Good top down racers are a rare commodity these days. The first few times you play Karnaaj you’re instantly reminded of such games as Micro Machines and RC Pro-Am. The top down perspective uses a mix of 2D and 3D features along with a good racing engine with tight controls and excellent driving physics, all equaling out to be a good time on the tracks.

One look at the box for Karnaaj is enough to make anyone visiting their local game store turn away for something with prettier box art. Inside the box however, is something of a graphical treat. The combination of 2D racers gunning around polygonal track objects that move in and out of your perspective gives the graphics a much more convincing sense of depth than the average top-down racer. Little graphical gems such as tire tracks, kicked up dust, boulders in the road that impede your speed, and audience members and seals to run over add greatly to the visual experience. The only bad thing about the graphics would have to be the in-game images of the characters, which are poorly digitized versions of the creators of the game making goofy faces and looking “cool.”

The sound in the game is nothing to call home about, but does include some upbeat tracks and decent sound effects such as missile firing, explosions, and car engines. There’s enough variety to keep things fresh through most of the experience and not sound repetitive.

The racing starts out relatively easy, starting with vehicles that look like they’ve come straight out of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble’s garage. Each season consists of a different amount of races, depending on the amount of tracks for that season. Whatever the amount of tracks per season, the number of races is doubled since you race each track twice, one race going backwards on the track. As you progress through a season, you earn money through wins, coins collected on the track, and money won through betting on the races. Using the money you win, you can upgrade your car’s engine for speed, tires for traction, and armor to take hits better from missiles and mines. Speaking of which, you can also purchase weapons with your funds, loading up on rockets and mines to help overtake the lead when things aren’t going as planned. Take too many hits from other racers’ arsenals, however, and you can blow up just as easy. Damage carries over from race to race, so you can also spend some of your hard earned cash to repair your car in between races. Betting is a nice way to pad your wallet. Although it’s not as important in early on, it becomes a factor in later seasons, when you need every dollar possible to afford that next upgrade to keep up with the pack. Bets consist of simple tasks, such as placing first in a race or beating a track record as well as bets with higher odds, such as guessing the placing order of the next race or betting against whether someone will finish the race or not. Usually, you determine the fate of that last bet, using your arsenal of missiles and mines to make sure he doesn’t finish, and laughing all the way to the bank.

Of course, the competition isn’t going to just lay in the middle of the road for you while you pound them with missiles. The computer AI in the game is actually pretty challenging at times. They’ll cut you off with no remorse, push you off the side of the road, and stuff missile after missile up your tailpipe. Sometimes they can become downright frustrating, firing a missle square at you from what seems like two full screens over, ending up with your car screeching off the side of the road. It’s the kind of thing that continues the tradition of ‘cheating’ computers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun blowing them away when you finally catch up. It’s a great challenge that makes the races incredibly fun from start to finish.

Multiplayer action is just as good, if not better. Nothing beats linking up with three friends, racing along the tracks, and laying down a cheap mine just as you and your friend are fighting for first place. The main game includes eighteen tracks to race on, as well as four additional multiplayer-only tracks, making for plenty of fresh racing every time you link up.

One of the best parts about Karnaaj is quite possibly the price. The game can be found new in most places for less than $10, making most people wonder how such a great game could be released at such a bargain price. The fact that the game is so cheap makes it easy to plunk down the change for you and a few friends to enjoy some serious racing that’s almost as much multiplayer fun as you’d get from games like Mario Kart and F-Zero.

One last nifty feature the developers managed to squeeze into the game is Internet ranking. Taking from either your seasonal races or quick race times, you can go to www.karnaaj.com and enter a 16-character code to have your name and best times displayed on the hall of records. It’s a neat way to keep you racing, always trying to shave a few seconds off of your time to reach number one. I’ll never figure out why games like Namco Museum, which is all about attaining a high score, don’t have such a feature.

There are some things missing from Karnaaj such as a way to keep cars from previous seasons and a section detailing your achievements for all of the races. These are minor complaints, however, and don’t detract one bit from the game. Paragon 5 and Infinite Dreams did an absolutely bang-up job on this outing, even with the ugly box art.