Pictures of Konami’s new WiiWare project may look strikingly familiar to older gamers. That’s because Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Super Off Roadused to be in about every arcade, mall and bowling alley known to man. Three players all standing with a foot peddle for gas and a wheel that could be spun around and around, while the trucks smashed into the wall repeatedly. It was fun then and Konami seems to think that the same formula would be fun now. Retro gamers start your pint-sized engines for Driift (working title, we also would have accepted Raciing and Off Roadiing) this July.

Driift is a top-down, derby style racer (stating the obvious I know). Players compete in 12 different tracks with 3 per environment, which are City, Snow, Hills and Oasis. There are also 34 different vehicles and four categories to choose from. Each class of vehicle handles differently with specialties in speed, acceleration, grip and more. All of these choices are open to the single-player game, but the multi-player modes are where this game has even remotely the chance of being downloaded.

Super Off Road supported three players in arcade or four on the NES, if you actually had the Satellite, but Driift laps both of those easily supporting up to eight players on one screen. This has great potential for gaming parties, especially considering that players have to use a combination of Wiimotes with the Nunchuk or Classic Controller hooked up. We can see many wins stolen and controllers busted by a quick arm pull. Multiplayer modes include classic free-for-alls and team racing, but it also has a few new ideas too. Contamination Mode is where one player is marked as contagious and has to infect other players (in-game, don’t deliberately sneeze on whoever you’re sharing a controller with), Cold Potato, which sounds like tag and Meteorite, which would be a standard race only with deadly meteors falling from the sky.