I was scouring the eshop for more cheapie games to buy and and subject my audience to videos of when I came across this game called Music Racer. The title is about as simple as it can get but it had that retro 80’s asthetic along with describing itself as a music game, so I thought “why not?” and bought it.

In short: This game is awesome. For 7 bucks you get synth pop music with all your favorite 80’s vehicles, crazy neon graphics and colors, and if you have any appreciation for what I just mentioned then you should buy it. It is worth the money. BUT – I do want you to know a couple things before going into it.

First off – it’s a a racing game, but it’s not competitive racing, or time trial racing, anything like that. It’s “racing” in a “I had to race to get to the elevator before it closed” sort of race. The “I had to race to the bathroom after eating that last helping of Lo Mein” type of race. There’s no winners or losers here. You’re only task is to pick up these white squares that make a little bass beat sound effect if you have the effects turned on, and you can build a combo by not hitting any obstacles, so you want to keep the combo going as long as possible because it’ll contribute toward your score at the end. Hit an obstacle and it only slows you down for a moment and it resets your combo counter. That’s it. The stakes are not high here and this is a game meant to be played for fun and nothing else.

Next up – the music has got a playlist that consists of synth pop, and a good chunk of EDM. If you don’t like EDM, then this game is a little harder to recommend. Other than that though you can choose the song before each race, and the track runs as long as the song does. When the song’s over, then your score is tallied up and you’re given a star rating for how well you did. One complaint I had is that I wish you could have a favorites list because I could not remember which songs I liked and the track names don’t really help you remember the songs.

You’ve got your standard selection of cars but then spending your points gets access to the Tron Light Cycle, KITT from Knightrider, the Delorean, and all that.

Like I said earlier, the car selection is pretty great. They don’t appear to have any differences in handling or speed so pick what you want and drive it. You’ve got your standard selection of cars but then spending your points gets access to the Tron Light Cycle, KITT from Knightrider, the Delorean, and all that. At the top of the list is some crazy santa themed car. I’m guessing because with as much playing as you’ll have to do to earn it, it’ll actually take you until Christmas to get it. You can change the color of the body and the rims to your liking, but I hope you like neon because it’s all a shade of that.

The gameplay is fast and matches the speed of the song. Some parts are slower and the car slows down to match that and it’ll be easy to pick up the square that way, and then suddenly the song picks up, your car blasts ahead, and even the racetrack starts getting wavy and thumps with the music as you try not to have a heart attack as this happens out of nowhere. Moving the car by the standard controls means left and right makes it switch lanes. The “advanced” control style lets you actually steer it, but I found that picking up squares was not nearly as easy as it was before. Your points not only get you new cars but also lets you purchase new tracks as well, and there’s some really cool ones to see. Each track has a standard option, a “zen” version that has no obstacles to hit you, a “cinematic” version that shows the racing from different angles…think of that as a “demo mode” more than anything else, and then there’s “hard”, where hitting one wall means game over. You do still get to keep your points you collected though, so that’s forgiving.

So that’s about all there is to it. If any of this sounds remotely appealing then buy the game. I mean you’ve bought a lot stupider things on Amazon after like 6 bourbons, right? At $7 bucks I am 100% satisfied with this game and planned on playing it for only a little while initially to test it out and then spend more time on it later, but I ended up playing for well over an hour with my stereo turned up because I enjoyed it so much. It’s easy to play for just a few minutes at a time or if you want to show it off to friends, then that’s an easy recommendation too. I’m totally aware of my 80’s retro bias but if I thought it was garbage, I’d tell you.