Game Review: Action Biker (Atari, Mastertronic)

One of the biggest problems when it came to budget games for the 8-bit Atari was loading times. While disk speeds were fantastic, cassettes were notoriously slow, and when games didn’t load it was painfully frustrating. So it’s no wonder that many of us approached anything on tape with trepidation. Having to wait 20+ minutes for something to load, and not even knowing if the wait was going to be worth it, and if it would be switched off a couple of minutes later. Thankfully, Mastertronic’s conversion of Action Biker proved to be worth the wait and then some…

A Licensed Game? We’ll Skip That Part…

Mastertronic made a big deal leading up to the release of Action Biker and their partnership with KP Foods. This was their first licensed game and gave both the game and company an incredible amount of publicity with a reported marketing push seeing the game promoted on no fewer than 12 million crisp packets. According to Mastertronic’s Bulletin Newsletter, the game was designed specifically as a joint promotion with KP’s character Clumsy Colin taking centre stage in the game.

It’s unclear what the financial arrangement was between the two or whether any license fee was actually paid. However, as one of Mastertronic’s more recognisable titles, and a marketing campaign that received plenty of press attention from the likes of Zzap 64 and Sinclair User for the original C64 and Spectrum releases, it certainly seemed to be worth the effort. Even though the Atari version was released six months later, it still managed to sell almost 60,000 copies and became their best selling game on the platform.

Getting Started

Despite being a licensed game, both the Atari and C64 versions of Action Biker makes very little use of the Skips branding or Clumsy Colin as a character himself. Gameplay is simple enough – taking control of a high speed motorbike you have to ride around the town collecting various bike-related items getting yourself ready so you can enter a drag race.

There are 40 items to collect in total, scattered around the landscape, and each one appears after you have collected the previous one so you can’t just ride around and collect them all in a couple of minutes flat. You’re awarded points for each one you collect based on how quickly you get each one and how fast you’re riding at the time.

Playing The Game

Playing Action Biker is quite straightforward. Left and right on the joystick steer your bike, with forward and backwards control your acceleration. To pick up objects all you have to do is just ride over them. You have five lives and you lose one every time you collide with any of the scenery, fall off any of the taller obstacles you have to climb, or if you run out of fuel. You can top this up if you pull into the garage and there’s no limit to the number of times you can do this so it’s worth stopping there as often as you can.

Some of the items you pick up will add enhancements to your bike including a higher capacity fuel tank, gears to improve your speed and acceleration (you can shift between high and low gear by pressing fire), a turbo for your engine and others you’ll discover as you play. The final item you will collect is the entry ticket to the drag race itself.

Action Biker’s Identity Crisis

While Action Biker was a hit in the UK across all formats, it did give Mastertronic something of a dilemma when it came to its re-release for the American audience. As the market was unfamilar with Skips, let alone the character of Clumsy Colin, some slight rebranding was in order. The packaging and manuals of the dual-format (Atari and Commodore 64) disk release removed all reference to KP Skips, and a new cover art was commissioned, turning it into a generic motorcycle game.

It made no difference to the gameplay, and as the in-game title screen made no reference to the snack or Clumsy Colin it was an easy way to alter the game and keep everything intact with minimal effort. One thing of note with the cassette version was the serial number for the game. Usually, Mastertronic kept the same reference numbers for games, just changing the prefix for each platform. But for some strange reason, the Atari version has a different number to the other versions, and this number is subsequently used for the dual format disk edition.

Gameplay

As you get stuck into Action Biker, it’s easy to see just why this became their best selling game on the Atari. Right from the start you’ll be drawn into the game and manage to get to grips with the controls in no time at all so all you have to do is focus on finding all of the objects scattered around the game area. It’s a relatively small game map and after the first few plays you’ll soon remember where many of the items are.

What makes Action Biker so addictive is the challenge of getting to the objects. While many of them are in relatively easy-to-reach open spaces, some need careful driving and steady control of your speed and brakes to get in and out of some of the tighter spots. That’s before you come to the tough ones on top of the rollercoaster and the raised structure that will cause beginners more than a few headaches…

The only weak part of the game I felt was the drag race at the end. Once you’ve got your entry ticket all you have to do is go to the start point on the race track, wait for the race to start then ride as fast as you can in a straight line to the finish and it’s game over.

Graphics and Sound

Compared to the Commodore 64 original, the Atari version of Action Biker is something of a disappointment. Considering the fact that this was developed to run on the later XL/XE models, it uses a limited colour palette for the graphics and as you can see from the screenshots, it does make trhe game look bland as a result. The game has retained the smooth full 360 degree scrolling however, and as before the main bike sprite is well animated rotating in full 360 degrees motion to match the scrolling.

The background detail has been scaled down somewhat from the C64 version, although I’m not sure why as it can’t have been down to memory issues as it was developed for 64kb machines. The most obvious is the part of the scenery just in front of the rollercoaster track. On the original this featured a selection of carnival stalls but here it’s been replaced with a few brick walls. However, one thing I did feel was an improvement over the C64 original was that the small bridges on the terrain to cross over water or small gaps between fences seemed to be easier to navigate, perhaps because of the visual design.

Sound features a basic engine sound for effects and a two channel version of Rob Hubbard’s in-game music heard on the C64 original. While they’ve made a reasonable attempt at converting it, it’s not the best sound I’ve heard in an Atari game, let alone a Mastertronic release and sadly they have done much better converting music from the C64. It does grate after a while although for those of you who haven’t played the original you might be more forgiving.

Overall

Action Biker is a real gem amongst the early Mastertronic releases. It’s a simple concept but proves to be challenging without being too frustrating. There’s a real sense of progression as some of the items allow you to upgrade your bike building up to the game’s conclusion and while it’s not technically stunning, the smooth scrolling and animation work well enough to make it easy on the eye while you play.

The only real disappointment as I said early is the rather abrupt ending to the game and the cheap cash-in on the Clumsy Colin name which had absolutely no connection to the game whatsoever. All that aside, this is easily one of the best Atari games from Mastertronic and one that should be an essential part of your collection.

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