''Wacky Wheels'' is a

kart racing Kart racing or karting is a road racing variant of motorsport with open-wheel, four-wheeled vehicles known as go-karts or shifter karts. They are usually raced on scaled-down circuits, although some professional kart races are also held on fu ...

video game released by

Apogee Software 3D Realms Entertainment ApS is a video game publisher based in Aalborg, Denmark. Scott Miller founded the company in his parents' home in Garland, Texas, in 1987 as Apogee Software Productions to release his game '' Kingdom of Kroz''. In the ...

for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...

in 1994. The game strongly resembles '' Super Mario Kart'' from the

Super NES The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in ...

, but the karts are described as

lawn mowers A lawn mower (also known as a mower, grass cutter or lawnmower) is a device utilizing one or more revolving blades (or a reel) to cut a grass surface to an even height. The height of the cut grass may be fixed by the design of the mower, but g ...

and the eight playable characters are animals from a zoo. The game was re-released on

GOG.com GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) is a digital distribution platform for video games and films. It is operated by GOG sp. z o.o., a wholly owned subsidiary of CD Projekt based in Warsaw, Poland. GOG.com delivers DRM-free video games through it ...

with support for Microsoft Windows,

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

, and

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

on August 20, 2014, then for Steam on May 6, 2015 as part of the ''3D Realms Anthology''.

Gameplay

While racing, players can collect

hedgehog A hedgehog is a spiny mammal of the subfamily Erinaceinae, in the eulipotyphlan family Erinaceidae. There are seventeen species of hedgehog in five genera found throughout parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in New Zealand by introductio ...

s, bombs and other objects that can be used to shoot or distract opponents. The game features both single and multiplayer play, with split-screen, modem, or direct serial link. In

multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system ( couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

mode, two human players can either race against each other or battle in special arenas where the sole purpose is to hit the opponent a certain number of times with hedgehogs. This last gaming mode, called ''Wacky shoot-out'', is similar to the classic deathmatch mode from first-person shooter games or the Battle Mode of Super Mario Kart. The game was and still is distributed as shareware, with only a few characters and courses active. Registration is required to unlock the remaining characters and courses. It is also the first game to feature a Dopefish

cameo appearance A cameo role, also called a cameo appearance and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief appearance of a well-known person in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking ones, and are commonly ei ...

Development

Developers Andy Edwardson and Shaun Gadalla of ''Wacky Wheels'' were inspired by '' Super Mario Kart'', and wished to create a similar experience on the personal computer. During development, he sent out a playable demo that included its

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

to Copysoft to canvas interest in funding the project. They rejected it and instead

Apogee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any ell ...

began funding development. However, just prior to the release of ''Wacky Wheels'', Copysoft released a similar game titled '' Skunny Kart''. Edwardson and Gadalla accused Copysoft of copyright infringement, noting the similarity in the games: however, no legal action was ever taken.

Sequel

In 2014 it was announced that Cascadia Games had acquired the rights to ''Wacky Wheels'' from Apogee and was working on a sequel/ remake of the game. The game called Wacky Wheels HD was released on Steam and Itch.io in Fall 2016. It was later withdrawn from Steam, and is no longer available.

References

External links

''Wacky Wheels'' website

The Official Apogee FAQ
{{Apogee Games 1994 video games Apogee games DOS games MacOS games Kart racing video games Racing video games Vehicular combat games Split-screen multiplayer games Games commercially released with DOSBox Video game clones Video games developed in the United States Windows games Multiplayer and single-player video games