Mickey’s Speedway USA Scribes Excerpts
The following excerpts detailing the development of Mickey’s Speedway USA was originally published on Rare’s Scribes letter page from 2000-2010. We’ve scoured each edition in order to provide you with every mention of the title to be found in Rare’s posted answers in chronological order below.
We’ve also included a link above each heading which will re-direct to the original letters page that the question was featured in should you wish to view it in the original context – otherwise you’ll find that the entries below only focus on answers related to Mickey’s Speedway USA for a comprehensive listing for any fan wanting further information on pre-release content, hidden easter eggs, abandoned features and development secrets:
Dear Scribes,
Wow! I have something meaningful to ask (bear with me here…)
Conker’s Bad Fur Day does honestly look like it’s going to kick huge quantities of arse, but I was wondering a couple of things…
- How long has it been like that? When did you decide to give up on the fuzzy cuteness (or at least that part of it without access to large weapons) and make the gore-and-swear-fest I hope it turns out to be?
- Who’s working on it? Are they ex-Banjoand Mickey’s Racing coders who saw one too many big-eyed animals and went a little funny in the head, or do you have a whole team that’s been kept away from the public for long enough to come up with this stuff?
Okay, that’ll do for semi-relevance today. But, since every quality (replace previous word as you see fit) letter has one, I think it’s about time for a bit of poor-quality image attachment goodness! (Okay, so it’s Shockwave Flash, but it’s still poor quality, so that counts, right?)
The Mr Pants Dance! http://www.shpadoinkle.co.uk/mrpants.html
Best viewed while listening to a CD of your choice, although preferably not anything from the 80s, for obvious reasons. And drunk.
Cussing Snake
Great. Two letters in, two Mr. Pants attachments. I’ve created a monster. Must distract myself with answers from the BFD team…
“1) Nearly two years now (just over two years when it hits the shelves, which is about the right development time for a game of this type). The original concept for Conker, the infamous Twelve Tales as it was known, was completely scrapped for various political and convoluted reasons. Needless to say, the scrapping decision was one made by, and NOT enforced onto, the team.
“Conker’s BFD has absolutely nothing in common with the original version of the game except for a squirrel called Conker.
“2) There are no ex-Banjo or Mickey people on Conker’s BFD simply because they’re still working on Banjo and Mickey. The Conker team is just that, and has been for the last two years (with a few casualties and additions on the way, here and there…)
“The experienced members of the team have been involved in no small way on products such as the Killer Instinct series, JFG and DK64 (George, you’ll get Carl back soon, don’t worry!)”
Dear Purveyors of Cows that stare deep into your soul,
I have noticed a trend in your Game Boy games as of late is to include a cow. I was playing DKC GBC today (as you do), and as I was going through one of the bonus parts of Slipslide Ride when I noticed a cow on the wall. A cow was also in Conker, and I saw it as graffiti in PD GBC. Could this be attributed to the comment about the cows being “motionless, forever staring into your soul” from some critic of Conker? Is this now a trademark of your Rareware GBC team? Does it really matter at all?
When is Tribals Gold and Silver coming out? I’ve been waiting for months!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go watch Neighbours after Patsy has robbed Lou blind: why didn’t he listen to Michelle? Why?
From your greatest admirer,
Charles Fenwick III, The Highly Esteemed Monkey With A British Accent (HEMWABA)
PS. Don’t you think it’s great that even if you don’t publish this, you still had to read it anyway? That makes me feel all good inside!
PPS. Death to Bucky! (Yes, I started the idea of “Tribals- gotta save ’em all” and have been published here many a time before, but almost always under different names)
There is indeed a history to this misshapen beast, as explained by a key member of Rare’s GBC team:
“The cow was first put in Conker – it started off as a joke idea, but it got drawn by the artists and put in. After receiving reviews of Conker, we noticed that some of the magazines had picked up on it so we decided to hide it within each new game from then on. It’s also hidden in Mickey’s Racing Adventure and in the upcoming Mickey’s Speedway USA. See if you can find them.”
I look forward to seeing the ‘Rare Cow FAQ’ pop up on game help sites in the near future. Go on, you’ve got nothing else to do over the holidays…
Hey Rare,
Don’t believe it when people say your games are easy. They’re full of S*&T. The people who say that are show-off kids who pretend to be king-s&#t. In actual fact, they have an incredibly hard time trying to finish your games just like the rest of us. PD‘s just one example. And it just doesn’t become fun anymore. It starts becoming tedious.
A good game, IMO, is one that doesn’t go for too long. A GREAT example is Metal Gear Solid. Kojima stated in an interview that with MGS2, he was aiming for about 15 hours gameplay because he doesn’t believe in long games. And it was at that point that I realised that this guy was a genius. I finished MGS in 14 hours, and I always thought, “Man, that was an awesome game. Plus, I’m just so good to have finished it so quickly!” but then I realised after reading Kojima’s statements that he probably always intended the game to be only about 15 hours gameplay. And I had to say to myself, “The boy’s a genius! Tedium begone!”
So, why don’t you do something like that?? Instead of aiming for hours and hours of gameplay by making up pick everything up, or making games unbearably hard, just make ’em easier. Trust me, it would make all your games much, much nicer in the end.
Please don’t believe stupid 9 year-old kids who say everything is easy. I read a comment on some message board somewhere that was talking about how ‘not-hard’ the Dark Bots are in PD. I mean, c’mon! The Dark Bots are impossible! It’s these damn stupid lying kids who ruin everything. Please don’t believe them. Please don’t make your games to cater for them. They’re full of it. Make your games easier.
Joe F. Tangco
Optimum game length is entirely subjective – speaking for myself, I’ve just put 140 hours into FFVIII and enjoyed every minute of it. I don’t think it matters how much time you spend playing as long as it never becomes a chore, and besides, a lot of people are limited in what they can buy and want to wring as much playing time out of each title as possible.
As for our own games, rather than purposefully swing them towards either the easy or difficult end of the scale, we try to balance them so that they’re accessible to people of all skill levels (hence the varying difficulty levels in PD, Mickey’s Speedway etc., the optional 100%+ totals in the DKC games, and so on) – why constrain yourself to making either a ‘hard’ or an ‘easy’ game when you can have both?
Hey Scribes Guy,
I know what I want and I want it now! I want the locations of the dogforsaken car parts in Mickey’s Speedway USA, ‘cos Nintendo Power and those drunkie online gaming magazines are TOO DA@* LAZY to show the locations of the DA@* CAR PARTS!!! Where the heck are these babies, anyhoo? Perhaps one is hidden in the swampy Everglades? Perhaps one lies in the Banjo-Kazooie cartridge, so you must Stop ‘n’ Swop? (Sorry! please don’t kill me!) Or perhaps… perhaps they’re all hidden in the super-secret debug version, shoved up Mickey’s arsenal! Please help! Give me a map or give me directions! I’m sure you’re driving other gamers mad as well! Do tell, O Jibey Scribes! Release your information online!!! Thank you.
JetDog (Y2Kong)
Indianapolis, Chicago, Malibu and Philadelphia. That’s what I’m told. Though the designer could simply have been describing a quiet night in watching the racing on TV with soft rock music playing in the background, a rum-based alcoholic drink in one hand and a squirty cheese sandwich in the other. You might have to be British to understand that. I’m not sure.
Dear Scribes,
It was noticed by a certain Rare fansite quite a while ago that there is a cow drawn in the sand of one of the beaches in BK: Grunty’s Revenge, and an identical one in the Game Boy Color Perfect Dark game. I’m just curious to know whether there are other strange jokes (or maybe they’re like programmers’ signatures?) hidden throughout Rare games, past and present. Obviously you can’t tell me what they are, that’d ruin the secrets. But just how many little nuances do you guys stick in there?
A Nerd
GBA and DS team veteran Gary offers: “The ‘Cow’ started life as a temporary graphic (hand-drawn by the designer) in Conker’s Pocket Tales, we thought it looked quite funny so we decided to hide it in the game somewhere and wait to see if anyone would ever find it. When the team moved onto the next project we added the cow again. As far as I remember the cow was in the following games: Conker’s Pocket Tales, Mickey’s Racing Adventure, Mickey’s Speedway USA, Perfect Dark and Grunty’s Revenge.” That’s a whole lot of orange in one sentence.
Q: since 2011 will be conkers 10th anniversary will you make a new online war between the SHC and the TEDIZ for the xbox live market place
Not Bartyhead
A: Every year is the anniversary of something, man. We can’t work on those principles, our lives would be an ongoing torrent of stress. For example, 2010 is the 10th anniversary of Mickey’s Speedway USA and the 20th anniversary of A Nightmare on Elm Street on the NES, but I don’t think we’ve got any Marketplace tie-ins planned. Not even an XBLA Krueger Kart mash-up of the two. Although, come to think of it, that would be pretty excellent.