The trouble with large, sprawling companies (apart from employees having to walk five miles to get from their office to the loo) is that you never quite know what you’re going to get. Infogrames has acquired so much intellectual property over the last half-decade, the last two years in particular, that it’s difficult to associate any one thing in particular with the burgeoning company.

In the one hand you get Driver 2 and Unreal Tournament, whilst the other sneakily tries to palm you off with Gekido and Asterix Mega Madness – and somewhere in the middle must sit Nick Toons Racing.

It initially looks pretty shoddy, the boxy nature of the karts themselves (especially Stimpy’s) ensuring that first impressions of the game are not favourable. Effort may have been made to disguise the graphical engine’s all-too apparent inadequacies behind a veneer of style, but it remains difficult to reconcile the visual quality on show with that of the ’toons it imitates. Let’s not be hypocritical though – we’re always harping on about how graphics really shouldn’t matter, and the rough ’n’ ready visuals have allowed the inclusion of outlandish environments whilst making it possible to pack tons of variety into each track. It’s not unusual to drive though three distinct types of scene in the space of thirty seconds ensuring that, once attuned to the trade of clarity for diversity, there’s always the danger that you’ll begin to appreciate the look which has been achieved… it just takes a little time.

Fortunately this is time which can be spent, relatively happily given the multitude of horrors that life can throw at you, indulged in some surprisingly savoury racing fun. Nick Toons replicates the boost system of Speed Freaks (lines of turbo-granting icons adorn the track) and merges it with the more precise approach to control exhibited by Crash Team Racing. Without an equivalent to CTR’s ‘Hang Time’ system (which granted players a multitude of ways to illicit a speed boost) Nick Toons Racing understandably comes across as a touch shallow by comparison, but a selection of power-ups and weapons are on tap to make up the deficit. Unfortunately this is where things begin to go slightly awry…

There’s no denying that some of the weapons-related elements are well thought out – it’s impossible to collide with stricken, spinning enemies (ensuring that you don’t scupper yourself by blasting an enemy ahead) and dropped weapons can be hung from the back of your kart for precise deployment; yet, as is apparent from the first hit one takes, your vehicle reels for far too long, getting successively blasted from first to sixth being all too common. Hence victory seems more a matter of who ‘just happened’ to cross the line first rather than who drove best. Couple this with the code’s general discomfort (forget any two-player fun) and you’ve got yourself a racer which, instead of captivating in its own right, serves to remind just how great Crash Team Racing is. An okay(ish) imitation, but an imitation nonetheless.