I have no idea what is going on with the Fast & Furious movies. I watched the first two, pretty good flicks about an undercover cop trying to infiltrate an illegal street racing gang. Nothing deep, but still entertaining. I tune out for a bit and the next thing I know, there are 75 films, Vin Diesel keeps saying “family” very fifth word, dead characters come back to life, and they’re going into space. No idea what the fuck is going on. Anyway, GameMill Entertainment and Cradle Games have Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition for me to review.

“Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition delivers high-speed racing and adrenaline-fueled action straight from the arcade to console! Choose from licensed supercars and tear through intense, cinematic tracks packed with shortcuts, stunts, missions, and explosive surprises. Race solo or go head-to-head in thrilling 2-player split-screen. With drifting, nitro boosts, and precision driving, this is the ultimate pick-up-and-play racing experience for fans of pure, unfiltered speed!”

Originally released in the arcade back in 2022 and developed by Raw Thrills. The game was based on the more recent films, so far and away from the humble street racing it once was. We’re talking ridiculously over-the-top car stunts, insane jumps and explosions so big that they have Michael Bay suggesting dialling it back a tad. As I said in the intro, I have no idea what is going on in the movies these days, but the clips I have seen look like something out of a videogame. Anyway, that arcade game is now available on all the consoles… no PC.

What you get with Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition is pure, unashamed arcade action. You get six tracks to race around, based on various locations around the globe such as Colombia, Hong Kong, Havana and others. Then there are the licenced cars, eight of them that do look like that have been pulled right out of the movie franchise that the game is based on. Yeah, this is definitely Fast & Furious. Okay, so you know how I called them “tracks” before? That’s not what the game calls them, they’re “missions” as each mission (track) has a set goal. Maybe you need to nab some gold, defuse a bomb (by driving into it so it explodes?), derail a train, stop a missile launch. Anyway, these missions are split into two laps and at the end of the second lap, you’re led to the mission goal. You have to finish first in every mission to complete it. There’s no second places here. First or fail.

As I mentioned before, the arcade version was developed by Raw Thrills. Did you ever play 2021’s Cruis’n Blast, also from Raw Thrills? Because that’s basically what Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition, just with the Fast & Furious movie licence… with fewer races and cars. Just like Cruis’n Blast, the races are ridiculously over-the-top. Massive jumps, stunts, changeable routes, shortcuts and action-packed set pieces. You can be speeding around and an airplane will drop tanks on parachutes, that will then proceeded to shoot the crap out of the scenery and cause racks to fall. Apache attack helicopters will fire missiles at you while you do a 600ft jump. Tankers explode and go flying into the air, and more. It is ridiculous.

The missions themselves really are the star here. But the most important thing of any driving game is how the racing plays and feels. Here come my gripes. All of the cars, all of them, have massive oversteer. All you have to do is slightly move the stick and the car will suddenly snap into a 35-degree angle. There is an option to reduce the sensitively, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. Even on the lowest setting, the cars still massively oversteer. Yet, the cars themselves don’t handle as the animation suggests. It’s very weird and takes a while to get used to, but I did get used to it. No, this isn’t drifting because that works separately. Even when taking a simple, slight curve, the car snapping into the 35-degree angle happens and it throws you off. The sound effects don’t match up with what the car is doing either. As an example, I was driving a car that topped out at 150mph, the speedometer displayed the top speed too, I could not go any faster. However, the sound effects still had the car’s revs increasing up and even changing up through gears. It’s very disorientating, am I going faster than 150mph or not? the Graphics say no, but the sound effects say yes.

Get ready for a lengthy and multi-rant over one gameplay mechanic. You know what rubber banding is in racing games, right? It’s when the AI controlled cars stick close to you, no matter how well you drive. The rubber banding here is massively off the charts. You can only progress through the pack and gain track positions when the game lets you. Allow me to explain. For all of lap one, you will not be allowed to go any higher than the back three positions. It does not matter how well you drive, the game just will not let you go any higher. For lap two, the game allows you to get in the middle of the pack for most of the race. You’ll be allowed to get up to 3rd position (no higher) as you come close to the end and reach the goal. When you are a few seconds away from the finish, a timer appears and then, and only then, will the game let you progress to 2nd and 1st place. Again, it does not matter how well you drive, this is how it works for every single race. Oh, the AI might make a very rare mistake and, lets say, you manage to get up to 2nd place before you are meant to. This is when the rubber banding kicks into overdrive and the AI cars will scream past you like you are standing still… even when you are going top speed.

You can take the AI cars out by slamming them into scenery, landing on them after a jump, or using a shockwave powerup that you will find on the track. Even so, due to the rubber banding, the game will not let you gain a position when you are not meant to. Take out an AI car, watch it explode and less than a second later, it’ll speed past you to take back that position, or even spawn in front of you. Shortcuts don’t work either for the same reason. You can not gain a position by taking a shortcut and the cars going the longer route will stay ahead of you, meaning that the shortcuts are pointless.

This insane rubber banding does make finishing each race in 1st place really easy though. It took me a while to notice the pattern I described above, but once I did, I soon realised how to win every race, every time. Your car is given three nitros and as the game’s rubber banding forces you to follow a strict racing pattern, you don’t need to use the nitros until the end. Just do that first lap being forced into the last three positions, do lap two and make your way into the middle of the pack, wait until near the end when the game lets you get into 3rd place. Then, wait for the timer to appear to indicate that you are close to the end… just spam the nitros and you’ll be in 1st place every time. It doesn’t matter which mission you do or what car you chose to drive, this method works every single time because of the strict rubber banding. If you use the nitros earlier in the race, the AI cars will match your speed even when they don’t use nitros, rendering the use of then nitros utterly redundant until the end. I don’t think I have ever witnessed rubber banding this severe before in a racing game. It breaks everything.

Now, I only played the arcade game once about two years ago, so I am not exactly well experienced on how it was. However, I don’t remember it being this “janky”. I remember having a lot of fun with it and the cars driving pretty well. Yeah, it’s an arcade cabinet and they are designed to eat your coins first and foremost, but I’m pretty sure that the arcade version from Raw Thrills played better than this console port from Cradle Games does. Another disappointment with Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition is that, in terms of content, it is a one-to-one port of the arcade version. You don’t get any new missions, no new cars. You get exactly what the arcade game gave you and nothing more. The game modes are very slim. You get a single player and a split screen two player option, that’s it. It really is bare bones and it does feel underwhelming for a console version. The music is terrible too, I had to turn it off.

So yeah, I have some pretty major gripes with this one. The car handling is off, the rubber banding totally breaks the game, and the gameplay options are pretty much non-existent. When you finish each mission with a car, you unlock the “furious” version of it, which gives you 10 nitros (even though it is pointless using them until the last few seconds). You’ll also unlock “extreme” mode of the races. Now, I’m not even sure what extreme mode does. I did play through the races multiple, times with the same car to get it up to x3 extreme but I didn’t notice any difference at all. The missions were exactly the same, the AI cars were the same, the rubber banding was the same and the same trick to win worked too. I have no idea what extreme mode is or does.

However, even with the issues that I’ve mentioned, I do have to admit that the over-the-top missions, the stupid set pieces and action are addictive and immense fun. It’s a damn shame that the rubber banding destroys the racing enjoyment, but the ridiculous missions themselves are adrenaline pumping. It would’ve been nice to have been some new tracks and cars for the console version, and some more interesting gameplay modes. I wouldn’t describe Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition as a terrible game, it has lot of issues and I do think that the port should’ve been catered for console/home play instead of it being trying to be a direct arcade port… but I did have some short-lived fun with it. Maybe pick it up on sale?