The late 1990s and early 2000s saw the rest of the industry catch up to Nintendo and attempt to make their own mascot kart racing games. Anyone with a property that appealed to kids and could have cutesy characters saw an opportunity to grab a piece of the pie that Mario Kart had claimed as their own. And when I say anyone, I mean anyone. The Muppets, Looney Tunes, South Park, LEGO, and even Woody Woodpecker saw kart racers. Square, makers of Final Fantasy, even jumped in on the bandwagon and created Chocobo Racing.

If you’ve never played a Final Fantasy game, chocobos are the giant chicken-like creatures you can ride in those games and they were the chosen character to begin branching out the Final Fantasy series. And Chocobo Racing was one of the weirdest directions the series has ever chosen to branch out in. Albeit, one that has its heart and soul in the right place.

Square, being Square and at the height of their popularity, wasn’t content with just making a Mario Kart clone and just dumping Final Fantasy characters into a generic kart racer. They went all out, delivering a full-on story mode. The story mode consists of nine levels, with each level presented as a chapter in a pop-up book. The pre-race and post-race for each level are filled with the adventures of our heroes as they set out to explore the world by racing.

The heroic cast of characters starts with just Chocobo being an active choice but with each successive victory, more characters join the team. Moogles, goblins, black mages, and even a behemoth join the cast of characters until they finally reach the powerful Bahamut, the final boss of the game. And each character has strengths and weakness, like fast acceleration but poor cornering and so on.

Each character also has an ability they utilize, although as the player you can choose which ability your character utilizes. These range from a dash ability that works as a speed boost to a mug ability that allows you to steal an opponent’s power up. Personally, I found that the dash ability was the most useful but everyone is going to have a different strategy.

As the story progresses, the races get more and more complex by adding in more and more power-ups. And choosing what to pick up and how/when to utilize them is vitally important. You see, the power-ups in Chocobo Racing stack. Picking up one lightning power-up and using it will set off a single strike of lightning but picking up two or three will increase its power and target range. It adds a level of strategy that is not present in most kart racers and is one of the cooler aspects of the game.

One of the less cool aspects of the game though is the track design. It’s sadly pretty generic and lacks any real personality. And early on, as you are coming to grips with the control of the game, it can actually be pretty frustrating due to numerous 90 degree angles in some early and mid-game stages that will quickly throw you in to the back of the pack with little hope of climbing back out. I’m not going to lie, I was about one try away from quitting the entire game at the mid-way point because I couldn’t beat the black mage’s haunted house level. Thankfully once you learn the courses and how to best control your chosen character, the tight turns stop being a frustrating obstacle and instead angling your line becomes second nature.

And you’ll be happy that it is second nature if you want to get the most out of the game because, while the nine story characters are unlocked in the other modes from the start, there are a number of “secret” characters that you can unlock and play as. Characters like Squall from Final Fantasy VII, Cloud from Final Fantasy VII, or Aya from Parasite Eve. And to unlock these characters, you’ll have to beat the game multiple times (10 to unlock all the characters). Oh, and you’ll want to look up all the crazy button combinations you have to press to actually use the secret characters too because it gets a little nutty.

Outside of the story though, Chocobo Racing offers a decent enough racing experience. There are the standard Time Trial and Vs. modes. But the one I’ll probably spend the most time with outside of the Story is the good old fashioned Grand Prix, where you can select four tracks to race on against five other racers. It doesn’t have the same charm as Mario Kart with it’s Mushroom Cup and whatnot but it does do the trick and you can play with a friend as well.

As a fan of Final Fantasy and a fan of its more weird fringe offerings, Chocobo Racing hits the spot. I’m enjoying the hell out of it and am glad I rediscovered it. For most though, it won’t. It just doesn’t do enough or offer enough to make it worth picking up over a racer in a series you are more invested in.

Co-published on Musings of a Grouch.