Have you ever heard the saying “A mile wide and an inch deep?” While this saying is typically used for stupid people, I believe that an alternate version of this can be used to describe NASCAR Arcade Rush; an inch wide and an inch deep. Let me explain. NASCAR Arcade Rush is a racing game developed by Team6 Game Studios and published by GameMill Entertainment. Team6 Game Studios has developed only racing titles, but has somewhat of a mixed record when it comes to how those games have been received.

GameMill Entertainment has helped Team6 Game Studios get a majority of their titles published, and most other releases that GameMill Entertainment has published seem to be just as much of a mixed bag. GameMill Entertainment’s most recently published game is Avatar: The Last Airbender – Quest for Balance which has been slam-dunked into the trash can by most players, so they definitely needed a break. Sadly, NASCAR Arcade Rush is not it.

The opening of NASCAR Arcade Rush seemed to actually work quite nicely. The menu is well laid out and responsive, the music definitely gives it a sense of youthful energy, and the art style seems to be a 3D version of designs that you would see in Speed Racer. At the start, there is not a whole lot of customization as most things are locked behind levels that unlock through racing and winning. Currently, there are one hundred levels with each one unlocking a new cosmetic for either your racer or your car.

While the cosmetics for your racer don’t really matter since you only see them on the podium, they are extremely zany compared to a majority of the cosmetics that you can unlock for your car. When it comes to the car, there doesn’t seem to be any way to boost its stats and none of the cosmetics seem to give you a boost. This sort of reminds me of those arcade racing machines where you more or less picked a car based on how it looked and then did your best to know how the mechanics of the game worked in order to win.

Compared to every other modern racer in existence, this one is pretty poor. I would easily take Warp Drive over NASCAR Arcade Rush, which is saying something considering that Warp Drive nearly gave some of my friends epilepsy when we tried to play split-screen co-op. With the NASCAR logo slapped onto it, I at least expected that there would be some sort of quality control from the company, but it would seem like Team6 Game Studios just handed NASCAR a bag of money and NASCAR just walked away.

Beyond the name, there is nothing to really associate NASCAR Arcade Rush with NASCAR. There are no drivers from any of the competitions, some of the cars have a passing resemblance to what is used on the track (which isn’t saying much), and there are no tracks that make sense to be associated with that company. The game page does say that each track is “Real-World NASCAR locations completely re-imagined with twists, jumps, nitro-boosts[,] and high-speed fun!” but I couldn’t tell if any of these locations were supposed to be that or not.

The AI in NASCAR Arcade Rush can give you a run for your money if you play in a high enough difficulty, but just barely. I managed to just barely get first place in my first race, but this was mainly because I kept slamming into walls since there were some extremely tight turns and no drifting. This threw me off since I am so used to playing Mario Kart, but once I learned this I thought the next best thing would be to reduce my speed when going around the corners.

This however proved not to be the smartest move as the brakes almost completely stop you in your tracks to the point of going 80 mph to 0 in less than a second. Doing such a maneuver tended to get me bashed around by a lot of cars, so I also abandoned this game plan and just went with maximum speed!

Did this cause me to ricochet off walls quite a bit? Yes. Did it cause me to crash into a car here and there? Sure. Did it give me the win? Always! I wasn’t really able to test out the multiplayer because I couldn’t find a single other person playing the game on Nintendo Switch. I would’ve also tested out the split screen, but that was difficult during the review time of NASCAR Arcade Rush. If you are looking for other racing games, I would suggest going over to Keiran’s review on Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 – Turbocharged right here.

A Switch review copy of NASCAR Arcade Rush was provided by GameMill Entertainment for the purposes of this review.

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NASCAR Arcade Rush

$49.99

3.5

Score

3.5/10

Pros

• Earnable Cosmetics
• Good Music

Cons

• Lack of Simple Driving Controls
• Strange Courses
• Old Graphics
• No Other Players To Be Found