When the original Switch made its debut, while there were some great AAA titles available to grab people’s attention, there were also a few smaller projects out in the wings worth giving a look. One of those was Fast RMX, a futuristic racer that instantly felt like it was pushing the new hardware without going too far either, and for a pretty humble price offered up some excellent sci-fi racing action. Now, with the launch of the Switch 2, the talented folks at Shin'en are back once more with a Fast RMX successor in Fusion that, once again, deserves a look for showing that budget-friendly fare can still be quite impressive when coming from the right team.

Sharing the bulk of its DNA with its predecessor, Fast Fusion is a sci-fi racer with a focus on winding tracks, a manageable amount of technique, and an impressive amount of speed once it gets warmed up. Your primary focus, aside from simply trying to stay on the track, will be managing your color to be sure not to miss any color-coded boost areas, grabbing currency which builds your internal boost meter, and often aggressively boosting into foes in order to knock them out temporarily and grab some extra boost in the process. Once you get into the swing of things this can be quite satisfying, finding an equilibrium point between technique-based racing and trading a little paint, helping to keep your attention throughout each race.

In terms of innovation there’s a little less on display, outside of an obvious graphical upgrade and the addition of a jump that can just as often get you in trouble as be helpful. The Fusion part of the name points to your ability to fuse 2 different vehicles together in different combinations, trying to find a mix that boosts the performance of one of the craft to best match your preferences, but outside of aesthetics this isn’t that heavily felt as a new feature. 

In terms of scoring considerations, this is absolutely a case where you need to have some perspective on the quality of what has been delivered against the asking price. While this obviously lacks the depth or number of tracks you’d see in larger titles, the fact that the asking price is a mere $15 really makes this a bargain. Not only does it do an excellent job of showing off a great sense of speed, in general it also has a great (if a bit gritty) overall look that suits its action well. If you’re looking for a game moving in a very different direction from the excellent Mario Kart World and have some modest means at your disposal it’s well worth your attention.