Enduro Racer

Credits: Sega’s off-road arcade racer was converted to the Atari ST by Ian Morrison for Giga Games, with graphics by Saul Marchese and Stuart Hibbert of Focus Creative Enterprises, music by David Whittaker, and publishing by Activision.

Time to get ready and... hey wait, why are those other guys in front of the start line?!

Enduro Racer was quite a cool racing game, I remember playing it a few times in the arcades. With its emphasis on jumping mechanics as well as pure racing, it didn't quite offer the same adrenaline rush of, say, Super Hang On, but still worked pretty well from the illusion of speed point of view. (Admittedly the sit-on component of Super Hang On gave that an even greater edge, as you hunched over looking at the screen, and actually ducked when you went under the checkpoint sign - I distinctly remember doing that as a kid! But... I digress...)

The ST port was a good conversion, given the constraints of the system - obviously playing with a joystick doesn't emulate the motorcycle handle controls of the arcade version (at least if I'm not remembering incorrectly here). When you press the fire button to start it brings up a GEM-like menu at the top with options, which has always seemed a bit odd... but anyway, onto the game.

Press fire and get... a menu. Er, okay.

Graphically it's quite a nice game with big, bold sprites that hold up pretty well (the ST was not exactly renowned for its handling of large sprites...), colourful graphics and a decent illusion of speed. The music is chirpy and well presented; sound effects are minimal (the explosion when you inevitably crash your bike is good enough, but the "phut" sound effect when you hit another bike is weak). Gameplay is your standard "try to keep accelerating whilst staying on the track" with the added bonus of doing wheelies when there are jumps so that you 1/ don't crash on landing and 2/ get a little speed boost after landing (I think...)

Maybe doing this right behind another racer isn't the best idea... oh well...

The scoring system is also madness - you rack up over a million points for lasting about 30 seconds I think. I'd actually forgotten that this sort of wild scoring metric was pretty common in a lot of arcade games in the mid-late 80s. Each stage had its own unique look and tune, which made reaching each new stage feel like a nice little achievement. 

I don't remember playing it a great deal - IIRC it was very, very tough to get past Stage 3 - but I definitely wheeled it out (groan) every so often. It had a slightly different vibe to most racing games of the time, and definitely a worthwhile addition to the Summer Pack.

Nice little dirt kicking up behind the wheels animation going on here.

Gamplay video below - this was my second attempt and I just managed to sneak past the checkpoint before being timed out (the time actually gives you a couple of grace seconds after you hit zero, which is nice given the fine margins of the game otherwise) - but failed to reach Stage 3. I did try again and did a little better - 4 seconds on the clock when I went under the checkpoint - but then for some reason my bike got stuck, could be the controller emulation. Sorry, I didn't feel inclined to try again with this game, so this is all I can give you!