"A CRASH Course in destruction!"
Sideswiped note is an arcade-style Racing Game released for the Nintendo DS, developed by Recom and published by Majesco Entertainment in late 2009.Sideswiped tasks the player with competing in a series of races around the world. Though appearing relatively simple, Sideswiped incorporates over-the-top physics with Burnout-style Vehicular Combat, permitting vehicles to be launched miles into the air on a dime - sometimes with an explosive end. However, coming in first isn't always the goal; more often than not, emphasis is put on causing as much chaos as possible in Destruction and Crash Racing events, with special variants of these and minigames mixed in to keep the action varied. The core of the game is Mission Mode, a steady campaign where every race completed earns cash to buy new cars and upgrades to tackle increasingly challenging events. A Quick Race mode is also included, which randomly generates easier events to play with specific vehicles and goals.
Sideswiped also supports several flavors of multiplayer; hot-seat score chasing for single cartridge and console, along with local wireless for up to four players and cartridges. There was also support for global event leaderboards with Nintendo Wi-Fi connection, but this has since been discontinued with the end of the Nintendo Wi-Fi service.
Sideswiped contains examples of the following tropes:
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The more expensive a vehicle is, the more expensive and more numerous its upgrades will become; while fully upgrading one of the starter cars can be done in a few races, upgrading something like the Wyvern takes dedicated saving.
- Anti-Grinding: Several unlockable events will have their payouts cut substantially after you complete them, dropping from $50,000 to a mere $6,000 or less. Averted later on with two special green events in Las Vegas and Seaside, the former of which always pays out the full $50,000, and the latter only drops to $40,000.
- Arrange Mode: Most red "Special" events are variants of more common varieties, such as Full Boost and Non-Boost races which grant infinite boost and zero boost respectively, but are otherwise Normal Race events. Dynamite is a variant of Destruction where traffic cars are significantly easier to detonate and buses are replaced with oil tankers that dispense time penalties if struck with the player's car. Survival is a variation of Crash Racing where the player has to escape their rivals with limited health rather than smash them to pieces, which has a variation of itself exclusive to the Arena as a last-man-standing demolition derby.
- Artistic License – Physics: Cars are regularly launched through the air like torpedoes in collisions, construction vehicles and armored trucks can keep pace with sports sedans and muscle cars and stop just as quickly despite their mammoth weight, and head-on assaults will propel the slower moving car away while the faster driver piles on completely unscathed. Then again, when it's to the tune of thousands of points or when you're nailing some schmuck who keeps trying to run you off the road, who's complaining?
- Artificial Stupidity: AI drivers will barrel through the course nearly ambivalent to you when racing normally, which can result in smaller cars getting launched down the track if you're driving something like the Daidara or God Hand. Can get worse in Survival or Crash Racing where these same smaller vehicles might try to take you on with predictable and hilarious results.
- Artwork and Game Graphics Segregation: The red car on the cover is clearly intended to be a red Typhoon based on the shape and grille, but due to the limitations of the DS these cars only appear as low-resolution models. The green truck in the background is also obviously a Cannon, with similar resemblance and in-game restrictions for the same reasons.
- Assassination Sidequest: Played with in Boss events, where you're tasked with pursuing and crashing into a limousine followed by a horde of powerful guard vehicles. While stealth is recommended since the guardian cars can throw smaller vehicles with no effort, nothing is stopping you from giving chase in a Heavy vehicle and crashing out all of them.
- Big Badass Rig: Can be your weapon of choice with the Daidara, the earliest available Heavy vehicle taking the appearance of a Japanese semi-truck.
- Bonus Feature Failure: The Nerai minigame has absolutely no purpose outside of a minor distraction and offers zero additional functionality in Mission Mode. The additional events unlocked at the end of the campaign are exceptionally difficult for no real benefit as, by the time you get there, you'll already have enough money to buy absolutely everything you could possibly want.
- Boring, but Practical: The Daidara is the slowest car in the game and can be readily outran by your starting cars even with all of its power upgrades. However, it is far better than almost any other car for Destruction and Dynamite events, which are exceedingly common with point targets that are almost unattainable in smaller vehicles. With its comparatively modest asking price and wide range of applications, it's one of the best value-for-money vehicles in the game and will continue to be useful well until the God Hand becomes affordable.
- Bowling for Ratings: The Bowling minigame has you doing this with cars, launching your vehicle into a set of sedans arranged as the pins. Getting a strike awards you with a point bonus and causes all the sedans to explode.
- Capture the Flag: Of a sort in Flag mode, where the player who's holding the flag when time expires (or when the flag crosses the finish line) is the winner. The flag can be taken from its holder by ramming their car, and grabbing the flag triggers a few moments of Mercy Invincibility where the flag cannot be lost no matter how hard the new holder's car is hit.
- Car Fu: Encouraged throughout the game, with the zany physics permitting cars to be launched miles into the air. Crash Races and the Arena Survival events require you to engage in this if you want to win, with Destruction and Dynamite events letting you take it out on traffic cars too.
- Cartoon Bomb: The point of Bomb events is to pass these to other cars to blow them to pieces. Failing to pass all your bombs to the other cars before time runs out has explosive results.
- Construction Vehicle Rampage: The God Hand is a giant bulldozer that will tear apart almost any other vehicle in the game, and is the best choice for Destruction and Dynamite events thanks to its wide front scoop.
- Cool Car: Most of the Sport and Vintage vehicles are these such as the Worm, Dragoon, and Wyvern. Some of the SUVs get in on this too, especially the Ouroboros.
- Copy-and-Paste Environments: Each area has three track variations that all share the majority of their layouts with each other barring some alterations. Instances of this include every track using both bridges over the river in New York and a curvy road in southern Seaside making an appearance in each layout.
- Conveniently Empty Roads: In any non-Destruction race, the roads will be completely empty of traffic despite some courses taking place in cities like Las Vegas and New York. Averted in Destruction and Dynamite races, where roads will be densely populated with vehicles and debris as you would expect them to be.
- Critical Existence Failure: Your car will function perfectly fine in Survival events until it loses its very last sliver of health, where it will immediately explode and be rendered inoperable. Otherwise subverted across the game as, despite the detail of the damage, your car will never stop running or even degrade in functionality.
- Die, Chair, Die!: Signs, hot dog stands and road cones blanket the streets in Destruction and Dynamite events. Running them over with your car, launching cars into them, or blowing them sky high nets you points in addition to all the other chaos you're causing. Of course, the traffic cars, buses, and occasional oil tankers in these modes count as well and provide even more points.
- Dump Stat: Body strength increases the amount of health your vehicle has in Survival events, but that's all it does. Since most events don't take durability into account it's often a waste of money upgrading this stat when Power and Boost are always relevant.
- Every Car Is a Pinto: Every single car will burst into flame after taking a significant amount of damage, and will explode after being launched by the player regardless of what it is. This even includes the God Hand, a massive bulldozer.
- Fake Difficulty: Tankers in Dynamite will take away time and launch your vehicle into the air if you collide with them. This wouldn't be an issue if they didn't have the perverse tendency to be launched directly at you as a result of explosions at speeds you won't have time to react to. Can get exceptionally bad in the Mountain Dynamite event, where a tanker regularly appears along a narrow road where there's absolutely no way to get past it without punting a flaming car down the road beforehand - and it can still fly into you.
- Fake Longevity: Once you complete all the immediately visibly events in an area, most of the events you will unlock will just be harder variants of existing ones, most notably Demolition events simply having higher score requirements with zero change to the actual gameplay.
- Later Time Trials will also require you to purchase the fastest vehicle in each class and buy Power upgrades for it if you want so much as a chance of passing them. This can become a major cash sink if it's a vehicle that you otherwise don't have use for.
- Played the straightest with the Bowling minigame stages; the first requires you to get 40 points, the second requires you to get 50 points , and the third, extra one requires 60. There is zero change in the gameplay between these events.
- Fauxrrari: Though crude, most of the vehicle models are very clearly based on real life cars, most notably the Ouroboros which bears a near-exact resemblance to a Hummer H2.
- Fragile Speedster: Any of the Sports and Vintage cars qualify, most notably the Wyvern. Even with upgrades they are not particularly durable, but handle quite well and have incredible top speeds that make them invaluable in Time Trial and Normal races. Just don't take them into a Survival event, or you'll very quickly regret it as your car gets launched in a ball of flame by a Ouroboros or God Hand.
- Gang Up on the Human: Computer drivers in Survival and Boss events will always focus on wrecking the player, and will wait further up the track if the player's car is stopped. This becomes particularly evident in the Arena, where you can watch all seven other cars converge upon your location if you hold still.
- Hot Paint Job: The Big Bang has one of these, sporting a black body with red flames. It's also the only vehicle in the game with a flashy livery.
- Infinity -1 Sword: The Nidhog, an armored truck capable of reaching near-maximum stats. It's available from the beginning of the game, but is unobtainable without a drastic amount of grinding with its million dollar price tag. Obtaining it is practically required for the last few events, as there will be so many Heavy vehicles that the Daidara and God Hand won't be able to handle them all.
- Infinity +1 Sword: The secret Big Bang, a black bus with the maximum possible stats capable of throwing even Heavy vehicles like the God Hand and Nidhog. Unlocking it requires every optional objective in each event to be completed, and by the time it's unlocked the only use for it will be to complete a handful of post-game extra events.
- Level-Map Display: The bottom screen shows a map of the track along with the location of the player and every enemy car on the track.
- Life Meter: Your vehicle has one in Survival events, and having it involuntarily emptied has explosive results. The amount of punishment a vehicle can take is increased by strengthening its Body, but considering that this usually isn't an issue it typically isn't worth bothering.
- Lightning Bruiser: The SUVs tend to be exceptionally well balanced, particularly the Ouroboros which is both capable of hitting high speeds and holding its own in combat. These qualities make them well suited for Survival events, where they can both outrun aggressors and survive any tangles they find themselves in. Their only real downsides are being top-heavy, which can make negotiating corners difficult without grinding along walls.
- Made of Indestructium: The Big Bang is functionally invincible; it is so heavy and durable that other drivers will be lucky to even scratch it before they're launched across the map. Even if a God Hand runs at it with full force, the Big Bang will usually win the encounter; the worst that will happen to the latter will be getting launched as usual.
- Magikarp Power: The Nidhog starts with relatively low stats that aren't worth its million credit price tag, but put some more money into it and it becomes one of the fastest cars available while also hitting like a runaway train.
- Market-Based Title: Released as Clash King in Japan, and Sideswiped everywhere else.
- Master of All: A sufficiently upgraded Nidhog will be one of these, throwing other cars around like toys while being able to readily top 200 MPH and insanely durable in Survival events rendering almost every other car redundant barring a handful of events. The Big Bang is also one of these, and is so heavy it's almost impossible to damage.
- Meta Multiplayer: A Non-Preemptive Multiplayer example; single-console multiplayer consists of taking turns playing the Trampoline or Bowling minigames. When one player completes a single round in either game, control goes to the other player. Yhe winner is decided by whoever got the highest overall score.
- Money for Nothing: As you approach the end of the game, you will invariably end up with the best car in every class with all of their essential upgrades, rendering all the money you'll continue to get completely useless outside of a handful of cosmetic color schemes. In addition, the Big Bang has absolutely no upgrades available and blows every other car in the game out of the water, making spending any further cash nearly pointless if you somehow have upgrades left to buy.
- Mighty Glacier: The Daidara and God Hand are both pitifully slow, but hit exceptionally hard and are hard to toss around without having a Heavy vehicle of your own. The Nidhog subverts this when given enough upgrades, becoming one of the fastest vehicles in the game.
- Minigame Zone: The Arena is the only place where the Trampoline and Bowling minigames can be played, and hosts special Survival and Crash Racing events that play more like demolition derbies.
- Nitro Boost: Simply called "Boost" in-game, it's rewarded for getting air and drifting your car. A vehicle's boost capacity can be upgraded in the Parts Shop.
- No Plot? No Problem!: There's nary a single word of story in sight, no context nor justification for the events of the game ever given.
- One-Word Title: Sideswiped in most areas, referencing the action of hitting a vehicle's side against another car, something racers do frequently throughout the game drawing emphasis to the over-the-top vehicular combat. Averted with the Japanese release, where the game is named Clash King.
- Only a Flesh Wound: Your car can be mangled, missing doors, with fire pouring out of its engine, and it will still drive just as well as it did prior to all of that.
- Peninsula of Power Leveling: Late into Las Vegas and Seaside are two green events which are both quite easy and give a full payout with each clear, where the money to purchase any necessary vehicles and upgrades can be quickly earned without needing to farm low-paying events.
- Post-End Game Content: Completing every event unlocks a handful of bonus events that give massive payouts, but most of them are prohibitively difficult without a fully upgraded God Hand or Nidhog. Completing all the objectives outside of these events unlocks the Big Bang, which trivializes most of them. You also unlock the Nerai minigame in the title screen, a simple Bullet Hell top-down shooter.
- Randomly Generated Quests: Quick Race randomly selects cars, event types, and tracks from across the game to create unique events for the player. These events tend to be on the easier side to ensure they can always be completed, which can be helpful if it generates a Destruction event with the Warrior, or a proper race with the Daidara. Note that these races can even generate with content the player has yet to unlock, offering an opportunity to experiment with late-game cars early. The Big Bang will never be chosen, however, even if it has already been unlocked.
- Red Ones Go Faster: Your opponent in Rival missions will be a bright red sports carnote with tight-pulled Rubber-Band A.I..
- Rubber-Band A.I.: Rival events pit you against a red sports car which, if passed, will begin closing the gap at insane speeds far beyond what the player can typically attain. Granted, the player's Wyvern can travel that fast when boosting, but it's a cold comfort when you've made the rival crash only for them to erase your lead in moments.
- In general, cars will slow down drastically if the player falls behind; you can watch the other cars in a race come to a complete stop on the minimap if you sit still for a few moments.
- Score Milking: One of the easiest ways to deal with tricky Crash Races is to push a vehicle along or have it land on you; either one will cause you to rapidly gain points, which can drastically inflate your final score if you do it consistently.
- Scoring Points: The entire point of Crash Races, Destruction, and Dynamite events, where score is earned based on how many props you destroy and how much damage you do to traffic vehicles. The Nerai minigame also awards you points based on how long you survive and how many road cones you shoot.
- Secret Character: The Big Bang, a hot rod bus unlocked by completing every optional objective in each mission. It has maximum stats, is absolutely giant compared to other vehicles, cannot be customized, is completely indestructible, and there is zero hint to its existence.
- Shows Damage: Model Changes and Retextures are both in effect; cars will have textures of body work scraped and mangled, with some vehicles losing bumpers, hoods and doors on top of that. Cars will also begin smoking after taking enough damage, eventually lighting on fire.
- Starter Equipment: The Warrior and Cannon are your two starting vehicles, with rather low stats but otherwise being rather capable in their own right early on.
- Starter Gear Staying Power: While you'll invariably need to move on from them in the mid-game as the Daidara and Wyvern start appearing as opponents, your starter cars are highly capable of winning races and racking up carnage in Destruction events, which can help a lot when trying to afford better vehicles early on in Mission Mode. The Warrior is also the best vehicle for the Trampoline minigame, providing a great opportunity for fast cash when trying to afford endgame vehicles.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Cars explode violently after being launched great distances, and the player's car will explode in Survival when it runs out of health. Traffic cars in Destruction and especially Dynamite events will also blow up, which can cause chain reactions of explosions that cascade down the track.
- Teaser Equipment: The Wyvern, God Hand, Ouroboros and Nidhog are all available from the start of the game, but are so comically expensive compared to the paltry event payouts that you won't be able to feasibly afford them until much later on.
- Tier System: The vehicle classes roughly determine how capable a car is of throwing other cars around; a car from a higher tier can toss around lower-tier cars with ease, lower-tier cars can barely scratch higher tiers, and cars within the same tier mostly boil down to whoever's moving faster at the time of impact. In order, the tiers are Sport, Vintage, SUV, and Heavy.
- Unexpected Shmup Level: The bonus Nerai mini-game, a primitive 2D shooter where you shoot road cones and try to go for a high score.
- Vehicular Combat: Racing in Sideswiped is gratuitously full-contact; cars can be hit, crushed, and even launched hundreds of feet into the air or down the track depending on the aggressor and the severity of the collision. Smashing your opposition to pieces is either encouraged or outright required depending on the nature of the event. The player must also upgrade or purchase new vehicles to tackle ever more difficult challenges, with many events depending on the player being able to bring the right car for the job.
- Wacky Racing: Even before getting into the special racing modes, Sideswiped leans hard into driving insanity with wildly unrealistic physics, along with ridiculous vehicle choices including an armored truck and a bulldozer. Every vehicle is equipped with occasionally infinite boost, as well.
- Wreaking Havok: Destruction and Dynamite events both involve you causing as much chaos as possible, launching cars down roads to cause chain reactions of explosions for points. Especially true in Dynamite, where it's far easier to make traffic vehicles explode.
