Checkered Flag

The Good
I can appreciate games like Checkered Flag. I really can. I should not be in a position where I critisize racing games just because they have a resemblance of Virtua Racing. And that's the charm about Checkered Flag. From the looks of the screenshots on the box, it's a simplistic polygon racer that reminds us of that simpler time when Virtua Racing hit the arcades and was actually a great deal of fun, especially when you had plenty to do.

The Bad
Unfortunately, the very concept of this game was about all I liked. Everything about the game, once you start playing it, is absolutely pitiful.

Checkered Flag doesn't suffer from graphics. They're actually a bit more colorful than Virtua Racing's was. That is, to say, "slightly". Nothing more. But the game is shockingly slow and choppy. This game is the perfect example of what's entirely wrong with the Atari Jaguar, and that's its weak and pathetic MC6000 CPU that barely can power the system's powerful 64-bit processors. The racing is also virtually impossible to control. The car you drive is way too "touchy" and steers left and right way too fast with just a slight push.

Every level's design looks identical to the last and the framerate is so terrible that the game truly enrages you after playing it for more than 2 minutes.

The Bottom Line
Frankly, the game's color and graphics make it a complete Virtua Racing clone, except the problem is that compared to the Saturn (and sadly, even the Sega 32X version), the Jaguar feels like your playing a polygon racer on the NES.

The control on the Jaguar controller is easy enough to learn, except if you don't have the numeric pad nameslip over the keys, it's way too hard to figure out where the correct button is to change the viewpoint. Basically, if you loved Virtua Racing, you'd probably have loved this game if the graphics weren't so slow, the gameplay weren't so unplayable, and the controls weren't so confusing. Simply a tragically bad game. Why didn't they have someone test-play this game before they sold it?