Speed Racer Common Problems
Before contacting Bongosoft for assistance, please check whether the answer to your question is below.
The game crashes.
The hardest sort of problems to diagnose, these are usually caused by errant drivers or hardware on your computer. If you have installed new graphics or sound hardware yourself, make sure you have downloaded the latest drivers from the manufacturer?s website, and ensure you are using the latest version of DirectX from Microsoft Windows Update.
I get the error "Cannot load ctrlx.COX. This object might need an external program or library not yet installed."
This error comes from attempting to run Speed Racer on Windows 95 or earlier. Speed Racer requires Windows 98 or later.
After downloading, I try to run the file to install the game and I am told that it is not a valid Windows file, or is corrupted.
Unfortunately this happens occasionally when downloading any file, especially if you have paused and resumed it many times using a download manager program. Try downloading the file again.
The menu is not in the middle of the screen, parts of the game are off the bottom, or the graphics appear odd, grainy or discoloured.
It looks like your computer is not set to 800x600 resolution with at least 16-bit colour. However, there is still hope: as long as they date from around 1997 or later, your monitor and graphics card are more than capable of operating at this setting, and frankly ought to be doing so.
Right-click an empty area of your desktop and choose Properties. On the Settings tab, find the slider below which it says "640 by 480 pixels" and drag it to the right to increase to "800 by 600 pixels". In addition, next to this slider, you'll see a dropdown box with choices of numbers of colours. Select at least "High Color" if it is available. Click OK and follow the instructions given you. Your desktop may shrink slightly but you'll be able to fit much more on the screen and all the colours should now be more pleasant too.
If the slider will not move away from the "640 by 480 pixels" setting, or the dropdown box only contains "16 colors" or "256 colors" and not "High Color" or "True Color", either your graphics card is very old indeed, or your graphic drivers are not set up correctly.
Where is the computer opponent? Where are the championship modes?
They don't exist, I'm afraid! I told you it was a simple game.
Text in the game is misaligned, overspills boxes or looks messy. Or the game has lots of blank spaces where text should be.
Try restarting your computer and running the game. If that fails, download and install this font pack, restart the computer again and try again.
Question not answered here?
If you would like to contact me with a question or comment, use the contact form.