'Austin Powers' Almost Had His Own Bonkers 'Mario Kart' Clone

When the first Austin Powers movie came out in 1997, there were two things in everyone's minds: the first one was "Hahaha, a penis," and the second one was "What would these characters look like if they had giant heads and battled each other whilst racing on tiny cars in Sega's hit Dreamcast video game console?" Rockstar Games, the makers of Grand Theft Auto, came close to answering that question, and we have the WTF concept art to prove it.

Austin Powers: Mojo Rally wouldn't have been like the 3000 other Mario Kart clones on the market. What sets this one apart is that it's the only kart racing game (to our knowledge, anyway) whose producer personally promised to "make you very, very horny" in an interview with IGN. Even the UK's official Dreamcast Magazine used the words "Hot And Horny" to describe the game in a headline: 

But ... would Mojo Rally have lived up to such lofty promises? Considering that, in the same interview, the producer says the game was to be rated E for Everyone, we're guessing "Nah." He also admits to the interviewer that they "won't be shagging" in this cartoony racing game, so, like, why even bother making it? The game's rating explains why the press release refers to Fat Bastard (whose rear attack would have been a fart cloud, but you probably guessed that already) as "overweight Scottish man born out of wedlock."

Mojo Rally was scheduled to come out exclusively on Dreamcast in October 2000 and would have featured "graphics that are stunning and breathtaking with 640 by 480-pixel resolution that will fully exploit the psychedelic." Sadly, it was canceled due to a "market surplus of kart games," though the fact that the Dreamcast was, well, the Dreamcast might have had something to do with it too. 

Instead, Rockstar decided to go with a somewhat less popular genre: Windows simulators on Game Boy Color. As in, they published two bizarre GBC games that simulated the experience of using Austin's and Dr. Evil's respective computers, complete with a nearly one-minute-long boot screen, a tiny desktop with selectable wallpapers, and a fake internet browser that, improbably, isn't infected with every computer virus that existed up to that moment.

Despite including exciting mini-games like "Rock, Papers, Scissors, but it's Austin Powers" and "Pac-Man, but it's Austin Powers," these two games failed to become the next Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue. As of this writing, the only other Austin Powers video games in existence are a pinball game for PlayStation 1 and a trivia game for PC. Meanwhile, there's probably an alternate universe out there where Mojo Rally came out and spawned endless sequels that are still keeping the Dreamcast as the dominant console in the market. Yes, we're living in the inferior timeline.

Maxwell Yezpitelok co-runs a Nintendo-centric YouTube channel, NintendoDuo. 

Top image: New Line Cinema