Game Review: BMX Racers – Version 1 (Commodore 64, Mastertronic)

BMX Racers was, as with other early releases programmed by Richard and David Darling, was made with their own The Games Creator.  Like the predecessor release Space Walk, there are two versions of the game.  The first one, being reviewed here, uses a slow blue screen loader, and has different instructions both on the cassette inlay and displayed on screen around half way through loading.   It effectively states that you ride your BMX through the city park, and avoid the trees and the mad biker.  If you go near the granny, the walking stick will go in your wheel.  You can accelerate over the jumps and watch out for the oil patches.

On the Straight and Narrow

Once the game has loaded, you can see an immediate gameplay problem.  The track that you ride through the park is very narrow, but also does not give you any leeway to go off road either, with a multitude of trees dotted around the outside.  This effectively means that you must stick to that track as it scrolls towards you, with up to accelerate or down to brake, with left and right to steer. That would be all well and good if you were able to gather some speed, but the enemies you need to avoid do appear to be somewhat randomly placed as the screen scrolls down, so the granny with her walking stick can appear pretty much out of nowhere, as can the mad biker from the bottom of the screen.

BMX Boys Have Not a Lot of Fun

That narrow path and somewhat large opposing characters, notably the car heading towards you (not mentioned in the instructions) does effectively mean it is a game to dodge everything and get as far as you can.  The grass would be suitable cover but the random tree layout means that you cannot rely on that, and more often that not get trapped trying to get back on to the road itself, or hit a tree and lose one of the three lives that you start with.  There is also due to that randomisation occurrences where three obstacles come at once, the oil, the granny, and the car, which means avoiding action must be taken – and you hit the trees.

Jump For Your Points

The main way of getting additional points is to hit the jumps.  However, you must be speeding up by pressing up on the stick when you hit the jump.  If you hit it sideways, you lose a life.  If that was not pointless enough, the jump does not even allow you to jump over obstacles that come either, so if a car is right behind it, you can try to steer mid jump to avoid it, but often you will hit it, and lose a life – which kind of makes the jump somewhat pointless and an additional frustration with the gameplay that in truth you could do without.

Endless Rider

If you do manage to survive long enough, you will complete the first lap and head into lap two, where the track seems to narrow even more – making an already difficult and unplayable game even less so, should you get that far or have the patience to do so.  At the end of the level the in-game music speeds up and then goes back to normal when recommencing the next level – and that is just shoddy.   There seems to be more randomisation on that second level and at more speed too.

If you do lose a life, another flaw comes into play.  You will restart near the bottom and steer in whatever direction you were last facing, so if you lost steering right, you will steer right immediately, and usually into a random tree.  Very quickly through no fault of your own you can lose all three lives in quick succession, and that is an instant reach for the off button when that happens.  Not only is it unplayable, but also unfair, and quite frankly, no one deserves that injustice served upon them.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in BMX Racers are not very good.  The bikes themselves are poorly animated, as is the granny with her walking stick and the car, with the trees reasonable.  It does not even scroll smoothly which for a machine like the Commodore 64 is just poor.  The sound is the usual one channel Games Creator tune which without doubt sounds like it was knocked together in around five minutes, and does not give you any excitement of riding your BMX bike as you should do. Improvements even here would have at least elevated it slightly from what it is.

Final Thoughts

Version one of BMX Racers is a very low-quality game, even for budget standards, that clearly in my view should not have been released in this state.  There is a random element to most of the gameplay elements, and battling on a narrow track with the seemingly randomised with the mad biker and granny appearing almost at the worst place possible, every single time.  When compared to the early Mr Chip software offerings, which were far and away much better games, it did make you think how much quality control had gone in before submission.  One to avoid.

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