99 Bottles of Beer on the wall
A good game is a good game. I think it was Plato who said that. He said a lot of smart things. A good game is good, because it is good. Sounds self-evident. If the game has good gameplay, good graphics, a good story, it’s good, right? Anyone can agree with that. In fact, saying it out loud makes it sound kinda dumb. Maybe this Plato guy was full of shit. One day one of his students asked “master, can a bad game be good?”. He stroked his beard for a while and said “lol no”, and executed his student.
This question has plagued gamers since then. Can a bad game be good?
Today I will try to answer that question with Road Trip, a racing game for the PS2. It’s a weird mix of janky driving controls, oddball physics, low budget and graphics that look like something that would get laughed off the PS1. When you look at its individual parts, on paper, it should stink, but it doesn’t. It’s like smelling cheese. It reeks, but when you taste it, it’s wonderful, and you can’t reconcile that idea too well.
Read on to find out why you should play Road Trip, a game that’s both good and bad in equal measure.
Gameplay
Road Trip (2002) is an open world racing game for the PS2. The President of the world is sick of his job, so he posts an open challenge: Anyone who beats him in a race will become the new President. To do this, you must complete a series of races to get your C, B and A licenses, then participate in the World Gran Prix. This crowns you as the number one racer, and allows you to challenge the President, so you can get a chance to rule and abolish the concept of taxes. At least, that’s what I’d do.
To become number one, you’ll to trick out your car with the best parts. To do this, you’ll need money. Tons of it. You get it by winning races. Win races, get money, use that money to buy better parts, then win more races to get even more money, and the cycle repeats.
The game’s big selling point is that it’s an open world RPG. A Car-PG, if you will. You start in a little suburban town called Peach Town, and you can participate in basic races to fill your pockets. Then, the game hints that you can drive on the road to the next city, and there you’ll come across an old school samurai village. The game has nine different cities, each with its own quirky theme. They each have NPCs to talk to, quests to complete, races to participate in, stuff to find and stores with unique parts.
You make your way through each town, getting stronger and progressing through the ranks.
The cool thing about the open world is that it’s completely open from the start. There are no cordoned-off areas. You don’t need upgrades to get to (most) places, you can drive where you want and find something to do. The game offers a neat sense of freedom that most open world games don’t.
Since this is a racing game, you’ll do a lot of driving, which I have to go into detail on. It’s not as straightforward as it seems. It has its own unique jank, that gives it an interesting flavor.
Driving
You’d expect a racing game to have decent driving, at a bare minimum. If the handling sucks, the game sucks, but Road Trip breaks this rule. It’s an arcade racer, with simple controls, but it takes grip into account. The game’s physics are bizarre in unimaginable ways.
In a regular arcade racer, you’re practically glued to the ground. You can take a turn at a hundred miles an hour, without having to brake. Grip isn’t really taken into consideration. What matters is that you keep the car inside the road, and off any walls. Even this is ignored by most games. Slam against a wall and ride it instead of turning the steering wheel. There aren’t many consequences unless you slam head-first into an obstacle or fly off the course.
Road Trip does things a bit different. It looks like a cutesy arcade racer, but it takes grip into account. You can’t take a turn at a hundred miles an hour. You have to brake, a lot harder than you’d think, take the turn slowly, or you’ll end up under steering. If you lose grip, you have to wrestle with the car until you get some traction going, or you’ll slide around like your car is wearing Soap shoes1.
Grip plays such a prominent role in the game’s handling, that it extends to things other arcade racers don’t consider, such as acceleration. If you have a powerful engine, you can go fast. That’s self-evident. In most simplified racing games, you get the most speed possible, and just gun it. If you try that in Road Trip, and don’t have the right tires, you’ll end up wasting your power doing burnouts. If the tires aren’t grabbing the road, they can’t push you forward.
This emphasis on grip makes the game a lot more involved than you’d expect. You’d think that the cutesy game about chibified cars would be one of those where you never have to let go of the acceleration, and you fly through tracks like nothing, but it’s not. You have to learn each track, find the best lines, brake at the right times, and make sure you have proper traction to avoid sliding off the track.
That’s not to say the game is a simulation. It’s far from being Gran Turismo, or even a more semi-simulation like Forza Horizon, but it’s not a straight arcade racer, either. It’s approachable, and simple, but it’s not a cakewalk. You have to learn how it handles, and be mindful of how you’re driving. It takes some getting used to, and you need some level of skill to do well in it, and I really like that. You don’t need to have a full simulation where you model everything from the traction of each individual tire, all the way to the loose change rattling around in the cup holder. You can have a fun, challenging game by adding one or two skill checks, and Road Trip does this well.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, though. Sure, this game gives you baby’s first taste of under steer, and that’s fun and all, but there are some strange quirks and features here that aren’t all that great.
For starters, the controls are fully digital, meaning everything in the game is either on or off. Zero or a hundred, there’s no in-between. If you press the accelerator, you’re slamming the pedal through the floor and into the asphalt below. If you steer right, you’re jamming the wheel to the right until the driveshaft starts squealing. There is no graduation to anything, even if you use the analog stick to steer. It’s D-pad driving, and you slam the brakes anytime you want to make an adjustment.
This is okay, for the most part. The game is designed around this. Again, for the most part. The steering is a problem for most of the game. Even though you’re pushing to one side when you steer, your car barely turns. This game has some of the stiffest steering I’ve ever seen. It’s like you’re trying to steer the car with one of those anti-theft clubs stuck to the wheel. This is at its worst at the start of the game, where you have the default steering. Your car turns like a sixteen wheeler, with a turn radius the size of a city block. Driving around with it feels like you’re pleading with your car to turn, and it doesn’t want to listen. The first thing you should do in this game is go into the shop and buy the 2X steering upgrade.
Even with the highest-tier steering upgrade, it still feels less responsive than it should. It takes a while to get used to, and you eventually manage to live with it, but it makes some of the exploration a pain in the neck. You’ll drive past a collectible because you couldn’t turn quick enough, then spend the next few seconds pulling a massive U-turn like you’re piloting a cargo ship, to go for a second shot.
Even the AI opponents have trouble with basic handling. You’ll often see them clustered up in a corner next to a sharp turn, stuck there, unable to move. This little bit of information is ominous foreshadowing for later.
The game handles well in the tracks, where the added nuance of grip and other mechanics makes it a challenge. It encourages you to learn the tracks, look for lines and use the brake. It’s not as technical as Gran Turismo, but it gives you something to think about and master. The driving kind of stinks for more casual cruising out in the open, where you’ll be fighting with some of the more unique parts of this game’s physics engine.
Physics
Gravity is weird in Road Trip. Say goodbye to your preconceived notions about that fundamental force. 9.8 meters per second per second is a myth. Parabolic arcs are a government conspiracy. We’re breaking the conditioning here. It won’t always make sense, but that’s how things work.
Look at this nonsense
A normal parabolic arc looks like this
It follows a standard trajectory. The same one you see every day, if you’re launching cars off ramps. There’s a rise and a smooth drop as gravity and the forward momentum carry it back down to the ground. Everything is as it should be. There’s even a happy little dog there watching it happen.
Now this is what happens in Road Trip
You jump off the ramp, and the car follows the trajectory up as if were still on the ground. At some arbitrary point in its journey, gravity switches back on and the car gets pulled down. It’s like when Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff and looks down. There’s no parabola, nothing works as it should. The little dog couldn’t take it. He was so distraught by this, that he started smoking with cigarettes and joined a gang.
Any time there’s a jump in one of the tracks, you’re at risk of getting sent into space. You can mitigate this by slowing down before a jump, but sometimes there’s no helping it. A tiny bump on the road can send you flying upwards if you hit it at a wrong angle and with enough speed. It’s rare, but it happened to me twice during my playthrough. Once it sent me into the sky so violently, that I broke through the track and got an instant disqualification.
Tracks
There’s a good selection of tracks in Road Trip. They’re varied, with different visual themes, complexity levels and racing surfaces.
There are the basic Mario Circuit type races, which are laps on a closed circuit. Very simple, but the higher difficulty ones will test your skill and car tuning. There are off-road tracks that are a lot more slippery than the paved roads, even with high-grade off road tires. These are more difficult, but at the same time they make your opponents make way more mistakes. There are a lot of tracks that mix both off-road and paved surfaces. This leads to some interesting choices when it comes to picking your tires.
It offers a good variety of challenges and it tests different skills. There weren’t any tracks that stood out as particularly heinous. The closest would be Snow Mountain Raceway. It’s an ice track, the only one in the game, and it’s slippery, even with ice tires. It’s kind of long and there isn’t much to do in it. The visuals are nice, at least.
The only other stand-out track is the post-game Tin Raceway. A massive, hellish nightmare of a track with weird platforms, multiple branching paths and no guard rails. It’s floating in a void somewhere in space, like Rainbow Road. Unlike Rainbow Road, there’s no Lakitu to put you back on the track if you fall. You just fail the race. It’s the hardest track, but it’s optional. It’s a lot of fun, too. The game is easy, overall, with one exception, so the challenge is welcome.
Exploration
Road Trip is one of the few games where the open-world aspect doesn’t feel like filler. It’s central to the game’s identity. You can drive to any location on the continent from the start, you can go off-road, drive on the bottom of the ocean, drive up a river. It feels free, and it makes sense to drive everywhere since you’re a sentient car.
There are nine cities in the game. Each one has its own unique look and feel, from a basic small town, to a Christmas village, and one that’s just Las Vegas. Every city has basic amenities, like a parts shop and a place to change your car’s body. All shops have their own unique inventory, making them feel even more distinct.
You can go to any city in any order, but the game strongly hints at a recommended route. There are signs from the starting area that say “Next town”, and following them guides you to towns with increasingly more difficult races and more expensive gear. There aren’t any barriers or gear restrictions (except for the last town), so you can make a beeline for Papaya Island from the start, grind out some money and buy the biggest engine available. It’ll take a while, but you’re free to do so.
Visiting every location is rewarding on its own, but there are also a lot of things to do in each town. There are dozens of mini games to play, with most cities having at least one. You can climb a mountain, race to the edge of a cliff (without falling off), play beach flag or even catch fish. The Las Vegas city, Sandpolis, has a ton of stuff to do, as you would expect. You can participate in difficult driving challenges like you would see in Gran Turismo, play car soccer before Rocket League, explore ancient ruins and of course…
You can gamble with your car! I once gambled with my car in Vegas. I no longer have a car.
Towns are full of NPCs driving around or in their own houses. You can bump into them to chat. They usually ask if they can join your team, but a lot of them have side quests for you to do, or information about stuff to do around town. Side quests are usually simple. They’ll ask you to go somewhere, where you’ll find an item you have to return, or talk to someone.
None of the quests or objectives are marked on the map. If you want to find something, you’ll have to pay attention to the hints you’re given. This makes exploration feel more rewarding. You’re not following waypoints or lines on the ground. You’re driving around, looking for landmarks and familiarizing yourself with the world. It’s like back in the day before GPS when you had to ask people for directions, and they’d give you some vague ramblings about street names and buildings. It’s right behind the pharmacy, next to the big tree on River street, where old man Jenkins lives. Just take a left after the liquor store, you can’t miss it.
Along with all of that, there’s also a bunch of crap scattered around for you to find. Coins, gems, and other collectibles. There are over one hundred Quick-Pic shops, where you can go and take a picture with your car awkwardly super-imposed over the local landscape. You drive in one direction and you’re bound to run into something to do, someone to talk to, or just something cool to look at.
The map is full of interesting stuff, but there’s also a lot of nothing if you stray from the path. The ocean has one or two spots to check out, but the rest of it is empty, with no real indication that there’s nothing more to do. There are areas that are open plains of flat ground, that have a weird liminal vibe to them.
These areas should have been used for something, even a pointless collectible, but they’re unused. This is a low-budget game, so I blame that on the lack of care in some areas. It also explains the weird physics.
With all that said, exploring the world in Road Trip is a ton of fun. Anywhere you go, with one or two exceptions, there’s something interesting waiting for you. Even with some of the empty areas, the world feels more alive than most of the open worlds in modern games, which are vast and spacious, but full of tedious tasks and copy/pasted assets. The world in this game feels big enough to hold a lot of possibilities, but small enough to travel in without it feeling like a chore. With how different every location is, it really feels like you’re discovering something new at every turn. The shops and gear you can get also lend the game a good feeling of natural progression. It’s a real adventure, as you’d expect from an RPG.
The World Grand Prix
The game’s end goal is to win the World Grand Prix to become the best racer and challenge the President. This is a seven race tournament, with one race in seven different cities. You get points based on your placement in each race, and at the end, it tallies it all up and crowns a winner.
I’ve said this game is easy. It is, it’s pretty simple. Once you get used to the game’s weird handling, and learn to use the brake button, it’s pretty smooth sailing. To get to this point in the game, you need to place in the top three on each track, and you need to replay races a lot to earn money to buy gear, which you need for the Grand Prix. At this point, you know how to play the game, and you’re good at it. When I tried this, I was at that point. I could get first place in each race consistently.
That means I cleared this on the first try and became President in no time, right?
Well, do you remember the times I mentioned the AI in this game? The same ones that are so bad at driving they wouldn’t even get hired as a Swift trucker?
You need to team up with them.
You can get first place in every race, but you have two lead weights bringing up the rear down in 20th and 22nd place, earning zero points each. Then the team that has been consistently getting 4th, 5th and 6th win with their cumulative points. It doesn’t matter that you lapped each of them twice in one race, if your team is to busy sniffing a wall, you’re going to fail because of them. It’s like playing DOTA with cars.
You can buy new gear for your teammates. You can deck them out with a monster engine, the best tires, the fastest transmission and top of the line brakes, but they won’t know how to use any of it. They will be driving into walls in one million dollar cars, like giving a toddler a Lamborghini Aventador.
You can win the Grand Prix. It’s possible. I tried multiple times, and reached a point where it felt legitimately impossible to do, but you can actually finish this, and even in first place. All you need to do is grind for hours to the point where you can buy your idiot teammates the most expensive engine and the best tires. You’ll also need a set for yourself, which will run you over 200,000 dollars. You can get a few thousand dollars here and there, and it’s not on the same level as the grind in some MMOs, but it’s a lot more than you’d expect from the racing game where you can be a lady bug and drive on a rainbow.
This part of the game is a sudden, unexpected wall that blocks your path, much like the ones your teammates keep slamming into. It’s a chore, completely unfun and a grind. You have to equip your team with high-end gear, and then, on top of that, hope that their AI doesn’t shit the bed, while also hoping that your opponents do.
It’s a seven race dice roll. You can cruise your way through the first five races, then during the last two, your teammates decide that driving is for chumps and they fly off course to go stare at some grass. There isn’t any way to retire and restart, either. You have to finish the entire thing, or start and quit every race individually, which means getting to each town, starting the race, and retiring. Repeat seven times.
I managed to beat this challenge, after retrying more times than I care to admit. There was one effort that was ended by the physics glitch I mentioned earlier. I drove into a bump, it sent me flying off the face of the Earth, and I got an instant disqualification, causing me to get no points in that stage of the Grand Prix, and I lost with two races to go.
Despite all this hardship, I won, became the number one racist, and challenged the President to a one-on-one race. I was ready for anything. I took my best gear, my strongest engine, my most expensive tires. I grit my teeth and got ready for the game’s final boss.
Then I beat him in one go because he got stuck to a wall.
Presentation
Plato once said “there are two kinds of disease of the soul: bad graphics, and annoying audio design”
Road Trip’s visuals are unique. They’re low fidelity, but they have a ton of charm. Everything is lit in a very basic way, it’s all flat. Cars don’t have much texture to them, and don’t look like they’re made of metal. Textures, especially the ones for the ground, are low resolution and messy. The game looks its best during the pre-rendered dialogue scenes.
Despite these technical shortcomings, it has a lot going for it thanks to its unique style. The cars are real cars, shrunken down and made to look cute, but they keep all their identifying features and details. The designers did a fantastic job at keeping the car’s original lines and look, while stylizing them.
Even if the game doesn’t look the best, it makes up for it in the variety on display. Each city has its own aesthetic, with different architectural styles. Each town is hand-made, and all the little details, like shop signs, are all made to fit the theme of their city.
It won’t win any awards for its graphics, but they do a lot with what little they have. There are less copy/pasted assets here than in modern triple-a games. It has a ton of character, and a lot of work was put into making their cheap little game look as good as it could.
It looks like it was made by an elementary school student, but one that’s really hard-working.
The music is actually pretty good. It has two radio stations for you to listen to as you cruise around. Peach FM has smooth, jazzy midi songs. Like the graphics, they’re low-fidelity, but made with care. Each track is catchy and gives off a warm, nostalgic vibe.
The other station plays four songs from a real-life band called the Push Kings. The songs are extremely compressed and staticky. It took me a few listens to realize the lyrics were in English. These songs used to creep me out as a kid. They barely registered as music. It was like some eerie recording playing from some spooky old record player. Listening to them now, they sound alright. The fuzzy sound combined with the unmistakably late 90s/early 2000s sound makes them even more nostalgic now.
The sound effects are where the lack of a budget is evident. There are only two sounds for driving; one for paved roads and one for off-road. When you lose traction on dirt, the game plays 3-second sound that loops infinitely in a distinct rhythm, making it grating and impossible to ignore. There are around ten engines to choose from, but they all sound the same. Speaking of the engine, none of the driving sounds have enough bass. They’re tinny and weak. The soundscape is definitely the game’s weakest aspect.
Overall, I really like the game’s presentation. It might be my nostalgia blinding me, but I think this game looks good. It obviously doesn’t look good on a technical level. It looks underdone, like it’s missing textures, but that gives it a janky charm. I can’t say the game looks like garbage when I can drive to nine cities, each with their own unique layout, look and hand-crafted buildings. I can say the game looks cheap all I want, but the car models are genuinely amazing. I love the way they deform the original models into chibi caricatures while keeping the spirit intact. The kooky extra cars are adorable, too, like a rocking horse or a lady bug.
This game has soul. It oozes charm. This game’s so cute, I’d pinch its cheeks if I could.
Conclusion
With all that said, is Road Trip a good game? Is it a good racing game? Can I say it is with its stiff handling and bizarre physics? With its imprecise digital controls? The Grand Prix, the game’s big, final challenge, is a clown show that puts this game’s worst features under a microscope for you to gawk at.
The game also looks bad. The colors are weird, the textures are minimal, the shading is basic. It looks like a PS1 game with some makeup. The sound isn’t good, either. They’re low quality, repetitive and thin. There’s no satisfying engine sound, which is a basic need for a racing game.
With all that said, I recommend Road Trip. I think everyone should try it out, if they can. Even if it’s for a little bit.
The game has a lot of very glaring, obvious flaws, but the sum is greater than its parts. The driving is weird, but it’s fun. It takes some time to get used to, but it rewards skill. By adding a simple grip system, it elevates the experience. It’s not technical or anything like a simulation, but just by being a little more demanding, it makes things interesting. I could see an improvement in my placements and lap times as I played and learned more, even if I had the same gear.
The exploration aspect adds a lot to the game. The map is small compared to the massive digital countries we get nowadays. Unlike those games, Road Trip’s map has stuff to do. Things to look at, places to go. Each town is made to be unique, to encourage you to look for it. They’re full of little shops, stories happening, NPCs to talk to, side quests to do, trinkets to find. It’s similar to the Ubisoft busywork, but its simple structure, combined with the freedom it gives makes exploration feel natural and rewarding.
It’s a simple game that does a lot with its limited resources. Since their budget is limited, they have to justify every inclusion. That means every piece has to be unique and interesting, they have to make the rivers accessible so they add fun stuff like water skis and propellers, they add the ability to fly, just because it’s fun, and you use it as an alternate route to the last area.
They used the driving for everything. Racing all the time will get boring, and we can only design a small number of tracks, so let’s have the player do some driving tests, we can reuse this area. They program some basic ball physics, and now you can play golf and soccer. Why? Because it’s an easy way to get some extra fun out of the driving. There’s even a special race that’s a point-to-point trek across the whole continent. They thought of everything they could to make the most out of their driving game, while keeping it fun and exciting, and I think they succeeded.
I’ve been playing this game on and off since I was a kid. I admit my opinion of it is colored by nostalgia, but I wouldn’t have played through it as a cranky old man if it weren’t at least fun. I enjoyed my time with the game. Even though I know all the areas and the tracks, I was still charmed by the car game for kids.
If you like racing games, you should give this game a try. It’s not as fast as something like Burnout or Need for Speed, nor is it as arcadey. You can’t drift, which is a weird thing to leave out. It’s not a simulation like Forza or Gran Turismo. It’s a silly little driving game that just wants you to have a good time. Drive around some cities, play some mini games, earn some money and buy parts to make you go faster and win more races. If you’re an indie dev, play this game, and get inspired to make something like it. It’s an untapped spring of potential. If you like fun, check this game out.
Like Plato once said “The years wrinkle our skin, but a lack of Road Trip on the PS2 wrinkles our soul”. Maybe he wasn’t so full of shit, after all.
If you’re going to play the game, check out the Road Trip guide. Someone made a detailed guide for this game, in 2026. Truly impressive.
I know Soap Shoes aren’t slippery in general. It’s just the grinding thing. I couldn’t pass up the chance to reference them.
Now that was unexpected--and awesome. Also, can't thank you enough for the parabolic arc video lol
PARABOLA DOG IS COURTING DEATH IN THAT SECOND PICTURE. That said this game does look like it really has a lot of soul. This thing looks like it was the passion project of 3 guys in a garage in Japan.