LEGO Racers



LEGO Racers consists of games with, as the title suggests, LEGO people in LEGO cars racing each other.

Similar to the Mario Kart series, you can use weapons to help you. In this case you collect colored blocks for different types of power-ups, and collect white blocks to upgrade power-ups. Red are projectiles-like weapons, yellow are traps, blue blocks are defensive shields, and green blocks are speed boosts. To the point that these exact type of pickups are ripped straight out of Diddy Kong Racing.

LEGO Racers also contains a build mode, for which you can build your own characters and cars. As you defeat more racers, you gain more pieces to use to make more characters and vehicles.

Along with introducing some old LEGO Set characters like Johnny Thunder, this is where Rocket Racer comes from - he claims to be the best racer and you must work your way up to beat him.

It received a sequel, in which Rocket Racer, after his defeat in the first game, has once again worked his way to the top and you have to defeat him again. On the planet Xalax.

These games provide examples of the following tropes:

 * Always Night: Dark Forest Dash and possibly Pirate Skull Pass and Alien Rally Asteroid.
 * Aliens Speaking English: Gypsy Moth speaks perfect English.
 * Anachronism Stew: Kings, pirates, adventurers, space racers, and pharaohs all racing together. It's a world of toys, after all.
 * And Your Reward Is A Cool Car: In the first game, you get to use the entire Cool Car set of the newest champion, assuming that you achieve first place. Dropped in the second; beating champions means extra upgrades for your car.
 * A Winner Is You / Bragging Rights Reward: What do you get after spending tons of time looking for all the golden bricks scattered throughout the maps in the second game? Fireworks.
 * Built With Lego
 * The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The second has the same mechanic from Mario Kart in which whenever there's an AI opponent behind you, it starts gaining an enormous amount of speed to catch up. Except that it can be turned off. Then there's Reigel and the Berg mentioned on the YMMV tab.
 * Inverted in the first game, as AI racers won't take any of the shortcuts, even if the player already opened them up.
 * Convection, Schmonvection: Adventure Temple Trail features a large lava pit next to the track at the lowest point in the map, complete with minecarts with skeletons inside falling into the lava. Doesn't effect the drivers in the slightest.
 * Driving Game
 * Deflector Shields: The blue brick. The third and fourth levels have Attack Reflector bonuses against any racer who used a cannonball or a missile.
 * Dummied Out: The Knightmare-Athon short-cut was removed completely, but there are still power-ups intact from where it used to be.
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin
 * Funetik Aksent: Baron Von Barron's text is spelled with V's instead of W's, Z's instead of S's, and U's instead of A's.
 * Flying Saucer: It will get you if you don't use a blue brick.
 * Go-Karting with Bowser: Or, rather, Basil the Batlord and Baron von Barron.
 * Homing Projectile: The red power-ups in the first game, the homing missile in the second.
 * Humanoid Aliens: Gypsy Moth and Alpha Draconis/Dragonis
 * Interface Screw: When the yellow brick is fully charged up, it'll lay down a "Mummy's Curse" that will cause this.
 * LEGO: Duh.
 * Luck-Based Mission: Like Mario Kart, the races can sometimes become this.
 * MacGuffin: The golden bricks in the second game.
 * Macross Missile Massacre: Level Up the red brick in Racers to the fourth and you get to launch three devastating, high-speed, Roboteching missiles at once.
 * Missing Secret: The Knightmare-athon shortcut, which was Dummied Out, but still shown on the load screen.
 * My Name Is Not Durwood: A common misconception is Sam Sinister's name, which is mistakenly spelled "Sanister" in the second Racers game. Of course, his actual name was never made clear in the first place.
 * Nintendo Hard: Good luck in the latter races of the first game.
 * Palmtree Panic: Imperial Grand Prix and Tribal Island Trail.
 * Pirate: Captain Redbeard
 * Power-Up: Power bricks show up in both iterations, but work rather diferently.
 * Racers has a four-color brick system and implements a fifth color, white, to essentially Level Up the effect of the other four colors.
 * Racers 2 has only one sort of brick which, like Wipeout, randomly decides the power up a racer will gain depending on the position of the racer in the track. Losing racers usually get strong, offensive Area of Effect bricks which devastate other racers' cars if used in close proximity. Winning racers get weak, defensive bricks like invisibility cloaks to avoid missile lock ons and maintain the racers' current positions.
 * Rewarding Vandalism: This tends to open shortcuts and some even have enough white and green bricks to upgrade to warp turbo boost.
 * Recycled in Space: LEGO Racers 2 is LEGO Racers...
 * Rollercoaster Mine: While you can't ride on it yourself, you can see the end of one in Adventure Temple Trail.
 * Suspiciously Similar Substitute: This game is quite similar to Diddy Kong Racing's gameplay engine, and even the power-ups. But besides that, it's unique with courses, characters, and a build option.
 * Rubber Band AI: Interesting in that only the Boss Racers seems to have it in the original.
 * Save Game Limits: The N64 version required a nearly-empty Memory Pak to store your data. Otherwise, it was literally impossible to save your game.
 * Shifting Sand Land: Desert Adventure Dragway.
 * Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Ice Planet Pathway.
 * Arctic in the second.
 * Speaking Simlish: In LEGO Racers 2.
 * 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.
 * Urban Legend of Zelda: The supposed "Truck Driver" cheat. It was once rumored that if you make a character named "Truck Driver" and beat Rocket Racer with him, you'd unlock a super secret car. It's been confirmed false.
 * The Von Trope Family: Baron Von Barron, natch.
 * Vocal Dissonance: The PC version mixed up the voices of several opponents. While Rob-N-Hood speaking with the voice of Captain Redbeard isn't much of a deal, hearing Willa the Witch Talk Like a Pirate in the grumpy voice of Blackjack Hawkins is all kinds of wrong.
 * Wacky Racing
 * Weapon of Choice: In the first game, each boss racer favors a particular brick type. It's very noticeable in-game.
 * Captain Redbeard prefers red bricks, especially the cannonball.
 * King Kahuna prefers blue bricks, usually first level shields and sometimes second level shields.
 * Basil the Bat Lord uses them all dangerously well, but appears to ever so slightly prefer green bricks.
 * Johnny Thunder prefers red bricks, particularly the grappling hook.
 * Baron Von Barron prefers blue bricks. Especially the third level shield.
 * Gypsy Moth uses red bricks the most, usually devastating the racers with Rockets, but will often go with anything she can get.
 * Rocket Racer only picks up green bricks unless you prevent him from getting any, which is when he'll use rockets instead. He prefers the infamous warp turbo boost. Good luck, you'll need it.