Biker Mice from Mars

"Quite possibly one of the best games based on an old cartoon"

In today's day and age, when everything in the media that experiences some form of success will inevitably get a video game made based on the same premise, Biker Mice From Mars is no exception. While a majority of these games fall into obscurity for all the right reasons, Biker Mice From Mars on the Nintendo DS needs to be brought back from the abyss, for it is an enjoyable game that will appeal to a majority of DS owners.

Biker Mice From Mars for the Nintendo DS is based of the revival of the cartoon by the same name. While the Biker Mice From Mars never saw the same success as other Saturday morning cartoons in the 1990's, they did develop a cult following that helped bring the cartoon back to life in 2006. To enjoy this game you do not have to know a thing about the cartoon; it stands by its self as an awesome game, although it is short.

Biker Mice From Mars combines two popular video game categories into one game. While past incarnations of the series turned video game focused only on the racing aspect, the Nintendo DS version has 3D racing levels and classic 2D beat 'em up levels combined together to make a very fun game.

Each level starts with a racing level where you essentially race against the clock on your motorcycle chasing down various enemies from the cartoon. During these high-octane racing moments, you have to shoot cars and motorcycles in front of you while avoiding obstacles they throw back at you. Each level is timed and you cannot finish without gaining time extension. The only way to gain time extension is to destroy the enemy racers in front of you.

During the race you will find the standard items you would expect to see in any racing game. There are two types of weapons, turbo boosts, jumps, and obstacles, both destroyable and indestructible. Weapons represent themselves as crates that you must crash into. You can grab homing missiles and regular missiles. While things are must easier to shoot and destroy with the homing missiles, only the regular missiles can be found abundantly. You will be lucky to find five homing missiles in an entire race. This adds to the strategic element of the levels. You have to line your self up with the enemy racer or shoot ahead of a curve in order to strike a hit. If you fall behind for various reasons, you will have a harder time aiming. Turbo boosts seem plentiful at times, but at other times are rarer and harder to find than some precious metals. You have to stock up.

As you fly by various items, some can be hard to discern. There are tokens hidden throughout each level that grant access to hidden levels when enough are required. They contain the Biker Mice From Mars logo. So do the Turbo boots. While the turbo boosts contain a smaller logo and a flame on them, they can be hard to differentiate from the tokens when blazing by and keeping your focus on the enemy in front of you.

The physics of the racing levels feels natural for the most part. The only time when you must question the validity of something happening is if you go over a jump with a turbo boost, and that jump happens to be at the top of a hill. When all those conditions happen simultaneously, you can fly through the air for what seems like an eternity. The camera angle will switch down to the normal view, leaving your chosen mouse flying at the top of the screen, giving for an awkward feel and a difficult line of sight.

While racing is conducted on the top screen, the bottom screen contains vital information such as number of each type of missile, total health of your Biker Mouse, health of the currently engaged enemy, and a map of the distance to and from the finish line. While it is useful to find out how far you are from the finish as a dot on a line with a checkered flag at one end, the line is small and at the very bottom of the bottom screen. Since most of the action is in the top half of the top screen, it is difficult to determine where in the race you are. You cannot look out of the corner of your eye. It takes your full attention, even is just for a brief instant, to discover your position. This can cause major issues because enemy bikers throw obstacles at you with almost no warning. While you can see where they are aiming, you cannot tell when that obstacle will come at you. If it flies at you when your attention is somewhere else, you will have issues.

Keeping true to the standards of all video games, you have multiple characters to choose from with different aspects and statistics. While their speed differences are most noticeable in the racing levels, their strength and endurance is noticeable in both. You have your three typical character types. A strong but slow mouse (Modo), a weak but very fast mouse (Vinnie) and your average rating in all categories mouse (Throttle). If you are trying to maximize kills in a racing level, you want to choose the strongest one, as his missiles will do more damage. If you are having trouble in a beat 'em up level, you also want to choose a strong one as his endurance for taking attacks is greater.

The beat 'em up levels are your typical side scrolling, punch and kick your way to the end. You run along for a brief moment and you will encounter several enemies. You have to destroy each one until they are all gone and you can continue to the right. All the levels scroll right which does get boring after a while.

The beat 'em up levels out number the racing levels by a great number. While the overall number of levels is divided equally, each beat 'em up level is broken up into stages. The stages themselves do not take a great deal of time to play through. However, when combined together to form the level, it can take well over a half an hour to finish some levels. The racing levels on the other hand, take about two minutes each. Those who like the beat 'em up levels more than the racing levels will not find this to be annoying at all, but those of us who found the racing levels much more fun than kicking and punching will fester a little disdain towards them.

There are apparently no limits to the amount of lives you have. Should you die, you just restart at the beginning of the stage. This is good because you can spend forty minutes on a level and die near the end of it and not have to go back and repeat the entire thing. Every level is timed, including the racing levels. If you beat the level under a certain time limit that is not revealed until you beat the game, you gain a star. Up to three stars can be gained in each level. Time is one factor, number of retries, number of kills and amount of tokens grabbed throughout the levels are the other factors.

Throughout the beat 'em up levels will be different things to break up the monotony. There will be a time where you can climb into a rocket powered pod and you have to gracefully jump large gaps using your rocket power and land on tiny ledges. Each ledge has a remote mine on it that will trigger when touched. You have to shoot your own bombs at it before you land in hopes of not being damaged. Your rocket fuel diminishes quickly so you have to land frequently to fill it back up. There will also be times where you take control of a machine gun and shoot enemies rather than attack them.

The enemies throughout the game are not varied much at all. While they are the typical ones you see in the cartoon, the enemies in the first level will pop up again in the very last level. There will be times throughout the game that enemies pop up in the background and throw grenades at you. You have to quickly pick them up and throw them back in order to move on. There is no indication that you need to do this and someone new to the game will find it frustrating because he or she will not know what to do at first.

There will be different environmental hazards as well that you need to avoid such as low bridges and bombers coming in from above. The game will give you plenty of notice when it happens so you can prepare your self. Contrary to what would be popular belief, the notice actually helps a lot more than makes the game easier. The game will move so fast at times that if the on-screen "DUCK!" did not appear, you would curse when your chosen mouse is whacked in the head by a moving beam that you never saw coming. Bomb locations will appear on the ground indicating where a bomb is about to land. This gives you a brief second to get to the one safe location on the map before they come in and explode.

Perhaps the biggest quarrel most gamers will have with this title is that it is short and fairly easy. The infinite amount of retries greatly hurts the game and makes it beatable in about two days, playing for a few hours each day. While there are very frustrating parts of the game, especially when you get ganged up on by grenade launchers as other enemies all at the same time, the game, overall, is not hard. What is hard is beating the levels in the time dictated. That becomes a challenge that immensely adds to the replay value of Biker Mice From Mars. Once the game is defeated, you unlock Time Trial mode which allows you to replay any level you want in order to get a better score.

The sound effects in the game leave something to be desired. While the enemies make a dying cat noise that is obnoxious, it must be remembered that a lot of the enemies are actually cats. After all, a mouse's natural predator is a cat. These do get annoying but can be turned off at the start of any level. What is impressive is the music in the game. From the title screen to the final cut scene, the music is perhaps the most impressive aspect of the game. This is the one DS game where headphones are a must. The DS speakers do no justice to the awesome guitar riffs and drum beats.

The game as a whole looks and feels like the cartoon does. While you do not get the same animation techniques as the cartoon, you do get the feel of the cartoon. The beat 'em up levels are dark and mysterious. All backgrounds in these levels are incredibly varied and give the feel and essence of the location they are supposed to represent. From burning buildings to moving subway trains to waterfalls and rivers, the 2D aspects of the game are presented so well that they feel 3D.

All the beat 'em up levels convey a sense of darkness, not so much in terms of lighting but in terms of atmosphere. It almost feels like the game would be too dark and gloomy for children, but not quite. The game walks up to that might-scare-small-children-line and touches it, but does not cross it. The atmosphere and theme fits in with all levels, including the racing levels.

The racing levels, however, are not as varied in looks. While there are differences between each of them in what you are racing around, such as tunnels and bridges, all the levels look as though they are being competed on a dirt track in the desert somewhere. Perhaps it is because they move so fast that it is difficult to take in the scenery, but the racing levels feel like something was left out or that not as much effort was placed into them as the beat 'em up levels. They certainly are not bad, but feel like they could have been much better.

The overall aspect of the game is a good one. While the hardcore gamer group will probably not enjoy it, the game does have appeal to all others, whether you are a child or an adult. If you are a fan of the Biker Mice From Mars cartoon, whether it be the original one from the 90's or the current one, this is a game you should not pass on. If you are looking for a good beat 'em up on the Nintendo DS, this is also one you should not pass on. However, if you want a great racing game, this may not be for you. If you come in expecting the same type of game the SNES version was, you will be left disappointed. This is a great pick-up-and-play game, especially once you beat it and unlock Time Trial mode. While it is short and on the easy side (especially the final boss) it is a game that everyone will enjoy. The game can be had for less than $15 new, so at that low of a price, it is a steal. Biker Mice From Mars is a budget title based of an obscure cartoon that is well worth your time, effort and money.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/10/08

Game Release: Biker Mice from Mars (US, 06/05/07)