A Review of Pixar's Cars Video Game for the PC - Radiator Springs Adventure

Disney Pixar’s hit film Cars, like other blockbuster summer films, is not just a movie. It’s the beginning of a long list of licensed toys, t-shirts, and other products featuring the characters from the movie. My daughter recently received the Pixar Cars video game, Radiator Springs Adventures, as a gift from her grandmother.

Apparently there are two different Cars video games on the market, one is where Lightning McQueen races in the Piston Cup Series and the other is an activity game featuring the characters and the town of Radiator Springs. We have the Radiator Springs Adventure version. The Cars video game is packaged with Mater and Lightning McQueen on the cover and is marketed to children ages 4 and up. Cars Radiator Springs Adventure is rated E for everyone. With ten games on the CD-Rom, the Cars video game promises non-stop action and many challenges.

Installing the Cars video game proved to be more challenging than any game on the disc. First, we tried installing it on Grandma’s Dell computer running Windows XP. The install wizard started but could never complete the installation. It would close with an error box. Grandma is not the most technical of computer users so she sent the Cars video game to our house.

I first tried installing the disc on my daughter’s VAIO laptop. It installed just fine but whenever I clicked the Cars icon, a blank box opened then shut itself right away followed by an obscure error message.

Okay, time to read the readme file. It turns out the Cars video game has some known issues with various video cards. Not wanting to hassle with figuring out my daughter’s system and trying to update the drivers, I decided to load the game on my desktop computer. If my computer wouldn’t run the video game, I’d either try troubleshooting the laptop or try to return the game. At last, when I clicked on the Cars video game icon, the lovable Pixar characters filled my screen.