When you first start the game, you’ll already notice that practically nothing has changed… And that goes for the rest of the game. The single player mode exists of three difficulties (easy, medium and hard) with each of them having exactly (and with exactly I mean exactly… as in there being no difference what so ever) the same tournaments to race in. The same tracks, same goals, … In other words, boring from the start!

To go somewhat deeper into the tournament aspect, we find battle cups or regular time trials. In those battle cups you’re supposed to deplete the opponent’s ‘health bar’ and fill yours. You can do so by ramming your opponents off the back end of the screen, just destroying their car or hope they’re stupid enough to drive themselves out of sight. If you manage to become the last car on the track, you’ll earn (depending on the amount of racers) one or two points. If you drop yourself off the road or screen it’ll be you losing those points and the opposition will be the one winning them. The regular races are actually more like time trials, or checkpoint races. In this mode you’ll just have to make sure you reach the finish lime within the given time limit.

So the single player is all but a big success, how about the multiplayer? In the good old days, Micro Machines was one of the most popular games to play in multiplayer. Ramming each other of the road, laughing when someone does something totally ridiculous like driving of the road on a straight peace of mommy’s ironing board. Luckily this fun-factor has returned to the DS as well, but because of the limited options the fun isn’t bound to last long. It’s the single player all over again, but with real players being your opponents.

When we’re talking graphics, MM V4 is nothing out of the ordinary, just an average game. No great amount of textures (which in some cases have been stretched to their limit) and that in turn leads to little detail. I’ve seen better things being thrown on the DS screens then the stuff V4 is showing here. One thing to say about the graphics: average.

The sound on the other hand is a lot better! Again not the best I’ve heard, but most certainly not the worst either. The effects sounds relatively realistic (as far as we can talk about realism in this game of course), the soundtrack… that’s a whole different story again. Those typical arcade songs which drive you totally crazy after having heard them for over ten minutes.