Slot Car Rivals
Mimicking the real-world hobby of slot car racing, Slot Car Rivals invites you to race against your StreetPass tags on increasingly complex tracks as you aim to become the champion. Each course has a set of challenges to complete in order to progress. Each of the four circuits has five tracks (although the fifth track in the final circuit is just a randomizer), with the first three unlocking by just finishing the previous race. Completing all of the challenges for the first and second tracks will unlock the circuit's first and second bonus tracks, respectively. Completing all of the challenges for the third track instead unlocks the first track in the next circuit. These challenges may require you to finish a race within a certain time constraint, complete the race without crashing, or something similar. While most of them are easy enough to perform with sufficient practice, they add a welcome level of complexity to an otherwise simple game.
Racing itself comes down to knowing when to put pedal to the metal and when to ease off the throttle. Using just one button, you propel your little car forward on the track, but sharp turns and boost panels will require expert timing if you want to stay ahead of the crowd. If you don't let off the gas enough for your car to ease around a turn, it will fly off the track and lose you precious seconds while you set it back up. However, if you manage to accelerate as soon as the window of danger expires, your car will get a generous boost to help recover any speed lost on the turn.
Boost panels, while less common, can grant even more power to a car if you time them well. You'll need to charge the boost by keeping on the gas for a marked segment of the track preceding the actual panel. If you successfully charge all the way, then releasing the gas while you're on top of the panel will grant you a huge boost forward. Using sharp turns and boost panels to your advantage is the only way to win your races, and it can be difficult to master, but it feels so cathartic once you really get in the groove.
Even if it isn't required for the race's set of challenges, good performance is important, as is having a full group of racers to compete against. After every race, your opponents will make a single-use mod chip for your slot car that you'll automatically use on the next race. The mod chip can improve your car's top speed and handling to varying degrees, but its effectiveness is based on how well you did in your race and how many other racers are available to contribute to the chip's construction. I've raced with mods on both ends of that spectrum, and the high-quality ones had a surprisingly hefty impact on my lap times.
On the non-functional end of things, completing certain milestones can unlock unique cars to race with. While the changes are purely cosmetic, I was always pretty stoked to unlock a new car, even though I only ever drove with the antique roadster as soon as I got it. You can also make custom cars, or copy them from your opponent's if you get first place in a race, but the customization tools are bare-bones and nothing made with them ever looked close to as good as even the simplest unique car. Whatever you choose to race with, that's what you'll have when your Mii gets sent to other players, so picking a cool car that you worked hard to unlock has some bragging value too.
While this wasn't my favorite StreetPass game by any means, races were so short that it never felt like it was overstaying its welcome. The tracks could also look really good when playing in 3d, especially the bonus unlockable ones that played around with different lighting and neon colors. While I sometimes wish that I had chosen Market Crashers as my free DLC game, now that I have all of them and can enjoy them on their own terms, I'm just happy to have had the chance to play Slot Car Rivals. If a game like this came out today at a budget price point and replaced StreetPass encounters with actual online play, I think it could even be a decent distraction. I'm not the biggest fan of racing games myself, so I wouldn't go seeking out anything like that, but if some friends invited me to play with them, Slot Car Rivals tells me that I would probably have a good time.
