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Thread: Game of the Day 4/12/2016: Turbo

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    celerystalker is a poindexter celerystalker's Avatar
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    Default Game of the Day 4/12/2016: Turbo

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    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?
    Last edited by celerystalker; 04-12-2016 at 12:42 AM.

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    ServBot (Level 11) tom's Avatar
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    Yes, I played that game on my Colecovision.

    It was awesome to play with the steering controller, after a little learning curve on how it works it was just a pleasure to play.
    Like driving a real car, and going into cities, along the seafront, ice and such. To me it was like Enduro, just with excellent graphics and a cool controller, which actually worked.

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    celerystalker is a poindexter celerystalker's Avatar
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    I've not had a chance to play the Colecovision port, but it sounds great, and I'd imagine the steering wheel module is pretty cool. I've never owned one, but maybe I'll come across one someday...

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    ServBot (Level 11) Edmond Dantes's Avatar
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    I've tried to play the arcade version, emulated. God the steering is sensitive.... my analog stick controller is fine for Outrun, but with Turbo even the teensiest push sends the car all the way to the side of the road. Its impossible to control that way.

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    Strawberry (Level 2) Compute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Edmond Dantes View Post
    I've tried to play the arcade version, emulated. God the steering is sensitive.... my analog stick controller is fine for Outrun, but with Turbo even the teensiest push sends the car all the way to the side of the road. Its impossible to control that way.
    The arcade version uses a stick with optical encoders like Pole Position. An integral part of gameplay is spinning the wheel to get decent control in the snow stages. Outrun has a 270 degree wheel with potentiometers, so the steering translates much better to an analog stick. You're better off playing Turbo on the real thing, anyway. It looks way cool with the top 5 scores staring back in big red LEDs.

    Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk
    See my latest arcade repair at the Holodeck 2 Arcade Repair Blog: http://holodeck2arcade.blogspot.com

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    Great Puma (Level 12) Steve W's Avatar
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    I have it, but I never put much time into it. Mainly because I only picked it up a few years ago, and I bought the Intellivision version of Pole Position after it came out, and that put me off racing games on the Intelly for good. I've also never been much of a racing game fan, and those early sprite-based games always felt a bit clunky. It was when polygons were used that I felt that racing games finally had come into their own.

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