I had a lot of fun naming and shaming the Atari ST's dodgy coin-op conversions with that Double Dragon double bill last time, so I figured I'd do it again with today's duo. It never occurred to me at the time just how rough some of these ports were, though I don't think today's two did quite so badly. Maybe later I'll have to throw on Space Harrier to see how poorly the ST handled Sega's notoriously difficult-to-adapt sprite-scaling shoot 'em up (not that a comparison really works without seeing it in motion via a video format. I should probably look into that).
Before we begin, I'd like to remind readers about a couple of Brief Jaunts that were largely based on my experiences with their Atari ST equivalents (I believe I went through DOSBox for them originally): Dungeon Master and Captive. I'm really only mentioning them so I won't forget and accidentally cover them again.
Buggy Boy
Even as a nipper I was never particularly into racing games. At least, the serious kind of racing games where you're chasing checkpoints and switching gears and the like. Buggy Boy bridged a gap for me, much like Space Crusade did with otherwise overly dense strategy games (or Elite with space sims, or Dungeon Master with party-based RPGs), presenting a game that, while still focused on long-distance racing, filled the screen with other distractions to keep me engaged. It's like the exact opposite of Desert Bus in that regard.
Buggy Boy was published by Taito for the Atari ST in 1988, but was actually developed by Tatsumi who first produced it for the Arcades in 1986. Tatsumi also created the fighter sim Lock-On, the Road Rash-like Cycle Warriors, and that punk kid Kanji Tatsumi. He once told some kid to get bent, you know. (Buggy Boy doesn't really have music, alas, beyond a few tunes for its credits. Here's the next best thing though: a longplay.)
Welcome to Buggy Boy! Look at that sweet boxy vehicle. It has a glass bottom for observing roadkill.Some pretty descriptive tracks in this game. At least this way they don't have to commit to either the US or Japan.Because, hey, turns out the North is pretty cold in both territories.Anyway, this is the game. It's fairly OutRun-ish, with some rudimentary sprite-scaling and what I consider to be some pretty nice minimalistic art.The main buggy is also super adorable, somehow. Like the way it tumbles over obstacles. The game uses a fairly basic "lo-hi" gear system: if stationary, you need to switch to "lo" and then back to "hi" to get to max speed quickly. When you only have one fire button, it pays to simplify.Buggy Boy's not exactly a normal racing game either. Logs in the road will cause you to jump over obstacles in the path.Whereas smaller rocks will flip you up onto two wheels for a while, making it easier to avoid the bigger obstacles.I really like the way the game does tunnels too, even if they're all uniformly box-like. You can still hit walls too, of course. I wouldn't recommend it.Unfortunately, I ran out of time just shy of the second checkpoint. As is the nature of these games, you have barely enough on the clock to make it to each subsequent checkpoint.West seems a little easier, so we'll try again. While there's a lot of racing, Buggy Boy's also a big score game: by collecting these flags in the order shown at the top right, you get a bonus and the flags all flash for a while. You can collect flags in any order when they're flashing, so if you're fast enough you can keep getting full sets and boost your score. Best not to let it distract you too much though, as you'll go careening into a rock or something chasing the last colored flag. Some dick put lampposts in the middle of this track! I remember why I don't like West now.Even so, I'm doing a lot better this time. Let's consider that first one a dry run.A cool but entirely impractical feature are these slanted walls. This game's just fun.As also evinced by this soccerball in the middle of the track. It's yet another thing that scores you points and can possibly distract you if you catch a peripheral glance at it. If you actually do reach it, you punt it ahead a few hundred meters.Now that's more like it! While I didn't finish the track, I at least rocked the scoreboards. If only there were other names... (Fun fact: if you score highest, the music changes to be more triumphant. It's a nice touch.)
Buggy Boy seems ludicrously basic in this day and age, but then so were most racing games from the 80s. The only thing that really mattered back then (and, I dare say, still does) is that they controlled well and could maintain your interest one way or another. Of course, that can mean many different things to different people, but what usually plagued Arcade ports was a lack of difficulty balancing from its journey from the Arcades to the home console - obviously, as quarter-munching was no longer the primary objective, you needed to make it appealing to players by dropping the difficulty to an extent where the game would still present some challenge. Most home versions of Arcade games always tended to feel a bit off, either because the tech wasn't there to replicate it faithfully or the difficulty was still bananas, but in cases like Buggy Boy here it was more or less perfect.
Well, as perfect as an Arcade game on a home computer could manage, at least.
Chase HQ
From one Taito joint to another, Chase HQ is a racing game that set itself apart with its criminal takedowns. It wasn't enough that you completed the route; you also had to bring down the stage's criminal by keeping as close to him as possible until you could force his car off the road with enough collision damage. It's a simple template but it worked out pretty well for Taito, leading to a number of sequels.
The 1989 Atari ST version didn't fare quite as well as some other home conversions, but the game's still playable. It even has the voice samples! "This is Nancy at Chase HQ, we got an emergency here!" That whole biz.
That's an... attempt to replicate Chase HQ's title screen, starring Det. Fishlips and Det. Nightmare Hand. A+ for effort.Nancy only says the recurring first line with these radio transmissions. The rest is silence.But we do get a shot of the criminal's vehicle. I mean, as soon as we get close to it there'll be a huge arrow to point it out, but some early intelligence wouldn't hurt.I mean, it still looks fine for a game made in 1989, but there's some grittiness to the car graphics that seem a bit weird. It's like if you put a photo of a real car through Papers, Please's filter.I forget what happens if you ignore this arrow and go left instead. I'd hazard a guess that the game adds even more course, which doesn't go well with the strict time limit this game has.I don't think the car's meant to face that way. The driving's a little more "serious" here than it was in Buggy Boy. I'm also going faster (and you might've noticed that in both games, we have kmph instead of mph. That's a Europe thing).Gee thanks. This was in the original Arcade version too. If you needed more hints, the music changes once you're close enough to the perp. The Idaho Slasher isn't going to escape this time! You'll be cutting potatoes in jail, pal.Oddly, the guy doesn't stop even when his car is on fire. That it's still moving is impressive too. It's only with the addition of extra fire does the guy politely turn over and let himself be arrested. What are they building these cars out of?We're charging you with first degree murder, reckless driving and somehow making the entire city vanish. Hey Kowalski, does this guy think he's David Copperfield or somethin'?THE New York armed robber?Oh yeah, this brown and green color scheme is really working for me.The way the timer works in this game is that you get a certain amount of time to catch up with the criminal, and then an additional bunch of time to take them down.in this case, I crashed one too many times and didn't have enough left over for the actual Crash Time part. Carlos speeds away with his flaming sports car. Do we not fill cars with flammable gasoline in this universe?I'm being subtly informed that I can continue this mission before the counter runs down. To the game's credit, it lets you keep going from this point rather than starting over. Of course, the credits are extremely finite, but there's only so much you can do with an Arcade conversion.
Chase HQ isn't quite the game that Buggy Boy is. Well, rather, this particular ST conversion didn't translate as well. There's a lot of exciting speed and chaos in any Arcade session of Chase HQ that this version doesn't necessarily capture. It doesn't help that the game came out a year after the Arcade version, so we're dealing with both a quick and cheap turnaround and the fact that a 1988 Arcade cabinet's tech would be getting beyond anything a standard 1985 Atari ST could manage. (Here's the Arcade version for comparison.)
Still, there's not really that much to Chase HQ, and this game does manage to capture some of the thrill of smashing into cars in the name of the law for the home computer crowd. Could've been worse?
