Crazy Cars - Atari ST (Playthrough & Opinion)
2Crazy Cars is a one player racing game made by Titus in 1987, I’m not sure why it’s called Crazy Cars, it’s just a generic race to the end goal, if there is one, I highly doubt that, I think that it is a lazy road to infinity myself. There were also ports for the Amiga, Spectrum and I believe, although I’m not 100% certain, that there are versions for the PC, Amstrad CPC and C64. But again I’m looking at the Atari ST build.
Despite there being a bright red Ferrari-esque car on the title screen, you are stuck for the entirety of the game with this generic black car, feels like false advertising to me, but there you go.
You are dumped straight into the race without so much as a warning and are forced to race at high speed to your destination of no real purpose. Just like Outrun there is a timer counting down at the top and when it’s over then its game over. I don’t think that there is more than the one level that you can see, it’s pretty much just a means to gain a high score. Now this isn’t a bad idea, but the execution of it much be better than what Titus managed here. There are no extra cars, no multiplayer, no extra game modes, nothing but a wafer thin concept that you will see everything of within the 67 seconds to beat play a session.
The cars themselves are drawn alright and the best graphics probably appears on the title and game over screens. The frame rate isn’t great and there’s no variety in the roadside objects. Overall it doesn’t look at all special and all you have to listen to is the awful car sound.
The biggest problem is the gameplay. It’s a simple premise of just stay on the road using the joystick and moving as fast as you can whilst dodging the cars. The biggest problem here is that the framerate is so bad that the cars twitch all over the road so accidentally hitting a rival car becomes very easy. And do you know what happens when you hit another vehicle? Well you slow down to a crawl and the other car gets off scot-free, but to make matters worse nine times out of ten you will also be hit by the car behind you, then the car behind him and then the car behind him until eventually you find yourself at the back of the queue. This has happened to me so many times I wonder if this has ever been tested.
Overall Crazy Cars is not a good game and I’m not sure how they were able to make a trilogy based on this one because frankly I hate playing this. It’s so lazy and has so few ideas that it could be written out in detail on the top of the gear nob.
If you're interested in seeing more retro or current game videos then feel free to subscribe or check out some of my playlists:
Atari ST: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4xxIIv8AfzF1WNCk2yjFs9SNEZUf6o3
Sega Mega Drive: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4xxIIv8AfzY6iR6W6cRsFRt7zUlgHIE
Sega Master System: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4xxIIv8AfySbjh71hXweL28cqu-DbR5
Windows PC: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4xxIIv8AfxkkqPP6dWcSarH94BPrbvr