Games I loved that never made it big...

Games I loved that didn’t make it big...

Some mini-reviews of games that I really enjoyed, that didn’t get the recognition they deserved.

Dune Buggy (Vic 20 game, 1985(ish))

Dune Buggy was a simple top-down driving game for the Vic 20 which I played in about 1985. I can find no reference to the title online, it maybe that it was a home coded game. Regardless, it was great fun and I played it a lot.

You drove your buggy down the screen (or more accurately the screen scrolled past your buggy vertically) and you needed to ‘steer’ left and right to avoid rocks, trees and bushes. If you crashed into one it was game over. At the same time you had to run over little stick men. The obstacles and men appeared at random so there was no preset course that could be learnt.

Each game started with a set amount of time on the clock (from memory I think it was sixty seconds) and every time you ran a man over, a second (or maybe it was five seconds; cut me some slack, this was a long time ago!) was added to your play time. The challenge was to drive as far as you could before time ran out with the high scores being measured in distance covered.

Simple but enormously addictive, I can still recall with startling clarity my elation on breaking the elusive 5 km barrier for the very first time!

I can find no images of the game anywhere, so you will have to make do with an artist’s impression...

AG 15/11/2021

An artist's impression of Dune Buggy...

Roadkill

Roadkill (Commodore Amiga 1200 & CD32 game, 1994)

Roadkill was a top-down racing game released by Acid Software in 1994 and appeared to be the bastard lovechild of Super Sprint, the Atari 1986 game and Deathrace 2000, the 1975 film.

You raced around a series of simple circuits; aiming for a top three finish each time to progress to the next round. The emphasis was very much on extreme violence, with tracks littered with spiked walls (to ram your competitors into) and collectable rockets and missiles to be used to eliminate your opponents from the race. Other power-ups included speed-ups, extra traction and armour. Money was awarded for your finishing position and for destroying the other racers, multiplying hugely if you took care of a defined number in a short time. Your accumulated cash when you were destroyed (or finished outside the top three) was your final score.

The racing view was zoomed in which made control tricky, but this was balanced by the tracks being wide with road markings indicating upcoming changes of direction. An on-screen track map also helped with navigation, as did the option to have a practice lap before every race.

Along with the enjoyment and playability, the stars of the show were the music and absolutely fabulous speech samples, which continually encouraged you to: “Destroy him” or “Take his life” with a deep throaty tone that would give the voice-over guy from the 1980's aftershave commercials a serious run for his money.

Roadkill wasn't hugely successful, almost certainly because it was an A1200 and CD32 exclusive which limited its potential market significantly. Nevertheless, this was really good fun and is definitely worth looking up as it is still highly enjoyable. Recommended.

AG 15/11/2021

Slap Fight

Slap Fight (Arcade, 1986)

Slap Fight was a vertically scrolling shoot-‘em-up, originally developed by Toaplan and published by Taito in 1986. The back story was that your planet of Theron had been overrun by aliens and you were piloting a fighter craft to defeat the invaders in typical shoot-‘em-up style. I played the arcade version of this game (a lot!) and it was later ported to other platforms by a number of developers.

When killed, certain enemies would drop a star in a classic lack of originality. Collecting the stars enabled the selection of a variety of power-ups displayed in a grid across the bottom of the screen; players familiar with Gradius or the later PlayStation title Project X (among many others) will be more than at home with the system.

Your ship could be upgraded by selecting: Speed-ups, Bombs, Lasers, Homing Missiles, Shields or an option to add Side-shooting, all of which made your ship increasingly powerful, but it was when using the option to add ‘Wing’ that the real silliness kicked in. Each addition made your ship progressively wider until it was an insane killing machine that almost filled the entire width of the screen!

A full play through only takes about twelve minutes, but this is one of a very small number of games in my life that I have beaten, often completing three full cycles before it was ‘game-over’.

Unfortunately the game suffers from the ‘annoyingly depleted weapon when you get killed’ problem that blighted many similar titles, which potentially makes it a one life game (it is possible to recover, but it’s bloody hard) but nonetheless it is still fun and a terrific challenge.

Slick, fast and so very hard, Slap Fight is a somewhat forgotten gem that never seems to receive the kudos that it deserves. It can still be located hiding in the MAME section of ‘modded’ consoles and can also be found and played for free online; shoot-‘em-up fans will absolutely love it.

AG 07/12/2021

Blur

Blur (Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, 2010)

If you can envisage a Mario Kart / Burnout mash-up for grown-ups, or, alternatively, Wipeout with cars, then you are well on the way to imagining Blur.

Blur was a racing game developed by Bizarre Creations and published by Activision in 2010. It was a masterpiece of the ‘battle-racing’ genre using realistic vehicles and real world tracks; but with crazy jumps and outrageous power-ups and weapons. And with an option for twenty-player online multiplayer play it was fabulous fun. Realistic racing action coupled with almost cartoon-level violence could see you drop from first to last in just a couple of seconds. You didn’t mind though, as deploying a well timed Nitro power-up could see you travel in the opposite direction just as quickly.

It looked amazing, the courses were well designed and felt solid and real, it had a number of different play modes (ranging from a career option to simple pick-up and play online multiplayer blasts) and there was a wide variety of vehicles which handled really well. But the thing that made the game stand out was that every single race was completely full-on and utterly mental!

Despite being released to great reviews, unfortunately the sales figures didn’t match the critical reception, with the game shifting an underwhelming 500,000 copies. Nonetheless this was a stupidly fast, thoroughly enjoyable, adrenaline-pumped thrill ride of a title and if I was preparing a top-ten list of: ‘really fun games that didn’t get a sequel that absolutely bloody-well should have’, then this would be sat smugly right at the very top of the pile.

AG 07/12/2021