The games behind bad box art: Karnaaj Rally

 

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For quite obvious visual reasons, Karnaaj Rally’s box art is legendary. It’s essentially just a Polaroid of a man on his stag weekend. From the odd composition, garish colours, and haphazard way this box art looks thrown together, Karnaaj Rally starts out looking like the result of what would happen if you gave NDubz a billion pounds and a million years to come up with a serious and saleable video game concept.       

 

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Here’s the game’s character select screen, which kinda explains the deal behind the bizarre box art. It’s a racing game that lets you assume the role of one of several characters you’d never willingly ever want to assume the role of.  

 

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After selecting our driver, we were introduced to this guy, Leppa. He’s our sponsor and is here to take us through the bizarre world of Karnaaj Rally, though given the fact that he can’t even afford a shirt we’re not expecting this relationship will prove to be any kind of gravy train.

 

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He does give us some useful tips though, like this one here, which helps explain how you go about getting ‘ultimate pleasure’ from the game - and it doesn’t involve Paraffin and a match. Surprised? We were.

 

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If you think the driver selection process was bad then you should check out the vehicle selection, it’s somehow even worse. Our initial choice of motor vehicle consists of Fred Flintstone’s car or something that looks like a giant pencil. Geez.    

 

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Finally we get into the game, and to be honest it isn’t all that bad. It’s a playable and decent looking top-down combat jostle racer in the style of Badlands meets Micro Machines. While not a patch on either of those aforementioned games, if you’re a fan of the genre, and play your games wearing sunglasses, you may be able to find some fraction of enjoyment from this weird little GBA racing oddity.

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2 Responses to “The games behind bad box art: Karnaaj Rally”

  1. Alfonso Maruccia Says:

    Never liked racer games except for Atari’s Super Sprint. And that’s just another reason to stay away from the genre :-P

  2. djshep1973 Says:

    Oh, that is a superb critique of a truly awful looking game!

    True, I’ve not played it, but I don’t need to, having laughed myself to tears just reading about it.

    :-D

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