Genre: Racing
Developer: NdCUBE
Publisher: NEC Interchannel
# of Players: 1-4
Memory: 22 blocks
ERSB: Everyone
Released On: April 16th, 2003
Also On: None
Features: Frustrating controls
Website: www.necgames.com
Introduction:
The last time we saw NEC as a recognizable force in the gaming industry they brought gamers one of the first 16 bit consoles with the TurboGraphx 16. With games like Keith Courage, Bloody Wolf, and Bonk’s Adventure, the TurboGraphx 16 provided for some fun gaming experiences, though unfortunately it never hit big outside of Japan, which caused its untimely downfall. However, NEC has made its return to the gaming business after a decade of silence.
In late January, NEC announced its return to gaming, and their first game under their newly formed gaming label, NEC Games, would be a title by the name of Tube Slider exclusively for the Nintendo GameCube.
When people hear the name Tube Slider, most can’t help but think about some type of porno. Though, the truth is, it isn’t anything of the sort. So, I apologize if I got anyone’s hopes up. Tube Slider is actually a futuristic racer in the spirit of Nintendo’s own F-Zero. Its similarities end there…
The game is developed by NdCUBE, a company that should sound familiar to Game Boy Advance owners, because NdCUBE is the developer behind the GBA’s F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, and in fact, NdCUBE is actually a Nintendo second party formed by Nintendo and Japanese media giant Dentsu. The fact that Nintendo themselves isn’t publishing Tube Slider might confuse some, but the reason for it will become apparent…
Presentation:
Tube Slider isn’t exactly the most appealing of games, so you won’t get sucked into the game’s futuristic atmosphere as much as you like, if at all…
Futuristic racing games don’t usually offer anything different from one another to which it actually grabs a person’s interest. Honestly,
"many others like it have come and gone over the years"
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only games like Nintendo’s F-Zero or Psygnosis’ Wipeout have broken through to the mainstream to avoid being deemed as part of a genre that is oddly clichéd. Unfortunately, Tube Slider won’t make much of a difference, since many others like it have come and gone over the years.
The whole story behind Tube Slider stems from mankind’s efforts to preserve Mother Nature. Since, man has earned this new found love of the planet, fossil fuel based vehicles have been completely wiped out, and the only source of fuel on the planet is hydrogen based. On top of this, wars have ceased to exist on the Earth, and in order to deviate from their pacifist lifestyles the human race has created the sport of tube sliding. Tube sliding pits combatants in tracks built of long tubes, where they race to the grand finish at lighting fast speeds. Sounds pretty original doesn’t it? Well, unfortunately you don’t get pulled into any type story in the game at all, I just happened to stumble across it accidentally awhile back.
Gameplay:
The name of the game says it all…Tube Slider. At first I thought it was a cool concept, and it is to some extent, but the game finds many ways to piss you off, and most of these nuisances can be found within the gameplay…
When you first begin Tube Slider, you’ll be making your way through the game’s first circuit in Grand Prix mode with no problem at all. Chances are you’ll place in first in every single race your first time through, leaving your opponents hundreds of miles behind. But once you’re through with the game’s first circuit, it takes you to school. Initially, you don’t even have to know exactly how to play the game to win, but those later circuits, which albeit feature the same 9 tracks as the previous one, will force you to learn, and the hard way.
One of the key techniques you need to learn is how to lock-onto a rival racer. To do this, you simply have to get close to your opponent and stay behind him. As you do this your craft will shoot these laser beams out of it, and lock onto the opponent ahead of you. Annoyingly though, when you lock onto the rival racer, it becomes oh so much harder to control your craft since you are locked onto them, and it’s even worse when it happens you. However this lock-on technique does have some benefits. What this lock-on maneuver does is drain a racer of its fuel, and send it to the one that it was performed by, allowing them to earn a boost maneuver, which can make or break a race. Though, this boost maneuver can vary upon the choice of the user, which if you didn’t know is YOU. You can choose between either boost or turbo before each race. Boost allows you to perform a on the spot acceleration move, which can be earned over time and add up to a Max of 3 at a time. The turbo function allows you to accelerate your speed over time, by draining a fuel bar of its contents until there’s none left, but of course that will refill quickly over time as well. It’s all just user preference and neither of the two prove to be much more beneficial than the other.
"Speaking of nausea, the game’s camera can be a real pain in the ass"
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However, they have one thing in common, and that is that they send you ship through these tubes at such incredible speeds, that you might even get nauseous. If you happen to hit one of the boost items found on the tracks floor while in boost, you go even faster too. Speaking of nausea, the game’s camera can be a real pain in the ass. The standard view keeps your perspective right up the ships ass crack all the time, and as you know with any racing game, it’s crucial to see what’s ahead of you. What makes the standard camera configuration even worse is that no matter where you are on the screen, upside down, on the left side of the tube, on the right, it will always put the perspective right behind you in an upright position, which oddly makes it harder to see. Luckily, there is an option to set the camera view on a set level, so things such as making a left turn won’t become too hard to execute. Unfortunately, nothing can make that any easier since one of the areas where Tube Slider can really disappoint is in one of the most crucial…the controls. When you control whichever one of the oddly named craft in the game, it often feels as if you have very little control over it. You could compare it to playing a game with an un-calibrated controller, which makes whatever you’re controlling always seem to drift in a certain direction, no matter how hard I press the joystick towards the opposite. You can imagine that it can become very annoying. However, it might just be an intentional addition to the game, because if you think about it, the faster your craft goes, the less control you should have over it, but then again, that doesn’t explain why this happens when your vehicle is practically at a dead stop. But, that’s not all… Since you’re blazing through one big tube throughout every race, you often find yourself riding the walls, or going upside down, and to help prevent that, you have utilize your craft’s side thrusters, which barely do a damn thing. In theory they’re supposed to help keep your craft balanced, but other than helping to execute sharp turns, they don’t do shit. Though, even performing sharp turns using the thrusters is a bitch, but when you eventually get it down as well as the other gameplay mechanics in the game, such as boosting, Tube Slider will actually become enjoyable. But, the control issues will always haunt the game.
My final issue with the game would have to be the difficulty of the game’s AI. Like in most racers, the crafts in Tube Slider come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, just like in the real world, Tube Slider follows the rules of Social Darwinism or “the survival of the fittest”, so unless you’re some behemoth of a racer, you get tossed around like the neighborhood crack whore. However, the biggest racers aren’t the best ones to use, since
"Tube Slider follows the rules of Social Darwinism or the survival of the fittest"
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they’re as slow as tortoise, and trust me…slow and steady doesn’t win the race. So, no matter what, you will have to use one of the smaller, yet faster, racers in order to win races. But remember how I said that the bigger ships basically suck and are too slow to use? Well, somehow when you’re competing against them and not using them, they tend to ugh… leave you in the dust. That is of course you flawlessly navigate the course without even grazing the surface of an opponents hull; something which is downright impossible with the game’s sloppy controls.
Visuals:
Tube Slider isn’t a terrible looking game at all, but compared to the upcoming F-Zero for the GameCube it doesn’t stand a chance. Despite having craft models being designed by the artists of the infamous Japanese animation masterpiece Akira, Tube Slider’s models for ships or levels look great on paper, but in the actual game itself it’s dull and boring. The same can also be said about the game’s textures. But you got to hand it to Tube Slider for one visual aspect that has been executed excellently in the game, and that is the framerate. With a game like this, framerate is crucial to its presentation, and thankfully NdCUBE has managed to keep the game running at a rock solid 60 frames per second.
Audio:
Whenever you get your hands on a futuristic racing title these days you pretty much know what to expect from the game’s soundtrack…Lots of crappy techno. I don’t know if it’s my personal grudge against the actual genre of techno, trance, or whatever synthesized crap people listen to, or the dullness of Tube Slider’s soundtrack. It just doesn’t establish the game’s mood all too well. However, I have to say that I did like one or two of the 9 tracks in the game. Fortunately and oddly, before each race starts you are given the option of picking which one of the game’s music tracks you want to listen to before you jet off the starting line. It’s just odd for that kind of feature to be included in a GameCube since that’s a trait that is usually characteristic of an Xbox racer. As for the sound effects and such; they’re a bit bland. I would have liked something that actually got down the feel of this futuristic sport we know as tube sliding.
Final Thoughts:
When this game was first announced, GameCube owners found out that it would hit stores only a few short months later. So, there wasn’t really any time for some sort of hype to build up around the game. Luckily, that ended up being a good thing, since Tube Slider isn’t the best of games. Though, I have to admit that I did enjoy my experience with NdCUBE’s first GameCube game. It has a lot going for it and if you learn how to play the game really well, you’ll enjoy the game for as long as it lasts, which isn’t very long. If it wasn’t for Tube Slider’s cruel AI and sloppy controls it could have earned a more venerable score.
*GamersMark.com reviewed this game with a copy of the title purchased from retail
