[Playing…] Uniracers – Unirally (1994)

I remember in the 32/64 bit era. Pirouette games with the skateboard became fashionable thanks to the great games of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Although these types of games were not entirely new (in the 80s there were already games like Skate or Die either 720º) managed to bring the genre to the general public.

The moment I saw myself playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater I couldn't help but remember another game that passed without making much noise in the 16-bit generation. I'm talking about Uniracers (also known as Unirally) a game that combined unicycle racing with crazy pirouettes that allowed us to gain an advantage over our rival. Maybe on paper Uniracers It has nothing to do with the Tony Hawk games but it made me feel something similar, since in both titles, The most exciting part was doing the maximum number of complicated pirouettes and then managing to reach the ground without ruining everything.

Despite having been developed by DMA Designs (former members of what would later become Rockstar) and Nintendo, on one of its most successful consoles (Super Nintendo) and being tremendously fun, This game did not catch on with the public. I would like to believe that perhaps it was because of the strangeness of his proposal or its visual simplicity. However there is a legal reason that directly affected the production of cartridges of this game, and which originated when Pixar sued DMA Designs.

For some reason, Pixar considered that the unicycles of Uniracers They were a plagiarism of a unicycle that appeared in his short film (Red's Dream) and took legal measures that managed to affect the production of the game. Even to this day I don't even know how they got away with it. I mean, a unicycle is a unicycle and not even the ones from Uniracers, nor the Pixar one have anything that differentiates them from a real one (they have no eyes, nor any detail that characterizes them). Mike Dailly, one of the game's developers, made the following statement on this matter: “We made the unicycle models based on real unicycles, but Pixar considers any 3D unicycle their own.”

Due to this legal issue, the production of Uniracers had to be stopped, so there are not as many units of this game as other titles of the time. In addition, this legal controversy may also affect the game appearing in compilations or on the Virtual Console.

Although the unicycles are very well made (they are pre-rendered models like the sprites in the saga Donkey Kong Country) and they have very good animations, The rest of the game's visuals are too simple. The road is usually of various colors and from time to time it has a different part that represents some type of obstacle and danger (such as the wet part that slows down our unicycle or the metal parts on which we cannot do pirouettes). The circuits become more complicated but they are always just as simple when it comes to graphics. The backgrounds are flat and poorly detailed and the unicycles are identical to each other, except for the color.

The music is great, with garage rock songs that encourage speed and doing pirouettes, and the sound effects are very simple, since we will only hear some braking and the little noises when we do some pirouette.

The original proposal of this game would remain an anecdote if it were not for its playable section, which is excellent. Uniracers is not a conventional racing game, since To increase the speed of our unicycle we have to do pirouettes. Initially it will be easy to make turns and rotations because the circuits will have large straight areas and ramps where you can jump to do them safely, but in the more advanced circuits we will have to take a lot of risks to be able to get a little advantage over our competitor.

There are a huge number of pirouettes, ranging from spins (singles, doubles, triples) to rotations of the unicycle in all directions. These pirouettes can be combined with each other. Come on, you can make a forward turn and at the same time turn the unicycle on itself. The more risky and complex the pirouette, the more speed it will give us when we fall to the ground., but if we fail, we will only take one hit, with the corresponding loss of speed.

Pirouettes are so important that some circuits are not racing circuits, they are simply a kind of half-pipe where you can gain speed and learn to do complicated pirouettes, which will help us in later levels of difficulty.

It may seem at first that doing pirouettes is a bit complicated, but the truth is that can be learned little by little and intuitively. For example, if during a jump we press L or R the unicycle will turn forward or backward, if we press the A button it will rotate on itself, and if we press both it will do both at the same time. As we touch buttons, our unicycle will add pirouettes. The more complex it is, the more time the unicycle will need to do them and therefore, the easier it will be for us to make a mistake or find a track layout that makes us fail when trying to fall on it. Therefore, the faster we want, the more risk we will have to assume.

The game offers several modes (for 1 or 2 players) and the possibility of creating leagues and even changing the name of the unicycles to whatever we like (as long as it is not Sega or Sonic, seriously, the game says that is not a “cool enough” name). The different cups and circuits can (and should) be replayed to obtain more valuable medals and at the same time unlock new, more complex cups.

Uniracers It has great music and although visually it is very simple, it manages to convey a good feeling of speed. But undoubtedly its strong point is the playability, it may not seem like it, but this game can be very addictive.

A día de hoy (y gracias a internet) este juego ha recibido algo más de atención de la que tuvo en su día, y se le suele considerar una joya oculta dentro del enorme catálogo de Super Nintendo. Es un juego que recomiendo rotundamente y estoy seguro que de si Pixar no se hubiese metido por el medio, este juego habría gozado de una mayor popularidad.