For at least 3 years at school, the in-joke “Pimp My Ride for the PlayStation 2” cropped up once and again in my friendship group. One of my friends loves collecting old games, and games he already owns for some reason (multiple copies for steam, emulation, and consoles). This includes the videogame tie-in to the titular show hosted by “Xzibit”, the subject of this review. My friend owned this game and for years we joked about how ridiculous the phrase “Pimp My Ride for the PS2” is, occasionally studying the box art like we were giddy 10 year olds in Gamestop. One miraculous birthday of his (this was genuinely life changing) we actually played the game for the very first time by taking it in turns. What a treat it was. Then for my birthday (he’s one day younger than me so it must have been the next year) he gifted me this game to play on my Wii U. Owning this game myself felt akin to what lost media fanatics must experience after searching for years. This was my Roman Empire, my 130 minute cut of The Magnificent Ambersons. Today was my first time touching my copy while I downloaded some games on my Xbox (because really, how else do I spend the wait?)

I put the disc in, got to the startup menu, which Wii fans will know is usually home to nice music and graphics. Instead, nothing but the logo appears, with the words a second time in Arial font right above. The background is white. Xzhibit says “we’re gonna pimp your ride”. Complete silence. No music.

The in-game menu music is a 20 second song that stops playing for 10 seconds instead of looping.

Pimp My Ride for the Nintendo Wii is the most raucously funny game I’ve ever experienced. I wish Backloggd let you ‘like’ things separately to the rating (as Letterboxd does), because there really is no better way to express this game than a one star with a heart. Pimp My Ride for the Nintendo Wii is the most comically, absurdly awful game I’ve ever seen. “So bad it’s good” movies a la The Room are funny because of how hard they’re trying and how far they’re missing. “So bad it’s good” videogames are funny because the amount of stupid design decisions that snowball over several hours until you’re overwhelmed, wondering how this could ever have been made. The Infested Chopper in Devil May Cry 2 is funny because every time you think it’s over, it just keeps going. Pimp My Ride for the Nintendo Wii is funny because everything is the exact same shitty rhythm minigame. Calling it a “rhythm minigame” is an insult to even the most broken Friday Night Funkin mod. You complete the same button press over and over, with a century between each input. This causes your character to dance which raises money, I guess. That’s the whole minigame. And that’s the best minigame. Cruise Control is just holding down a button. “Ghost Ride The Whip” is an iconic phrase, at least.

In Pimp My Ride, there are no cars. There are whips. You don’t “fix ‘er up”, you pimp your ride. Pimp My Ride has somewhat funky music (when it randomly plays something good), which makes the most entertaining part of this game cruising around the map, even if there’s nothing to do.

The game is split into two distinct stages:
The first half of gameplay is choosing a whip, driving to waypoints to do shitty minigames until you raise enough money to Pimp Your Ride (for the Nintendo Wii). It’s easy, boring, but funny in an absurd way. You can’t even run people over because they’ll teleport out of the way. Giant XXXX’s block your way to the rest of the map.

Then, once you’ve raised enough money by repeating the 3 boring ass minigames, you can actually Pimp Your Ride (for the Playstation Portable). You get to see the glorious character models which have no mouth movement. Then, you have to go back around the map and pick up parts with an actually strict timer. Seriously, the game goes from dead easy to insanely demanding as you have to race against your rival. The contrast between Autopilot playing the first half and something that resembles a videogame is hilarious. It’s still awful though.

Overall, this was a complete waste of my time because my games had finished downloading by the time I had started playing. It wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining without my weird friendship lore building it up over several years.