In this race, only the fastest toys win.
Toy Story Racer is a 2001 kart racing video game developed by Traveller's Tales and published by Activision and Disney Interactive Studios for the PlayStation and Game Boy Color. Based on the hit characters from the Toy Story series, players can take control of Woody, Buzz, and other toys as they traverse across locales from the film and other places as they race to the finish line. From there, the winners obtain soldiers they can collect to progress and unlock a wide variety of new characters for each level of challenges they complete with the first batch of racers made available to them.
In 2010, the game was released on the PlayStation Store as part of the PS1 Classics collection.
Tropers and Toys! Start your engines!
- 100% Completion: To beat the game, the players have to unlock all racers, compete in every race they have, and collect 200 soldiers.
- Accent Adaptation: Bo Peep, surprisingly, is depicted with a Southern Belle type voice that she didn't have in the films.
- Adapted Out:
- Despite coming out after Toy Story 2, Jessie, Bullseye, Stinky Pete, Mrs. Potato Head, Wheezy, and Evil Emperor Zurg are not playable characters. That said, Zurg does appear, but only as a snowman in the Christmas race track.
- The GameBoy version only includes Woody, Buzz, Bo Peep, and Mr. Potato Head as playable characters, leaving the other racers except for the alien out entirely.
- Adaptational Badass: Characters that would normally have troubled driving (namely Rex with his small hands; Hamm, who was shown to be a sloppy driver in Toy Story 2; and Babyface, who has claws for hands and spider legs) are capable of tearing up the road with the other toys no problem.
- Adaptation Expansion:
- Some of the areas of Andy's house not seen in the films up to that point (chiefly the attic, the living room, and the kitchen) can be glimpsed during races through that course.
- Sid is lucky enough to get three different areas to explore beyond the scope of the first film—his house, his attic, and his backyard.
- Ascended Extra: Rocky Gibraltar and Lenny, both toys who had minor roles in the first film, are made playable characters in the PlayStation 1 version. Bo Peep is another noteworthy example, as she gets to be a playable character in both version of the game rather than simply serving as a Satellite Love Interest to Woody—and this is before Toy Story 4 bumped up her role.
- Badass Driver: All the toys in the game get to show off their skills behind the wheel.
- The Cameo: In Sid's House, Sid's Attic, Andy's Neighborhood, and Sid's Backyard, Scud can be seen growling at the toys as they race by him. Luckily for them, he just sits there and doesn't attack them.
- Demoted to Extra:
- The Green Army Men do appear in this game, but they're only collectibles for beating races and have no other role. Averted in the GameBoy version, where one of them is playable after unlocking him.
- Zurg gets this way worse, as he's only just a snowman in the Christmas track!
- Dinky Drivers: Given that the characters are all toys, this is to be expected; each of the tracks are ginormous from their perspective.
- Eliminated from the Race: The game has multiple ways in which this can be accomplished, depending on the mode.
- In Knockout Races, racers are eliminated from play if they wind up in dead last during any lap.
- In Knockout Tournaments, the loser at the end of the race is not allowed to advanced to the next leg of the tournament.
- In Survival Races, if a player gets hit by a weapon during the race, they're out.
- Enforced in Super Survival Races, where players have to eliminate the competition if they want to win.
- In Smash, racers have to eliminate their competition by using power ups to knock them out during the race.
- Fake Shemp: Tim Allen voices Buzz in the game through the use of archived dialogue from the films, which Traveller's Tales did previously in Toy Story 2.
- Living Toys: The game is centered around some of the most famous examples of this trope, only this time they've taken to the race track.
- Nervous Wreck: Rex, as per usual, is quite nervous about racing against his friends, and some of his voice lines show him expressing doubt he'll be able to do it.
- No Focus on Humans: While there are humans in the Toy Story universe, there aren't any to be seen on any of the tracks. It's especially jarring in Andy and Sid's houses that none of the characters are there—maybe they went out for a walk?
- The Voiceless: RC, Lenny, and Babyface don't have any speaking dialogue in the game. While this isn't surprising for RC and Babyface, since neither of them talked in the original movie, Lenny having no voice is surprising since he did speak in the first film.
