Halloween Racer (Game Boy Color) Playthrough
1"Halloween Racer" developed by Visual Impact and published by Microïds in 1999 for the Game Boy Color is a mascot racer themed around Halloween, with its thematic elements and eerie atmosphere.
The storyline in "Halloween Racer" is quite barebones, featuring the denizens of Halloween organizing races within their peculiar realm. Players could choose from six playable characters, including a witch on a broom, a knight on a floating shield, a scarecrow, a skeleton with foggy feet, a penguin on a snowman's head, and a rabbit atop a pumpkin head.
These characters can't race against each other but competes against four, five, or six computer-controlled NPCs. The NPCs are more simplistically designed, featuring characters like a pumpkin person, a vampire bat, a mummy, and others. Unlike the player racer, these NPCs doesn't start at the beginning of the race but were scattered at various points along the circuit.
"Halloween Racer" also includes elements related to Christmas, which are unlocked around the midpoint of the game, making it more suited for its Europe-exclusive releases, where Halloween is not as prominent as Christmas.
The game offers two primary modes: Championship and Practice, both available in three difficulty levels - Rookie, Advanced, and Expert. Higher difficulty levels are unlocked by conquering the lower ones in Championship mode. Rookie encompasses four circuits and eight races, Advanced added a fifth circuit (Jungle) with fifteen races, and Expert introduced six circuits (including Icefield) with a total of eighteen races.
The player has to finish at least third in each race to win a championship. Falling to fourth place or failing to reach a circuit checkpoint within the time limit required players to use in-game credits to continue, which are earned by winning races and accumulating points through gem collection and overtaking opponents.
There is a Password Save system to save progress, with passwords awarded after completing each championship.
Unfortuntely, the game is too simplistic to be much fun to play. After a few circuits, it mostly repeats itself through the rest of the game, just with swapped graphics.
"Halloween Racer" spawned a sequel in 2001 titled "Monster Racer" featuring much of the same cast from "Halloween Racer" and includes several of its original circuits.