Buckle up and get ready to race! Rally across America with Mickey and friends! Race around 20 All-American courses - from Alaska to the Everglades - as you try to track down the Weasels and rescue poor dognapped Pluto. Use Ludwig Von Drake's wacky weapons - such as the "Antigrav-o-Kit Magno Flyer" or the "Stormy Weather Whenever Engager" - to give you the edge. Then blast past your friends and listen as the drivers taunt each other using Disney's original character voices!
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Mickey's Speedway USA offers a fast-paced and enjoyable kart racing experience with classic Disney characters. While it doesn't reinvent the genre like Mario Kart 64, it boasts solid controls, visually charming tracks, and a delightful sense of speed. The item selection feels a bit uninspired, but overall the game delivers on lighthearted racing fun. If you're a Disney fan and enjoyed kart racers of the era, Mickey's Speedway USA is worth a spin!
I totally forgot this game existed. I don't see a reason to play this when several better racing games exist on the N64 unless you're a massive Disney fan and really want to play as Disney characters. Otherwise, just go play Mario Kart or Diddy Kong Racing.
This is a game I picked up for 500 yen ages ago during a different N64 kick of mine. Finishing up Pilotwings 64 the other day, my friends in the voice chat I was in were talking a bunch about racing games, and it got me thinking of this yet unplayed N64 racing game I had lying around. It seemed like the perfect time to finally pop this game in and give it a proper shot. While it’s certainly not as famous or talked about as Rareware’s other N64 racing title, Diddy Kong Racing, it’s nonetheless a Rareware game from back then they made nearly nothing but hits, so it seemed high time I finally check it out. It took me about 7 hours to get platinum or gold rankings in almost every normal non-mirror race (which I didn't bother with), and I did it in the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.
Though a racing game, Mickey’s Speedway USA actually does have a narrative to it. Displayed through the confusing choice of late 90’s computer GUI interfaces, we see Mickey going outside to play with Pluto, only to find a note. The note is from the dastardly Weasels, and they’ve stolen Pluto and his diamond-encrusted collar and are driving cross country with him! They even send you picture postcards they’ve custom made as you go through the game of the Weasels torturing Pluto at different locations, and it made for an extremely uncomfortable and very badly aged attempt at humor ^^;. At any rate, Mickey hits up his friends as soon as they can, and with the help of Professor Von Drake, they get into go-karts and start doing races to get good enough at driving to catch those Weasels and rescue Pluto. It’s a weird narrative with some very badly aged aspects to it, but it’s a fine enough excuse for a racing game, I suppose XD
The game itself gives you the choice of six racers with three actual stat variations between them (Mickey’s stats are identical to Donald’s, for example) with another three unlockable throughout the game. You then have five different cups of four races each, and you have three CC ratings to play each race at. While getting the highest score total in one will get you a gold trophy, getting first in all four races gets you a special platinum trophy. Platinums are usually what you want for unlocking new characters, but there’s actually a tenth character waiting for anyone dedicated enough to both have the GBC version of this game alongside the tech to connect it up to this game via an N64 Transfer Pak. Pain in the butt special unlock conditions aside, it’s overall a very familiar formula for anyone who’s played a kart racer before. However, while this game has some special aspects to it, I think it ultimately doesn’t impress too terribly for a game coming out as late as 2000 (some 3-ish years after Mario Kart 64 and even a year after Crash Team Racing).
At least for me, I’m not a huge fan of different characters with different stats, at least not like this. The unlockable characters in particular feel like pretty straightforward power upgrades, and there felt like very little reason to use older characters once I’d unlocked even my first new one. The tracks themselves are okay, but they’re both a bit barren as well as being very short. Most of them have very little in the way of obstacles or interesting sections, and you’ll get through all three laps of most of them in less than two minutes, and you’ll likely be looking at sub-minute times for many tracks on anything above the lowest CC ranking.
This is, of course, with the exception of the last cup's tracks. First of all, to even unlock the final cup, you need to find a hidden car part in each of the four previous cups, and those things are hidden quite well to impossibly well, and finding them without a guide back in the day must've been absolutely miserable. As for the cup itself, it REALLY feels like they were compensating here for how relatively uninspired the previous tracks mostly were XD. They're packed with narrow corridors with slow-down parts on both sides and so many bottomless pits that the CPUs fall off of them constantly. Generally weak track design was a very big sticking point for me in a lot of this game, and even though I'm not the biggest Mario Kart 64 fan, I found myself wishing for its track design quite a lot during my time with this game.
As for the CC rankings themselves, I hesitate to call them “difficulties” as such, either, as honestly the CPUs appeared to more or less always be playing just as well. They seem to be more difficult the more difficult the tier of cup you were challenging was, but outside of that, they never seemed to be more intelligent or better at the game whether I was on the highest or lowest CC ranking. Those CC rankings themselves are also no joke. The CC rankings in Mario Kart change your speed, sure, but to be perfectly honest, I never even realized it until very recently because the changes in speed never felt that great. In this game, it is absolutely impossible to ignore just how great the speed difference is, because you’re going like twice as fast even just going between the first and second CC rankings (though there honestly felt like much less of a jump between the second and third rankings). It’s an interesting idea, sure, but it just doesn’t compensate for much when the game seems to lack drift boosting and is also generally laden down with poor AI and fairly mediocre track design.
The number of players is also something interesting. Six players feels a little small for a kart racer, though with tracks this small perhaps it just works better? It also easily could’ve been a technical concern, as this game’s framerate is REALLY good, especially for an N64 game (though perhaps it just feels that way because I’d just come off of playing Pilotwings 64 XD). It likely also needs that framerate for JUST how fast it has you going on the highest CC ranking, of course. But even still, it's a blessing in disguise, ultimately, that you have those smaller player numbers.
Six players including yourself might also feel like a small number because this game just generally has a very lackluster item pool that is at the same time very poorly balanced. You have equivalents of Mario Kart’s green shell, a crappy red shell, a good red shell (which is very rare and is like a blue shell for specifically the guy ahead of you), an oil slick that’s basically Mario Kart’s banana peel, a turbo boost that’s one of Mario Kart’s mushrooms, a rain cloud that slows everyone and keeps them from using items, and an invincibility item like the power star in Mario Kart.
The thing with the power star item in particular is that these tracks are so small that if any AI gets them, it's basically an "I win" button for them, since particularly on harder tracks it's hard for it not to be something that gets them so far into the lead that you have no chance at all to win. It can be extremely disheartening to be doing well on a later track and then just get victory robbed from you by an invincible jerk at the last second, and it makes the already frustrating final tracks in the game that much more difficult to put up with. At the very least the game does have an in-game infinite retries of a track cheat to get past this crap reasonably XD. Overall, the item pool is just yet another way where this game feels like more mediocre and far less polished Mario Kart 64. Like the track design, it's not the worst I've ever seen, sure, but it's not exactly justifying my choice of kart racer compared to the N64's more famous entries in this genre (which this game is so blatantly copying).
While the execution may be mediocre, the presentation is far less so. The story scenes are very well animated an illustrated, and the characters themselves look awesome. Unlike a near-launch title like Mario Kart 64, you and your fellow racers are actually 3D models, not just 2D sprites, and they look great too. I never play Goofy, and I certainly don’t like losing, but it nevertheless always makes me smile to see the way his ears flap in the wind behind him when he passes me, just like they do in the cartoons~. Additionally, while they weren’t redubbed for the Japanese release, the characters also have quite a few voiced lines of dialogue they’ll shout (a bit too often, frankly) as you race. There are a lot of generic ones, of course, but there are also a really surprising amount of ones particular to specific character interactions, and it makes for a very unique feeling racing experience on the console. On top of the generally good to very good music selection for the game (if you can hear it over all the mid-race racer chat), and the presentation is easily one of the strongest things this game has going for it.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This certainly isn’t a bad game by any means, but it’s just really not impressive enough to really go out of your way to try and hunt down. For big Disney fans, I’m sure this will be a really cool and fun time, but as far as kart racers go, this is a thoroughly mediocre one even for the time, and that goes double for a console like the N64 that has SO many excellent racing games of all stripes on it. It's also quite a tough and relatively frustrating one if you're going to try and see the credits, though I'd say that there's plenty of fun to be had without seeing the credits, of course. This is certainly a neat entry in Rareware’s history, but for all but big Rareware, Disney, and/or N64 racing fans, I wouldn’t really say this is particularly worth going out of your way to acquire or go out and play for any reason beyond engaging with it as a curiosity.
Though a racing game, Mickey’s Speedway USA actually does have a narrative to it. Displayed through the confusing choice of late 90’s computer GUI interfaces, we see Mickey going outside to play with Pluto, only to find a note. The note is from the dastardly Weasels, and they’ve stolen Pluto and his diamond-encrusted collar and are driving cross country with him! They even send you picture postcards they’ve custom made as you go through the game of the Weasels torturing Pluto at different locations, and it made for an extremely uncomfortable and very badly aged attempt at humor ^^;. At any rate, Mickey hits up his friends as soon as they can, and with the help of Professor Von Drake, they get into go-karts and start doing races to get good enough at driving to catch those Weasels and rescue Pluto. It’s a weird narrative with some very badly aged aspects to it, but it’s a fine enough excuse for a racing game, I suppose XD
The game itself gives you the choice of six racers with three actual stat variations between them (Mickey’s stats are identical to Donald’s, for example) with another three unlockable throughout the game. You then have five different cups of four races each, and you have three CC ratings to play each race at. While getting the highest score total in one will get you a gold trophy, getting first in all four races gets you a special platinum trophy. Platinums are usually what you want for unlocking new characters, but there’s actually a tenth character waiting for anyone dedicated enough to both have the GBC version of this game alongside the tech to connect it up to this game via an N64 Transfer Pak. Pain in the butt special unlock conditions aside, it’s overall a very familiar formula for anyone who’s played a kart racer before. However, while this game has some special aspects to it, I think it ultimately doesn’t impress too terribly for a game coming out as late as 2000 (some 3-ish years after Mario Kart 64 and even a year after Crash Team Racing).
At least for me, I’m not a huge fan of different characters with different stats, at least not like this. The unlockable characters in particular feel like pretty straightforward power upgrades, and there felt like very little reason to use older characters once I’d unlocked even my first new one. The tracks themselves are okay, but they’re both a bit barren as well as being very short. Most of them have very little in the way of obstacles or interesting sections, and you’ll get through all three laps of most of them in less than two minutes, and you’ll likely be looking at sub-minute times for many tracks on anything above the lowest CC ranking.
This is, of course, with the exception of the last cup's tracks. First of all, to even unlock the final cup, you need to find a hidden car part in each of the four previous cups, and those things are hidden quite well to impossibly well, and finding them without a guide back in the day must've been absolutely miserable. As for the cup itself, it REALLY feels like they were compensating here for how relatively uninspired the previous tracks mostly were XD. They're packed with narrow corridors with slow-down parts on both sides and so many bottomless pits that the CPUs fall off of them constantly. Generally weak track design was a very big sticking point for me in a lot of this game, and even though I'm not the biggest Mario Kart 64 fan, I found myself wishing for its track design quite a lot during my time with this game.
As for the CC rankings themselves, I hesitate to call them “difficulties” as such, either, as honestly the CPUs appeared to more or less always be playing just as well. They seem to be more difficult the more difficult the tier of cup you were challenging was, but outside of that, they never seemed to be more intelligent or better at the game whether I was on the highest or lowest CC ranking. Those CC rankings themselves are also no joke. The CC rankings in Mario Kart change your speed, sure, but to be perfectly honest, I never even realized it until very recently because the changes in speed never felt that great. In this game, it is absolutely impossible to ignore just how great the speed difference is, because you’re going like twice as fast even just going between the first and second CC rankings (though there honestly felt like much less of a jump between the second and third rankings). It’s an interesting idea, sure, but it just doesn’t compensate for much when the game seems to lack drift boosting and is also generally laden down with poor AI and fairly mediocre track design.
The number of players is also something interesting. Six players feels a little small for a kart racer, though with tracks this small perhaps it just works better? It also easily could’ve been a technical concern, as this game’s framerate is REALLY good, especially for an N64 game (though perhaps it just feels that way because I’d just come off of playing Pilotwings 64 XD). It likely also needs that framerate for JUST how fast it has you going on the highest CC ranking, of course. But even still, it's a blessing in disguise, ultimately, that you have those smaller player numbers.
Six players including yourself might also feel like a small number because this game just generally has a very lackluster item pool that is at the same time very poorly balanced. You have equivalents of Mario Kart’s green shell, a crappy red shell, a good red shell (which is very rare and is like a blue shell for specifically the guy ahead of you), an oil slick that’s basically Mario Kart’s banana peel, a turbo boost that’s one of Mario Kart’s mushrooms, a rain cloud that slows everyone and keeps them from using items, and an invincibility item like the power star in Mario Kart.
The thing with the power star item in particular is that these tracks are so small that if any AI gets them, it's basically an "I win" button for them, since particularly on harder tracks it's hard for it not to be something that gets them so far into the lead that you have no chance at all to win. It can be extremely disheartening to be doing well on a later track and then just get victory robbed from you by an invincible jerk at the last second, and it makes the already frustrating final tracks in the game that much more difficult to put up with. At the very least the game does have an in-game infinite retries of a track cheat to get past this crap reasonably XD. Overall, the item pool is just yet another way where this game feels like more mediocre and far less polished Mario Kart 64. Like the track design, it's not the worst I've ever seen, sure, but it's not exactly justifying my choice of kart racer compared to the N64's more famous entries in this genre (which this game is so blatantly copying).
While the execution may be mediocre, the presentation is far less so. The story scenes are very well animated an illustrated, and the characters themselves look awesome. Unlike a near-launch title like Mario Kart 64, you and your fellow racers are actually 3D models, not just 2D sprites, and they look great too. I never play Goofy, and I certainly don’t like losing, but it nevertheless always makes me smile to see the way his ears flap in the wind behind him when he passes me, just like they do in the cartoons~. Additionally, while they weren’t redubbed for the Japanese release, the characters also have quite a few voiced lines of dialogue they’ll shout (a bit too often, frankly) as you race. There are a lot of generic ones, of course, but there are also a really surprising amount of ones particular to specific character interactions, and it makes for a very unique feeling racing experience on the console. On top of the generally good to very good music selection for the game (if you can hear it over all the mid-race racer chat), and the presentation is easily one of the strongest things this game has going for it.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This certainly isn’t a bad game by any means, but it’s just really not impressive enough to really go out of your way to try and hunt down. For big Disney fans, I’m sure this will be a really cool and fun time, but as far as kart racers go, this is a thoroughly mediocre one even for the time, and that goes double for a console like the N64 that has SO many excellent racing games of all stripes on it. It's also quite a tough and relatively frustrating one if you're going to try and see the credits, though I'd say that there's plenty of fun to be had without seeing the credits, of course. This is certainly a neat entry in Rareware’s history, but for all but big Rareware, Disney, and/or N64 racing fans, I wouldn’t really say this is particularly worth going out of your way to acquire or go out and play for any reason beyond engaging with it as a curiosity.
A superior kart racer on N64 behind the hit series Diddy Kong Racing. It’s what Mario Kart 64 wants to be.
Severely underrated kart racer, one I wasn't expecting to be as enamored with its driving physics as I did. The learning curve is absolutely rewarding in a way that you don't really get out of Mario Kart 64 or Diddy Kong Racing.
That said, it's still marred by some really uninteresting items (not awful since the racing's great but still), the game's slower CCs being painfully boring to play after increasing difficulty and some really rough rubberbanding. Absolutely still worth a playthrough if you have the time though.
That said, it's still marred by some really uninteresting items (not awful since the racing's great but still), the game's slower CCs being painfully boring to play after increasing difficulty and some really rough rubberbanding. Absolutely still worth a playthrough if you have the time though.
Fondest memory I have of this game was asking my cousin to unlock the 3 brothers during a 4th of July weekend. I remember also liking the tracks in this one the most out of the 4 racing games I had on the n64.