Developed by Kevin Green and published by Mastertronic in 1988.
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During the latest intercontinental Rally Championship, it seems that the organisers decided that high-seed wasn't exciting enough and decided to add a little excitement to the proceedings by strapping explosives to the competitors cars. Forced to race at break-neck speeds through a spooky pine forest in the dead of night, those drivers that fail to reach the next checkpoint in time are summarily eliminated from the race in dramatic fashion...
Such is the premise for Night Racer, a budget release from Mastertronic for the C64.
I'm used to playing games that don't have endings, but this is certainly the first that I've played one that doesn't even have a beginning. There doesn't appear to be any kind of title screen, so the player is immediately launched into the game with a prompt to enter their racer's name.
The game takes the third-person racing perspective made popular in games such as Pole Position and OutRun and brings to a game that is a lot more mundane than the dramatic case instructions would have you believe. The race is staged across five separate point-to-point sprints where the objective is to reach the next checkpoint before the target yellow car.
Achieving this goal is easier said than done since the road twists and turns sharply, forcing your car to skid off the road. The cars of other racers have a nasty habit of getting in the way and the narrow road makes overtaking quite difficult; make contact with another vehicle and you'll lose a considerable amount of speed, which jeopardises your chances of completing the stage in time.
Pressing the fire-button makes your car accelerate, whilst pushing forwards and backwards on the joystick changes gear. I couldn't actually find a way to brake, so the only way to slow down seems to be to change gear.
The course mini-map in the bottom left of the screen shows the positions of both your vehicle and that of the yellow car. The turns in the road occur roughly in line with the map, but they don't always turn in the direction corresponding with the map.
The 3D road movement effect is pretty good and the effect of travelling through the woods is simple but remarkably effective. Sadly, the car graphics are chunky, ugly and don't look particularly great. The dashboard and steering wheel graphics are a nice touch, but they occupy a large chunk of the available screen real estate, leaving little for the actual race window. Considering just how much of this is black, these graphics were probably added just to give it some colour!
Sonically, the game isn't much to write home about either. Music plays during the inter-stage interludes and at the end of the game, but the game is limited to effects only. These are limited to a droning, wasp-like noise in place of a car engine and some strange "scuffing" sound when your car hits the corner of the track; it's better than silence but not by much.
Aside from the convincing 3D effect, there's really not an awful lot of content to the game. Should you manage to beat the game then there's really very little point in playing it again, except to try and improve your lap times and register a new high score (whoever Suzy is, I think she probably cheated...).
Night Racer is a functional racing game, but is one that really doesn't do enough to warrant more than an hour's play maximum. Those looking for a decent racing game on the C64 would be much better served by U.S. Gold's conversion of Sega's OutRun.
#retrogaming
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