I loved Wacky Wheels! Bought my copy in school, of all places, from some guys in the year above taking part in “Young Enterprise”. My favourite memory is playing the duck shoot split screen with my sister. All the music was awesome. I ended up using it (with kind permission from Mark Klem, who’s a really nice guy) as background music in some of my videos.
I played a lot of both Skunny Kart and Wacky Wheels. I had no idea that there was this connection between the two games. Thank you for doing this video! Brought me back to some great childhood memories.
Played this to death as a kid, and love ROTT! Been playing Wacky Wheels recently so it was funny seeing this pop up. Even the music brings back memories. Like you, I never heard of Skunny Kart back then either. Also, nice to see someone on TH-cam who can pronounce 'aforementioned' correctly haha.
Skunny Kart music was so good. I still to this day 2022 have the files on my phone and blast "drivin'' on" from time to time as I do with it's nostalgic main theme
Thank god for Shareware as a kid, as it was most of my gaming. I rarely felt the yearn for full retail copies, as I was generally satisfied. I did, however, get the retail version of this game!!
They certainly do don't they? I didn't really find much information on what the Beavis Soft developers did after this, but nothing related to Atari Karts came up. I guess everyone was copying Mario Kart at the time, hence a lot of these kart racers ended up very similar.
I got my first PC in May 1994, a Intel dx2-66 and SB16 with Cirrus Logic VLB card. I played this shareware game a reasonable amount. I didn't really notice the jerky motion back in the day after coming from an Amiga 500 but nowdays do wonder why they didn't try a bit more to smooth it out. I guess it's a limitation of the game engine. F1GP by Geoff crammond was smooth as silk as a comparison on the same machine.
Great video! :D Many years ago we had some visitors, my nephew and some of his friends during a local amusement park style event. My nephews friend gave me this game saying he got it from that event. I am pretty sure he stole it. He wanted us to have fun playing the game he said. And oh boy we had fun. Multiplayer is just great and the music is amazing. GUs music has higher quality but the sound blaster fm music is the best I think.
Definitely. They actually _used_ the OPL3 chip, rather than treating it like an OPL2. It also sounds great on dual-OPL2 cards. This is one of the few games where OPL actually sounds _good,_ rather than relying heavily on nostalgia for what sounds "right."
This game deserves an open source version with modern OS support and all bells and whistles (eg: faster FPS, high resolution, internet multiplayer gameplay, ...). Similar to OpenTTD and many other games of that era.
2:25 Man, Hocus Pocus is super nostalgic for me. I used to play it on my NEC Ready 7022. I still have that computer, but sadly not the game. It was a CD re-release, I believe.
Definitely missing a lot of things that made SMK more interesting (rival karts couldn't attack, not much on the tracks, I don't think there's a performance difference between karts), but was a fun little game if you didn't have an SNES (I didn't when it released, though had a friend that had one).
I was the opposite, I played Skunny Kart first and played it a lot, and only heard about Wacky Wheels a few years later. I didn't know about the relationship between the two games until fairly recently though.
Yo great video! Love this game and appreciate your research into it. Really wish I'd seen this a couple of weeks ago while I was making a vid on Wacky Wheels too. The Dopefish and deathmatch references seem to confirm what I suspected about the developers love of Doom.
No mention that the sound effects in Copysoft's Skunny Kart are also copied? I'd recognize that Bugs Bunny "Abacadabra" from the wizard's hat invisibility powerup anywhere... which suggests that the "Hocus Pocus" from the genie's lamp invincibility powerup is also Bugs Bunny from the same cartoon, that the "Whatsup" from the purple "shrink all opponents" bottle is probably one of the times Bugs Bunny said it with his mouth full of carrot, with the "Doc?" clipped off, and that the Bart Simpson "Aww, man!" from being hit by a missile and the Terminator "I'll Be Back" from the red "shrink yourself" bottle aren't impersonators. (I don't recognise the rest of the audio samples.)
So which classic DOS PC kart racer did you enjoy back in the day? Wacky Wheels, Skunny Kart, or maybe something else? Let me know in the comments below!
I wish I liked this game more than I do. Cute game and all that, but it just didn't do it for me for some reason. Never heard of Skunny Kart before, thanks for the info.
Did you play it when it was new? Gameplay-wise it certainly hasn't aged very well, the joy is in the nostalgia for me. It probably helps that I was very young at the time and didn't know any better!
@@ctrlaltrees Not new. I played it I believe in 1997 when I was first year uni student in the UK. I think I got a copy of it from the network. (bless you uni network!) I didn't play it that much, kart racing was never one of my favorite genres as I can't stand weapons in racing games (other than Super Cars 2). Eventually I got it again from GOG, but not exactly the game I want to play often. Nostalgia is a strong motivator for sure. It's not completely absent in me, but definitely not as strong as for other guys who played it when brand new and enjoyed it. EDIT: It was not 1997 as I didn't have access to the network in 1997, but in 1998.
Sort of embarrassing that Wacky Wheels' whole shtick is to replicate Mario Kart on the PC while Jazz Jackrabbit in the same year has a "mode 7" style bonus round that runs at 70fps that's not even part of the main game 🥴 Oh well, doesn't take away that Wacky Wheels is fun game!
That's an excellent point and one I hadn't considered - you're right, the bonus stages on Jazz were very impressive. I suppose it helps that Epic Megagames had a lot more resources, Wacky Wheels was basically all programmed by a single developer!
@@ctrlaltrees The founder named it "Epic MegaGames" to make it sound bigger than it actually was. 😉 it was actually based in his parents basement with all developers being contracted out, so I think that Epic was actually smaller at the time as Apogee had employees. Jazz was programmed by 1 developer aswell, 18 yo Arjan Brussee while he was attending school. I guess it helped that Arjan didn't had to work with Joe Siegler 😬
Hadn't heard of skunny kart but I've been wondering what game that skunny was from. I use to play that platforming version a fair bit but had no idea of name/character/dev. I have WW HD and yeah it just didn't feel the same. I didn't get into it as much as I do with the original version. I didn't know about the dopefish thing but like you I started with shareware version, I'm not 100% on the details as I did it when I was around 4-6 yrs old. But I remember watching that ordering info and then being able to play as the panda or other locked characters after doing it..I dunno how/why it worked and I know it was 100% shareware. I dont think it worked every time, you had to do it a few times I think. It may of also been a locked level (shown in the ordering info demo) that you could also play (or its just my brain giving me a false memory).
![งมหอย จับปลา มือเปล่า หาอยู่หากินแบบวีถีอีสานกับแก๊งเซียนหรั่ง ม่วนคัก! [ขอนแก่น] @Sianstudio](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JEJZg6N-AbU/mqdefault.jpg)
I loved Wacky Wheels! Bought my copy in school, of all places, from some guys in the year above taking part in “Young Enterprise”. My favourite memory is playing the duck shoot split screen with my sister. All the music was awesome. I ended up using it (with kind permission from Mark Klem, who’s a really nice guy) as background music in some of my videos.
I played a lot of both Skunny Kart and Wacky Wheels. I had no idea that there was this connection between the two games. Thank you for doing this video! Brought me back to some great childhood memories.
Played this to death as a kid, and love ROTT! Been playing Wacky Wheels recently so it was funny seeing this pop up. Even the music brings back memories. Like you, I never heard of Skunny Kart back then either.
Also, nice to see someone on TH-cam who can pronounce 'aforementioned' correctly haha.
Skunny Kart music was so good. I still to this day 2022 have the files on my phone and blast "drivin'' on" from time to time as I do with it's nostalgic main theme
Oh yes, both games definitely had banging soundtracks!
Thank god for Shareware as a kid, as it was most of my gaming. I rarely felt the yearn for full retail copies, as I was generally satisfied. I did, however, get the retail version of this game!!
I loved this game when I was younger. It was one of the first ones I grabbed on Gog when I signed up there.
Did any of the staff go on to work on Atari Karts on the Jaguar at all? They feel quite similar.
They certainly do don't they? I didn't really find much information on what the Beavis Soft developers did after this, but nothing related to Atari Karts came up. I guess everyone was copying Mario Kart at the time, hence a lot of these kart racers ended up very similar.
I got my first PC in May 1994, a Intel dx2-66 and SB16 with Cirrus Logic VLB card. I played this shareware game a reasonable amount. I didn't really notice the jerky motion back in the day after coming from an Amiga 500 but nowdays do wonder why they didn't try a bit more to smooth it out. I guess it's a limitation of the game engine. F1GP by Geoff crammond was smooth as silk as a comparison on the same machine.
Nice video and good research! Thanks!
It’s no wonder Mario Kart franchise is still thriving especially with the bikes, gliders, wheels and the princesses in their outfits
Great video! :D Many years ago we had some visitors, my nephew and some of his friends during a local amusement park style event. My nephews friend gave me this game saying he got it from that event. I am pretty sure he stole it. He wanted us to have fun playing the game he said. And oh boy we had fun. Multiplayer is just great and the music is amazing. GUs music has higher quality but the sound blaster fm music is the best I think.
Definitely. They actually _used_ the OPL3 chip, rather than treating it like an OPL2. It also sounds great on dual-OPL2 cards. This is one of the few games where OPL actually sounds _good,_ rather than relying heavily on nostalgia for what sounds "right."
Dual OPL2 cards? That's new to me.@@nickwallette6201
it just hit me that in 1994 our hdd was only 230mb but the cd rom we just installed could hold 650mb... lol.
I lived for shareware and demos, they seemed so generous with the content that I rarely got bored as a kid. Never saw this one so will give it a go!
Go with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with the Nintendo Switch and you won’t look back
This game deserves an open source version with modern OS support and all bells and whistles (eg: faster FPS, high resolution, internet multiplayer gameplay, ...). Similar to OpenTTD and many other games of that era.
2:25 Man, Hocus Pocus is super nostalgic for me. I used to play it on my NEC Ready 7022. I still have that computer, but sadly not the game. It was a CD re-release, I believe.
Definitely missing a lot of things that made SMK more interesting (rival karts couldn't attack, not much on the tracks, I don't think there's a performance difference between karts), but was a fun little game if you didn't have an SNES (I didn't when it released, though had a friend that had one).
Wasn't there a TV series called whacky races featuring Dick Dastardly, Penelope Pitstop etc?
There was indeed... No connection though 🙂
@@ctrlaltrees although I noticed in the screenshot you showed at the end of the rights holders website that they used a car from that show
I was the opposite, I played Skunny Kart first and played it a lot, and only heard about Wacky Wheels a few years later. I didn't know about the relationship between the two games until fairly recently though.
I’m so glad my grandpa was a gamer when I was a kid. I got to play hundreds of pc games lol
Yo great video! Love this game and appreciate your research into it. Really wish I'd seen this a couple of weeks ago while I was making a vid on Wacky Wheels too. The Dopefish and deathmatch references seem to confirm what I suspected about the developers love of Doom.
Great stuff! I loved those sharewares back in the day!
No mention that the sound effects in Copysoft's Skunny Kart are also copied? I'd recognize that Bugs Bunny "Abacadabra" from the wizard's hat invisibility powerup anywhere... which suggests that the "Hocus Pocus" from the genie's lamp invincibility powerup is also Bugs Bunny from the same cartoon, that the "Whatsup" from the purple "shrink all opponents" bottle is probably one of the times Bugs Bunny said it with his mouth full of carrot, with the "Doc?" clipped off, and that the Bart Simpson "Aww, man!" from being hit by a missile and the Terminator "I'll Be Back" from the red "shrink yourself" bottle aren't impersonators.
(I don't recognise the rest of the audio samples.)
Nice pace to this video!! Enjoyed ROTT ... was my fave back in the day!!
Cheers Howard! Played hours and hours of ROTT back in the day, I loved the modern remake too!
So which classic DOS PC kart racer did you enjoy back in the day? Wacky Wheels, Skunny Kart, or maybe something else? Let me know in the comments below!
Awesome. I did the music for the original WW.
I wish I liked this game more than I do. Cute game and all that, but it just didn't do it for me for some reason.
Never heard of Skunny Kart before, thanks for the info.
Did you play it when it was new? Gameplay-wise it certainly hasn't aged very well, the joy is in the nostalgia for me. It probably helps that I was very young at the time and didn't know any better!
@@ctrlaltrees Not new. I played it I believe in 1997 when I was first year uni student in the UK. I think I got a copy of it from the network. (bless you uni network!) I didn't play it that much, kart racing was never one of my favorite genres as I can't stand weapons in racing games (other than Super Cars 2). Eventually I got it again from GOG, but not exactly the game I want to play often. Nostalgia is a strong motivator for sure. It's not completely absent in me, but definitely not as strong as for other guys who played it when brand new and enjoyed it.
EDIT: It was not 1997 as I didn't have access to the network in 1997, but in 1998.
I do wish the framerate in this game wasn't locked this low. It'd be nice if it ran smoother on faster computers.
I agree, and it seems like something a modern source port should be able to fix, but I haven't been able to find one.
Sort of embarrassing that Wacky Wheels' whole shtick is to replicate Mario Kart on the PC while Jazz Jackrabbit in the same year has a "mode 7" style bonus round that runs at 70fps that's not even part of the main game 🥴
Oh well, doesn't take away that Wacky Wheels is fun game!
That's an excellent point and one I hadn't considered - you're right, the bonus stages on Jazz were very impressive. I suppose it helps that Epic Megagames had a lot more resources, Wacky Wheels was basically all programmed by a single developer!
@@ctrlaltrees The founder named it "Epic MegaGames" to make it sound bigger than it actually was. 😉 it was actually based in his parents basement with all developers being contracted out, so I think that Epic was actually smaller at the time as Apogee had employees.
Jazz was programmed by 1 developer aswell, 18 yo Arjan Brussee while he was attending school.
I guess it helped that Arjan didn't had to work with Joe Siegler 😬
Arjan Brusee was/is a pretty legendary programmer so that doesn't surprise me. Epic had some insane talent at the time.
Hadn't heard of skunny kart but I've been wondering what game that skunny was from. I use to play that platforming version a fair bit but had no idea of name/character/dev. I have WW HD and yeah it just didn't feel the same. I didn't get into it as much as I do with the original version.
I didn't know about the dopefish thing but like you I started with shareware version, I'm not 100% on the details as I did it when I was around 4-6 yrs old. But I remember watching that ordering info and then being able to play as the panda or other locked characters after doing it..I dunno how/why it worked and I know it was 100% shareware. I dont think it worked every time, you had to do it a few times I think. It may of also been a locked level (shown in the ordering info demo) that you could also play (or its just my brain giving me a false memory).
Was it locked to that (looks like 15fps) framerate or did you bust out an actual 386 to review?
When you refer to the developer's favorite game around 5:46 what do you mean? Thanks!
Wait, so how was Rise of the triad relevant again? :O
My introduction to Wacky Wheels was the shareware version on the ROTT CD 😅
All about the music.
This is a channel boosting comment. I have nothing important to say. Carry on.
Cheers Garo, keep up the good work! 😁