Full Review

This is the first game I bought for my Game Boy Advance and before I tell you how awesome it is, I recommend that you DON'T buy it. Instead wait for the sequel because there is one HUGE flaw to this otherwise outstanding game.

The game itself is highly addictive. The graphics are really awesome. I can't believe I'm playing a mini-Grand Turismo on a hand held. It's got the cool import cars and the cool upgrades. The tracks are challenging yet not totally impossible. The amount of detail put into this game is incredible which is why I'm totally confused and frustrated at why they made a crucial mistake and destroyed this game.

This mistake I'm referring to (and believe me this is a BIG mistake) is that instead of a battery RAM save, they opted for the password save. This password is 16 characters long with each character in the range of 0-9,a-z,A-Z,!-*

Imagine the frustration when everytime you have to stop playing, you have to write down a password that looks something like:
!4d0 3BcZ yw#- 1tZ%

It takes almost 5 freakin' minutes to put that thing in when you want to play again!

This is supposed to be a hand-held portable game and instead is a game that requires you to carry a pen and paper everywhere you go and if you could, a keyboard.

My guess as to why they did this was not for the cheaper password save (less than a buck per cartridge), but so they can sell the sequel that should come with a battery save.

I'm upset at THQ for pulling this stunt even though the game itself is awesome. Don't buy it. Let them hurt by this mistake so they never do it again.