Tonka Monster Trucks

Tonka Joe is the host as you enter the world of monster trucks, explaining your play options and offering advice to new drivers. Square jawed, deep voiced, and brawny, he enthusiastically guides players through the complexities of getting a driver's license, customizing a vehicle, and learning to operate it--at maximum velocity, naturally. Those players wishing to skip the preliminaries can get right behind the wheel, stunting, racing, and zooming around on freestyle courses. Every course comes with a hoard of screaming fans who evaluate driver performance on a scale from one to five. Keep the crowd cheering, and you're sure to score big.

Though its software is a little prone to crashing and other glitches, Tonka Monster Trucks is otherwise a reasonably appealing game. It has three levels of difficulty, and offers over 15 driving courses to big-truck aficionados. As with adult driving games, it takes some practice and finesse to operate the Tonka trucks, a factor that will reward patient players. The tutorials are thorough and well designed, and the courses themselves are inventive, loaded with items no real-life monster-truck operator could ever hope to crush, smash, or otherwise flatten.

A satisfyingly noisy soundtrack and the ability to leave muddy tire tracks all over the racecourse more than complete the gaming fun. --Alyx Dellamonica

Amazon.com Product Description
Design and drive your own Tonka monster truck! Get ready to enter the
exciting world of Tonka Monster Trucks, where kids can create and drive
the biggest, toughest trucks around. The fun begins in the garage, where monster
trucks can be customized with a choice of powerful engines, all-terrain tires,
and colorful paint jobs. Save and print pictures of the trucks, scoreboard, and
your own Tonka Monster Trucks driver's license. Then it's time to kick up
some dirt on the Tonka tracks. Drive over ramps, do cool tricks on the Tonka
stunt track, and race with friends. Even design challenging tracks by adding
ramps, vehicles, and other obstacles. Kids can play using a keyboard, gamepad,
or the Tonka Dig'n Rigs Playset.

Santa had previously brought the Tonka DigsNRigs game last year. I was hoping to use the control console from that with Monster Trucks. ...- however the software's printed manual inside the box says that it is compatible, but gives no instructions on how to make it work. The DigsNRigs console is not the default input device, the keyboard arrows are. The manual refers you to the readme file, which also gives no specifics.

DigsNRigs Solution: In the game itself, there is a building which lights up red when selected, called "Options." Click in there and you will see the setting for input device. Keyboard, DigsNRigs, or game controller can be used. I have not tried my Microsoft Game Controller with this game. Once selected, just "go back" and you are done. Digs and Rigs will now work well.

Problems: On my P3, 450MHz Gateway, 128MBRAM, W98SE, The program will freeze and lockup the PC if you try to exit gracefully. I have found that "End Task" (Ctrl+Alt+Del) works better, but is still not always effective in preventing a hard power off to recover. Using Win2000 or XP should solve this. Also, we frequently get a blue screen error message saying too many stacks, suggesting increasing the 'MinSPs' variable in System.ini. WIN98 System.ini does not have this variable to change! I added it at the bottom of the file and still got the error message, so that will require contacting the company for tech support. It happens after about 2 hours of solid play, so it is not a big problem.

The online help at the company's website seems helpful and thorough, but there were not specific solutions to these problems. I followed the guidelines they suggested to improve performance and prevent lockups in general (reduce video acceleration) with slight improvement.

Despite the fact that the game requires P2 250MHz with 30MB RAM, I am fairly sure that these problems would not occur on more modern PC than my P3, or while running an NT based OS, like W2K or XP. And so, based largely on the fun factor of this game for both my 4yo and 2yo, I have to say 4 stars. I am a computer professional, so an extra hour debugging this program is no big deal for me. If you are not computer savvy, you may not enjoy configuring this on your older computer.


Great Program!   May 25, 2002
14 out of 14 found this review helpful

This program works great. Be advised though that it is VERY graphics intensive. If you have an old system, it won't run very well. We are running Windows XP on a P4 1.9Ghz and it hasn't skipped a beat. The graphics really are decent. My five year old loves to play it, and dad even sneaks in from time to time to blast the nitrous over a row of cars...


tonka monster trucks   April 4, 2002
9 out of 16 found this review helpful

I liked the game and so does my son, but I was disappointed to find out that the dig and rigs playset does not work with the monster trucks.