Chase HQ (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com

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Published on March 23, 2019 12:00:00 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xhIykGnteI

Game:

Chase H.Q. (1988)

Category:

Review

Duration: 22:41

1,025 views

53

🕹️ Chase HQ is a coin-op conversion by Ocean; who brought the game to all the home platforms. Is this game true to the Arcade version?, or as bad as Outrun? Lets find out as we take it out for a spin.

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Production Notes:
===============
Captured: 8th August 2017
Narrated: 7th August 2018
Edited: 5th July 2018, August 2018, Dec 2018, March 2019

Welcome to review #19 in our 5th series of games. We have three more shows after this before the Summer break - which, as usual, is April until September. We'll be back in September for the final batch.

I always like to celebrate the games which make it to a review, even if I dont personally enjoy them. This is a game many loved to hate back in the day, and for a large number of reasons. The game felt too slow, and too uncontrollable to be much fun. I came back to this game fully expecting it to be as I remembered, but this time I activated the cheat mode which came with the game. Here, you have to push forwards to get the car going, and then left go of forward and the car should keep on accelerating, up to a million km/h. Staying in 1st gear, and the car drifts well around the corners, and chasing down the bad guys is made much more fun. If the game had been released with this high frame rate and control, Im sure many people would have a different opinion of it. Dont get me wrong, this is no Crazy Cars 3 or Lotus, but its not as bad as Outrun, thats for sure.

I recorded the game three times: PAL mode, NTSC mode, and also in Auto-scaling mode, on WinUAE. For the PAL and Auto rips, I used my normal 030 setup, which might help with the speed a little, although I think the game may be frame-locked, as I didnt see any huge difference between the modes. When the game starts in NTSC, and I zoom off down the road in full turbo, I had the cheat on, so the NTSC comparison at the start of the review was meant to be a joke to imply the NTSC version was faster. In the review I say the broken lines to the left of the screen are emulation bugs, but in truth I think its the game itself, as Ive seen footage of it on real NTSC hardware and it had the same glitch. I was going to edit the caption in the video but forgot. The speech bubbles as each criminal is caught was meant to be funny, maybe in the style of TVs The Detectives, and not meant to seem homophobic.

Danscore:
Chase HQ was a laughing stock on most platforms, either due to a lack of speed, a lack of control, or in this case BOTH. The trill of driving down a road at 200 km/h is only evident with the cheat on, and this seems to unlock the game to a level which is perhaps more like what the authors intended. Without the cheat, its rather unforgiving, but not impossible. The banded roads and red and white 'racing' stripes by the side of the road, dont make much sense as we drive through a city and through the countryside. The controls and sensitivity are annoying, and bumping criminals off the road can seem boring, rather than the high speed chase it was meant to be. The levels in the game also seem short, and the whole thing can be completed in around 20mins. If this was released for £19.99, thats £1 per minute. I'd give the game 5 out of 10, but there are plenty of fans out there - as can be seen by its high position in the Lemon Top 50 Driving Games vote and videos. That means its way above the likes of Wheels On Fire and Desert Racing of Bardos.

Next week we get back (at last) to the point and click adventures with Universe.

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