Game Review: Kikstart (Atari, Mastertronic)

Growing up in the UK in the 1980s you can’t have failed to have seen the BBC show Kickstart. The motorcyle trials show was a hit for well over a decade challenging riders on off-road courses filled will all manner of obstacles against the clock. The junior version was just as successful and it’s no surprise that a game was released based on it. Well, sort of. Shaun Southern, through Welsh publisher Mr Chip Software, released an unofficial game based on the show called Kikstart for the Commodore 64 (obviously a very different game, hoping to avoid legal action) which eventually saw a re-release through Mastertronic. And this eventually made its way to the Atari…

Start Your Engines

Unlike the TV show, each game of Kikstart is played over three different courses against the clock. You control the speed of your bike using left/right on the joystick to accelerate and brake, up to perform a wheelie and fire to jump/bunny hop. Each of the obstacles needs to be tackled differently so you have to adjust how you ride constantly across the course. Rough ground, for example, needs to be taken slowly while jumps naturally have to be tackled at top speed while still being aware of what lies in wait at the other end.

Make your way to the end of each of the three courses in the fastest possible time, and hopefully your overall total will get you on to the high score table. But if you fall off any of the obstacles at any time, your bike will ride very slowly at the side until it can rejoin the course at the next safe spot, wasting precious time!

Friendly Rivalry

You’ll notice as soon as you start playing Kikstart that it has a split-screen view. Kikstart allows for two people to play at once and while you don’t see each other on the same course, you compete on the same tracks to see who can get the best times both on each individual course and overall. The game doesn’t progress on to the next course until you’ve both completed the one you are currently on and the multiplayer mode is a welcome addition and adds an extra element of longevity to game long after you’ve mastered all of the courses in single player mode.

What did impress me here is that the split-screen functionality worked flawlessly. From the scrolling, timer displays, and responsive player controls – and most importantly there was no slowdown whatsover making it a joy to play against a friend and fight for those all-important bragging rights!

Courses

There are a total of eight courses on offer in Kikstart, and you can choose which three you play from the course select menu. The game automatically defaults to the first three in order but you can select any combination of these for each game, or even race a single course three times.

The variety of obstacles and difficulty levels increase depending on the course number chosen, although it has to be said that the design of some of the later ones leaves a lot to be desired. Some are rather cluttered, have obstacles in places that make collisions invevitable and in some instances have jumps in locations that make them almost impossible to achieve regardless of the speed of your rider.

With only a small number of them available to the player, every single one of the courses needs to be as playable as possible without any areas that can’t be traversed. Add to this frustrations with the game re-spawning you half way up jumps or in areas that lead almost immediately to crashes again, and it makes this version of Kikstart frustrating when it doesn’t need to be.

Playability

If you can ignore the course design problems (or at least in the latter stages), there is a entertaining game underneath. It’s challenging and will take time to master the controls of your bike, but it’s rarely frustrating and once you learn how to approach each obstacle it’s extremely rewarding as you continue to beat your personal best scores.

However, Kikstart really comes into its own as a two player game. No matter how well you’ve managed to play the courses alone, the challenge of playing against someone else adds that extra pressure of not making any mistakes and it elevates the game to a new level. It’s just let down by the limited number of courses and sadly that impacts on its long term appeal both as a single and multiplayer game.

Graphics and Sound

Visually the Atari does quite a good job of recreating the look of the C64 original with reasonably smooth scrolling, clearly defined graphics so it’s easy to distinguish all of the obstacles from each another and there are some nice animations on the biker and water hazzards. Sound is fairly limited though to just engine noises and a few effects when you fall off your bike or complete each race and the music (a simple rendition of the TV theme) is missing.

Overall

All of the elements are there that made Kikstart such a hit on the Commodore 64, nut while the core gameplay is there this doesn’t quite hit the mark. It looks, feels and plays like a great conversion of the original, but the course design in the later stages combined with the unusual choice of respawn points really has a detrimental impact on this version.

While the early courses are great fun to play both as a one or two player game, it’s the later ones that really hinder it and in turn damage the long term appeal it has as well. It’s still an entertaining game, but just for a few tweaks it could have been so much better.

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