Speedway Bundle Stock & Truck

Genre: Compilation / Arcade Racing

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Split-Screen)

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Review:

(Note: Multiple games included in this bundle are available in other bundles. Speedway Racing is also available in Power Racing Bundle, and Speed Truck Racing is also available in Power Racing Bundle 2. In addition, all of the contents of this bundle are included in Power Racing Bundle 3, along with WildTrax Racing.)

Power Racing Bundle, released on Nintendo Switch in 2020, is a Compilation of two Arcade Racing games: Speedway Racing and Speed Truck Racing, both games also released separately on the Nintendo Switch in 2021.

Here’s what I thought of each of the games in this collection:

Game	Genre	# of Players	Grade
Speedway Racing	Arcade Racing	1-4 Competitive (Local Split-Screen)	D+
tl;dr Speedway Racing is an Arcade Racing game with NASCAR-style racing events. The game mixes some surprisingly good presentation elements with some bad ones and some that are outright bizarre. However, even the good elements here are hard to appreciate with this game’s terrible framerates, bad collision physics, and some really inexplicably awful design choices that make this game an ordeal to play.
Speed Truck Racing	Arcade Racing	1-4 Competitive (Local Split-Screen)	D+
tl;dr Speed Truck Racing is an Arcade-style Racing game that has players racing trucks on a strange combination of Nascar-style tracks and dirt-covered tracks. This game isn’t without its positive points, and it does make improvements over its predecessor, Speedway Racing, but the core gameplay here is still terribly broken, and this combined with the game’s aggressive checkpoint system sap all the fun out of the experience.

Both of these games make use of many of the same art assets, and both games share many of the same flaws. Both games have some good lighting in areas, but suffer from some nasty slowdown and aliasing, and both games have the same inexplicable use of sound-alike brand logos for companies like “Mechilin”, “Mibol” and “Subawy” (no, I didn’t misspell those) and a strange, cheesy announcer, who says things like “kart your engines”.

It’s interesting comparing these two games directly, because Speed Truck Racing is clearly the direct successor to Speedway Racing, and fixes some of the problems that game had (namely, its insane collisions and over-aggressive enemy AI), but retains some of the issues (the overly-harsh checkpoint system and fiddly respawn “button”) and adds a few of its own (namely, broken, nonsensical physics for its trucks). In addition, Speed Truck’s soundtrack is nowhere near as good as Speedway’s is. On balance, it’s hard for me to pick which of these two I think is the best, although neither of these games is very good

Bundling them together doesn’t change that fact either, especially considering the bundle in question costs a penny more than buying the games separately. Save your penny… in fact, save all of them, and just don’t buy Power Racing Bundle 2 at all. Neither of the games in this package is worth getting.

tl;dr – Speedway Bundle Stock & Truck is a compilation of Speedway Racing and its direct successor Speed Truck Racing, two Arcade Racing games that have a lot of shared art assets, but also both have some terrible framerate issues and game design flaws. There are a few good points here and there, but overall neither of these games is worth getting.

Grade: D+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2021 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Most Overpriced

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