Nickelodeon Kart Racers is a game that tells you everything in its name, a Nickelodeon themed Kart Racer. It’s simple, fast paced and can be quite fun.

Racecourses are based on classic Nickelodeon shows and their characters make up the fairly small roster, these are: SpongeBob, Patrick and Sandy (SpongeBob SquarePants); Tommy, Angelica and Reptar (Rugrats); Arnold and Helga (Hey Arnold), and the four Ninja Turtles.

Some of the races have slight challenge elements like the character in last gets kicked from the race or go a certain way around giant signpost arrows. It adds a little something that adds a little more unpredictability to the game.

The characters each have their own unique power up pickups as well as access to a pool of gadgets that are obtained to use during races. Gadgets can be anything from throwable baby bottles to a Flying Dutchman Cart upgrade. Other than power ups during races the characters have no advantage over one another so you can always just pick your favourite. Cart upgrades will effect the stats and these can be bought with in-game currency from the shop accessible through the main menu.

Alongside the pickups we get a boost bar, similar to nitrous in other car games. The boost is gained by driving through slime which collects it up so the player can use it at three different power levels which is handy in a race.

As a Cart Racer it has three main modes for solo players: Grand Prix (a series of races), Free Race (singles), and Time Attack (explains itself really). There are three difficulties for the enemy driver skill levels and if you’re not confident in winning the races can be played in team mode (scores for places are added together). During races the Carts will automatically switch between Car, Plane and Boat modes depending on the surface driven on.

We get split screen multiplayer too which can do the solo stuff as well as an arena mode which has extra little cart based competitions.

Sometimes the game glitches out in a weird way by putting the player in last place, this happened a few times while I was winning and it can’t be recovered from. The rubberbanding effect that gives losing racers a chance can unfairly boost other characters into first sometimes.

Overall it’s a decent little game that hits my nostalgia for the characters. Racing feels enjoyable enough but it doesn’t do anything really unique. It’s not too hard and not frustrating either. I like the game and if all you want is a standard Cart Racer fairly cheap I would recommend this game.