Al Unser Jr. Turbo Racing is all about racing for the glory as you try to obtain 1st place in the World Grand Prix. Luckily for you Uncle Al is there to give you advice every step of the way and help you make improvements to your car and your team. Can YOU be as good as Uncle Al? Strap on your seatbelt and throw that hot dog out the window so you can prove to the world just how TURBO you are.
Visuals
Third person racing game
Blocky F1 Cars
Bland Background
Minimalistic Menus
Al Unser Jr. Turbo Racing is nothing unique to the NES racing genre. You race your square looking F1 car from a third person perspective as you try to make hair pin turns and outmaneuver other square looking F1 cars that look exactly like yours. The background looks like something out of a Mad Max movie with just desert and mountains that don’t really give you a feeling of just where the fuck you are.
The menus in this game go for a minimalistic approach. While this can be a good thing when done right, Forza 3, this one leaves much to the imagination with its use turning attributes with full names into stats with abbreviated names. I couldn’t tell what some of the things were due to this fact of using 3 letters for everything.
Audio
Fist pumping music
Terrible sound effects
As soon as you pop this game in you’re greeted with a white screen with no music whatsoever. It’s kind of lame but it’s better than hearing the same nonsensical crap that some racers tend to put in. That bliss is short lived because as soon as you press start you have to deal with some pretty generic menu music until you get into any kind of race. Here you have a choice of which background music you’d like while you try to smother the competition. From my perspective, C is the best choice just because it’s not the god awful track of A.
The sound effects leave some room for improvement because it’s just a typical racing game with the ever increasing engine noise, some whistles to tell you about place and a ear piercing BWOOOP for every menu you pick. Crashes are also pretty lame too.
Completion
Not knowing just what the hell I was getting into, I immediately started the Grand Prix mode under the name “Wally” and started with a qualifying race for my starting position. This was the first time I got to experience what Al Unser Jr. Turbo Racing was all about.
From the start of things my F1 racer was ridiculously slow going at a steady pace of 30mph until I realized that pushing Up [and down] shifts you into the appropriate gear to increase your speed. With this new found knowledge I made the harrowing turns and finished dead last with a 12th place starting position. Bummer. Now it was onto the REAL DEAL!
As soon as the light 1 I sped off to a swift 30 mph only to shift up and then back down accidentally and, before I knew it, I was even MORE in dead last. Taking minimal amount of time I shifted and sped up to a brisk 90 mph where I shifted again only to crash into the car in front of me. This caused me to lose more time to where I couldn’t catch up. It wasn’t because I was a terrible driver, as I only crashed once or twice, but the controls caused me to shift up or down at random times due to their placement on the d-pad. Sadly I finished the Grand Prix in the same position I started in, last.