I remember, as a kid, discovering the arcade Night Driver and thinking that nothing could be more amazing. The real speed sensation was incredible. Then came Pole Position, which was amazing, then Out Run, which was the peak, and then everything went wrong after that. This game is like those primitive racers, we could think of it as a precursor to Night Driver, zxspectrumcrapversionofcourse.
You're greeted by one of the worst loading screens I've ever seen, Azimov probably trying to scrape a few Squid Yoghourt points from somewhere... Or he forgot about it and wrote it in 3 seconds before sending it.:
(Fortunately, it only lasts as long as the opening tune)
After a keypress we get the main menu with several interesting options:
When I first saw this screen, an image from my younger days immediately came to mind and I thought, "Wait, this car is...". So I changed the colour to red and did a web search to prove that I was not (completely) crazy:
I don't know if Azimov did it on purpose, but this is definitely a low-res Countach LP400 !!! Million Scrambled Smile points here.
After recovering from the impression, back to the menu where you get the chance to change the name. Name? Which name? In the menu we see there is a text in the upper part of the car's windshield: "CSSCGC.2025". Well, you type in any string and it appears right there.
Nothing impressive... yet. You start the game by pressing some of the three driving buttons (OPQ) and you see the driving position of the car. The upper windscreen is the same magenta colour as the outside. This is where Azimov's magic comes in, as the text is displayed in reverse as you would see it from inside:
Oh yes, lots of Deep Fried Ice Cream. The downside of this impressive demonstration is that it is slow, very slow. The first time is spectacular, but waiting 8-10 seconds for the rendering every time you want to restart the game is not much fun. A good rucksack full of patience may be needed here. But considering that you had to wait for the entire Lode Runner screen to be redrawn every time you started, we might as well have some calm here.
You change the color of your racer scrolling through all Spectrum palette except black (the tires).
Three tracks are available to choose from. Each one is longer than the previous one, thus increasing the difficulty. More about that later.
Another nice touch from the author is that the name of the game scrolls very quickly in the menu screen:
(you notice the speed when screen capture did this)
Finally, the tracks can be edited. No, there is no graphical editor, this is a serious crap contest. You are given the option to interrupt the program and manually change the values defining left, right and straight contained in a string. Yet it works.
Moving on to the game itself. You wait for the lights to stop flashing, F1 style.
You soon realise that you get damage even if you do nothing. Ah, the Q key. You have to move ! No pedal to the metal and auf wiedersehen Monty. Low frequency beeps are all you get in the game.
Then there are bends in both directions and straights, all very fast. Any delay in reaction means damage to the car. Very clever use of straight lines to show the track without delay. It works fine !
This is the screen you're going to see the most:
This game is difficult, hard, a bit annoying because you crash a lot and have to wait for the inner text to be plotted each time.
Putting the pieces together: A magnificent crap. As contradictory as it sounds, it has incredible details accompanied by horrors worthy of this competition. Although very difficult, the keyboard response is good and you can replay it to challenge yourself to go a few more metres before the inevitable crash.
Scrambled Smile: 9/10
Broccoli and Squid Yoghourt: 5/10
Deep Fried Ice Cream: 9/10
Strawberry Monosodium Glutamate: 5/10
Affable Hot Chocolate Sauce: 8/10
Comments
Post a Comment