Opinions may vary on how good of a game Road Rage was on consoles, but Road Rage on the Gameboy Advance is an impressive piece of software that proves ambition can be found even in licensed games.
This is a Crazy Taxi clone through and through, which means that your purpose is to pick up passengers and drive them to their destination while under a time limit, the better you do, the more points you score. For a handheld, the game offers a nice amount of modes: Road Rage, which i what I just described, Sunday Drive, which is the game without a time limit, Head to Head, which I couldn't try since it requires a second player and, finally, a missions mode, featuring about 10 different missions, each one with a unique stage and goal, like jumping on clouds for a certain amount of time , or driving through narrow cliffs. There are a few neat extras, like being able to change the colors of any playable car and character in the game. There's a lot of replayability here, featuring about 20 different characters and 6 different maps, which must be unlocked by amassing points... or by inputting the correct password. Sadly, the game runs on passwords and not on battery.
The game is a fantastic little experiment, somehow they managed to cram large environments into the cart, and created a faux feeling of 3D by using some technological wizardy. It's a very strange effect, watching compressed terrain on the horizon, decompressing as you advance, but once you get used to it... it looks great, complete with jumps and what have you. The gameplay is fun and simple too, A accelerates, R and B are breaks and L can be used to eject a passenger. There's a very good sense of speed in the game, making for fun and fast entertainment on the go.
In order to traverse the town you're given a minimap on the lower left part on the screen, and aided with an onscreen arrow on top of the screen getting to your objective isn't too hard. Sadly, the arrow on top of the screen is a bit faulty, and may disappear altogether if you get out of the optimal route, only returning as soon as you set wheel on the minimap's highlighted streets
I had a blast with Road Rage on the Gameboy Advance, its arcadey nature makes it a perfect game to take on the go. Sadly, the password system hampers it a bit, since it'd be preferable to have everything you unlock accessible as soon as you turn on the system. Simpsons fans might not get the most out of the game, but this game could've been just as a good without the license, make of that what you will.
8.0 out of 10
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