Monster Race is this weird little Game Boy gem from Koei that feels like someone took Pokémon and strapped it to a go-kart. You collect these chunky pixel monsters—some cute, some just bizarre—and then race them on these winding tracks. The first time I played, I picked this dopey-looking turtle thing thinking it’d be slow but tanky, but nope, it wiped out on the first turn like a drunk on ice skates.

There’s a surprising amount of strategy in picking the right monster for each track. That samurai-looking one? Absolute beast on straightaways but corners like a shopping cart with a busted wheel. The races themselves are chaotic in that classic Game Boy way—simple controls, but just enough depth to keep you retrying that one annoying forest track for way too long.

It never got an English release, which is a shame because the monster designs alone deserve more love. If you can track down a copy, it’s a fun little time capsule of late-90s monster-collecting madness.