Unirally:

Platform: SNES
Developer: DMA Design
Released: 1994 (North America), 1995 (PAL regions)

I got a bit of a shock when I first met SNES owners who had never heard of this game. “YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF UNIRALLY? BUT IT’S A CLASSIC! EVERYONE’S PLAYED IT!” and so on. On further reflection, maybe this game wasn’t as big as I thought it was. In fact, this may have been my first encounter with a game that received loads of critical acclaim but no-one actually played. You know, like every game that Tim Schafer makes. Nonetheless, it was a game worth playing.

Unirally, or Uniracers if you lived in North America, was a 2D racing game where you played as living unicycles. You press left or right to move in that direction, and you have to reach the finish line before your opponent. It was a fairly simple concept, with one major distinguishing feature- stunts. The tracks were covered in jumps, and the idea was that performing and landing stunts would cause you to gain speed. Remember those twisting backflip jumps that aerial skiier Alisa Camplin did to win a Gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics? Yeah, you’ll be doing that quite a lot.

Split screen was pure fun

But stunts weren’t the only reason this game was good, because Unirally was one of those games that delivered on all fronts. The graphics were created with the same kind of 3D rendering technology that was used to make Donkey Kong Country, and the results were amazing. Not only did the game have a unique look, but the colours of the track had a practical purpose by advising you when to jump, when to stay grounded, and so on. The game also had a memorable soundtrack, responsive controls and excellent track design, and despite the extremely high speed of the game, the frame rate never dropped. It never even looked like dropping. It was just fast, functional and beautiful, all at once, all the time.

As well as a two-player mode, the game had a single player mode which was split into Cups or Tours or somesuch, with five tracks per Cup. The unlocked tracks could be done in any order, but a certain number of tracks had to be completed to unlock the next Cup. Aside from the stunt tracks (one per Cup) where you had to reach a certain score to win, the tracks were races against computer-controlled unicycles where you had to finish first to win. The unicycles themselves came in all sorts of different colours and you could rename them whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. This meant that you could choose your favourite colour of unicycle, give it a name and get attached to it… or you could just give them all funny names for no reason. Either way is cool.

Screenshots really don't do justice to this game

This game was developed by DMA Design, who went on to become Rockstar North and develop the highly successful Grand Theft Auto series of games. Unirally definitely contains all the hallmarks of a good Rockstar game, because it’s funny (well, the instruction manual is), it’s cool, it’s different, it’s polished, and above all it’s fun.

With so much critical acclaim and such a huge company backing it, how come this game has never achieved mainstream success? The answer lies in an animated short film by Pixar (yes, the same Pixar that made Toy Story) called Red’s Dream. Pixar sued DMA on the grounds that Unirally was a rip-off of Red’s Dream, even though the only thing the game and the film have in common is the presence of unicycles. Such a lawsuit might be called frivolous by today’s standards, but surprisingly, Pixar ended up winning. Production of the game was cancelled as a result, meaning that only 300,000 copies of the game were ever made. It also explains why Rockstar North never re-released the game on Virtual Console or anything like that. To date, this is the only recorded evidence that Pixar could be evil.

It’s a real shame too, because Unirally is brilliant in so many ways. It’s a one-of-a-kind game with top-notch gameplay and world-class production values. If you have a SNES, get this game. If you don’t have a SNES, start a petition to get it re-released on Virtual Console. It really is that good.