Crashing Guide to Bumper Cars

Basically, you are driving a car of red, green, yellow, or blue (you get to choose), and your aim is to cause as much damage as possible to the other cars, but at the same time, try and avoid getting your own car damaged. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Let me tell you, it's not as easy as it sounds.

Before you can play any game, you need to load it. To find Bumper Cars, look in the Action section in the Games Room, or go to //www.neopets.com/games/bumpercars.phtml. When you load the game, you will need to press any key as it says to. It then gives you a choice of 4 colours. Each colour represents a different car with different controls. To select a car, you press the car's forward or up button. Each of the cars' controls is shown on this page.

I personally find the blue car easiest to use, as I am more familiar with the arrow keys rather than the letters, and by controlling your car using the arrows, you're not as likely to accidentally press the wrong key; if you were using the letters, you might accidentally press H instead of G or make a similar error.

Every car has a pre-determined amount of damage you can do to it before it dies. Once you cause another car to die in a round, it will come back in the next round, but once you die, that’s game over. The amount of damage a car has, I refer to as damage points. I’ve worked out that your car has approximately 100 damage points before it is game over. You can keep track of how much damage has been done to your car. I’ve also worked out that before an opposing car dies out, it needs to have been given 35-50 damage. The amount of damage an opposing car needs to have before it dies goes up a small portion every round. Every round, you will gain back a small portion of your damage points. I will explain more about how much damage cars do in the next paragraph.

For every time you hit a car with no power-up (we will get to power-ups shortly), you should get 8 points. You will also lose one damage point. For every time you hit a car against a wall, you should get 5 points and lose 1 damage point. Every time you are hit by another car, you will lose 6 damage points. When you hit the wall, or another car causes you to hit the wall, you will lose 5 damage points.

Because you need to try and save damage points to stay in the game, and get more points, it is important that you play it safe when you are low on damage points. Try to stay away from the other cars as much as possible, unless you have a clear path and you think you can hit the car and get out of the way quick enough; every time you hit another car, you lose at least one damage point and put yourself in danger of losing more than that. Just remember, at the beginning of the next round you will gain some of your damage points back.

When you bump into a car, don't keep going forward. Try and turn away from the other cars. I recommend this because when you hit an opposing car, your power goes down for a second or two, and during that time your car is extremely vulnerable. Remember, you want to get as little damage points as possible, because once you get to over 100, it's game over. For example, if you keep constantly hitting a car, they can get their power back before you do and ram into you. Then they have done more damage to you than you did to them. Also, while you're going for your 2nd whack at the car, the other cars have regrouped and are going to hit you while you are distracted by the car you are hitting.

I mentioned power-ups before, and now I will go into more detail about them. There are several power-ups you can get when playing the game, and each power-up has a different effect.

The Shield – This keeps you protected so the other cars can't do any damage to you, but you can do damage to them. However, you will not get any points for the damage you do to the other cars while you have the Shield.

The Engine – This power-up makes you go super fast, and you get more points than you normally would when smashing into other cars. Its downside is that it's easier to damage your car, as you do not have as much control as you normally would have without this power-up. Engines come in four colours. In order from least to most powerful, these colours are blue, yellow, white, and multicolored.

The Wrench – This power-up replenishes your damage points. This is one really useful power up and can help you get a high score. Like Engines, Wrenches come in four colours. In order from least to most powerful, these colours are blue, yellow, white, and multicolored.

The Petrol Tank – I personally do not like this power-up. It makes the car spin out of control. You can try to keep control of the car, or you can have fun and let it spin out of control and hope that you don't do much damage to yourself.

The Bomb – A circle flashes red. You DO NOT want to hit this. It does 20 damage to you and could ruin your game.

The idea is to stay alive for as long as possible so you can get more points. Here are the key points:

*From my experience, the blue car is easiest to use.

*You only have 100 damage points, so be careful.

*Once you hit a car, get out of the way.

*Power-ups can be both good and bad.

Author's Note: I’d like to thank symphonatic for editing and correcting all grammar mistakes there were in this article. I hope this guide has helped your Bumper Car skills and that you are much more knowledgeable about the game after reading. I wish you the best of luck. If you have any questions, please feel free to Neomail me.