YMMV / Beetle Adventure Racing

• Game-Breaker: The Police Beetle. Lagging behind in a race a lot? Just turn on the siren. Whoever is in front of you will stop and let you pass, as long as you're close enough to be heard. It's pretty handy when you're going out of your way to look for crates. Though in fairness, you have to finish the Bonus championship (in other words, beat the game) to actually get it in the first place.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The game was obviously made to advertise the Volkswagen New Beetle, but manages to be a competent racing game with fun and highly detailed levels to explore, and holds up fairly well. It received nearly universal acclaim, making it especially stand out since the N64's library was being flooded with racing games at the time.
• That One Achievement: In general, getting all 100 bonus points in a track and simultaneously finishing well enough to have the 100 points count to unlock a map in Beetle Battle is bound to be frustrating in one way or another. Having the Police Beetle does help with the latter, but that still leaves the problem of missing just a few (if not just one) cunningly placed point crates short of the 100, which is rather common. Every track has at least one such example, notably:
  • Coventry Cove has a rather nasty floating 10-point crate infront of an abandoned castle that you can only reach from an oddly angled ramp. If you drive too much to the left, you won't even jump off the ramp, you'll just drive straight downhill back on track again. And driving too far to the right will result in a failed jump. Also, you only have two attempts to do this (unless you're willing to significantly risk your position and just backtrack all the way to the ramp's beginning) because it only appears in a route that will be closed off in the final lap.
  • Mount Mayhem has a cave with two entries, the normal one on the bottom or a ramp right on top of the normal entry that leads to an alternative route and a 10-point crate... if you're good at jumping over the monstrous gap inbetween, that is. And if you manage to get that, two more separate exits are right up ahead, with only the right one leading to another point crate. A similiar thing occurs when you enter the cave normally instead, where it's only the left exit that has a point-crate. And just like the Coventry Cove example above, you only have two rounds to do all of this.
  • Inferno Isle has a floating 5-point crate that you reach by jumping off a ramp-shaped shipwreck... which happens right after another ramp just before, in which even a slightly botched jump from the first ramp will make getting that 5-point crate much harder, if not a lost cause entirely. Another annoying set of point crates is located in an alternate route that you find by falling through (instead of jumping over) a broken bridge somewhat later on. The crates are placed on a tiny set of platforms that you have to jump over back to back, in which falling off completely due to even a slight mistake is far too likely.
  • Sunset Sands has a blatant Guide Dang It! example, one that defies all Racing Game logic: You have to do a full stop on a red platform infront a sign that outright tells you to stand still to get to another alternate route containing point crates, in the kind of game where such signs are usually immediately run over at first sight. Actually getting to said platform is another "Guide Dang It!" as well, albeit to a lesser extent, as you have to reach it by jumping over a ramp inside the first temple that isn't even present at first, which actually requires entering the temple from its alternate entry just to activate that one.
  • Metro Madness has a particularly egregiously placed ramp early on. It's located right behind direction walls that have very tiny gaps inbetween, with a 2-point crate located in one. You have to enter this gap at full speed and make sure to not even graze the walls when passing through, or else you won't have the momentum to make the big jump. You also have to make this jump to reach an alternate route to Metro Madness' downtown section with another 2-point crate that you can only find by not driving straight across the bridge right after exiting the tunnel, but instead to the left on a small bridge that can't even be seen by the naked eye.
  • Wicked Woods has two instances of this: The very first 10-point crate is located inside an alternate entry of a tree that's high above the tunnel you usually drive through. To reach it, you must jump off a ramp that has barely any hint of its presence whatsoever, where you'd have to stay off-road to the left where it's likely to end up jumping off of said ramp unknowingly and unprepared, completely botching the jump in the process. You simply have to know it's coming and time the jump correctly. Another alternate route can only be reached by jumping off a hill next to a tree with a 5-point crate on it located right after exiting a cave and only barely making it to the other side. The annoying part comes after you exit this route and jump to the top of a valley, where it's very likely you'll fly past a long line of 2-point crates, forcing you to backtrack just to get these, potentially ruining your position.
  • The game also has the red Daisy Boxes, three of these each hiding in all six tracks and they activate new cheats in the Cheat Menu (which you unlock by finishing Coventry Cove in a Championship with 50 bonus points). Since they're all hidden in very obscure places and thus supposed to be comparably difficult to find, they don't specifically qualify as this. That being said however, Wicked Woods's second Daisy Box stands out in how insane it is to reach. After driving past a haunted town, there's a big jump to the left with a 10-point crate floating infront of it. The Daisy Box is located near the landing spot, midair, requiring downright perfect planning and timing more than any other crate in the game. Worse is that you not only have merely two laps to get it, but to even have an attempt at doing so, unless you have continues left to retry this track in the championship, means having to race all of the five tracks up to this one beforehand in the Bonus championship.

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