Kids watch the weirdest stuff. Of course, our parents said the same thing about us when we were watching pizza-eating turtles and a talking rat, but still. One of the more recent animated series is Dragon Booster. Originally a Canadian series, it recently showed up on ABC and Disney. On a recent road trip, I even spotted some Dragon Booster Happy Meal toys while waiting for my Egg McMuffin. This obviously can only mean one thing: it’s time to make a licensed video game.

Dragon Booster is best explained as a racer on rails. You select a rider and a dragon and then race them against other competitors. Here’s where things get odd. Unlike most racers where you might hold a button to accelerate or break, you don’t get that luxury here. Instead you’ll be selecting between three different options: slow, medium and fast. At the same time, you’ll need to manage your energy level; if you go too fast for too long, you’ll need to slow down and recharge, but going slow for too long doesn’t win races.

You’ll use your D-Pad to control the dragon in all other situations, and tapping on your dragon will make him jump.  While racing, you’ll be presented with targets to tap. Some are obstacles, which are eliminated when tapped, while others are switches which will open up gates or disable traps. You’ll also be tapping away at power-ups. These are used in conjunction with the different items with which you equip yourself and your dragon. Finally, you’ll be able to tap other dragons either to defend yourself, or to punch them in the face and advance. In general, you’re just frantically tapping the hell out of your DS; you could probably put a hole in the touch screen if you’re not careful.

Racing is not very fun when you don’t have control over the speed of whatever vehicle or mythical character you’re driving. I found myself constantly realizing that I was using the “Fast” setting too much and draining my Dragon’s energy. It quickly became an energy management simulation, which kept me distracted from destroying obstacles and beating down dragons. Not that it really matters, because the best strategy turned out to be just crushing through everything. Every time I tried to take out obstacles and create a path, it seemed to actually slow me down, especially when taking out an obstacle only put me into a pit or off a cliff.

After each race that you win, you get some coin which can be used to purchase a variety of offensive and defensive items for yourself and your dragon.  These items really change the way you play the game, allowing you to throw up a shield or shoot fireballs at enemies. A shield will allow you to bust on through pretty much everything, from another dragon to a wall. You just need to keep tapping the power-ups on the track so that you can activate your equipment over and over again. As long as you’ve got power, you can just try barreling through just about everything.

The game features two mini-games that allow you to hone your skills and earn some cash at the same time. One is basically a skeet shooting exhibition, while the other is supposed to be a head-to-head race / fight. The target shooting was actually kind of neat for five minutes. Basically, you shoot your targets and your opponent shoots his or hers during a set period of time. Sporadically, a bonus marker will appear that either of you can shoot. It would’ve been a bit more fun with some new difficulty levels and if targets were evenly distributed. It’s hard to beat your opponent when he gets ten more targets to shoot. The fighting “game” was laughable. Just keep tapping the dragon’s head and hope you win.

I had high hopes for the graphics, especially from the menus which feature cool-looking cel-shaded 3D dragons. But once I started playing the game, things became pixilated and horrendous with sporadic slow-down. This is surprising since this is a racer with an engine that doesn’t really do too much. The sound was okay at best, but doesn’t do much for the experience.

Overall: 2/10

Sadly, Dragon Booster is a marriage of two design questions with frequently unfortunate answers: “Hey we’ve got two screens and you can touch one of them, what do we do?” and “Hey, what do we do with this license?” Konami would’ve been better off creating a kart racer and slapping dragons on it than trying to do something unique with this mess.  It’s sad when I enjoyed the target mini-game more than the actual game itself. This one is dead on arrival except to maybe the blindest of Dragon Booster fans.