Game Review: Milk Race (MSX, Mastertronic)

With the rights gained to do a game based on the 1987 Tour of Britain, which was sponsored by the Milk Marketing Board and therefore called the Milk Race, it was key for Mastertronic to get the game released on as many 8-bit formats.  With Icon Design handling most of the work, this meant that five formats, including the MSX version here, were covered.  Initial signs are promising too, with the well-drawn loading screen the same as the ZX Spectrum one and at least loading relatively quickly.

The title screen is very basic, with options for joystick and keyboard, the option to redefine the keys and start the game.  When you do press the option for joystick, the MSX will beep at you, and certain emulators will warn you that this game is doing a hardware call that may not be the best for your computer.  Ouch.  That is quite nasty and feels like the code was ported over a little rushed, and not tidied up for what the MSX series would expect that key press to do.  Needless to say, select your control method once and stick with it.  Pressing 0 then starts the game.

I Want to Ride My Bicycle

The game shows you a map of the Milk Race route, which handily is also shown on the cassette inlay.  There are thirteen stages in all including some shorter time trial stages, and each time you reach the next stage, the map will appear showing you the stage number with the part of the map highlighted.  There is also a good piece of music by David Whittaker which plays here, and sets the scene well for the racing ahead.  Unfortunately, you cannot press fire on the joystick to start, you need to press the space bar, which seems a little odd if you have chosen joystick control.

The stage starts and you will notice that the game behaves in the same way as the ZX Spectrum version, with all bikes drawn the same colour, white, on a black road.  The milk bottles appear at the top or bottom of the screen and you need to carefully position the bike to pick them up.  There is the race director’s car that can come across the screen, often at diagonals and can run into you without warning too.  Holding fire and pressing up or down changes the gear, whilst up and down alone steers the bicycle on track, with right to speed up and left to slow down. The top right of the screen shows the indicator of the slope so you can be aware what gear you need to be in, as well as score, an energy bar, time remaining (for the time trial sections) as well as speed, position, and gear.

Time Trial Torment

On some of the stages, such as the start of stage one, a timer counts down to indicate you need to reach the end of the timed section where a marshal holds up a flag, before it reaches zero.  The timer counts down very slowly, and should give you enough time to power through.  However, there is not always a flag drop to indicate the start of the time trial section either, which means you sometimes are not aware you are taking part.  A better visual indicator (and this is a common fault across all versions) would have been a much better option.  In addition, you do get a bonus score for any time remaining when you complete the timed section, and the stage then continues onwards without warning.  It would have been an option to say to press fire to continue, perhaps?

Fresh Milk’s Gotta Lotta Bottle

The collision detection does seem fair enough, in that if you do hit a fellow competitor, a pothole, or one of the race director’s cars, you will crash. It takes a good few seconds to recover though, so you will need to allow the car to leave you and then gradually build up your speed. It also seems more difficult to collect the milk bottles to boost your energy, with your bike needing to line up close to the bottom of the milk bottle to appear to be on line with it and collect it, so careful positioning can be needed, especially if you are low on energy.  Also, if you are going fast, you cannot reach the top of the screen from the bottom (and vice versa) if the milk bottle appears, so you are often best sticking to one side and seeing if the milk appears for you.

In addition, whilst there is a high score challenge and the prospect of finishing first in the yellow jersey, the stages can get very tedious and repetitive due to the fact they all look very similar.  Some of the longer distance stages here seem to take much longer too, with them being somewhat repetitive in what they offer, and a limited supply of milk bottles for you to collect that all important energy. Different backdrops for parts of the country may have worked well, or indeed turns in the course so you cycle in any direction with the road turning.  It does feel like it was a minimum effort at times just to port the ZX Spectrum version over without any enhancements.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Milk Race are the same as the ZX Spectrum version with the loading screen, map, and main game area, including the crowd’s heads turning as you ride by.  There is a decent attempt at scrolling the screen with some parallax effects so that the background goes slower than the foreground, but surely as the MSX has hardware sprites, some of those could have been used for the bicycles to help differentiate which one you are in control of.  It would have also helped with the collision detection too.  The sound effects are quite limited, with just noises for crashing and collecting the milk bottles, whilst the David Whittaker music on both the map screens and the main in-game theme both being of a good standard.

Final Thoughts

Whilst Milk Race is a reasonable attempt to be a cycling game, the more you play this version, the more you realise that so many enhancements could have been made, such as the use of hardware sprites, better controls so that you could press fire to skip the intro screens and a little bit smoother in the gameplay department.  The collision detection is fair, although lining up the milk bottles more exact can prove to be frustrating at times.  It is a reasonable and playable game, but it does need some more polish, especially with that bug on the title screen not giving you much confidence before you start.

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