Hot Wheels Mechanix

Hot Wheels Mechanix is a typical single-player race game. In the beginning, players can access three easier tracks: Tiki Jungle, Urban Wasteland, and Pluto Mines. Winning first place or collecting enough tools opens up the other tracks: Moon Base, Construction Site, and Beachway. Finally, mastery of all tracks opens up the unforgiving Asteroid Belt, a narrow strip that dangles somewhere out there in space. Successful racers are rewarded with vroomy new cars with names like Speed Machine and Radar Ranger. Here's the added gearhead touch: players can make their new Hot Wheels even hotter by adding modifications like spiked tires, bigger engines, even wings! Those wings we added to our speedster on a whim came in quite handy when we drove our car off the track in the Asteroid Belt: they popped out and we soared safely to a lower level of the track.

It's fairly easy to advance to higher levels and better cars with this game. Use a joystick, a game pad, or a racing wheel to control the action. Your keyboard will work, if you don't mind sliding into a lot of walls. The different tracks had some good obstacles--trains, moving walls, red-hot lava--but the environments were sparse on the visuals. And we really, really wanted the bonus race to be an orange plastic track with a loop-the-loop running through a kid's filthy bedroom, just for old time's sake. (Ages 6 and older) --Anne Erickson