Bug Riders — Obscure PSX Game? Yes. Hidden Gem? Well…
I’d love to call Bug Riders a hidden gem in the way I talked about Blast Chamber in the previous article, but I can’t. But what I can call it is interesting. And that usually goes pretty far for me.
Okay, let’s take a look at the cover before we dive in.
A Game of Thrones
Bug Riders: The Race of Kings, developed by n-Space and published by GT Interactive in 1997, is (as the name suggests!) a game where you race not aircraft or even dragons, but giant insects.
When you boot up, you’re treated to a very mid-late(ish) 90s pre-rendered intro that sets the scene and does a surprising amount of worldbuilding. Probably too much worldbuilding, really. But it does give Bug Riders a hearty dollop of fantasy flavour and fleshes out its world and characters.
The 48-year reign of the 33rd Emperor of the Empire of a thousand years had come to an abrupt end and the wheels of succession are in motion. And how shall this new ruler be chosen? Why, a racing tournament, of course! Hence it is a race of kings.
Now it’s time to pick from one of eight hopefuls with their own colourful backstories and motivations for claiming the throne — and their own gameplay stats. Some of the usual design choices from the era creep in; the male characters tend to have more power, female ones are faster and more agile — the usual. It makes little sense since it’s the bugs you’re racing and not them, but hey-ho. And poor Xexyck. Everyone else has professions or titles, but not him. He’s Bug Boy.
Poor thing.
It’s all Downhill from Here.
With your hopeful future Emperor picked, it’s time to get racing… and that’s where Bug Riders tragically starts falling apart. Right off the bat, there are some odd design choices such as you needing to constantly crop your bug to make the green bar rise and increase your speed — but not too far otherwise your bug will protest and you’ll get a speed penalty.
For anyone used to standard racing games, this will feel like you constantly need to re-accelerate. The constant sound of whipping is grating too and is one of those design choices that I wonder why it didn’t annoy the designers and testers enough to remove it. It’s more akin to a horse racing game than a driving/flying one — no doubt that that’s where the inspiration came from. But it works so poorly as you’re either lurching forward at high speed or crawling along with little in between.
One thing you’ll quickly realize too is that the racing is on rails. That’s right, an on-rails racing game. You never stop moving, only speed up or slow down and if you let go of the controls, the game will make the turns for you, just more poorly than you can yourself. Combined with the camera perspective that frequently leans too far and feels claustrophobic at times as it zooms right in behind you, this can be very disorientating. To compensate for the on-rails nature of the racing, you need to manually manoeuvre for the tightest turns and pass through blue time gates to add a few more seconds to the clock each time.
Unless you’re playing Time Trial, you’ll also face off against other racers. Regardless of the character you pick, you’re armed with a basic magic attack to stun them, and there are also power-ups you can pick up for special abilities such as homing fireballs.
There are six different tracks, each with its own biomes and environmental hazards and a tournament for each, as well as a versus battle mode in addition to a time trial. The music is quite nifty and has plenty of fantasy flair mixed with a little late-90s D&B and trance. And that’s… about all there is really to Bug Riders.
A Missed Opportunity
On paper and stylistically, there’s such promise for Bug Riders. But the execution misses the mark as often as you’ll miss the time gates thanks to the camera and controls. And once you notice that the racing action is indeed on rails, you’ll never feel fully in control. You’ll also be racing the same short track over and over again to work your way through each region’s tournament board. Another wrong step is that you also can’t practice other tracks and maps through Time Trial as only the first one is unlocked at the start.
It’s a shame. A fantasy air-racing game is a great idea but it feels like n-Space didn’t put enough time and effort into the game itself to complement how much they spent on presentation, worldbuilding, and characterizations.
Bug Riders is an interesting curio — nothing more. It can be fun in short bursts if you just accept what it is and grapple with the controls and camera long enough, but you’ll soon tire of both.
