The graphics, as you can see from the screenshots, are excellent. Everything is very bright and vivid, and the game world is full of crisp visuals. The courses go over a variety of different terrains, all with their own unique look and feel. Each of the course backgrounds is also nice, with lots of different looks and a nice color palette. The drivers are also animated well, although due to the nature of the game (the lower half of their bodies is covered by their karts) that doesn’t mean a lot of different animation.

This game also excels in the sound department. Each of the characters retains his/her/its voice in the Japanese game, resulting in some quirky (if incomprehensible) sound bites. The kart and weapon sounds are all your standard fare, and sound good enough to pass. The music, while catchy, really isn’t that much better than what you’d find on the GBC. Honorable mention however goes to the opening theme, which sounds wonderful (even if it hasn’t changed from the Japanese version, thus leaving a lot of gamers wondering what "Wai Wai Racing" is). While the soundtrack won’t overwhelm you, it’s good enough to help you get in the racing mood.

Really, there are only two problems with Konami Krazy Racers. First, although it has no bearing on the gameplay, most of the characters will be unfamiliar to casual gamers. The lineup consists of Goemon (from the Mystical Ninja series), Pawapuro-Kun (from the Jikkyo Power Pro series), Pastel (from the Twinbee series), Nyami (from the Poppin’ Music series), Takosuke (an octopus from the Parodius series, finally explaining to me the meaning of the octopus in the first GBA commercial), Moai (from Gradius), Ninja (from MGS), and finally Dracula (from Castlevania, obviously). Since most gamers outside of Japan can only identify with three or four of these characters, there’s not a lot of star power to sell the game to kart fans. The other issue is found in the translation, which is horrible. It sounds like it was translated by a summer intern in about an hour’s time. While this is a minor issue (this isn’t a text-driven game), it’s still very distracting (especially to an editor type like myself).