Then again, I’m a Canadian who has never had cable TV and only got to watch these shows during visits with his grandparents. I’d forgotten about how prevalent slime was on Nickelodeon TV, and didn’t think that it would actually be a way of earning speed boost. Truth be told, the first time I played this game I avoided the slime, thinking that it would be bad. Then again, given that this is Nickelodeon that’s to be expected. These environments are pretty true to their source material and ooze both colour and slime, with slime being a big part of gameplay. The action – which is spread over three different difficulties – takes place on almost twenty-five track arrangements, including ones set in Bikini Bottom, the New York City sewers, Tommy Pickle’s house and Arnold’s school.
Hell, it’s kind of difficult to be a kart racer and not be compared to the series that made the genre what it is and still remains its biggest draw. It’s also not very original, although we won’t pretend that it’s the first game to borrow from Mario Kart over the last 20 some-odd years. Thus, there’s a lot of fan service, which will bring at least some back to easier days when the worries of adulthood were nonexistent. It’s part Mario Kart and part 90s cartoon, featuring familiar characters and environments. Nickelodeon Kart Racers is, at its core, a mixture of speed and nostalgia, with a copious amount of goo thrown in for good measure. It’s just that they seem to be the most modern characters included here because of the recent show, and rival only SpongeBob in terms of popularity. Of course, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been around for decades now, and were one of my favourite things when I grew up during the 90s. Meanwhile younger gamers, including these folks’ potential kids, may have grown up watching some of the iconic, pop culture mainstay’s newer animated shows, like their modernized and very animated take on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After all, many people within the average gamer age group (which, at least used to be in the mid-30s if I remember correctly) grew up watching shows like Rugrats, SpongeBob SquarePants, Hey Arnold!, Ren & Stimpy and more. In a way, this applies to Nickelodeon Kart Racers, a Mario Kart-inspired game that uses nostalgia as one of its main forms of appeal. Companies know that developing a new IP is a costly and risky process, so they like to draw from the past and use both nostalgia, iconic characters and classic storytelling to revitalize older, once successful properties for newer audiences. At least, that’s the case with quite a few properties and experiences, including classic movies and video games like Spyro the Dragon, A Star is Born and Final Fantasy VII. These days, what was once old is becoming new again.