This review is an updated version of the version that appeared in the 2022 Games review.

Other than Power Pete and Bugdom I haven't been a big fan of Pangea Software games. It was revealed in an interview that Power Pete had to be cut down from its original concept (the whole name of Bargain Bin seems to be done late in development, having renamed from "Games Gallery" and offers a glimpse of what could've been). Billy Frontier suffers the hardest as it got completely mangled somewhere in the transition from original game to marketable concept, and while Cro-Mag Rally (originally released in 2000 and re-released in 2022 as an open-source port) is a marketable concept it too suffers much from cuts.

On the surface, it's a bit like a ripoff of Mario Kart, a themed racing kart game with items to manipulate the standing of the races. While it is a port made by Jorio and excellent on a mechanical level while bringing old Mac games into modernity without compromising the core vision, CMR, in its original form, cannot execute on its premise without major frustrations.

• The first problem is that the physics are awful. You will be slipping around constantly in your "Bone Buggy" or what have you, so just getting the hang of your vehicle is a challenge in itself. You can tweak the physics to make it more manageable but these changes will block any new time challenges and progress.
• The second problem is that the first course, Desert, is way too long and hazardous, taking over 4 minutes for a single race. If you want something like Nintendo, the first course is supposed to be fairly easy with long straightaways and curves, while showing off the physics of what the game can actually do.
• The third problem is that the items aren't very good. You have a couple of power-ups but in terms of offenses, all you have are "Bone Bombs" and Oil Slicks (they're different in later levels). The former is never going to aim properly, and there's no guided-assist versions like Red or Purple Shells. You also can't have oils and bones at the same time, you lose them the second you get one of the other type.
• The fourth problem is that the tournament progress is way harder than it needs to be. It's not good enough to be in the top 3, you can't pass unless you also collect eight arrowheads, which are easily missed and not well marked.

Going a bit deeper, the other problem that really stands out is that it feels so incomplete. I enjoyed The Cutting Room Floor before the admin went insane, and many of the games profiled there have cuts so obvious they have stitches visible when they come out to retail (Nintendo generally does a great job at smoothing out cut content so it's less obvious—exceptions exist, of course). The idea seems to be that you move through early civilization with the courses, ending around the Bronze Age, but it kind of seems to trail off at that point, and even in Crete, you still don't have any characters besides the caveman and cavewoman (Brog and Grag). The Jorio port tries to improve that somewhat with additional clothing choices based after multiplayer palette swaps but it's still the same two models, and they're both ugly, even for late 1990s cavemen models.

Given that in one course (Atlantis), the carts are switched out for submarines with a different control scheme, maybe the original plan was that there was more of a pronounced time travel element and they'd have different clothing as they went through time (as well as other time-appropriate racers), but if there was ever a point that happened it all got cut for what we have today...which is a shame because it would have distinguished it from something like Mario Kart into its own identity.

That being said, I should ALSO mention around 2008 it was re-released for iPhone and mobile systems. I'm not sure if it's available anymore but it was essentially still the same game.

FINAL RATING:   

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