Rock N' Roll Racing

Characters
Jake Badlands or Tarquinn are the best racers for new players, and are powerhouses early in the game while control of your car is poor. Snake becomes the all-around best character once you buy the Battle Trak, which has great handling no matter who you are, but a rookie or even average player may not want to wait that long.

Each character has two skills. Here's a quick evaluation of each skill:
 * Acceleration: Gets you to top speed faster. Good for recovering from mistakes, and almost a must-have for someone without cornering.
 * Cornering: Makes it easier to navigate turns. This is far more valuable than it sounds... compare Snake and Jake (in any car other than the Battle Trak) and you'll see why.
 * Top Speed: Leave the competition in the dust!
 * Jumping: Reduces impact from landing, so bumpy roads don't give a bumpy ride.

Snake Sanders

 * Homeland: Terra
 * Skills: Acceleration, Top Speed

Snake is the game's speed demon. However, he'll have handling problems early in the game with all that speed but no cornering, so he is definitely not good for newbies.

Jake Badlands

 * Homeworld: Xeno Prime
 * Skills: Acceleration, Cornering

Jake is the best character for a new player. Cornering is a solid trait, because being able to turn corners quickly and reliably without losing much speed will gain much more overall speed than a higher top speed. This combined with acceleration is great, since when you do make a mistake and slow down, you can recover quickly.

Olaf (secret!)

 * Homeworld: Valhalla
 * Skills: Acceleration, Top Speed, Cornering

A combination of Snake and Jake with no weaknesses. Obviously, there would be little reason not to pick Olaf if he weren't a secret character, as he has the top three abilities. Of course, because of this he is unbalanced with the other characters, so using him is sort of "cheating".

Cars
Be warned that when you buy a new car, you will lose all your upgrades for your previous car. You cannot sell your upgrades or your old car, so buying a new car is a big, but necessary, investment.

Dirt Devil

 * Cost: $18,000
 * Armaments:
 * Offense (Y): VK Plasma Rifles
 * Defense (A): BF's Slipsauce
 * Assist (X): Locust Jump Jets

Slower than Marauder, better handling. Waste of time, though. :)

Marauder

 * Cost: $18,000
 * Armaments:
 * Offense (Y): VK Plasma Rifles
 * Defense (A): BF's Slipsauce
 * Assist (X): Locust Jump Jets

Faster than Dirt Devil, looser handling.

Generally prefer the Marauder to the Dirt Devil, especially if your character has the cornering skill.

Air Blade

 * Cost: $70,000
 * Armaments:
 * Offense (Y): Rogue Missiles
 * Defense (A): Bear Claw Mines
 * Assist (X): Lightning Nitros

Far superior to the Dirt Devil and Marauder: a Marauder with hundreds of thousands of dollars in upgrades still performs somewhat weakly against an unadorned Air Blade. For this reason you will not want to upgrade your Marauder or Dirt Devil much, if at all, until you get the Air Blade. The armaments are also a lot better: nitros are far more useful than jump jets, mines are more useful than slipsauce, although still not very good, and the rogue missiles are the most powerful weapons in the game, easily able to destroy an enemy vehicle with a couple hits (especially with the weak armor early in the game). Characters without cornering skill, such as Snake, will still have a rough time controlling the vehicle and may want to buy at least one tire upgrade.

Battle Trak

 * Cost: $110,000
 * Armaments:
 * Offense (Y): Rogue Missiles
 * Defense (A): KO Scatterpack
 * Assist (X): Lightning Nitros

You'll want this on Bogmire, since the planet is very muddy and this car uses treads. For this reason, you also don't need to spend money on tires, so getting the Battle Trak is where characters with loose handling like Snake start to shine -- you really need to buy this as soon as possible if you have a character with no cornering skill. The Scatterpacks are an improvement upon the Bear Claw Mines and are the best drop weapon in the game. You'll have your Battle Trak for a while, so you can afford to upgrade it pretty heavily, but you'll need to start saving up for a Havac when you're on New Mojave.

Havac

 * Cost: $130,000
 * Armaments:
 * Offense (Y): Sundog Beams
 * Defense (A): KO Scatterpack
 * Assist (X): Lightning Nitros

By the time you get to Nho, where you'll need it, you should have enough money to buy this, which you should. On top of not needing tires, now you won't need shock absorbers. The Sundog Beams are a mixed bag compared to the Rogue Missiles you've surely grown to love. The Sundog Beams track enemy cars (like heat-seeking missiles), but they're somewhat slow and don't do much damage. If you're going to bother with them, you should upgrade to maximum capacity, seven beams, which will often prove not enough to blow up just one car by this point in the game. However, if your enemy has already sustained heavy damage, or you can pop in front with some Scatterpacks afterwards, they are still useful.

Equipment
You'll need to upgrade throughout the game, but don't go overboard. As a general rule, it's a waste to upgrade anything all the way to level 4 until you have the Havac, since the cost is too high when you still have to buy another vehicle later. You also might not want to upgrade your Dirt Devil or Marauder at all.

Remember that you only need to upgrade when you need it for the points to win the races. Buying an upgrade in the hopes that you will recoup your costs through your victories is not very economical. For example, if you buy two missile upgrades, those two upgrades will need to win you four races that you would have otherwise lost entirely to break even. That's not going to work. What this means is, if you are reasonably confident you can complete the current division without upgrades, and you will need to but a new car on the next planet, don't upgrade your car. Save your money for the next car you have to buy, and use the surplus to upgrade that! You can often even start saving up early in Division B, because if you can crush Division B you can probably win Division A.

Of course, once you have the Havac, there is no longer any need to conserve money. You can, and will need to, buy all the upgrades you can.

Body
When you race, you will see under the lap number a meter using small colored spheres. This meter is your car's structural health: when it gets red and near empty, your car starts smoking and one or two hits may well do you in. When you buy a new car, you only get three spheres in your meter; each body upgrade gives you one more sphere, so that you can take more damage before exploding.

Engine
Your engine controls your acceleration and top speed. However, engine upgrades are the most expensive. For the price of a level 2 engine, you can buy an Air Blade -- definitely recommended instead if you don't have it yet. But once you have at least an Air Blade, it's certainly worth it to upgrade your engine at least a little... it can mean the difference between placing first or fourth!

Shocks
Shock absorbers streamline jumping, as your landing impacts will be smoother. They're not that necessary, though you may want an upgrade for bumpy courses, and they're a complete waste on somebody who has jumping skill. The need for shocks disappears completely with the Havac.

Tires
You can only buy tires relatively early in the game, before you get the Battle Trak, which does not use tires. This will only be necessary when you have a character with no cornering skill.

Armaments
Each car has its own kind of armaments. See the cars section to see how well they work.

Chem VI
This is where you start the game. You can't race without a car, but you only have $20,000, which means you must buy the Dirt Devil or Marauder. As discussed in cars above, the Marauder is usually the better deal.

We recommend not upgrading your vehicle at all and going straight for the Air Blade. You will probably not make it through Division B on your first time through (on the higher difficulty settings), but that often will not change whether you upgrade your vehicle or not. You should be able to buy an Air Blade on your second time through Division B, or if not, your third time. Once you do, you'll have no trouble getting through the remaining races on Chem VI, even in division A, with no further upgrades. But do upgrade your Air Blade when you can afford it until Drakonis (where you'll upgrade a bit more, then save up for the Battle Trak). You'll want to buy Rhino Skin armor, some plasma rifle shots, and possibly a new engine, but you won't really need the engine upgrade until Drakonis. If your character has no cornering, upgrade your tires, too.

An alternative is to skip the Air Blade and keep upgrading the Marauder, but this is a very expensive proposition as a heavily upgraded Marauder will still underperform compared to an Air Blade. On the whole, buying an Air Blade and upgrading that instead will be both easier and cheaper.

You will probably get more than the required points before you complete all the races in Division B (if not, it's a near certainty in Division A). This gives you the option to go to Captain Braddock to go to the next planet. But don't do it! You have nothing to lose and free money to gain, which you can use to upgrade your car, and that's always useful no matter how sick you get of the tracks here.

Drakonis
Remember that the Battle Trak costs $110,000, and that's how much you will want at minimum when you finish Division A, since you'll want the Battle Trak on Bogmire, and you need it if you have no cornering. If you like, upgrade as little as possible and only buy upgrades when it's apparent you'll need to in order to win enough races to get the points you need.

Bogmire
Buy the Battle Trak immediately! It should be enough to get you through your first few races even if you can't afford to upgrade anything after buying it. Then keep upgrading it throughout Bogmire. Once you get used to the track layouts, you'll have no problem.

New Mojave
Nothing changes here, just new tracks and better enemies. Start saving up for the Havac, but don't be afraid to pump up a little more now if you think you'll need it to survive. You probably don't need to upgrade any of your equipment to level 4 to make it, but level 3 is OK.

Nho
The Havac is to Nho as the Battle Trak is to Bogmire, but it's not as important to upgrade now, since your Battle Trak is probably pumped up and it still races well on the ice. It's still not a bad idea to upgrade even with little money for upgrades, though, since the Havac won't need a super engine to get through the snow, and it'll go even faster with a super engine. :) If you're playing Snake, don't upgrade your engine too much right off. You're used to the Battle Trak now; the Havac will go too fast and you will run into corners... your lack of cornering skill becomes more problematic at high speeds. You can beat the opposition easily enough, so don't rush to upgrade the engine too soon.

Inferno
This is it! The final planet. You can't even access it in Vs. Mode, so if you've been toying around with that, this will be a whole new adventure for you...

This is where the game gets tough. You may well find it somewhat comparable to your struggle on Chem IV way back at the beginning of the game, but it won't quite be that bad. On some tracks there are reverse warp arrows which send you rocketing backward, probably costing you more victories than anything else. Your opponents will all be sporting Havacs, and they'll be powerful, so you will no longer have the technological edge. That means relatively minor mistakes become much more serious here, and this why hitting a reverse warp arrow can ruin the race for you. On top of all this, the track layouts can be somewhat confusing.

If you get more than the required points in Division A before the end, there's no reason to continue racing. Go directly to Captain Braddock, sit down, strap in, shut up, and watch the ending. :)

Trivia
The songs in the game are:
 * Bad to the Bone by George Thorogood
 * Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf
 * Highway Star by Deep Purple
 * Paranoid by Black Sabbath
 * Peter Gunn Theme by Henry Mancini