Game of the Day 4/12/2016: Turbo

[celerystalker]

Sega's Turbo is often considered the beginning of their proud racing tradition alongside Monaco GP, and it's easy to see why. As one of the earliest racers that took on a perspective of driving into the screen with a sense of depth, it challenged players to pass as many rival cars as possible within 99 seconds while avoiding crashes, which cost lives. Passing at least 30 cars allows you to continue on, getting a nice score bonus for the number as well. The version I'm talking about today, though, is the Intellivision port.

While the Intellivision can't scale sprites, the perspective and core gameplay are well-preserved for the time, as you get a nice sense of speed and cars that animate and change size at the right time to maintain the illusion of driving forward. Even on the Intellivision, there are different backdrops and weather to drive through, including slippery ice, oil slicks, and dry highways, and they actually look pretty great. The slippery ice is a challenge, slicks cause you to lose control for a split second... I still to this day am surprised at how well done it is given the technology.

One divisive aspect of Turbo is its control on the Intellivision, which is pretty unique. You use your side buttons for your accelerator obviously enough, but the control disc is used as a steering wheel, and you basically press down and turn it around the edge like you would a steering wheel. Unconventional as it is, it works great in my opinion, and is a great substitute for the steering wheel of the arcade game. It comes together with the speed, perspective, and changing environments to create what to me is one of the absolute best racers for classic consoles. Yeah, there are little things like the abrupt background changes and the fact that the courses aren't winding and tricky, but Turbo is less about navigating turns and more about passing rivals with increasingly tricky patterns and steering.

Played it?