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Activision
48K disk £14.95
48k
cassette £9.95
1
player
Joystick
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Along with Broderbund, Activision has to
be the most improved software house of the past year or so.
Significantly, it was their recent UK release of the brilliant
Lucasfilm range of games which rocketed them to the top of the
'Third Party' league (in my humble opinion, at any rate) and, with
the quality of their own software improving all the time, a real
'killer' game was always on the cards. Well, it's finally arrived.
AMERICAN
ROAD RACE is a high-speed racing game which knocks all other racing
games for six. It might well have been based on the film 'Cannonball
Run' such are the similarities between the two. Like the film, ROAD
RACE is a city to city madcap excursion across America in which you
must try to complete the journey in as quick a time as possible and,
hopefully, add your name to that illustrious ROAD RACE scoreboard.
Can you get your name in lights up there beside All American Al,
Eastside Eddie, Move Over Mary and all the other hot-shot Road
Racers? If you make it into the Top 10 your name will be slotted
into the appropriate place on the board and you can then save that
particular 'field' to tape or disk as a permanent record of your
achievements.
The screen
view is much the same as in Baja Buggies or Pole Position, though
the scenery is far more spectacular and changes as you progress
through the different States. The game would soon become monotonous
if you had to suffer the same old background scenery, but the ever
changing countryside gives an
added interest as you carve your way through the deserts of New
Mexico, the ice and snow of Colorado, and the lush green fields of
New York State.
This isn't
a race track so, naturally, the roads are crammed with other
motorists (read 'pests') cruising along at the kind of speeds
designed to set your nerves on edge as you try to weave your way
through them at turbo-speed. Speaking of turbo-speed, your car is
capable of 240mph (which leaves you wondering exactly what sort of
car you are meant to be driving as not even a Group 5 Racing Porsche
can reach those speeds!), so nothing on the road can touch you - not
even old 'Smokey Bear' himself A radar warns you of the presence of
'da fuzz', so get that pedal to the metal and, at 240mph, you'll
blow dem Smokies off the road. You can also slow down to a
respectable law-abiding speed (below 70mph) but anything in between
will cost you a ticket and valuable race time.
At the outset you have the choice of four different routes with
varying race lengths and degrees of difficulty. Three of these are
West Coast to East Coast routes and the fourth is a slog round the
whole of America visiting every single city on the map. The map is
displayed at the start of each new game and at each stopping point
along your chosen route. As well as relaying the obvious
information, it also shows road conditions ahead and your current
race position.
Just for added realism the road conditions vary from city to city
and you will encounter ice & snow, fog, roadworks, potholes in
the road, etc. as well as the obligatory night driving. As you may
have gathered by now, this game's a real endurance test!
Obviously, you can't race all the way across America on one solitary
tank of petrol and you have to make frequent stops at roadside Fuel
Pumps to take on more gas. Stopping at these is quite tricky and
should you miss one and subsequently run out of fuel, you'll have to
'push' the car to the next pump. This is also the penalty for
revving too high in one gear and blowing your engine. All this
wastes valuable time, so it's best to keep checking the instrument
panel - located at the bottom of the screen - for signs of trouble.
The instruments are clear and precise and include genuine
rotary-dial speedometer and rev counters. None of this digital
rubbish here!
In the race itself you have a set time in which to travel from one
city to the next. The distance between each city varies considerably
as does the amount of traffic on the road, but it always gets
noticeably heavier as you hit the City Limits on each stage of your
journey. All the cities have their own individual and, to the best
of my knowledge, authentic skylines - the Statue of Liberty at New
York, the mountains of Denver, the White House at Washington etc. -
and greatly adds to the enjoyment of the game. It's even worth
tackling the hazardous 'All Round Trip' in order to view the
skylines of the individual cities on the map.
If I have any criticism at all about the game, it concerns the cars
and motorbikes of the opposing traffic some of which aren't all that
cleverly defined. As a driving simulation it isn't quite as
realistic as Pole Position but the many and varied scenarios of ROAD
RACE, the brute speed (it makes Pole Position look positively
lethargic) and, most of all, the realistic feel of revving the
engine as you change up and down through the four available gears
more than compensates for any shortcomings.
To sum up, ROAD RACE is a true 'megagame' in every sense of the word
and rates right up there alongside FRACTALUS and DROPZONE. Keep 'em
coming Activision!!!
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