Tube Slider is a void in my brain. I’m not exactly sure what to make of it. Basically, it’s a futuristic racer very much in the vein of F-Zero. On the one hand, I know that the people who made this game, NDcube, also made one of my favorite games on the GBA, F-Zero: Maximum Velocity. On the other hand, I feel that this game may have been an abandoned model for the GameCube F-Zero that existed before Sega took the reigns. Although I doubt the validity of my reasoning, it wouldn’t surprise me if Tube Slider was at one point F-Zero. The contrast of what Tube Slider could have been to what it is creates a confusing product with so much wasted potential.

The graphics of Tube Slider are something of a mixed bag (which you will soon find out is the theme of this review). The ship models are finely detailed, yet not very appealing, and some border on generic. The backgrounds in the races look gorgeous and fantastic, but since the race takes place inside tubes, the bars of the tubes get in the way of your ogling to remind you that you are in the race. It sorta looks like you are racing through a really long jail. The effects are nice, but lack any oomph. The framerate is very steady and never seems to drop for any reason.

Tube Slider’s sound is also varied in quality. Some of the music is pretty catchy, whereas other tracks are pretty ho-hum techno riffs. The sound effects are weird. There is a low hiss/whistle that your futuristic hovercraft makes, which kinda gets annoying after you hear it over extended play. The result is futuristic cyber-style sounds with a somewhat chunky execution.

Control is actually the only thing Tube Slider gets completely right. The button layout is intuitive and responsive, which is good because actually winning the race takes a lot of memorization and reflexes. No problems here, except a general looseness when trying to recover.

Now we get to the meat of the matter. Tube Slider has refreshingly new ideas crammed into a stale execution of a racing game. Usually, you would expect the future of racing to be fast and furious, but the sense of speed just isn’t there. You can unlock a mode later that increases the speed of all the ships, but the end result is not good enough. The speedometer would tell me 1299 mph, but I would be hard-pressed to believe I was actually going that fast. The lock-on feature, which allows you to siphon boost energy from your opponents, is actually very clever. However, the times you can utilize this feature effectively are very seldom, and usually, you reap no benefit from trying. There are only ten courses, and they are all tubes (surprised?). The problem with this tube emphasis is that despite the “gravity-defying” claim of Tube Slider, gravity is still in effect. Its presence means the entire strategy of racing in Tube Slider is to try to stay at the lowest point possible. And should you accidentally curl up onto the roof, you slow down for no reason, and the control loosens. Tube Slider is more difficult than it has to be, because winning often demands perfection on your part. One screw-up and you are whisked from first place to sixth, even on the easiest setting. It’s not the kind of difficulty you want to have in a racing game.

The multiplayer is nothing to write home about. The training mode is pretty good if you have your heart set on winning, because it teaches you how to take the perfect path. In the end, Tube Slider had a lot of potential and new ideas, but the game is somewhat lacking in execution.