Review – Victory Heat Rally

I love arcade racing games. I still shout “OH NO, A TORNADO!” an exclamation from the announcer in Cruis’n Blast on the Death Valley track, like it’s a quote from a so-bad-it’s-good action movie. It’s practically an unwritten rule that every good arcade racer has at least one ubiquitous announcer callout. RIIIIIDGE RACERRRR, Daaaayyytonaaaaa USA and Hyyydrooo Thunder are basically burned into my brain. So when I booted up Victory Heat Rally and heard “Welcome to Victory Heat Rally!” with that same enthusiasm, it felt like a warm hug.

 

 

Skydevilpalm, the developers behind Victory Heat Rally, also love arcade racing games. I don’t even need to speak to one of their staff to know this — Just look at this game. Listen to the incredibly energetic dance soundtrack. But the best proof comes from what happens when you approach a sharp turn. Your car literally turns sideways and you go flying straight ahead as you finish your drift. Every racing game needs a good drifting mechanic, but Victory Heat Rally has a great drifting mechanic. I can tell that these devs worship at the steering wheels of Outrun 2, Ridge Racer Type 4, Power Drift, and Initial D.

Okay, I’m not going to keep name-dropping great racing games that aren’t the one I’m reviewing here. I just need you to know that Victory Heat Rally belongs in the same conversation as those aforementioned heavyweights. So, you’ve gathered that Victory Heat Rally is an arcade racing game, right? To go further into detail, it’s a colorful super scaler ’90s throwback arcade racer that uniquely combines the 2D sprites of its cute little pimped out cars with ambitious 3D race tracks. It looks incredible in motion too. I was concerned that the Nintendo Switch wouldn’t be able to handle it without exploding, but Skydevilpalm have pulled off this port flawlessly. There’s no slowdown, stuttering, or input lag to be found. The frame rate is a rock solid 60 fps. It’s a Christmas miracle.

 

 

VHR is one of the fastest arcade racers I’ve played that isn’t an anti-gravity racing game. When you drift the track spins around your vehicle in incredible fashion and, much like Mario Kart, you can hold a drift long enough to get up to a level 3 turbo boost. Races are short five lap sprints with three-checkpoint rallies also popping up in the game’s single-player Championship Mode. The tracks are designed specifically to get you accustomed to drifting around as many turns as possible and flying over big jumps. With all of the different slopes, hills, helixes, and slants, the tracks almost resemble roller coasters just as much as they do racing circuits. It’s incredibly fun and addictive to chain as many drifts and boosts together as possible.

The Championship Mode is the brunt of the content on offer here. You have three license classes (A, EX, and Z) with three cups each, and each class is represented by a world map full of missions. These missions can be circuit races, rallies, time trials, and Gran Turismo-esque license tests called Joker Races that see you hitting or avoiding obstacles, cups, or 1 on 1 rival races. VHR gives you numerous types of races, and occasionally vicious CPUs, to really put your driving skills to the test. Of course, there’s also a Grand Prix mode with all of the cups from Championship mode included and a VS mode for up to four players on the same system. Online play isn’t an option (yet) but there’s a Time Attack mode with worldwide leaderboards. I can imagine the unique flow of the racing in this game will get a pretty dedicated player base.

I appreciate the effort put into Victory Heat Rally’s cast and worldbuilding. Its racer designs don’t go for stereotypes so much as anime archetypes. Be they enthusiastic, edgy or determined, the characters and their motivations shine through. It’s effective, especially considering the game’s emcee, Sally McRally, gives a brief background for each of them, including the three racers you start out with and the nine you unlock from winning Rival Races by leading the race longer than your opponent. They each have different driving stats and their car tires, suspension and paint can all be customized using various unlockable presets. My favorite character example is Kenzie who doubles as a pilot which makes a lot of sense for how much the cars fly around the circuits in this game.

 

 

The circuit locations are diverse and vibrant, including a beach, an Air Force base, a castle and an icy tundra just to name a few. There are some pretty cool visual surprises later in Championship mode that I don’t want to spoil, but let’s just say between you, me and ET this is definitely trying to be a ‘90s arcade racer. I did notice that some of the visual effects such as the water are noticeably more pixelated on the Switch versus the Steam version of the game. But this is a minor gripe when the game runs as smoothly as it does on Switch. In fact, Victory Heat Rally is one of the most fluid racing games on the platform.

I have to admit I haven’t really liked the live service-heavy, open world, primarily simcade style of racing games we have gotten more and more of the last few years. There is an unrivaled simplicity to a great arcade racing game that I’ve been able to find in recent indie racing games like Horizon Chase Turbo and Hot Shot Racing.

 

 

Here in 2024, arguably one of the weakest years for racing games I’ve ever seen, Victory Heat Rally makes a big splash as far as being a visually standout, easy to pick up racing game. It has the attract screen to grab anyone who ever sat at a Sega arcade cabinet and the handling to reel in fans of kart racers. While it also occasionally has the uneven CPU difficulty of kart racers, you win in Victory Heat Rally by using pure skill. Skill is also exactly what its developers utilized when making VHR a reality over the course of five years time. Here is a game that exudes design knowledge and the visionary talent of people who simply wanted to make a racing game like the ones they grew up playing. And while Victory Heat Rally is the ideal length for a racing game, it still left me hungry for more because it is fantastic.

 

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