Chase H.Q. Longplay (Spectrum 128k) [50 FPS]
27Developed and published by Ocean in 1989
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Whilst Sega's OutRun was the poster-child for arcade racing games back in the 80's, Taito's Chase H.Q. was certainly a worthy opponent in the fun stakes. Unsurprisingly, it received a slew of conversions to home consoles and computers, including the C64 and Spectrum.
I tried to create a longplay video of the C64 version a few months ago and gave up in frustration, largely due to the terrible controls and sluggishness. Even the 16-bit Amiga port was little lacking, so with this in mind, what possible hope could there be for a Spectrum version being playable?
The answer, surprisingly, is pretty good. The team at Ocean managed to create an experience that holds true to the arcade game as far as the Spectrum's hardware would allow, featuring scrolling routines that put some of the 16-bit racers (i.e. the Amiga version of OutRun) to shame.
The game pays homage to classic cop shows like Miami Vice, putting the player in the role of 2 hot-shot detectives within the special Chase H.Q. division of the city police force. Driving a souped-up sports car, the pair must track down criminals ram their cars off the road before time runs out.
One of the things I liked especially about the Speccy version is the presentation. The briefing scenes from the arcade featured fully digitised voice overs that wouldn't have been possible here, but the developers managed to include their own version of them using text and pictures of the drivers, replete with cheesy 80's mullets and moustaches.
Once on the road, the player has 60 seconds (technically, the ratio is 2:1 real seconds to in-game seconds) to hunt down the perpetrators vehicle whilst avoiding traffic and roadside obstacles. The road will sometimes fork and the player must pay close attention as to which route is the correct one to take - get it wrong and it will cost many precious seconds to catch up and will almost certainly end in failure. Get close enough to the target vehicle and you'll be gifted an additional 60 seconds of time, but now the objective is to ram the vehicle sufficient times to force it off the road (usually in a huge fireball).
As mentioned earlier, the speed at which the road scrolls and objects mover about (relative to the power of the machine) is impressive. It can still get a bit sluggish at times, but I've seen far worse from much more capable machines. Attribute clash is largely avoided by limiting everything in the lower part of the screen (road, cars and track-side objects) to black over a single background colour. The upper portion of the screen uses blue (and a half-brightness variant) to represent the skyline/horizon - the only place where you get a bit of clashing is some of the taller roadside objects where the object inherits the background colour from the sky. The reality is, you'll be spending far too much time watching and avoiding the traffic to notice it.
The game features a cheery, chip-tune rendition of the arcade theme tune, but it's sound effects from then on. Effects are pretty decent, including shifting pitch to denote acceleration, squealing tyres and a cool wailing when you hit the siren. There are even one or two voice samples taken from the arcade machine ("Let's go Mr. Driver!") that sound remarkably clear and are a great touch.
Chase H.Q. on the Spectrum is another really good effort from the guys at Ocean and is definitely a title worthy of your attention. So, what are you waiting for? Punch the pedal and go bag some bad guys!
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