Hot Wheels: Extreme Racing

"TRANSFORM TO RACE ON LAND, AIR AND WATER!
Tweak your car for optimal performance, then hit the track and watch it transform over land, air and sea. Pick-up awesome power-ups along the way to wreak serious havoc on your opponents! RACE with what's under the hood, but WIN with what's strapped on top!"

The game has a good premise of racing with multiple vehicles like later Mario karts or sonic transformed but the confines of a karting style race circuit really hampers the gameplay as you don't have a lot of room to manoeuvre and all the vehicles are fairly light to control and easily knocked around by weapons fire. The back of the cd case says 24 levels! What it fails to mention is that there are only 12 levels and 12 reverse versions and you have to play all 24 three times and it already feels like a grind before starting the reverse tracks.

Winning each cup is done by accumulating a specified score as well as winning overall from four races for each cup. You don't need to win every race, but it helps. Score is achieved by collecting weapons, hitting and destroying opponents. There is also a bonus crystal to find in each level for a huge score boost. Weapons are scattered all over the levels but not always easily collected. You gain score each time you pick up a weapon so there is no sense in holding onto one and letting others go by though you might want to hold on if you know an opponent is near. Farming it for points might be better than winning the race.

Winning cups unlocks additional cars and cogs. Cogs can be assigned to different parts of your car before each race though boosting the car side is usually the best option. Ultimately though, the game feels unrewarding for completing all cups as there is no real ending and you just get access to the cheat menu. After the game is completed I show a quick race in Arcade mode with the final car unlocked. I show the extra viewpoint and an action replay of the race before manually rolling the credits.

00:00:00 Intro
00:02:50 Easy Cup (New Cup Unlocked)
00:18:40 Medium Cup (new Cup Unlocked)
00:34:18 Hard Cup (Car Unlocked - Shadow Jet)
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00:50:35 Silver Easy Cup (Extra Gear Unlocked)
01:06:50 Silver Medium Cup (Car Unlocked - Double Vision)
01:22:20 Silver Hard Cup (Reverse Cups Unlocked)
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01:38:50 Gold Easy Cup (Car Unlocked - Super Modified)
01:55:12 Gold Medium Cup (Extra Gear Unlocked)
02:11:23 Gold Hard Cup (Secret Letter Unlocked)
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02:27:50 Reverse Easy Cup (Car Unlocked Toe Jam)
02:43:48 Reverse Medium Cup (Secret Letter Unlocked)
02:59:18 Reverse Hard Cup (Secret Letter Unlocked)
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03:14:55 Reverse Silver Easy Cup (Secret Letter Unlocked)
03:30:50 Reverse Silver Medium Cup (Extra Gear Unlocked)
03:46:15 Reverse Silver Hard Cup (Secret Letter Unlocked)
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04:02:02 Reverse Gold Easy Cup (Extras Gear Unlocked)
04:17:54 Reverse Gold Medium Cup (Secret Letter Unlocked)
04:33:47 Reverse Gold Hard Cup (Code Letter and Car unlocked - Rollcage)
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04:50:50 Arcade Race
04:56:40 Credits