Raising the BAR [IGN]

There aren’t a lot of racing games built on the strength of singular car licenses. For every Lotus Challenge or Automobili Lamborghini, there are dozens of racers that try to attract players with ever-lengthening car lists spanning hundreds of models from all around the world. When I finally stopped playing 2021’s Forza Horizon 5 this summer I had amassed way north of 700 cars and spent more than 300 hours on this one game alone. When Gran Turismo 7 came out, I caught the car collecting bug again – and I’m already heeding the call to build another virtual fleet in Forza Motorsport. But the now-popular loop of upgrading cars to win races and earn money to spend it on more cars and upgrade those to win races and earn money to spend it on more cars wasn’t always what racing games were about. Until Gran Turismo disrupted racing games forever and turned us into Ash Ketchum’s gearhead cousin, players picked their car of choice from an unlocked roster and honed their skills to win races – against the AI competition or friends – just to win. Sure, there were medal systems, records to beat, and some new tracks to see, but the point was the race. Not the next vehicle. N64 Needed SpeedBeetle Adventure Racing is different. Developed jointly by EA and Paradigm Entertainment for Nintendo 64, BAR actually started life as an installment in another popular racing game series: Need for Speed. “Beetle Adventure Racing started with us thinking about how to bring a Need for Speed game to the N64. Since most of the focus for NFS was on the other platforms, the N64 team was able to run under the radar for quite a while, and decided to start from scratch on an arcade racing game that was built on what we thought the N64 audience would want versus just doing a straight port of an existing game,” Hanno Lemke, Senior Producer of BAR, told me when I asked how the game came together. “The execs thought we were busy developing an NFS game when in fact we were off doing something completely different.”In my last column, I looked at how the secret second half of Pitfall II came to be – and how it was almost deleted because it didn’t match the publisher’s marketing plan. I was surprised to hear that Beetle Adventure Racing tracked a similar course. According to Lemke, instead of following the series’ template, the team assigned to do Need for Speed 64 prototyped a playable level featuring big air, stunts, collectibles, and power-ups and then tweaked and iterated until it became fun to play.”Ferrari will never approve having their cars in this game” – EA, 1998“We realised that this was a significant departure from the NFS series, but it felt right for the N64. When the execs finally asked for a product review meeting, we were a bit nervous, and predictably the first reaction was ‘this doesn’t look like a NFS game’ and ‘Ferrari will never approve having their cars in this game’, but thankfully there were some gamers in the room who couldn’t put the controller down and thought the game was pretty fun. So, we narrowly escaped the game getting killed on the spot, but they still wanted a Need for Speed game. We nodded politely but then kept going down the path of making a unique-to-N64 racing game anyway, as we were convinced this was the right thing to do.”Ladies and Gentlemen, the BeetlesWith growing confidence that the team was on the right track, the team at Paradigm – the same people who worked closely with Nintendo on PilotWings 64 just a few years earlier – kept improving the game mechanics, making the game more “adventurous” and adding more tracks. It didn’t hurt that outsourcing to Paradigm was cost-effective, compared to EA’s internally-developed racers, but EA management did realize the game’s potential and formally greenlit the project. Soon, more EA designers were brought on to help shape the spin-off and the discussion turned to how the game would be marketed without licensed cars – which Lemke recalls was as a “tried and proven formula for NFS, and more broadly, EA.”“We initially thought about a mix of car licenses and a mix of vehicles suited to this type of gameplay, but the dev team was convinced the game wasn’t so much about the cars as much as the cars were a way to express yourself in your unique adventure,” he said.One new member of the expanded design team was Scott Jackson, who had worked on Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit, and joined the team as Art Director. Jackson recalls that he was the first to throw out the idea of using Beetles as the signature car.“After the concept of the game started to jell it was clear that the traditional NFS wrapper might not be the way to go, and although there might be disagreement from some, I’m pretty sure I threw out the idea of the Beetle in a meeting one day. The Beetle was the hot new thing at that moment and totally fit the quirky nature of the game.”VW’s Beetle RelaunchIf you lived through the era of VW’s famous compact’s rebirth in 1998, you’ll remember that it was everywhere. If you didn’t, know that Volkswagen’s marketing machine was on fire, pumping out one memorable commercial after the other, often heavily focused on rekindling 1960s “Love Bug” nostalgia. Billboards for the reborn automotive icon lined streets in major cities and somehow balanced “cool” and “cute” with technobabble about “turbonium” and loving looks at the dashboard’s built-in flower vase. Beetlemania was real in 1998– yet despite its ingenious marketing, the New Beetle was an odd choice as a lead vehicle for a racing game. With a top speed of 140 mph, its brand of Fahrvergnügen didn’t exactly produce sweaty palms. But there’s no denying that there was something about the Beetle that felt quite “nintendo”. From its odd shape, bucking all automotive trends, to the bright colors that recalled the N64’s many special editions – you could imagine Mario and friends driving a Beetle in Mario Kart. The Adventure BeginsIt turns out, the fun car design provided just the right inspiration for the design team to expand on the “adventure” aspects of Beetle Adventure Racing and create an unusual mix of Need for Speed and Nintendo’s popular kart racers. The initial game prototype track became Coventry Cove – the first level players would see in the game, and definitely the most “traditional” racing course. From there, the game opens up, leading players past fire-breathing dragons, through haunted forests, and on a quest to discover countless shortcuts that completely reshape the racing experience. “All the track themes started with a basic premise — English countryside, alpine, jungle island, desert, city – but part of my initial contribution was to amp up the adventure aspect so it not only meant an alternate path, but that you could find something crazy or spectacular on that route,” said Jackson “Movies, and other adventure cliches were packed into the tracks. I was the artist who put the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand at the end of the original Need for Speed coastal track as an homage to Planet of the Apes (still not sure why they let me do that!), so that’s where I was coming from!”Jackson then applied that new “over-the-top” approach to the remaining tracks and battle arenas and together with designer/producer Scott Blackwood and the teams at Paradigm and EA shaped Beetle Adventure Racing into something that firmly stands on its own. It’s not Need for Speed. It’s not Mario Kart or Wave Race. But it sadly also wasn’t the birth of a new “Adventure Racing” series yours-truly once hoped for. More Adventure RacingI asked Blackwood back in 1999 about the prospects of a sequel, but he was non-committal at the time: “You know how it goes, but you never know. However, I will say that our game is a breath of fresh air in the racing genre, not to mention that it has definitely raised the BAR — excuse the pun — when it comes to breaking out of the traditional racing model.”We did start work immediately on the sequel – Adventure Racing 2” – Scott JacksonMore than 20 years later, Jackson filled in the rest of the story: “We did start work immediately on the sequel – Adventure Racing 2,” he told me. “We dropped the Beetle license and were planning on doing a variety of different non-licensed vehicles — surf van, sports car, etc, with more customization. All of the tracks were brainstormed on paper, some made it to paper layouts, a few went to modeling stage, and the first track was almost completely done when we were canceled. It was a snowy city/town environment that had paths through an airport, art gallery, sewer system, and interior paths through the offices of EA Canada and Paradigm Entertainment! Other tracks included a Western theme with a ghost town, Carlsbad Caverns, and mesa jumping, and a water-based track with multiple islands, venice style canals, seamonster, and some Myst-style steam-punk elements.”Likewise, a planned PlayStation port by a Salt Lake City-based development team went nowhere due to the complexities of bringing a game tailored for the N64 hardware to Sony’s 32-bit machine.But there was… another. In a surprise twist, EA created a new, custom version of Beetle Adventure Racing for the Australian market and released it that same year: HSV Adventure Racing. The gameplay and stages were identical, but all Beetles were unceremoniously replaced with Holden Vehicles. “This was purely a marketing decision. We had included local car models/brands in the Australian and Japanese markets with NFS successfully”, said Lemke. “EA Australia’s best-selling franchise was NFS, and a large part of that success was based on including the two most popular car brands in Australia. They requested this strategy carry over to BAR, where they wanted a local brand and car as the star of the game.”End of the RoadSo what ended BAR’s all-too-short run? It wasn’t the critical reception. I reviewed the game for IGN in 1999 and rated it a 9.1/10, sharing that I had yet to “meet anyone who didn’t enjoy taking BAR’s Bugs for a spin.” Other critics agreed, making Beetle Adventure Racing EA’s highest-rated console racer to date. Jackson says that the game was received well internally as well – including by the head of EA, Don Mattrick, who he says loved the game. “The team felt the ball was dropped by EA marketing, however, with terrible box art and a virtually non-existent marketing presence.”Lemke added: “BAR was the best-rated racing game we had developed up to that point, with a passionate fan base. However, the sales numbers were small relative to other products EA was developing, as the racing genre was very competitive on the N64 and BAR just didn’t break out. Ultimately there wasn’t enough momentum to green light a sequel or further development of the game across other platforms.”BAR released in March of 1999 to great acclaim and excitement, but a month later, Nintendo brought its latest Mario universe spin-off to the west: a new type of fighting game named Super Smash Bros. Beetle Adventure Racing topped gamers’ Best Racing Game lists for a few years to come, but Nintendo’s new multiplayer brawler dominated conversations online and joined Mario Kart 64 and GoldenEye in the pantheon of four-player multiplayer hits. “As I’ve played the game with my kids years later, I am filled with woulda-coulda-shoulda’s on how the tracks could have been tweaked here or there for a smoother or more robust experience”, Jackson said about BAR’s legacy. “As always, we were under the gun to deliver, and tweaking the driving experience after the track started getting detailed by the Dallas art team was not really possible.”The reality is that BAR remains infinitely playable and enjoyable today. Like many other games that faded in players’ recollections because they didn’t see sequels or remasters, BAR – and the Adventure Racing concept – deserve to be remembered. Where Can You Play it Now?Beetle Adventure Racing and HSV Adventure Racing were never rereleased in a game collection or plug-in/micro-console form. Given EA’s ongoing relationship with VW, there’s hope that Beetle Adventure Racing will eventually show up on Nintendo’s Switch Online with Expansion Pack subscription service. But until then, the only place to play it is by tracking down a cartridge and hooking up your old N64. Or, if you want to see it upscaled to 4K, there’s alternative harware on the way from Analogue in 2024. There are of course lots of other interesting racers on the market – perhaps the closest being the Hot Wheels Unleashed series and, of course, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe – but there’s nothing quite like Beetle Adventure Racing.It was sadly also one of just a few examples of Electronic Arts really trying to cater to Nintendo fans. Like the equally interesting Boom Blox for Nintendo Wii, it just couldn’t find its audience on the first-party and Nintendo mascot-dominated platforms. But that’s another story for another day. Peer Schneider started as an editor on IGN’s N64 channel, then called N64.com, and fondly remembers the early days of 3D gaming. Forgotten Gems is a monthly column and will return in November.