Play Chocobo Racing Online

Summary

Chocobo Racing turns the beloved yellow bird and the rest of the Final Fantasy cast into a Mario‑Kart‑style kart experience. You can pick from ten quirky courses—like Gingerbread Land and the floating gardens—while collecting Magic Stones that grant short speed bursts, Haste, or other power‑ups, and you earn a boost simply by timing your accelerator tap at the start. Skidding around tight corners and choosing a rechargeable special ability add a layer of strategy beyond the bright visuals.

The game offers a Story mode narrated by Cid that unlocks hidden characters such as Cloud, Squall, and Cactuar, plus a custom racer you can tweak across five parameters using points earned from each run. Versus, Grand Prix, Relay and Time Attack give multiplayer and solo challenges, with split‑screen support for two players on the same TV.

Critics in the West called it a decent but unpolished attempt to cash in on the kart craze, citing clunky D‑pad steering and generic track designs, though Famitsu in Japan was more forgiving. Still, the soundtrack of re‑imagined Uematsu melodies and the nostalgia of seeing familiar Final Fantasy faces keep it an occasional curiosity for retro racing fans.

Storyline

Chocobo Racing’s Story Mode is narrated by Cid and unfolds in nine pop‑up‑book chapters, each introduced with FMV cutscenes. Before every chapter the player can watch the story or skip straight to the race, except on the first playthrough.
In the opening chapter “Gadgets a go‑go,” Cid equips Chocobo with Jet‑Blades for a test run, then Mog the Moogle shows up, prompting a race that reveals Chocobo’s “Dash” stems from a Blue Crystal in his leg‑ring. Curious, Mog seeks his own crystal and Cid sends the duo on a quest for its secret.
Their journey leads to Mysidia, where a White Mage notices the companions’ Magicite—previously called Blue Crystals—and challenges them to a race in the Floating Gardens. Winning grants the legend that Ming‑Wu shattered a great Magicite Crystal into eight shards, scattering them to the four winds.
Collecting all shards awakens the portal to Fantasia, where Bahamut greets the racers, tests them in a final race, and declares the portal open forever, uniting both worlds.