YMMV / LEGO Racers

• Anticlimax Boss: In the second game, Rocket Racer is the easiest boss in the game. Even Sam Sanister is harder than him. To elaborate more, the levels that surround Rocket Racer are some of the most enjoyable and well-designed levels in the game — they use over-the-top antics such as loop-de-loops and ramps, which is breath-taking after seeing mostly tracks that consist of land and not much else. The Xalax tracks also have the most variety in the game; instead of being a different route on the same map every time, everything changes up. The bosses of the previous worlds also are unique in their own ways — Sam Sanister is super fast, Riegel uses a Humongous Mecha to race you, and the Berg is a strong monster who races you on foot. Rocket Racer barely stacks up to the regular NPCs of the game. The track also leaves a ton to be desired — it's a complete circle with occasional walls and ramps, and nothing else. Unless you've been actively avoiding upgrades by this point, he's a total cakewalk, and even if you have accomplished the former, a power-up or two is usually enough to make it.
• Awesome Music:
  • Rocket Racer Run.
  • Knightmare-athon comes in at a close second.
  • Riegel's Racetrack from the second game.
• Breather Boss:
  • King Kahuka, who hosts the second circuit in the first game. Compared to the previous boss Captain Redbeard, who loves spamming projectiles and makes it difficult to maintain a lead over him, Kahuka is a cakewalk since he only spams shields. As a result of his Poor, Predictable Rock, Kahuka isn't aggressive enough to retake the lead once he's lost it. Therefore, all the player needs to do is get ahead of Kahuka, and then it's easy to stay ahead of him and win the race.
  • Johnny Thunder, who hosts the fourth circuit in the first game. After you make it through Basil the Bat Lord, it's really strange to see the first four tracks again which are significantly lower in difficulty. What's more though, Johnny Thunder is arguably even easier than Captain Redbeard, as he's not quite as spam-happy with his projectiles (since he prefers to upgrade them just a little bit first before actually using them, meaning he uses them a lot more infrequently). While Baron von Barron doesn't typically give anyone a run for their money either, he's at least a bit more aggressive and his tracks being a little harder still means the difficulty caves at Johnny Thunder's circuit.
• Breather Level:
  • In the second game, Mars. Compared to the drawn-out Dino Island and Slippy-Slidey Ice World Arctic, Mars features much easier and shorter tracks.
  • Smash n' Bash in Xalax, for an actual breather level, also in the second game. Most of Xalax's tracks are gigantic and full of gimmicks, but Smash n' Bash takes place on a very small figure-8 circuit that you can finish in about five seconds. The gimmick of it seems to be that since everyone meets in the middle, everyone is supposed to crash into each other, but in practice this rarely ever happens. It doesn't help that despite the track's size there are still two repair checkpoints (many much bigger courses only have one), which means your car breaking apart is a complete nonissue.
• Broken Base: Fans are rather divided over which of the two games is superior, primarily because of how the two games are almost nothing alike.
• Contested Sequel: The second game went in a completely different direction, being much more open-ended and having a car damage system, and overall having a more "realistic" control scheme where the cars go skidding out of control if you turn too hard. Fans debate whether this was for the better or if it ruined it.
• First Installment Wins: When people talk about LEGO Racers nowadays, especially out of fond nostalgia, they typically are talking about the first game. LEGO Racers 2 is more contested, while Drome Racers is usually forgotten by anyone who isn't a LEGO maniac.
• Game-Breaker:
  • If you keep maxing out Green Bricks, it's pretty much impossible to lose. You can still crash with the lower-tier turbo boosts if you don't drive well, but the warp advances you along the track automatically. Should you want to actually challenge yourself, you can avoid them.
    • Assuming you can. Not as easy as it sounds if you get caught up in the hurly-burly, since red attack bricks make you lose an upgrade level on hit. If you can make a strong (turbo) start and quickly grab a Warp before anyone can stop you, though...
  • As are short cuts, because the AI keeps ignoring them. (Unless you're racing against Veronica Voltage.)
  • Also, the second game had the "Destructabrick" power up. Using that one twice in a row will basically assure your victory. It does not require any aiming skills to use and cannot be countered by any other power up. It only appears when you're falling behind, though, so you'll never see it if you're in the lead. It's so bad that the AI doesn't use it at all, because having half your car disintegrate regardless of where you currently are is simply frustrating.
  • Even more so than above, the power upgrades in the second game. Upon finishing a minigame, you can upgrade your car's power, grip, or shield. Power increases the speed, grip helps with traction, and shield makes your car less prone to damage. However, power completely overshadows all of these; even one upgrade towards it makes every race a complete breeze. It's pretty much the warp turbo all over again after this, as it makes all the bosses, even Reigel and the Berg easy to beat. Much like the warp turbo, you might want to avoid them if you want a challenge.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • Rocket Racer's introduction. The best kind of dated Ham and Cheese, without a spoken word.
  • Any time you win a race by the skin of your teeth, especially if it involves your car bouncing around barely in control from the effects of a Nitro Boost Power-Up, coming out of Warp, or a Grapple Hook boost.
• Polished Port: The Nintendo 64 version manages to have everything from the PC version despite the limited cartridge size, as well as not having any input lag or long loading times. The only drawback is that Build Mode characters are restricted to controller paks, greatly limiting the amount of characters you can make.
• Porting Disaster:
  • While the Game Boy Color port of the first game manages to retain its' trademark build mode, it has been simplified to the point you've got only three brick spots to mess around with. Building a driver is pretty much pointless, since the only thing you'll see most is his/her head - body and leg parts shall always be seen only in the build mode. The actual gameplay isn't that pleasing either, which means that it pits you against stock baldies in the same cars (their only difference is color), regardless of whether it's the circuit's leader or a last-place jobber. And, of course, there's that kind of FOV which won't let you see the powerup bricks for more than ONE second - given that the steering is not so perfect to react THAT quickly, your only option is to memorize the entire track. Oh, and there's technically no award for beating Rocket Racer! Not even a new build set. Not even credits.
  • The PSX version also suffers from this, with very muddled down graphics, Loads and Loads of Loading, and worst of all, bad input lag. In a racing game that requires you to make precise maneuvers and fast reflexes, the game is almost unplayable due to this.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The first game has the Game-Breaker mentioned above, and in the second game, it's very easy to slide out of control. One wrong move and you're out of the race, with no hopes of coming back.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Over the years, players have come up with many ways to play the first game to spice up the challenge, some of which can be found on the YouTube channel of Piotr Garschin Poland. These include helping a specific NPC racer win the circuit, winning a circuit with the fewest points possible, winning a circuit without using power-ups, and even winning a circuit while driving backwards.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Rocket Racers in LEGOLAND Windsor, which has many tracks that bear great resemblance to the first game, like Magma Moon Marathon.
  • Then there was the planned-but-scrapped LEGO Racers: The Video Game.
  • LEGO Drome Racers, from the same developers as LEGO Racers 2, was a somewhat more serious take on the concept, based on a LEGO Technic line.
  • Little BIG Planet Karting fits the bill, both games being racing spin-offs of creativity-embracing franchises with a focus on character/kart customization and Video Game Settings. Its actual inspiration had a heavy emphasis on customization too, though it went for more realistic racetracks.
• That One Boss:
  • The Berg from the second game. He starts at the first red light, and lays icebergs on the track, and due to the controls, it's made much harder than it should be to dodge them. Riegel comes in a close second, as he uses a Humongous Mecha. Both can't use power-ups nor be affected by them, so almost every power-up except the drill become useless.
  • Basil the Bat Lord from the first game. He is infamously difficult because, unlike most boss racers in the game, he doesn't prefer any one brick type, causing him to use all of the powerups equally and effectively.
  • Gypsy Moth is just plain-out faster than you (moreso than the other bosses), so you cannot keep up with her without using the Turbo Boost powerups, exploiting shortcuts, or slowing her down with other powerups. Even skillful driving isn't enough to cut it most of the time. Furthermore, unlike Rocket Racer and his Rocket Racer Run, her tracks aren't set up to allow you to spam Warp, which is actually quite scarce on some of the tracks (and if she's ahead of you, count on her getting - and using - the green bricks before you). Also, it's a circuit, so you have to beat her more than once to win.
  • Rocket Racer and Veronica Voltage, unlike the previous AI opponents, are willing to use the same tricks you've used to get ahead of the competition.
    • Rocket Racer's unique track is virtually set up for spamming the game-breaking warp drive whenever one gets the chance - and it's Rocket Racer's favorite powerup, so he'll do exactly that, more so than any other opponent. You're left in the dust if you don't do the same — and it makes for an amazing showdown.
    • Veronica Voltage goes among the lines of Perfect Play A.I. in the Time Trials. She holds nothing back and will use shortcuts and all flavours of turbo powerups, especially when powering through speed-reducing terrain. You don't have a lot of room for error to beat her records.
• That One Level:
  • Knightmare-athon. It comes at the beginning of the circuit, and is much harder than many levels before and after it. In the mirrored version, it comes last in the circuit, and if you were barely taking the lead, this track will be here to screw you over.
  • Pirate Skull Pass is possibly even worse. Having no shortcuts and rather scarce green brick placements makes it difficult to catch up to Basil or Gypsy if they get ahead of you at the start of the race.
  • Adventure Temple Trail. Not only do you have to deal with many 90 degree corner turns, but the very last thing you encounter before the finish line is a three-lane-split corridor in which one is picked at random to contain the exact same Interface Screw effect from the Level 3 Yellow bricks. Keep in mind, this in in the same Circuit as the above-mentioned tracks, so good luck getting Basil or Gypsy Moth's construction kits.
  • The second game has Dino Island, which is only the second world in the game. It's highly repetitive, and the tracks in it go on for very long periods of time.
  • The second game also has the Arctic world, which brings out the worst of the game's controls due to being a Slippy-Slidey Ice World.
• That One Sidequest: In the first game, Veronica Voltage has her own construction kit, but don't expect to get it without defeating her Time Trial ghosts on every. Single. Track. Try defeating her in Adventure Temple Trail or Ice Planet Pathway... we'll wait for you.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • In the first game, blue plus two or three white bricks has the ability to reflect cannonballs back onto the attacker. This is an extremely situational ability that only sees practical use in the first circuit and not much elsewhere. Besides that, a shield tends to be the last powerup that a typical player would want to throw away that many white bricks on, even if it does have the far more useful capability of spinning out anyone who collides with you at that tier too.
  • The second game has a few level set pieces that take advantage of anti-gravity capability. You would think that the developers would have taken a lot of advantage of this, but there are only three of these in the entire game, all in the final world — a loop-de-loop, a big u-turn that is angled 90 degrees from the ground, and a large cylinder, the last of which is completely impractical to take any advantage of anti-gravity from outside the explore mode.
  • Speaking of which, the explore mode also gets heavily under-utilized after the first world; it's only a tertiary part of the game and is only used to find hidden minigame vortexes and golden bricks, the latter of which have little effect on the game unless you want to visit another world earlier on.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Aside from her feminine lips, the game is not clear on Gypsy Moth's gender, and you need outside knowledge on the Insectoids theme in order to know (she's the queen of the Zotaxians).

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