’t going to give the kart racers, vehicular combat and racing sims the business. It was just another racer that dropped on Nintendo consoles and it didn’t even serve as a whistle-wetter while waiting for the next Mario Kart.

The thing is if Nintendo had gotten the license from TV Games/Raw Thrills, the game would’ve been a strong franchise post-Cruis’n World. That’s down to the games doing well in the arcades—their natural environment—but not transitioning well to newer consoles. It’s odd because most of the arcade racers had decent or better ports.

With the kind of racers that are normally on Nintendo consoles, Cruis’n is pretty dated and in relation to racing games now, it holds it down enough in arcades or play places but it just didn’t get it done in the last two console ports. It just seems like Nintendo should handle the development for consoles but there’s often a quick turnaround between the arcade release and the console release—and Ninty takes its time with game development.

What do you remember of Cruis’n USA and Cruis’n World? Could you see it being a bigger series in the 2020s? What do you believe would be needed to achieve this? Let us know down below!

Staff Writer; M. Swift

This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.

I don’t know, maybe it’s knowing the ending of the game is coming as opposed to having my own defined adventure and reaching the ending at my own pace. Open-world games have been a popular development trend for close to two decades now with games like Grand Theft Auto III, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and a few others really opening the gates for the genre in the 3D era of gaming.

Fast forward to the 2010s, and there are an abundance of titles out there but we’re focusing on one that I feel should be a regular franchise: Mad Max.

A Forgotten Open-World Cult Classic: Mad Max

Released in 2015, Mad Max is based on the post-apocalyptic classic film franchise while being its own story. That’s what works about the MM series: it has an amazing setting, Max is a character who can be as simple or complex as the writers want, and the stories can be self-contained or tied together. It’s a very flexible series.

As for Mad Max the game, it caught the vibe of the franchise taking place in a dried-out, war-ravaged landscape occupied by mostly raiders with whatever vehicles are still available. It’s different from my one of my top three favorites in Fallout which really doesn’t have drivable vehicles.

Note, there are vehicles in FO but you can’t drive them and the aircraft that are featured can’t be operated by the player. In MM all vehicles are drivable and it’s actually preferred that you’re in a vehicle during your adventures. The world of Mad Max just isn’t safe on foot at all.

On the note of driving, the game shines with vehicular combat. Mind you, it’s a grind to get the upgrades you need to truly be effective—the sniper rifle and the grappling hook—but getting those weapons and the upgrades is very rewarding. The problem is that most upgrades are locked behind storyline missions that are kind of mid.

Correction: the storyline missions are very mid and the overall storyline is mid as well. The prologue is awesome. We go from seasoned road warrior to down bad gas gremlin and have to build our boy Max back up. It’s just that everything in between is a slog. It’s very along the lines of why I eventually play the main missions in open-world titles.

That’s actually part of the fun to MM: making your own adventures by smashing raider camps. The mechanics in MM work very well. On-foot combat and the upgrades are all great, the driving is wonderful, and the territory reclamation system rocks and is something I love to see in action games.

Where’s the Sequel?

Well, that’s the thing about Mad Max…it came out around the same time as another open-world title with more behind it: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. It’s a long-running franchise that had a ton of hype and anticipation behind it. Meanwhile, MM came in after the 2014 film Mad Max: Fury Road but wasn’t tied to it.

While that was a good lead-in for the game, you’re not going to outpace Metal Gear Solid. However, it did well in certain markets as it was second to MGSV in the UK and got the “Greatest Hits” tag on PlayStation. It’s truly a game that could’ve done with a sequel and would’ve given players something different but familiar alongside Avalanche Studios’ titanic series Just Cause which is an open-world game with a modern setting.

Besides the smidgen of story and repetitive missions, Mad Max was a fine game that could’ve built up to a good series. Hell, keeping with Avalanche Studios, the first Just Cause didn’t take off but they kept with it and the series popped with the sequel. MM performed well in sales and should’ve seen a second game at least. It was the barebones of something that could’ve been more involved.

A problem would’ve been having start from scratch as a player similar to Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War.

What did you think of Mad Max? Did it deserve a sequel or was one game enough? Share your thoughts!

Staff Writer; M. Swift

This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.

Saints Row and the Sequel

The first two games in the series were based around the gang era of the purple-clad criminal group known as the Saints. Originally based in Stilwater, their exploits have drawn the attention of rival gangs and law enforcement. Of the two I preferred the second one as there is some tying up of loose ends with gangs from the debut title and the story just works.

Now, the first game in the series also had a good story but the follow-up really built on the lore of the Stilwater era. New people join the Saints and they all appear to be fishes out of the water. Besides the main character “The Boss”, his close friend Johnny Gat, the old head voiced by Keith David, and a young Saints hang around; the new members all existed adjacent to the gang gang lifestyle.

Gang stuff eventually came to their door and the Saints helped them deal with it and provided a home and—pretty quickly—a new family. I always felt that Saints Row 2 captured what made the series fun in the first place while providing that 3D era GTA hit which was missing after Rockstar became a little more serious about their storylines starting with GTA IV.

Prior to the HD era—starting with the PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles—GTA was a series that would get outrageous to the point of almost breaking the in-game realism. Part of the appeal of this was the dated graphics—which worked for the early 2000s.

With the HD era of GTA, the stories became a little more layered as the devs got away from the money-hoarding approach to their “American Dream by hook or by crook” stories. Volition not only said “F**k that”, it reached into Rockstar’s old bag of tricks to make the hardboiled gang drama exist alongside the comedic parts. It’s a strong mix that was strongest with SR2.

The Third and 4

Saints Row: The Third was the start of SR really outrageous. From a gameplay standpoint, this was still SR but story-wise this a different but familiar story. We still had to subjugate gangs in Steelport but the Saints were bow a corporate entity of a size where it could rival the true villain of SR2: the Ultor corporation.

They’ve got money, they’re doing movies, they have a big corporate headquarters. All it took was selling their likeness to Ultor. The Saints are open for business but end up being stranded in Steelport which is run by the Syndicate. In the second act, a military agency piles on the gang and freeze their assets. There is a progression of getting your stuff back, unifying the gangs, and taking out the military organization.

It took three games for the game to get outside of the core street gang approach of the earlier entries. However, it had to grow because where would the Saints go but up? That’s just what happened in the fourth entry as the boss becomes president. This was the peak of getting away from the gang narrative as the Saints battled aliens in a hologram of Steelport. Oh and he gets superpowers to use as well.

Again, if the series was going to continue there was only so many times the main character could steamroll gangs in large cities. If anything that would be a failure to hold turf by the Saints. It’s just that this is some wild progression: going from gang member in an ailing gang to the President of the United States.

What Made Saints Row So Much Fun?

Besides having some of the character customization I’ve seen in an open-world game—very specific—what really made this game fun is the gameplay. It was pretty arcade-y most of the time but it was perfect for the game’s direction.

The combat got better in the series as the world and possibilities opened up. Driving remained the same throughout. It was never great but it didn’t suck either—it’s open-world driving. The lore also improved but as the games went on there just seemed to be less to do in the game world. With that said, the fact that Saints Row didn’t have mandatory racing missions was always a big plus for me.

I’m not a fan of racing and having unavoidable missions always freeze games for me. The appeal to continue just torpedos to zilch.

Were you a fan of Saints Row? What did you think of the 2022 entry into the series? Also, what would you have changed about the series? Share your thoughts of in comments!

Staff Writer; M. Swift

This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.

Let’s look at four racing games that added something different that run-the-route-this-many-times.

Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (1998)

The little something extra added here involved police chases during races. It made perfect sense as these were illegal, dangerous street races and oddly no one was involving themselves to stop the races. They just continued on until there was a winner. With the addition of police chases, the races were even more urgent.

See, racing games have a tendency to get sweaty. You’re holding a tight lead or you’re gaining for that first or second place. It felt like a lot was weighing on those races. Of course, in future games more would be added which gave you a tangible weight to your races.

Now it can be reputation or in-game currency. There’s something to gain from every race and your position really matters. With racing games of the late 90s, it was just the race. Winning was the weight whereas now, that’s not enough.

So, adding just a new mechanic such as a police chase really came off as a big thing for the genre. It was also that something extra that made this slight detour special spawned a side series for the NfS franchise. Honestly, it wasn’t even a detour as it was a separate mode.

Plus, it was greatly improved from the previous games that it should’ve been the main mode. Hot Pursuit was a truly something new and the Pursuit mode really added to the races.

Road Rash (1991)

There was no shortage of motorcycle racing games after Excitebike came out. It had the same formula as your usual racing games from a decade prior. Some games just looked and played better would be the main differences between them.

Then Sega came out with the Sega Genesis and you began seeing games with an edge. That black cartridge always packed an experience that was a lot different from what Nintendo was offering at the same time. It was a different attitude and even the sports games reflected this.

That brings us to another EA game in Road Rash. What it added to racing games is violence. That’s all. The same thing we do in any action game and many adventure games: bashing, slashing, and kicking. Road Rash was basically Death Race 2000 on motorcycles.

Races took within an obviously illegal competition where maiming or killing other racers was fine. The game takes place in the present day 1990s, so nothing post-apocalyptic here. Although, the battles on bikes are something you’d see in Mad Max.

That what I loved about Road Race: you weren’t guaranteed to finish the race in one piece. If anything, you were guaranteed to fly off your bike a few times or get killed here and there. These races were vicious even in early 90s graphics.

Even more vicious was our third entry.

Carmageddon (1997)

Explaining Carmageddon is pretty simple. If you’ve ever seen Death Race 2000 or the reboots: that’s Carmaggedon. It was Road Rash with cars, basically. Violence on the road is encouraged and there are plenty of weapons to use. It took the Road Rash approach of having a race but throwing in some violence.

I’d say the main difference here is that the setting is entirely different. Whereas the Road Rash races were pretty much illegal as the police would show up sometimes, the races in this game were sport. The level of violence in Carmageddon did cause a controversy at the time surrounding video game violence but no more than Mortal Kombat and Doom did, honestly.

Overall, it added something new from the tried-and-true racing game formula by bringing an older concept. Also, it was a timely game for the period. Games were becoming more violent in the late 90s and more M-rated games were popping up.

Carmageddon really wasn’t too out of place with the times.

Super Mario Kart (1992)

Nintendo is no stranger to racing games on its consoles and handhelds but when it released Super Mario Kart, it spawned a new subgenre in racing games and a popular series in its Super Mario franchise. Super Mario Kart touched on the vehicle combat subgenre in racing games but was also the start of the superstar racing and kart racing subgenres.

The premise was simple: Nintendo had all of these iconic characters from—at that time—a decade of video games. “How can we put them all in one game?” You’d figure that would be a hard question for any developer but Nintendo managed to make several series off of doing that: Mario Golf, Mario Party, Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, Mario Strikers, and the …at the Olympic Games series.

Those are just a few as I’m certain I’m missing a couple. The point remains: Nintendo knows how to use its characters outside of just their own games. As for Super Mario Kart, Nintendo just put its characters—most of which were cartoonish in nature at the time—into go-karts.

Throw in some iconic race tracks, some item use, and some dangerous shells and you’ve got a racing game that really changed how racing could be presented. It could be fun, over-the-top, or cartoonish and still do well.

Staff Writer; M. Swift

This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.

Forza Horizon 3 was an excellent racing game and it was clearly the best game in the series. Now FH4 is the fourth title in the ‘Forza Horizon’ club and is the eleventh installment in the game series. Should we expect a higher level of technical excellence and innovation this time? The demo and hands-on previews suggest that something amazing is on the way.

The game will be available for the Xbox One and PC platforms and it’s ready to surprise you with stunning graphics. While driving the cars, gameplay looks so realistic that it will make you question the quality of other racing simulators. Whether you’re driving offroad in mud or trying to take a big turn on a racetrack, the environment looks beautiful and all the locations of Britain featured in Forza Horizon 4 feel real. The graphics make you want to stop and capture the beauty of Britain’s spectacular locations. If you are someone who enjoys wallpaper moments in video games, Forza Horizon 4 is the game we can highly recommend.

No matter which car you are driving, the small details like water drops on the windshield, dust and dirt particles, and leaves falling from trees are designed thoughtfully. Make sure that you pay attention to the changes in weather. Forza Horizon 4 features dynamic weather and day and night cycles.

If you’re on road, there are chances that you would be able to see all the seasons during the race. According to the season, you may be required to make certain changes in your driving style. For example, in winter, you might not want to speed up as the roads will become slippery, especially if your car’s tires are on snow. In summer, you can enjoy driving at full speed as there will be less to no puddles at all on your way but they may appear during and after a heavy rainstorm which is always unpredictable.

Summer, winter, spring, and fall are the seasons you would experience during the gameplay. To add more realism, the day and night cycles will let you drive under the sun and the moon. Visual effects, especially the particle effect during fog and sunset offer breathtaking views of Britain in Forza Horizon 4. Forza Horizon 4 feels absolutely fantastic in all weather. Driving on the dirt roads, wooded lanes, and high altitudes make the game look and sound extraordinarily good.

Hitting walls, stones, and boards significantly reduces your speed and causes damage to your vehicle. The list of cars in Forza Horizon 4 includes hundreds of vehicles and you would not want to do this to your favorite car. When you’re all set to play the game on PC or your Xbox One, you will have to complete the introductory race. You will learn about the controls and if this is the first time you’re playing a Forza Horizon game, it would be a great idea to pay extra attention to the game controls as soon after completing this race, you will be given more opportunities to test your skills in the forthcoming races.

For the first time in Forza Horizon 4, you will be able to customize your character to an extent that you will not feel like you are picking a pre-designed character. The customization options allow you to full control over your character’s fashion appearance and gears. The game unlocks different levels, features, and new options as you make progress.

For racing simulator lovers, the game is optimized well to hit 60 frames-per-second and those with high-end rigs can push the gameplay experience little further. If you’re worried about the support after the game’s launch, developer Playground Games has already confirmed that they have planned more content for the game and it will be released after the game’s launch. Some new cars will also be added to the game in the future.

Staff Writer; Jay Baker

Have any Gaming Tips? News? Hit up our Video Games Guru at; JayBaker@AfroGamers.com.