If you’ve ever watched an episode of The Flintstones, you know full well that cavemen (sorry, cave-people) had cars. Cro-Mag Rally lets you channel your inner Fred or Wilma, racing cutesy stone-age vehicles (Bone Buggy, anyone?) around a variety of cutesy tracks. The result? A cute little kart-style racing game, albeit a flawed one.

Combining tilt steering with onscreen accelerator, brake, weapon, and launcher controls (all positioned conveniently beneath your thumbs), Cro-Mag has a shallow learning curve. The game’s Race and Gather modes each challenge you to finish first, but the latter adds arrowheads you must collect along the way. There’s no campaign mode, nor is there much incentive to keep racing: All 11 vehicles and nine tracks arrive unlocked.

On the plus side, each vehicle has different stats (speed, acceleration, traction, and suspension), so there’s a bit of strategy involved in choosing one. As for the tracks, they’re an admirably diverse lot—Desert, Jungle, Great Wall, Atlantis, etc.—each with environment-specific weapons. You’ll find bones on the desert track, freeze bombs on Glacier, and so on. You can lob a weapon forward or backward depending on where you tap the launcher.

Cro-Mag has a more free-wheeling feel than either Crash Bandicoot or Moto Racer: You can drive up (and sometimes over) slanted walls and even find shortcuts. Plus, there’s an interesting surprise in the Atlantis track we won’t reveal here, though it’s not hard to guess. Fred Flintstone never had it so good.

Colorful, clever, and just plain cute, Cro-Mag Rally dares to be different and largely succeeds. Only the lack of replay value keeps it from earning a higher score.

Cro-Mag Rally
COMPANY: Pangea Software
CONTACT: www.pangeasoft.net
PRICE: $9.99
REQUIREMENTS: iPhone or iPod touch with 2.0 Software Update
Fun gameplay that’s not overly simplistic. Smartly designed controls. Colorful graphics mixed with lively music and sound. Bevy of weapons and power-ups keeps things interesting.
Only nine tracks. All cars and tracks unlocked from the get-go, so there’s less incentive to win races. Help option bumps you out of the game and into your browser. Seems to drain the battery in short order.