Should the Next "Mario Kart 🏎️" Game Have a Story Mode? + A Discussion on "SpongeBob SquarePants and the Nicktoons: Gravjet Racing 🧽"
There’s something I just can’t get out of my mind, and I’m not just content with just thinking about it in my head. I have to write it down, and post it on here. I just got done playing Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, or at least, I got done playing the Story Mode. There’s more to the game than just the Story Mode, and I’m sure there were plenty of people who bought the game who didn’t even bother playing through the Story Mode, and just played the Olympic Games sporting events themselves.
If you read any of the three previous posts I did, you’ll know that I liked it quite a bit. It was definitely a bit challenging, some parts of it were definitely too hard for me to get past, so I had to just skip them. Most of those were in the 8-bit sections of the game, but I think at least one of them was in the normal section of the game, the “real world” sections. But, I still had a great time with it. I don’t know if I’ll continue playing the game now that I have completed the Story Mode.
The sporting events that make up the chunk of the gameplay don’t really seem all that appealing on their own without a story connecting them or giving them context or stakes behind. Plus, some of them are just too hard to where they aren’t really all that fun or worth doing without a Story Mode to do them with. It’s definitely a game that was made to be played with other people, rather than be a single player experience, which is why there isn’t enough to keep a single player engaged beyond the Story Mode.
There’s not that much to do in the game after you complete the Story Mode besides just increase your own high scores, and win gold medals 🥇. I currently have bronze medals 🥉 on all the events from doing them in the Story Mode, so I’d have to keep playing each of these events until I can beat each of my own scores and earn gold medals 🥇 on all of them. It’s a game that you’ll kind of get bored with after all if you don’t have another person to play with and it’s just you playing, which is the situation for me. I have no one else to play with. I’m the only one in my house that even remotely knows how to play video games, specifically video games from this generation, and has enough free time to play.
I have a younger cousin who’s into video games, but he lives in Albuquerque while I live in Acoma, and he’s always busy at his job as an EMT to come play with me. Besides, he doesn’t even play Mario games anymore. He doesn’t own a Switch as far as I know, and I don’t think he’s interested in buying one since the majority of the games on the Switch are a little bit too kiddie for him I think, he only plays mature games like the Resident Evil 4 remake.
I like playing mature games too, and I want to play the Resident Evil 4 remake, but I don’t have a PS5 and they don’t release a lot of M rated or even T rated games for the Switch. It’s a console mostly reserved for kid or family-friendly games, like E or E10+. Just like the majority of Nintendo’s consoles. The Nintendo GameCube was the only time where they dabbled in releasing more M rated games and T rated games as well as E and E10+ rated games, having a more balanced mix of those rather having disproportionately more E and E10+ rated games than M or T rated games.
It was also the only time where Nintendo themselves dabbled in making their own M rated games, creating entirely new IPs for an older audience, rather than restricting themselves to just doing family-friendly games. Think, Geist, an action-adventure game about a soldier who becomes a ghost 👻 able to haunt people and possess people’s bodies as well as possess the bodies of animals and possess inanimate objects after his soul is separated from his body by a machine created by the bad guys. Or Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, an ambitious action-adventure horror game with a storyline that spans two millennia and four different locations.
Or P.N.03, a third person shooter sci-fi action game about a female mercenary ♀︎ named Vanessa Z. Schneider who travels to a space colony to fight a bunch of killer robots that have taken over the colony and presumably killed all of the people that were there. Or perhaps, the colony was never inhabited by humans at all, and it was just robots there because it’s implied in the game’s story that this whole job that Vanessa was hired for was just one big setup because it’s revealed at the end of the game that she’s actually a clone of the client that hired her. *Spoiler alert ⚠️*. And while she’s there at the colony, going through the hallways and rooms, dispatching any robot she sees, she finds another clone of herself inside of a vat, which is our first clue that things are not what they seem.
My theory is that client cloned herself twice, and Vanessa was the first one and the one that she released into the wild so to speak, implementing her with fake memories of a childhood and a life that she never had. With Vanessa fully believing that she’s a regular human with a job as a mercenary, and not a clone bred in a laboratory, the client sent her over to this colony on this other planet in order to test her combat skills by pitting her against a bunch of robot that she programmed specifically to try kill her. And then, if she passed her test, or met her expectations, she’d reveal the truth to her that she is a clone, and she would ease her into it by leaving her second clone inside of a vat inside the facility for Vanessa to find and start questioning her own existence before she even learned that she was a clone herself and that she and this other clone were clones of the client that hired her for this job.
That, or the client was developing a second clone of herself at this facility inside this space colony, and it really was under attack by killer robots and she really did need Vanessa’s assistance. Perhaps, she specifically sent her there to secure the second clone, and make sure it wasn’t damaged or destroyed by the robots. And she didn’t trust anyone else to do this job because she knew herself before anyone else, and she knew what Vanessa would do and wouldn’t do because she’s a clone of her. If you can’t trust anyone else, you can at least trust your clones.
That or the project was so sensitive that the client didn’t want anyone else to find out about it, and possibly leak it to the press or alert the authorities. Perhaps human cloning is still illegal in this game’s future world, and it’s something that can only be done off-world on other planets than Earth 🌎 to avoid the scrutiny of the press or the pressure from the authorities. But, if such a thing is a wide spread issue, perhaps the authorities are patrolling the Solar System or the galaxy (however far human civilization has extended itself in P.N.03’s timeline) have caught onto this practice of cloning humans off-world, and are looking out for any traces of such activity. And if they find it, then they arrest the perpetrators. So, she just had her previous clone, Vanessa do it to keep this project hush-hush so no one else would find out about it. It would just between her and Vanessa, and she knew that Vanessa wouldn’t snitch, even once she did learn the truth. Or maybe it was some combination of all those I just mentioned.
Either way, Vanessa takes it pretty well learning that she’s a clone. Like, yeah sure, she contemplates whether she should continue her career as a mercenary or not, but she doesn’t have an existential crisis or anything like that, and her reaction is a lot more muted and understated than it would be for anyone else if they learned they were a clone of someone else. Most people would probably freak out 😱, or have a panic attack 😰, or even throw up 🤮 if they found out that they were a clone, but not Vanessa.
She has the calmest reaction to such a revelation that you can think of. Almost as calm as Ada Wong’s reaction when she found out that Derek C. Simmons created a clone of her using the C-Virus and that his top scientist, Dr. Carla Radames is the woman ♀︎ that Simmons turned into a clone of her in Resident Evil 6. But, like with Ada, it fits Vanessa’s character to react that way to a massive revelation such as that.
P.N.03 is not a M rated game, it’s a T rated game. It makes sense why it’s rated T for Teen and not M for Mature, because there’s no blood 🩸, there’s no gore. Vanessa’s fighting robots the whole time, and they don’t have blood 🩸. They’re not made out of flesh, they out of metal, circuits and wires. We don’t even see the robots kill any humans, because there are no humans in this base. The colony is completely uninhabited by humans, it’s only robots. Vanessa, her client, and that other clone in the vat inside the facility are the only human characters in the entire game.
There’s not even any foul language, like no one says the F word (as in F-U-C-K, not the other F word that used to be a word for British cigarettes 🇬🇧🚬, but is now used as a derogatory term for gay people 🏳️🌈) at any point. I think the only swear word that they really say in the game is “shit,” as well as “crap,” “hell,” and “damn.” But, come on, those are PG-13 level curse words. They would not be enough to get an R rating if this were a movie.
So, it makes sense why it’s a T rated game and not an M rated one. made in-house by Nintendo, instead being made by Capcom. The same company behind the Resident Evil games as well as the Dino Crisis games and the Dead Rising games, which is relevant now since they just released a remastered version of the first Dead Rising game called Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, shortened or abbreviated to DRDR.
But still, it was pretty different from the other games that Nintendo was known for publishing at the time. In fact, I should be upfront, and say that none of those games I mentioned were made by Nintendo themselves, and were simply published by them or released on their console, the GameCube. Geist and Eternal Darkness were both published by Nintendo, so even though they didn’t directly make them, they still technically own them. While, P.N.03 was made by Capcom and was simply released by Nintendo as a GameCube exclusive, so Capcom owns the rights to that game and to the character, Vanessa Z. Schneider.
Even the original Resident Evil 4 was released on the GameCube, in fact, it was also remastered and released on the Nintendo Wii a few years later. The remake wasn’t even released on the Switch at all. My cousin had both the GameCube version of Resident Evil 4 OG and the Wii version. Of course, I can’t forget that both Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance and Mortal Kombat: Deception were released on the GameCube, and the next game in the 3D era trilogy, Mortal Kombat: Armageddon was released on the Wii.
Okay so, it wasn’t just the GameCube where they released more M rated and T rated games, they also did so on the Wii, which had the widest variety of games of the modern Nintendo consoles including the GameCube, the Wii U, and the Switch. The Wii had the most variety of games of vastly different genres and ratings. But, after the Wii, Nintendo seriously limited the amount of M rated and T rated games they’d publish or release on their consoles.
Mortal Kombat 11, Mortal Kombat 1 (terrible title BTW, should’ve called it Mortal Kombat 12, or Mortal Kombat: Rebirth, or Mortal Kombat: A New Beginning, or Mortal Kombat: Reset, or Mortal Kombat: A New Era, or something like that instead of Mortal Kombat 1 🤦♂️), and Maneater (2020) are the only three M rated games I can think of that were released on the Switch. So, I’m all alone in this space. I’m the only one cares enough to play any of these games.
(These are the cover arts for Geist, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, and P.N.03, the three games that came to mind that were released on the GameCube that were different from Nintendo’s output up until that point. Geist and Eternal Darkness are both M rated games, while P.N.03 is a T rated game. M rated and T rated games on the Switch or the previous console before the Switch, the Wii U are a lot fewer and further between than they were on the GameCube, Nintendo’s most experimental console.
Not terms of game mechanics, the GameCube was a conventional console through and through and didn’t have a gimmick like motion controls or hybridity like all of Nintendo’s consoles afterwards, but experimental in terms of the level of maturity and variety of genre of their games. To put a different way, their riskiest console as they were much more willing to take risks with this console and publish and release non-family-friendly games than they were on any of their consoles before or after.)
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 🏎️ or really any of the Mario Kart 🏎️ games are games that you can enjoy and keep coming back to even without a Story Mode. Like, I’ve come back to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 🏎️ more times than I foresee myself returning to Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. I could be be wrong on that, and if I do, I’ll eat my words, but I see myself mostly just playing the Olympic Games sporting events, or at least the ones I enjoyed, and then just stop playing it awhile, and then returning it months or even years later to replay the Story Mode from start-to-finish again. Maybe even to get myself hyped for the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics ☀️ since Nintendo and SEGA are not going to make another Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games game.
Tokyo 2020 was the last one that they’re ever going to make as of the time of me writing this since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) chose not to renew the license, leaving Nintendo and SEGA unable to produce anymore Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games games after Tokyo 2020. The only reason why these games even existed was because the IOC wanted to make them in order to promote the Games to a younger audience.
That’s really all they’re meant to, commercials for the Olympics. It’s Nintendo and SEGA who decided to turn them into Mario and Sonic crossover games, which made many Mario and Sonic fans lament that the only time that these two franchises were able to crossover were in sports games designed to be advertisements for the Olympic Games that were directly commissioned by the IOC.
It would sort of be like if they did a Rayman and Kirby crossover but only to promote the FIFA World Cup ⚽️, and it was directly commissioned and sponsored by FIFA themselves. Like, if they asked Nintendo and Ubisoft to make a FIFA World Cup ⚽️ game, and Nintendo and Ubisoft decided to make that game the big crossover between Rayman and Kirby. Only in this case, the IOC is a way more respected institution than FIFA.
So, without the IOC’s approval, Nintendo and SEGA can’t make anymore games in the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series. It’s why there wasn’t one for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics ❄️, why there wasn’t one for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics ☀️, and why there likely won’t be one for the upcoming 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics ❄️ or the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics ☀️ as I mentioned before.
(These are the logos for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics ❄️, the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics ☀️, the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics ❄️, and the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics ☀️.)
So, all I’ll probably have to get me in the mood for the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics ☀️ (the only one of the two Olympic Games that I’m interested in since it’s being hosted here in America 🇺🇸, and America 🇺🇸 hasn’t hosted an Olympic Games since 2002 with the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics ❄️) will be Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020.
I mean they could’ve picked a better game to end the series on since it by far has the best music and probably the best story out of all the Mario & Sonic games. I don’t know if the previous games had a story, but even if they do, I think Tokyo 2020 probably has the best one. Plus, the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics ☀️ were some of the best Olympic Games in years despite being held during the COVID-19 pandemic 🦠😷. They were actually postponed one year, and actually held in 2021 instead of the set year, 2020 since it was safer to hold them in 2021 than it was in 2020 due to the pandemic 🦠😷.
The pandemic 🦠😷 was still going on in 2021, but it wasn’t as severe as it was in 2020 due to Japan 🇯🇵 getting its vaccines 💉 in order and loosening its lockdown restrictions. Tokyo 2020 was actually made in 2019 one year before the actual Olympics were supposed to start, as every Mario & Sonic game was made and released one year before the corresponding Olympic Games. Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games came out in 2011, Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games came out in 2013, and Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games came out in 2015.
The 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics ☀️ were significant because they were the first time in Asian history where a Summer Olympic Games ☀️ was held in the same city twice. The Summer Olympics ☀️ were hosted previously in Tokyo in 1964, for the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics ☀️ and it was then that Tokyo became the first Asian city to host the Olympic Games. And in 2021, it would become the first Asian city to host the Olympic Games twice.
The 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics ☀️ was also the most expensive Olympic Games in history, costing over $20 billion 💵. The cost was likely due to the cost of constructing the new stadium and other new facilities for the venues that were not reused from the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games ☀️, as well as the delay caused by COVID 🦠. And while the games were still able to happen, there were a lot of restrictions due to the virus 🦠 still being out there still being a threat to public health.
They had to do most of the events behind closed doors and were not able to have live spectators at any of them (making it the first and so only Olympic Games to not have any official live spectating), as well as wearing masks 😷 when possible, sanitizing, and pretty much everything else that we came to expect during the pandemic 🦠😷. The delay and the COVID restrictions 🦠😷 were likely the two biggest reasons why the budget for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games ☀️ ballooned so high.
(This is the poster for Akira.)
But, they were significant for another reason, at least for us sci-fi fans and anime fans, as they were accurately predicted in the 1988 seminal anime classic, Akira. That movie also depicted the Olympic Games being hosted in Tokyo in the 2020, or being prepared to be hosted in since the movie took place in the year 2019 and we see the Olympic Stadium being built. Like, during the climax of the movie, we see that the stadium is under construction.
And although it wasn’t caused by a pandemic 🦠😷 in the film (no one could’ve predicted that), the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics would end up not being held the year they were supposed to in the film since Neo-Tokyo (the city where the Olympic Games were supposed to be hosted and where the story takes place) gets obliterated in an explosion caused by the titular Akira, a telekinetic boy ♂︎ who caused a similar explosion in Old-Tokyo in the year 1988 that kicked off World War III in the movie’s universe. That’s where the movie’s famous tagline comes from: “Neo-Tokyo is about to E.X.P.L.O.D.E..” I don’t know why “explode” is written as an acronym or what it stands, but that it’s the movie’s tagline, and the climax certainly does live up to that tagline. Neo-Tokyo does indeed explode, at the hands of Akira, just like he did Old-Tokyo in 1988.
At the end of the film, he creates a singularity that engulfs the entire city, or at the least the part of the city where the stadium was being built, taking the main antagonist, Tetsuo and the other Espers (the name given to the telekinetic kids in the custody of the Japan Self-Defense Forces 🇯🇵, or JSDF 🇯🇵 for short) with him to another dimension so that they could be safe from our chaotic world. The world in Akira is a lot more chaotic and in much more disarray than our world since they actually had a Third World War, caused by Akira himself due to his inability to control his powers.
He couldn’t have picked a worse time to lose control of powers and cause a massive explosion in the middle of Tokyo (or Old-Tokyo since it was destroyed in the explosion caused by Akira and then replaced by Neo-Tokyo after the war) that could easily be mistaken for a nuclear explosion ☢️ just as the Cold War was drawing to a close, and the United States 🇺🇸 and the Soviet Union ☭ were easing tensions and normalizing relations with each other as well reducing their nuclear weapon stockpiles ☢️.
Akira’s little accident ruined all of that, and these two superpowers threw away any sense of decorum or détente, took the gloves off and unleashed their nuclear weapon stockpiles ☢️ upon each other. But, not enough to destroy the world though since there’s a still a world left even after the war is over, and the major nuclear powers ☢️ fired nukes ☢️ at each other. And you can imagine the political ramifications of a global war such as that.
We don’t learn that much about the rest of the world is like post-war in the film, I don’t know if we do in the manga (the manga is pretty different from the film from what I understand), but we learn about lot about Japan 🇯🇵 since that’s where the entire story takes place and where all the characters are from, and things are not looking too good for the Land of the Rising Sun ☀️. Japan 🇯🇵 was on the verge of collapse by the movie’s events take place, a lot of political upheaval.
Revolution (and specifically, violent revolution) could break out at any moment, and indeed a military coup led by the character, Colonel Shikishima takes place in the country that successfully overthrows the civilian central government in Neo-Tokyo during the film’s events. It’s the thing that sets the film’s climax into motion and hastens Japan 🇯🇵’s collapse into violence and anarchy. So, given the condition the country was in, and given the powers that the Espers have, they were no longer safe and no one else around them was safe.
Tetsuo was a testament to how unsafe the Japanese people 🇯🇵 were with the Espers around. He had become a danger to himself and everyone else around him because of his newfound powers. So, Akira took it upon himself to move himself and the other Espers including the unstable Tetsuo to another universe to avoid putting another else’s lives at risk. It was best for pretty much everyone that Akira, Tetsuo, and the other Espers remove themselves from the situation and move to another dimension, another plane of existence entirely.
So, even in the world of Akira, the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics don’t end up happening in 2020. But, the connection and association between Akira and the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics ☀️ was so strong for fans of that movie that they actually wanted music from that movie to be played at the Opening Ceremony for the real-life 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics ☀️, specifically the theme for the main protagonist, Kaneda. It wasn’t, as far as I know.
(These are the logos for the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics ☀️ and the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics ☀️.)
But anyway, I’m way off base with this. Basically, what I’m trying to say with all of this is that Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 is a game that I played mostly for the story (as odd as may sound to some) and can’t really see my returning to afterwards despite how much I did enjoy the gameplay when it wasn’t hard as hell. I wouldn’t mind going back and playing the minigames that were sprinkled throughout the Story Mode. Though, I don’t really know how to access them. It said that they were available to play in the “Game Room,” but I couldn’t find this “Game Room” after I finished the Story Mode. Maybe, it’s only accessible during the Story Mode, I don’t know. I’ll have to take a look at it again if I ever play this game again in the near future.
Playing that game though, made wonder if the next Mario Kart 🏎️ game should have a Story Mode or not. I know that the two spin-off series are not in the same genre, the Mario Kart 🏎️ games are kart racing games 🏎️ whereas the Mario & Sonic games are sports games. There’s some overlap with those two genres, but it’s kind of the same idea of taking a game that doesn’t necessarily call for a story or need one per se, and applying one anyway.
Now obviously, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 🏎️ is not a new game, it’s a remaster of an old game that was released on the Switch. The original Mario Kart 8 🏎️ was released for the Wii U in 2014, and rather than create a new Mario Kart 🏎️ game entirely, Nintendo basically decided to just remaster that one and put it on the Switch in 2017. Not that most gamers noticed or cared, as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 🏎️ became the best selling Mario game in history 😱🤑. Meaning that so far Nintendo has not made a new Mario Kart 🏎️ title specifically for the Switch. In fact, they haven’t made a new Mario Kart 🏎️ title period.
The closest they got to one was making a mobile game called Mario Kart Tour 🏎️ and a mixed reality game called Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit 🏎️, which combined augmented reality, remote-controlled karts 🏎️, and cameras to create a more immersive racing experience. It was to allow you to race karts 🏎️ inside of your own home 🏠, basically turning your home 🏠 into a racing course.
But, there hasn’t been a true mainline installment of the Mario Kart 🏎️ series since Mario Kart 8 🏎️. No Mario Kart 9 🏎️ or Mario Kart 10 🏎️. Every fan of the series and every fan of Mario in general is hoping that Nintendo eventually makes one so that the series isn’t just relegated to mobile phones 📱 or to VR. This might as well be the Grand Theft Auto VI of Mario Kart 🏎️ games since it’s an elusive game that people have been waiting for years and aren’t sure it’ll ever come out, except unlike GTA 6, the next mainline Mario Kart 🏎️ title hasn’t even entered development as far as we know, and it’s just a rumor right now or assumption that eventually Nintendo will make one.
GTA 6 at the very least had a trailer to show for their work, but in the video game world, that means very little. Duke Nukem Forever ☢️ had a few trailers released during its 14 year long development, and yet, it still took two decades for it finally come out, in 2011. And the final product barely resembled what was in either of the two trailers that were released in 1997 and in 2001 respectively.
If they do make another one in the future, we don’t know if they do Mario Kart 9 🏎️ or if they’ll skip 9 and just go onto 10 kind of like how Microsoft skipped Windows 9 and just went on and did Windows 10 instead after they did the controversial Windows 8. If they do a tenth Mario Kart 🏎️ game, they’ll probably call it Mario Kart X 🏎️ since X is the roman numeral for 10. Kind of like how the tenth Mortal Kombat game was called Mortal Kombat X or the tenth Saw movie was called Saw X. I could see Nintendo doing that, and calling the tenth Mario Kart 🏎️ game, Mario Kart X 🏎️.
We also don’t know if the next installment will be on the Switch or on Nintendo’s next console, which many people are assuming will be the Switch 2, though I don’t think the next Nintendo console will be the Switch 2. I think it’ll be something else entirely. Anyway, given that the Switch is reaching the end of its life cycle, it’s pretty safe to assume that if there is another mainline Mario Kart 🏎️ game in the future that it’ll probably be on Nintendo’s next console, whatever that maybe.
But, regardless of whether the next game in the series is Mario Kart 9 🏎️ or Mario Kart 10 🏎️ (or Mario Kart X 🏎️) or whatever console it’s on, I know for sure that it’ll be one of the most highly anticipated games for that new console whenever it’s officially announced. Again, just like GTA 6, which isn’t coming out until next year in 2025, despite them releasing the first trailer for it earlier this year.
Still, I’m wondering if it should have a Story Mode or not. I mean, if a sports game like Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 had a Story Mode, why not a racing game? If it did, then it would be the first Mario Kart 🏎️ game to ever have a story. It would really differentiate it from the rest of the series, easily. But, what would reaction be to the news if there was going to be a Story Mode in the next Mario Kart 🏎️ game?
I imagine that the reaction would be mixed. I imagine that there would be some people baffled by the decision to add a Story Mode in the next mainline Mario Kart 🏎️ game. There would be a lot of people saying, “Mario Kart 🏎️ doesn’t need a story.” Just like how I’m sure there were a lot of people saying that the Mario & Sonic games didn’t need a story when they were coming out, especially the last one, Tokyo 2020 which is probably the most story driven one of them all potentially.
While there would be others, like me, who would either have no problem with it or be in favor of it. I know I want a story in a Mario Kart 🏎️ game, even though I do enjoy Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 🏎️ without one. Like I said, the Mario Kart 🏎️ series has never had a story in any of their games, so adding one would be a nice change of pace and would really set it apart from the other installments. It wouldn’t just be racing karts 🏎️ for the fun of it, you’d have a narrative to along with it, and to give context or give a reason for why you’re racing karts 🏎️.
And speaking for myself, I prefer my games to have stories. I’m a writer, I’m a story guy, I have to have stories in every piece of media I consume, and that includes video games. I tend not to latch onto video games that don’t have stories. Mario Kart 🏎️ and Nickelodeon Kart Racers are the only real exceptions to that, but that’s really only because they have characters I know and recognize. Therefore, I have a reason to be invested beyond just the gameplay.
Speaking of Nickelodeon Kart Racers though, since Mario Kart 🏎️ was arguably the first kart racing game franchise 🏎️, every kart racing game 🏎️ that it inspired, the copycats, the so-called “Mario Kart 🏎️ clones” have pretty followed Mario Kart 🏎️’s lead when it comes to everything, and that includes the lack of story. The only Mario Kart 🏎️ clone that I can think of that came close to having a story was Nicktoons Racing, the game that arguably inspired the much more well known and much more successful, Nickelodeon Kart Racers.
But even then, it was probably the thinnest story you could imagine. It was basically, “who’s the mysterious Mystery Rider?” and that was about it. But, at least give them credit for going that far with doing something vaguely resembling a plot or an overarching storyline. It had actual cutscenes, which none of the actual Mario Kart 🏎️ games nor any of the other Mario Kart 🏎️ clones that have been made over the years have.
Recently though, I discovered that in-between Nicktoons Racing and the first Nickelodeon Kart Racers, there was another Nickelodeon crossover racing game in the works. The game was to be called SpongeBob SquarePants and the Nicktoons: Gravjet Racing 🧽 or SpongeBob: Gravjet Blast-Off 🧽 depending on who you ask. For those that don’t know, SpongeBob SquarePants and the Nicktoons: Gravjet Racing 🧽 was Nickelodeon crossover racing game that was in development by Santa Cruz Games.
It’s basically a hovercraft racing game where you would play as various Nicktoons characters and race in these uniquely designed futuristic anti-gravity hovercrafts called Gravjets on a set track similar to the Wipeout series. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Wipeout games served as a major inspiration for the Gravjet game.
Each Gravjet was tailored to each character that was set to be playable, so you wouldn’t be able to customize your own Gravjet or choose which one you could use. Whichever character you chose, that was the Gravjet you were stuck for the rest of your playthrough. Though, that could just be a quirk of the leaked build, but more on that in a moment. It was set to come out in 2009, and it was nearly almost complete, but was canceled almost at the last minute due to the developer facing financial issues.
This game was shrouded in mystery and very few people probably knew about it until recently, on Thursday August 1, 2024, when a nearly complete build of the game was discovered on an XBox 360 development kit and released on the Internet 🛜, on a place called Hidden Palace and another place called the Internet Archive 🛜. So now people not only got to see this game first time, but they also got to play it. People were surprised at how complete this build was, and how it seemed as if this game was almost ready to be released before Santa Cruz Games pulled the plug 🔌 on it.
But, probably the most surprising thing of all about this unfinished game was that it features characters who have never appeared in any Nickelodeon crossover material like Otis 🐄 from Back at the Barnyard and Bessie Higgenbottom from The Mighty B! 🐝, who is the character that people were the most excited to see, and was a large reason why so people were disappointed this game never got finished or officially released. Indeed, I’m a bit disappointed that this game never got finished or officially released. I would’ve love to have played as Bessie, or watch others play as her in longplays of the game on YouTube had it actually been finished and released in an official capacity.
People have uploaded playthroughs or walkthroughs or longplays of the build that was discovered on that XBox 360 development kit and leaked online, but that doesn’t count, since despite how complete that build is (shockingly complete), it’s still not finished. There are still many things missing, including sound effects and voice acting, if we are to assume this game was to have any voice acting. The first Nickelodeon Kart Racers had no voice acting whatsoever, and yet it was finished and put out there for an official release by the publisher, GameMill. That was how it was designed to be.
So, it’s entirely possible that this Gravjet Racing game wasn’t going to have voice acting either, though that certainly would’ve been a minus. The third Nickelodeon Kart Racers, Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3: Slime Speedway is considered the best, not just because the gameplay mechanics had vastly improved, but because it finally had voice acting. Granted, some of that voice acting was reused voice clips from the shows the characters came from, or it was the voice actors repeating lines they said in the shows in question, but at least it was something. I would’ve hoped that Gravjet Racing would’ve had voice acting too.
I also hope that it would’ve had a Story Mode to go along with the basic racing mode, which is the only mode available in the leaked build. There isn’t any indication that it would’ve had a Story Mode, especially given that the games that it was presumably inspired by, the Wipeout games, didn’t have any stories to speak of. But, the leaked build is incomplete, so it might not have all of the content that was planned for the game, including potentially a Story Mode. So, we can’t say one way or another if Gravjet Racing was going to have a Story Mode or not. The question of whether this game was going to have one or not is what made me think about whether next Mario Kart 🏎️ game should have one. It’s why I’m writing this, and why I’m even talking about Gravjet Racing here of all places.
The fact that the game’s full title is SpongeBob SquarePants and the Nicktoons: Gravjet Racing 🧽 or SpongeBob: Gravjet Blast-Off 🧽, and not Nicktoons: Gravjet Racing indicates how much the Nicktoons landscapes had changed since Nicktoons Racing and how different it was in 2009 compared to 2000. It really shows which characters was at the top of the peaking order and which character Nickelodeon valued the most by this time, and indeed felt was the most bankable.
Nickelodeon probably felt at the time that a video game like this wouldn’t sell if SpongeBob 🧽’s name wasn’t plastered on it, even if he and his other core cast weren’t the only characters in it, and that this was a crossover game. But, given how well Nickelodeon Kart Racers and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl games have sold, I think the Nickelodeon higher ups were proven wrong is that were the case.
If Gravjet Racing were to be remade, they should add some voice acting to it, and not use reuse lines and catchphrases from the shows themselves but unique voice lines specifically for the game, to really give the characters and the game overall personality. And give players the ability to either customize their own Gravjets, or give them the ability to choose which Gravjets they can ride. Just like how the Mario Kart 🏎️ and Nickelodeon Kart Racers games let you choose which kart 🏎️ you can drive.
They can add even more characters from classic Nickelodeon shows that were not set to be included in the original Gravjet Racing, like I don’t know if they were going to include Rocko or any of the other characters from Rocko’s Modern Life. It would be kind of weird if they didn’t. But, obviously I wouldn’t want just Rocko to be included, but other characters too like Heffer, Filburt, Mr. and Mrs. Bighead, Dr. Hutchison (who’s Filburt’s wife BTW), the Chameleon Brothers, and Rachel Bighead.
I don’t know if CatDog were going to be in the game or not. Like with Rocko, it’d be weird if they weren’t since they are such classic Nicktoons characters and are mainstays of Nickelodeon crossover games. But if they weren’t, then include them in the remake along with Rancid Rabbit, the Greasers, Cliff, Shriek, and Lube, and of course Winslow, CatDog’s two-bit scam artist mouse roommate 🐁 who’s always scheming against them, always manipulating them (though mostly manipulating Dog since he’s more naïve and dumber than Cat, thus easier to manipulate than Cat) and always getting them into trouble for his own amusement. The only thing with Winslow though is that due to him being a mouse 🐁, the standard Gravjet wouldn’t fit him, so everything would have to scaled down his level, or they’d have increase his size so he’d be able to ride in the same sized Gravjets as every other character.
Also, I don’t know if any Rugrats characters were to going to be in it, given how popular and iconic the original Rugrats was, and how beloved those character are, it would also be a bit weird not to include them at all. But, given that this is the 2020s, I don’t know if they’d include the versions of the characters from the original or the reboot that premiered in 2021. The baby and toddler characters weren’t really changed that much in the reboot, except for Susie and Kimi, who’s ages were switched, with Kimi now being the same age as Angelica and Susie being the same age as the babies. Specifically, the same age as Chuckie, which is the age that Kimi was in the original timeline.
The adult characters were where the most significant changes were made, as they had to adjust the parents’ ages to fit with the reboot’s present day 2020s time period. They changed the parents from Baby Boomers to Millennials and the grandparents from the Greatest Generation to Baby Boomers. The grandparents in the reboot are pretty much in the same demographic, the same age range that the parents were in the original simply due to the time period, and how long it’s been since the original Rugrats ended and since All Grown-Up! was canceled, which was canonically the last thing that happened in the original timeline of Rugrats. It really was the swan song 🦢 for that side of the Rugrats franchise before the reboot came 13 years later.
They just couldn’t keep the parents and the grandparents the same generations that they were in the original. It just wouldn’t work out timeline wise, so I fully understand changing the parents’ generation from Baby Boomers to Millennials and the grandparents’ generation from the Greatest Generation to Baby Boomers. Among other changes beyond just changing the generations, as some of the parents and grandparents were given completely different character traits than they had in the original.
Grandpa Lou is the one whose character change was directly tied to his generational change, as he was changed from a World War II veteran in the original to a hippy in the reboot. A change that definitely polarized a lot of fans of the original Rugrats. A lot of fans didn’t like Hippy Lou and liked him better when he was a World War II vet. I suggested that instead of making him a hippy, they could’ve made him a Vietnam War veteran 🇻🇳 to keep the war veteran aspect of his character, just update to fit his new age bracket, and putting a new spin on that concept since Vietnam vets 🇻🇳 had a much different experience than that of World War II vets.
Namely because their war ended in failure and defeat, as whereas the World War II vets’ war ended in victory and success. They were admired and had something to genuinely celebrate, whereas Vietnam veterans 🇻🇳 didn’t. That’s not say World War II vets didn’t experience PTSD or long term trauma from their time in the war, they did, but they could at least say that their war ended in a victory and that in the end, it was all worth it. All of the pain, suffering, blood 🩸, sweat 😓, and tears 😭, and death, it was all worth it in the end because the US 🇺🇸 and the rest of the Allied Powers won the war.
Vietnam war vets 🇻🇳 can’t really say that. Despite their bravery and dedication, they have nothing to really show their service, they have no victory to fall back on to make up for he PTSD and disfigurement some of them faced as a result of being in that war. They can’t really say if it all worth it since in the end, they lost. For them, all of the pain, suffering, blood 🩸, sweat 😓, and tears 😭, and death was all for nothing. Nothing is worse than the feeling and knowledge that your sacrifice, your dedication, and hard work was all for nothing and that it didn’t amount to anything except more pain, suffering, and death.
I did also say however that the only World War II vets that could relate to Vietnam War vets 🇻🇳 are Pacific War vets, the veterans who served in the Pacific theater, and mainly fought against the Japanese 🇯🇵. Their experiences are somewhat similar as they too fought in mostly wet, humid, and insect riddled jungle environment 🌴, and they spent as much time fighting the elements as they did fighting the enemy. Just like veterans of Vietnam 🇻🇳 did. They were also cut off from the rest of the world, and weren’t sure at times if their fight was even worth it or not, if people back at home even cared.
Even after the war, their contributions to the war are often overlooked in favor of the contributions made those who served in Europe, which where Grandpa Lou served. He fought against the Germans. But even still, Pacific War vets can still look back and say that their fight was worth it because it ended in a victory. They defeated Japan 🇯🇵 and avenged the deaths at Pearl Harbor caused by the Japanese attack 🇯🇵.
I would say that World War I vets could relate to Vietnam War vets 🇻🇳 a bit more because while World War I did end in a victory for the Triple Entente, largely thanks to the intervention of the US 🇺🇸, a lot of people still came out of that war feeling as if none of their war efforts were worth it, that it was kind of all for nothing, and that they got very little out of it except for more pain, suffering, and death.
The First World War lead to a lot of political instability, and laid the groundwork for the Second World War, by creating the conditions, in Europe at least, necessary for the rise of figures like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, the two pioneers of fascism in the Western world, and the two main architects of the death, destruction, and suffering during the war in Europe, born out of resentments left over by the First World War’s underwhelming conclusion. No body really won World War I, and no body really got what they wanted out of it. They just got more instability and chaos.
Empires and monarchies fell, extreme ideologies like fascism and communism ☭ took root across the European continent, and governments rose that sought to challenge the status quo, and create and dominate their own spheres of influence. The Germans and the Italians 🇮🇹 in particular wanted revenge for both losing the First World War, in Germany’s case, and not getting exactly what was promised to them by their allies in the First World War, which was the case for Italy 🇮🇹.
Italy 🇮🇹 fought on the side of the Entente in the First World War, and were promised some territory in the Balkans from Austria-Hungary, but didn’t get it. In fact, they performed pretty badly during the war, and would end up performing just as badly in the Second World War, though they didn’t know it yet at the time. So, the Italians 🇮🇹 were pretty teed off about that, and wanted to make up for their humiliating performance and get revenge on the Allies for not giving them what they wanted in the previous war. As well as create a new Roman Empire, which was a personal dream of Mussolini’s. They would end up failing at all of those goals.
So, in the end, World War I was bad for pretty everyone, and no one really benefited from it. No good came of it. Too much death, destruction, pain, and suffering for so little reward. That’s why World War I is a tragedy, a depressing tragedy, in very much the same way the Vietnam War 🇻🇳 was. And that’s why I think Vietnam War vets 🇻🇳 could relate to World War I vets, at least on some level.
Korean War 🇰🇵🇰🇷 vets can also relate to Vietnam vets 🇻🇳 as their wars were pretty similar. Vietnam 🇻🇳 was essentially Korea 🇰🇵🇰🇷 but on a much larger scale involving much more counterinsurgency than the Korean War 🇰🇵🇰🇷 did. The most significant aspect where their experiences diverge is that Korea 🇰🇵🇰🇷 ended in a stalemate, while Vietnam 🇻🇳 ended in a defeat. So, even if their war didn’t end in a victory like World War II, and their war was forgotten by the majority of the American public 🇺🇸, Korean War vets 🇰🇵🇰🇷 can at least say that they saved South Korea 🇰🇷 and prevented it from being absorbed by the North 🇰🇵. Vietnam War vets 🇻🇳 can’t even say that.
They didn’t save South Vietnam from absorbed by North Vietnam 🇻🇳, in fact, they pretty much let it happen when they pulled out, and their government did very little to prevent South Vietnam being absorbed by the North 🇻🇳. The only thing they did was evacuate South Vietnamese refugees out of the country just as it was falling to the North 🇻🇳, and even then, they didn’t save all of them, just the ones they could. It would’ve been interesting what they could’ve done with that with Lou being a Vietnam vet 🇻🇳 instead of a World War II one.
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(These are the flags of the four main belligerents of the Vietnam War 🇻🇳: the United States 🇺🇸, North Vietnam 🇻🇳, the Việt Cộng, and South Vietnam. There were other players too like Australia 🇦🇺, New Zealand 🇳🇿, South Korea 🇰🇷, Thailand 🇹🇭, the Kingdom of Laos, the Khmer Republic, Taiwan 🇹🇼, and the Philippines 🇵🇭 who all supported South Vietnam along with the US 🇺🇸, and of course you had the Soviet Union ☭, China 🇨🇳, North Korea 🇰🇵, the Pathet Lao 🇱🇦, the Khmer Rouge, and the GRUNK, the Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea, the government-in-exile created out of the First Kingdom of Cambodia 🇰🇭 after Marshal Lon Nol overthrew King Norodom Sihanouk in a coup d’état and established the Khmer Republic, who all supported North Vietnam 🇻🇳 and the Việt Cộng, who many argue were one and the same due to them sharing the same command structure, and having the same commanders. They were following the same orders. But, I didn’t want to show any of them because I didn’t want to overload this part with flags, so I kept it simple by showing the four main players in the war. The ones that those other countries and non-state actors were supporting.)
Plus, I figured that a lot of Millennials and a lot of my generation, Generation Z has either parents or grandparents who are Vietnam vets 🇻🇳, they’re like the last generation of veterans of 20th century wars, where it was a generationally defining experience and millions of people were apart of it and were affected by it. Even though the Gulf War is also a 20th century war, it didn’t have the same cultural impact that Vietnam 🇻🇳 did, and it didn’t define the Gen Xers the same way Vietnam 🇻🇳 defined the Baby Boomers. I mean, for one thing, the US 🇺🇸 still had a draft when Vietnam 🇻🇳 happened, and it had already fully switched to an all-volunteer military by the time the Gulf War took place.
That’s why Vietnam 🇻🇳 affected so much more people than the Gulf War did because people just kept getting drafted, and some even tried to dodge the draft, namely the wealthiest and affluent of the country at the time. That’s what that Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) song, “Fortunate Son” was all about, and that song’s pretty much the official theme song or anthem of the entire Vietnam War 🇻🇳. So, Lou being a Vietnam vet 🇻🇳 would’ve made him relatable to younger generations, especially those still have living grandparents who served in that war. My grandfather served in the Vietnam War 🇻🇳, but he is no longer with us. He passed away in 2022 unfortunately 😔.
But, alas, they didn’t go in that direction with his character, and they made him a hippy instead (likely a draft dodger). And in so doing, they completely did away with the war veteran of the character, which was probably the most defining aspect of the character. Being a war veteran was who Grandpa Lou was, and by removing that aspect of his character, they changed him on a fundamental level to where he was barely even the same character anymore. He was only really the same character in name in only. That’s why the decision was so controversial amongst fans of the original.
And I highly doubt that they’d make any of the adult Rugrats characters playable, and would just make the baby and toddler characters playable since they’re the main focus. So, I guess it wouldn’t really matter too much if they used the reboot versions or the original versions. The only ones you would notice were from the reboot are Susie and Kimi as they’re different ages in the reboot than they are in the original. I would like to see the older Dil from All Grown-Up! since that was when he was at his best. In fact, include all of the older preteen versions of the characters from All Grown-Up! in the Gravjet Racing remake.
I would also like to see them add characters from more recent Nickelodeon shows like characters from The Loud House, maybe characters from Sanjay & Craig, maybe characters from the Big Nate animated series, maybe characters from Harvey Beaks, that short-lived cartoon show from CH Greenblatt (the guy ♂︎ who created the Cartoon Network show, Chowder), maybe characters from Glitch Techs, that show made by the same guy ♂︎ who made Fanboy & Chum Chum (which BTW, the two title characters from that show were set to appear in the original Gravjet Racing), and maybe even characters from the recent Fairly OddParents sequel series, The Fairly OddParents: A New Wish that people were skeptical about and didn’t watch at first until it started leaning more into nostalgia and bringing back old characters from the original Fairly OddParents, then it went viral.
Like, the new characters like the new main character, Hazel, or Cosmo and Wanda, or Hazel’s friends, Winn Harper and Jasmine Tran, Dale Dimmadome’s son, Dev Dimmadome, Hazel’s Anti-Fairy counterpart, Lezah, and maybe, the adult version of Poof known as Peri, since he changed his name to Peri after he became an adult and went off on his own to become a Fairy Godparent like his parents, Cosmo and Wanda.
I don’t think they’d add any of the classic Fairly OddParents characters that we’ve seen return older and sometimes wiser, like AJ, or Denzel Crocker, or Vicky for example. Maybe, they’d add Irep (formally known as Foop), the Anti-Fairy counterpart of Poof AKA Peri who was born after Poof was born. His name changed after Poof changed his name to Peri, hence why his name is now Irep. Or Irep’s parents, Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda, maybe even Jorgen, but that’s about it. But then again, the first Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl did include Hugh Neutron as a DLC character, even though he’s an adult character and not a kid, so you never know.
Speaking of which, I don’t know if the original canceled Gravjet Racing was going to have any characters from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, but if not, then they should include some in a potential remake in the future. Like, I’m talking Jimmy Neutron, Carl Wheezer, Sheen Estevez, Cindy Vortex, Libby Folfax, Nick Dean, and maybe even Jimmy’s parents, Hugh and Judy Neutron. Maybe, even throw in King Goobot, Ooblar, Brobot, Jimmy’s robot brother who lives on the Moon 🌕 with his robot parents that Jimmy built for him, Professor Calamitous, Dr. Moist, Jet Fusion, Beautiful Gorgeous, and the Junk Man ♂︎ since Brobot’s in there and the Junk Man ♂︎ is more of a Brobot enemy.
They could also include more characters from the shows they did include, like they could include more SpongeBob 🧽 characters like Patrick, Sandy 🐿️, Squidward 🐙, and maybe even Mr. Krabs 🦀 and Plankton. You could even throw Mrs. Puff 🐡 and Larry the Lobster 🦞 in there as well if you want. The only problem with making Plankton a playable character is that similar to Winslow from CatDog, given how tiny he is, things would have to be scaled down to Plankton’s level whenever you play as him or Plankton would have to beefed to everyone else’s size.
She kind of replaces the character, Daisy from the film, who was Otis 🐄’s love interest ❤️, except Abby’s not really a love interest ❤️ for Otis 🐄 the same way Daisy was in the film. She’s kind of his just friend, and is “one of the boys ♂︎” as she’s usually involved in Otis 🐄 and the other characters’ schemes and antics, and is just as goofy and crazy as they are. This is what contrasts her with Bessy as despite being a female ♀︎ like her, Abby is able to be goofy and immature like Otis 🐄 and his friends, but is still kind of able to get along with Bessy, largely on the basis of being the only other female ♀︎ in the main cast.
Just absolutely nonsensical plots, weird characters, jokes left and right, non-sequiturs, cutaway gags, and generally pure and unmitigated chaos across both seasons, because the show only had two seasons as the majority of Nicktoons shows do. The second season is way more insane than the first season from what I understand. I’ve only seen episodes from the first season, and I’ve seen nothing of the second season, which is why there are those clips from the show on YouTube that I don’t recognize. And they just cranked up the insanity to 11 when it came time to make the second season.
Like, they just gave on up being grounded or down-to-earth, and just decided to get as crazy as they can, because the second season is out there 🤪. I mean, the weirdest episode of Season 1 was the Bigfoot episode where we see Bigfoot fly at the end, and he even gets his own Ultraman or Jet Jaguar or Gamera-inspired theme song. I mean, there’s a talking dragon sock puppet in one episode, there’s a camping episode 🏕️ where the group gets saved by a magical being named Moose Shark 🫎🦈 who’s literally a moose 🫎 with a shark head 🦈, Peck 🐓 becomes a cyborg in one episode after Otis 🐄 accidentally injures him, and then Otis 🐄 himself becomes a cyborg at the end of the episode. And each time, they do a variation on the Bionic Janitor theme song, a fictional TV show in-universe about a cyborg janitor, to go along with their cyborg forms.
So, when we see Peck 🐓 flying in there as a cyborg, so music plays where he’s called “Bionic Rooster 🐓,” and then the same thing with Otis 🐄, only his theme song is “Bionic Bovine 🐄.” There’s an episode where Freddy drinks some radioactive waste ☢️ and gets laser vision, and then they do a Dr. Pig segment 🐖 where we see Dr. Pig 🐖 drink some radioactive waste ☢️ to prove that it doesn’t actually give you laser eyes, and then he basically turns into the Incredible Hulk. The Hulk Pig 🐖 if you will. And apparently, according to a YouTube comment I say, the reason why Season 2 is so much crazier than Season 1 is that the people who worked on the show knew in advance that the show was getting canceled after Season 2, and that Season 2 was going to be the last season.
So, they just said, “F it, we’re just going to go all out, and get as insane and weird as we possibly can. It’s not we’re getting another season after this, so why not? Why not go completely off the deep end?” I don’t know how true that is, but if it is true, then that’s just glorious. I would do the same if I was working on a cartoon show and I knew that it was getting canceled after the season we were currently working on.)
They could include more Back at the Barnyard characters since Otis 🐄 was in the original canceled version, like they could include Pig 🐖 (a fan favorite character from the series), or Abby, Freddy, Peck 🐓 (who’s voiced by the same guy ♂︎ who voices Carl on Jimmy Neutron…and also Doppy Doppweiler on Planet Sheen 😒), Duke, Bessy, and even Pip 🐁 (who’s actually voiced by the same guy ♂︎ who voices Sheen on Jimmy Neutron…and also Planet Sheen 😒). Although it would be a similar issue as with Winslow from CatDog or Plankton from SpongeBob 🧽 since Pip 🐁 is a mouse 🐁 and thus wouldn’t fit in a standard Gravjet, unless everything was scaled down to his level or his size was increased to be the same as every other character.
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They could include more Fanboy & Chum Chum characters since Fanboy and Chum Chum (AKA “Lance” Tobias Cranapple III and “Sir” Edmund Chummery) were both set to appear as playable character in the original Gravjet Racing. I’m not really that familiar with the characters from that show since I barely remember anything from it. But, they include the main few recurring side characters like Kyle Bloodworth-Thompson, Fanboy and Chum Chum’s main foil and the boy ♂︎ they always annoy (kind of Squidward 🐙’s relationship with SpongeBob 🧽 and Patrick in SpongeBob 🧽), Boogeregard “Boog” Shlizetti, Leonard “Lenny” Flynn-Boyle, Ozwald “Oz” Harmounian, Yo, Lupe, and Janitor Russ Poopatine.
Maybe you could include Man-Artica ❄️ in there as well. He’s the big superhero character that Fanboy and Chum Chum are into, only Man-Artica ❄️’s real like he exists as a real person within the show’s world and he’s pretty much this show’s equivalent to Santa Claus 🎅 since he’s the one that delivers gifts 🎁 to kids on Christmas 🎄. This is despite him hating kids, and he says that the reason why he gives gifts 🎁 to kids on Christmas 🎄 is to keep them away from him. If they include Powdered Toast Man along with Ren and Stimpy from The Ren & Stimpy Show…and also Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon 😒. I mean, they put Powdered Toast Man in Nickelodeon Kart Racers 3 as both a playable character and a power-up, so why not 🤷♂️? Why not include him and Man-Artica ❄️ in the game?
Oh, and BTW, Chum Chum was voiced by the same voice actress who voices Sticks in Sonic Boom and Luna Loud in The Loud House, despite Chum Chum being a boy ♂︎. This is a common practice in the industry to have women ♀︎ voice young prepubescent boy characters ♂︎ in cartoons because they much more easily recreate a boy voice ♂︎ due to some of their naturally higher pitched voices as opposed to a grown man ♂︎ trying to do the same thing. Like, for example, the popular, talented and prolific voice actress, Tara Strong voiced a bunch of boy characters ♂︎ over the course of her prestigious career, but most notably, Timmy Turner in the original Fairly OddParents, preteen Dil Pickles in All Grown-Up!, the spin-off/sequel series of the original Rugrats, Roger in The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, and Ben Tennyson from the original Ben 10 series, known retroactively as Classic Ben 10.
And of course, as mentioned, the original Gravjet Racing was to have Bessie Higgenbottom, a character who has never appeared in any Nickelodeon crossover game as of yet. But, if there ever is a remake of Gravjet Racing, maybe she will finally have her day in the Sun ☀️ join a huge roster of the Nicktoons characters in a crossover game. But with her in the game, they could include even more characters from The Mighty B! 🐝 such as her brother, Ben, her dog, Happy, her friend, Penny, and her two frenemies, Portia and Gwen (who is voiced by the same woman ♀︎ who voices both Lynn Loud Jr. and Lucy Loud on The Loud House). Maybe even include Rocky or K.G. Bianca in there too if you want.
One character I would love to see included is one from the recent Nickelodeon show that really didn’t last that long. It only lasted about two seasons across two years. I would like to see the character, Parker J. Cloud ☁️ be a playable character in the Gravjet Racing remake if there ever is one. For those that don’t know, and I’m sure there are plenty, Parker J. Cloud ☁️ is a talking cloud boy ♂︎ who lives in a small mountaintop town called Mount Middlemost, where he works as a postal worker along with his adopted father, Angus and his pink walrus companion, Russell. Child labor laws must be pretty lax in Mount Middlemost if Parker ☁️ is allowed to work as a postal worker, since he’s basically a child. Angus is pretty much raising him, which is why I say that he’s his adopted father.
They’re all from a show called Middlemost Post. It premiered in 2021 and ended in 2022, for a total of two seasons. It was a very short-lived show, about as short-lived as Harvey Beaks in all honesty, and it was just as disrespected by Nickelodeon as Harvey Beaks was. I mean, they didn’t really give the show its time in the Sun ☀️, it never really got to blossom and grow into its own. To make things even worse for Middlemost Post, I just from reading the Wikipedia page that the show was taken off of Paramount+ earlier this year, on Thursday March 28, 2024.
The reason Paramount gave for this decision sounds pretty asinine in all honesty, they said they removed the show from their service because they want to “focus on content with a global mass appeal” 🙄. “Global mass appeal” my ass, Paramount 🖕, that’s a bullshit reason to get rid of a show like Middlemost Post. Sure, it may not have “global mass appeal,” but it still has appeal to a domestic American audience 🇺🇸, at least leave it on for people who watched the show while it was still airing or for people who haven’t seen it and want to give it a chance, like me.
Because Paramount removed it from their streaming service, there is no way to watch the show now. It’s not like it a physical release to make up for this, no DVD 📀 or Blu-Ray 💿, nothing. Middlemost Post might very well become lost media if Paramount doesn’t re-release it in some form. Which is a shame because it does look like a decent show. Again, sort of like Harvey Beaks was. And Parker ☁️ himself seems like a very lovable character 🤗.
I would love to see him, and other characters from the show included in a potential remake of Gravjet Racing, and in other Nickelodeon crossover material in the future. If only to just make up for the show’s cancellation, give Parker ☁️ and the other Middlemost Post characters their shot at redemption. Besides Parker, I was thinking they could include Angus, Russell, and also Lily, that weird slow-talking worm or caterpillar 🐛 character who walks around with a robot suit.
(These are PNG images of Lily, the caterpillar character 🐛 I was talking about from Middlemost Post, who walks around with a mech suit. The second picture is what she looks without a her suit, and as you can see, she’s basically a worm or a caterpillar 🐛. She’s apparently Parker ☁️’s best friend and the only other character he’s close to besides Angus and Russell.)
In addition to all these characters, I would like to see a Story Mode be added to a Gravjet Racing remake to really differentiate it from the other Nickelodeon crossover racing games. I mean, if Mario Kart 🏎️ can’t have a Story Mode, then maybe Gravjet Racing can, and who knows? Maybe if Gravjet Racing has a story and if it’s good and it works, maybe it might inspire Nintendo to do the same for the next Mario Kart 🏎️ game, whether it be Mario Kart 9 🏎️ or Mario Kart 10 🏎️ (or Mario Kart X 🏎️). Maybe it could even inspire the next Wipeout game to have a story too if that franchise is ever resurrected in the future and they make another one.
But, I still think that the next Mario Kart 🏎️ game should have a Story Mode of its own, and should probably lead on that front since the Mario Kart 🏎️ franchise is pretty much what inspired the kart racing 🏎️ genre, all of those imitators including Nicktoons Racing, the Nickelodeon Kart Racers trilogy, and of course Gravjet Racing to lesser extent. Though, I contend that Gravjet Racing was more inspired by the Wipeout franchise than it was the Mario Kart 🏎️ franchise since in Gravjet Racing, the characters are racing each there with futuristic hovercrafts which they race with in the Wipeout games.
It certainly has the best intro theme, I’ll give it that much. See for yourself. And Wipeout Fusion is the only game in the series that was on the PS2. Every other entry was either on the PS1, Nintendo 64, PSP, PS3, PS Vita, PS4, and iOS and Android. Yes, the last game in the Wipeout series, Wipeout Merge was a mobile game 😒. I went out of my way to use the NTSC versions of these covers instead of the PAL versions since these are what players in North America would’ve seen on the store shelves instead of any of the PAL versions.
PAL versions of these covers would only be seen in Europe 🇪🇺 since the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 and the majority of the European Union 🇪🇺 use PAL instead of NTSC like the United States 🇺🇸 does, and other countries do too like Canada 🇨🇦, Japan 🇯🇵, South Korea 🇰🇷, Taiwan 🇹🇼, the Philippines 🇵🇭, Myanmar 🇲🇲 of all places, Comoros 🇰🇲, Mexico 🇲🇽, and pretty much every other Latin American country except Brazil 🇧🇷, Argentina 🇦🇷, Paraguay 🇵🇾, and Uruguay 🇺🇾. They use PAL.
Pretty much every other country in the world uses PAL. But there are a few others who use the even less common and abundant SECAM, such as Russia 🇷🇺, Belarus 🇧🇾, all of the Central Asian countries except Afghanistan 🇦🇫, France 🇫🇷 strangely enough, Morocco 🇲🇦, Tunisia 🇹🇳, Mauritania 🇲🇷, Mali 🇲🇱, Burkina Faso 🇧🇫, Niger 🇳🇪, Chad 🇹🇩, the Central African Republic 🇨🇫, the Democratic Republic of the Congo 🇨🇩, the Republic of the Congo 🇨🇬, Gabon 🇬🇦, Benin 🇧🇯, Togo 🇹🇬, Ivory Coast 🇨🇮, Senegal 🇸🇳, Madagascar 🇲🇬, and Mauritius 🇲🇺.)
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