Original Release: Activision, 2009, PlayStation 2
Other Releases: Nintendo DS (2009)
A simple racer that follows the general theme of the TV series with equally simple elements of upgrading beater cars and winning street races
MTV’s Pimp My Ride: Street Racing (PS2, Activision, 2009)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: PlayStation 2 Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
Unless you’re a big fan of the mid-2000s Xzibit show, you’d likely not know that there were actually two Pimp My Ride games. The first was an oddball GTA derivative that had you drive around fulfilling customer car orders by ramming other random cars to make their coins fly out in Mario style, for whatever reason … “Street Racing” is the second game, which basically recycles the first game’s driving engine but retools it into a straight-up racing game with no “open world” elements to it.
The other oddity about this one is that it was released in 2009 for the PS2 and DS, a full two years after the show was canceled (and well into the PS3/Xbox 360 era). That means no Xzibit, in fact almost no real connection to the show save for using its logo and a modified version of its theme song.
All of that, plus it being a $20 budget title, seems like it would add up to almost guaranteed catastrophe … but surprisingly, it’s actually a solid little racing title. It’s definitely on the simple and limited side of town, and definitely a little out of date for 2009, but it kinda shoots for a “Gran Turismo lite” style with its heavy-and-realistic-ish handling, focus on everyday street racing and need to tinker with beaters to advance in the main career mode.
That said, don’t expect anything approaching Gran Turismo’s car count, level of detail or general depth. This is a $20 budget game, so it has no licensed cars whatsoever – just a collection of about a couple dozen kinda odd-looking knockoffs for you to gradually unlock and then customize. Aside from pretty decent overall handling, the big strength is a collection of pretty well-designed tracks; again only about a dozen though, with championship cups padded out by having “reverse” versions of each in the mix.
The “pimping” process also eventually opens up a decent range of visual options for the car, but is extremely straightforward. You earn “scrilla” from your racing ostensibly to buy stuff, but the championship races (the only place to earn it) also gradually unlock everything you need when you place 2nd and 1st in each race. So actually buying anything really feels like a waste of money until you get near the end of the game. Upgrading car performance parts is also a simple and straightforward process that is the same for every car. There’s a little more action in crafting the visual design of your car, at least after you’ve unlocked a bunch of parts and such through championship race wins, but one thing you can do from the beginning is create custom drawings for vinyl wraps and your own custom license plate. Unlike Gran Turismo, you’re also able to paint each of your cars whatever color you like at any time for free.
The racing kinda resembles Gran Turismo in general “realistic everyday car” handling and emphasis on braking properly around sharp corners, but it definitely differs in a number of ways. It’s much more gentle, for starters, with no need to come to grips with corner technique for the first few championship cups. There’s also only one AI racer who kinda rubberbands around you to maintain general challenge, the rest of the pack are losers who are easily dusted. There are also more arcadey elements, like speed boost pickups, off-track shortcuts and Dukes of Hazzard jumps. And since this is “illegal street racing” you have to deal with NPC traffic on nearly every track, but collisions are handled very gently; you can usually truck the Sunday drivers with little penalty, and a bad enough wipeout only costs you two or three seconds of drive time before you’re gently placed back on the track in Lakitu style. And while your car will show visible damage over a race you can’t actually hurt its performance or permanently wear or damage it.
So it’s kinda a good choice if you dig the general Gran Turismo style but wish the game would take it easy and relax more, you know, make an effort to be more arcadey and invitingly fun. The developers definitely seemed to be racing fans and put more effort into the core driving action and track design than was probably necessary for a late-PS2-life budget title.
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