Corvette - Sauceless OutRun

26/05/25

Y’know, in recent years I’ve kind of come around on cars and otherwise non-kart related racing games. Racing games with a solid career or progression mode, with new cars to unlock and a variety of things to do, like the excellent Forza Horizon games or any Gran Turismo, I’ve really started to jive with. It’s nice to delve into genres I’ve barely touched in the past, and makes me approach the swell of Game Boy Advance racing games with a little less tepidness. It is a genre that, ultimately, I think just doesn’t work that well with the small scale and weaker hardware of the GBA, but I know there are diamonds hiding in this rough landscape, and that it all isn’t going to be as bad as Shrek Swamp Speedway. Urgh. I think I’m still traumatized a bit by all that. Regardless, today’s game - Corvette - doesn’t do much to break through my expectations as to the generalized quality of racing games on the handheld, with a generally unengaging and repetitive structure, it does at the very least manage to prove a competent enough racer with enough variety from totally putting me to sleep.

Corvette, released in late 2003, celebrates the history of the esteemed Chevrolet Corvette line of automobiles, and every facet of the game is warped around this celebration. A very basic description of Corvette’s GBA port is that it feels like a basic, sauceless port of the arcade classic OutRun (one of the greatest arcade games of all time, mind you). You’ll be driving through flat, linear race courses at generally very high speeds, with your main concerns being avoiding the various forms of traffic you’ll encounter, making turns, and trying to either hit the finish line before your rivals, or driving fast enough to hit each checkpoint in levels that put focus on a time limit. Whilst certain missions will feature some stipulations, there aren’t any particularly unique or notable mechanics in play; honestly, the most interesting thing I can think of in how this game plays is that you can pick between manual and automatic transmission. Not, uh, exactly high praise - it really does feel like a slightly more directed OutRun clone, for better or worse.

The foundational issue with this game is that it’s not particularly engaging; sure, when you hit high speeds and you’re weaving between traffic and making turns expertly, it can feel really, really good, but after only a few races playing Corvette really just feels like going through the motions. Weave past that car. Slow down a bit to make that turn. Avoid those cones. Don’t slam into the wall like I did several times. I was playing this over my lunch break at work, and whilst I admit I was very, very tired that day, I was genuinely falling asleep doing one of the Rally missions in this game. I was tired, but I wasn't tired enough to fall asleep playing a video game. Corvette isn’t bad, but if the entirety of your focus isn’t directed on it, it’s incredibly unengaging to the extreme.

Rather than having any kind of traditional career mode, Corvette’s main game mode takes you across America which is divided by ‘time periods’, by which I mean you’ll be utilizing a particular Corvette model from that year. Each time period will feature three missions you’ll need to pass to unlock the next ‘time period’ and the car associated with it. The format of these are pretty consistent, consisting of Rally, Grand Prix, and Extra races. Rally is the race type that feels the most like the OutRun I adore, having you drive through a ~5 minute course, trying to hit checkpoints to keep your time limit from hitting 0, with the additional caveat of having to catch up to and beat an opponent racer who will start significantly ahead of you from the jump. Grand Prix, on the other hand, feels more akin to a traditional racer, going around a track a handful of times whilst trying to hit the finish in the top three. Despite being a Grand Prix, which in pretty much every racing game I’ve ever played, was a set of matches with an overall score, each unique Grand Prix mission in Corvette is just a single race, which is a little disappointing to say the least, but if you fail, it’s some consolation you only have to replay a single race.

Even if I don’t really find the core gameplay of Corvette particularly engaging, I do give it a bit of credit for at least giving you an acceptable variety of tasks to do whilst working through its main single player mode, and this goes double for the third and final type of missions. Extra races are the most varied, as pretty much every time period/locale will give you a different kind of objective - the first Extra race, for example, will task you with hitting pretty much the speed limit of how fast your car can go, whilst a later one who ask you to drift between a number of cones that grow tighter and tighter whilst still beating the clock. The latter took me a good five, ten minutes to clear, but it was genuinely a lot of fun, and even the worst of the Extra races blew the Rally and Grand Prix races out of the water. There aren’t any that truly blew me away in design, but the only thing that really got me through Corvette as a whole was having these races that made me engage with it beyond the very basic tenets of racing games Corvette manages to scrape by.

Upon completing each of the three missions in each ‘time period’, you’ll unlock the next locale and a Corvette associated with that particular year. Whilst there’s nothing particularly wrong with the progression of unlocking new cars and having a further selection of cars to choose as you complete missions. But it’s linear in a way that I found pretty much every successive car objectively better than the previous one, so there was no reason to ever utilize one of the earlier models of cars. It’s not really a drawback, it’s just a little boring. Which, really, is the headline for my entire review of Corvette. It’s just… unexciting. Competent, sure, but never exciting.

Whilst I wouldn’t call the game notably challenging, it’s strangely stringent in that it's difficult at times. I think it was the second Extra race - one where you have to avoid touching any obstacles at all to avoid all collisions. Easy enough, especially with how ‘slow’ oncoming vehicles and obstacles seem to come towards you. The issue is actually finishing the race within its time limit - even dodging everything, as expected, I had to pretty much not reduce my speed at all from the jump to even reach the finish, and I landed it in what was essentially overtime. The clock hit 0, and my car slowed down automatically, practically rolling over the finish line at the last possible frame. Maybe I was doing something wrong whilst playing the game, but it could feel so stringent at times. Another example is one of the Rally missions; I spent two thirds of the race actually catching up to my sole opponent, got ahead, and then crashed out a single time right at the end, leading to my loss. That’s… that’s a little more on me, but still, the game doesn’t really allow for a large margin of error. What I found more bothersome turned up in the Grand Prix missions - I played perfectly, coming in second, and I didn’t even *see* whoever was in first place. Any major mistake would’ve cost me the race there and then. Maybe I’m just missing something. Either way, it’s not really an atrocious issue, it does genuinely help make the game even a touch more engaging, but I think it’s an intrinsically poor level of design that even a single mistake can cost you from winning a 5+ minute long race.

Ultimately, there isn’t a whole lot here when you get down to it. Whilst it’s not as brief as some of the sub-hour Game Boy Advance games I’ve tackled over the years, if you have any skill in racing games you’ll probably be done with Corvette over a handful of hours, and that’s only if you can keep yourself from falling asleep due to its simplicity. The only things you can unlock outside of the main mode’s progression are a handful of Corvette PNGs, and as the last person to be a car enthusiast, this was not the carrot on the stick I was hoping for. It’s presentation doesn’t do much to keep you engaged, either; the various music tracks, the ever-present rock slash easy listening that seems standard for forgettable titles like this. But, like some of the other racers I’ve tackled, one thing I want to highlight is the backgrounds of pretty much all the stages are genuinely quite beautiful (notably, it was the *only* good thing about Shrek Speedway), and the way the aesthetics of locales would change throughout Rally missions - with one going from an overcast afternoon, to a fiery, orange desert, before ending in a nighttime cityscape - is genuinely gorgeous. The rest of the game doesn’t look bad, per se, but as one of those pseudo-3D games that were everywhere around this time for the GBA, doesn’t really do much to excite.

I’m very passionate about writing these reviews, but games like Corvette make it hard to keep at it. Whilst competent and satisfying enough at it’s foundation, the game lacks a killer hook, a unique mode or really anything that really will keep your interest in tow. It’s OutRun-esque feelings piqued my interest for a little bit, but my concentration and engagement waned very, very quickly, catapulting Corvette into the tier of game that, whilst I don’t particularly dislike or actively have an issue with, does almost nothing to stand out in my mind on ever side of the divide of quality. The Game Boy Advance was not kind to the racer genre as a whole, but at least the majority of them stood out in one way or another - Corvette, it seems, will remain consigned to just be forgotten.

Thank you so much for reading my review of Corvette on the Game Boy Abyss! 100% one of those games that were boring enough that I really struggled to pump this review out. Regardless, you can find me over on BlueSky and Twitch under @GameBoyAbyss, or email me at mgeorge7003@hotmail.com or cckaiju@gmail.com if you have any questions or requests! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next itme.