Movie tie-ins generally suffer from incompatible cross-medium translations, but Speed Racer had a distinct possibility of breaking the trend – mainly because the game need be nothing more than a futuristic racer. Which is why it’s a particular shame that the game of the movie doesn’t really come up to scratch.

There’s some validity to the argument that Speed Racer isn’t the valuable franchise it once was, of course. This was a concept born in the Sixties and richly laced with, at the time, vibrant pop-culture references; from homages to movie greats like Toshiro Mifune and triple word plays to the number five, high speed racing and the main character’s nature all within the original Japanese title. But those essential quirks that made Speed Racer so invigorating and dynamic are now 40 years out of date, so any modern translation is going to be fundamentally flawed, and forced to rely on a somewhat unconvincing, ultramodern and superficial concept of a boy and his car.

While this might make for an uninspired, shallow firework show of a movie it could be made to work as a game. And it many respects it does. Somewhat akin to Wipeout or the recent Sonic Riders game, Speed Racer initially succeeds in a variety of different aspects. The cars, racers and tracks are all beautifully rendered, and while a few games have previously dabbled with the concept of impossibly winding anti-gravity racing circuits, few have done it as beautifully as seen here.

It’s these sprawling, spiralling, twisting, bending, awe-inspiring tracks that are as near to a saving grace as the Speed Racer game gets; each with its own vividly decorated, plastic-esque surface material leaping off the screen and weaving a psychedelic thread of potentially high-octane action through the many levels. Unfortunately, the cars don’t quite deliver on that promise of break-neck vivacity.

What’s most immediately (and terminally) noticeable about Speed Racer is that, ironically, it’s simply too slow. The cars fairly meander up to speed, and even then it feels like a leisurely saunter around a country road while adhering strictly to the speed limits. Your thumb quickly begins to ache as you involuntarily press the button extra hard in an attempt to coax some semblance of speed from the old’s mobile you’re pottering down the motorway in. This isn’t to suggest that the game’s code is struggling to run – the Wii handles the expansive tracks and dazzling effects without breaking a sweat. Instead, it appears to have been a conscious decision on the part of the developers to reign in the high-speed action. It feels as though the game should come with a complimentary flat cap and pair of string-back driving gloves.

Which is undoubtedly related to another inherent problem suffered by movie tie-ins. The licensors inevitably want to encourage all types of gamer to quickly and unquestioningly climb aboard their all-new band wagon, and therefore don’t want a game adaptation to cater for one particular demographic more than others – nor challenge the curious and casual Speed Racer fans too much. What’s left, after such aggressive micro-management of a game development is generally too tepid to appeal to anyone, let alone the broad demographic originally targeted.

So Speed Racer’s dawdling pace smacks of a corporately made decision to ‘increase accessibility’, but ultimately only results in a game so watered down it becomes an uninspired exercise in meandering through the levels. Even though most relatively experienced gamers expect such things from a movie tie-in, in the case of Speed Racer it all feels especially tragic. Not because the film looks so great (in this reviewer’s opinion the film looks bloody awful), but because most everything else, aside from the gameplay, has been done so well. The control system works great with the newly introduced Wii-wheel, and doesn’t feel at all awkward using the Wii-mote by its ‘handlebar’ method – both providing a slick and accurate steering mechanism for the unfortunately steady vehicles.

What could have been a fun and elaborately decorated distraction is let down by the strange decision to keep the action as sedate as possible; robbing the once majestic figure of the Speed Racer of his glory and his namesake.