Game Review: Speed King (Commodore 64, Mastertronic)

Mervyn J. Estcourt had programmed the motorcycle racer Full Throttle for the ZX Spectrum, released by Micromega, before turning his attention to the Commodore 64 with Speed King, released by Digital Integration in 1985.  The game got very favourable reviews at the time, and a year later, it was picked up by Mastertronic for a re-release on budget, with the option to convert to other computer formats.  The Commodore 64 original had a little bit of a re-brand with a nice new loading screen which replicated the new cassette inlay.  But that was not quite all, as we will see.

Think Once, Think Twice, Think Bike

When the game loads, the opening screen shows with all the options available, including selection of track, difficulty level, how many laps you wish to do, whether to practice or to race, and a course preview.  However, this screen layout differs from the original release, which had flags and a colourful grandstand look with the options contained within – on this re-release it is all blue with white text and graphics, apart from the two black and yellow flags repositioned on screen.  Thankfully, all the options do remain, as does the rather filter heavy title theme which is short but sweet, and stops after a time to get an automatic preview of the track selected (which you can also see by pressing space).  The RESTORE key goes back to the options screen at any time.

Racing Across the World

There are ten different tracks to race on, all with different characteristics and depicted by some accurate course map graphics for the courses of their time.  For Great Britain, you have Donington Park, Brands Hatch and Silverstone, along with Daytona (USA) and Paul Ricard (France) – which had the long back straight at the time of the game’s release.  The other five courses are depicted by their nations but easy to work out what the courses were – so you have Sweden (Anderstorp), Italy (Misano), San Marino (Mugello), Germany (Nürburgring, the 80s layout and not the Nordschleife) and Spain (Jarama.)  A good selection, and one that will be quite testing in places due to the number of corners.

Hell Bent for Leather

Once you press F7 to start the game, the grid is formed and the flag waves to commence the race.  You are up against nineteen other riders, so twenty bikes racing in all.  The controls take some getting used to, as fire is used for the throttle, with joystick down being up a gear, and joystick up being down a gear – and of course left and right to steer.   You can slow down by letting go of the fire button, but the more sensible option is to change gear.  Invertedly, you will end up going up a gear instead when approaching a corner without realising it – so a choice of controls may have been a nice option to have.  However, I do have to say once you are used to it, it does work pretty well and means you can slow down well before a corner.

Silver Dream Machine

As the bike heads around a corner, you do have good control of steering provided you are going at a sensible speed.  If you go too fast on a tight corner, the bike will go off the road surface, and too far off means you crash.  This does give you at least some room for error, and along with the use of space to do a track view at full speed, you get an idea of how the corners are beforehand, and once familiar, you can slow down.  Overtaking works reasonably well with the size of the bike getting larger as you come closer to them to overtake, and the thrill of getting one on the inside of a corner is very good, or zooming past at full pelt on a straight – albeit there are not always long enough straights to achieve that speed, apart from Paul Ricard.

The screen is well laid out and at the top has indicators of who programmed the game (which was not removed on this re-release), the last lap and lap record to the left, the total time elapsed and the current lap time to the right, along with what speed you are doing and the gear you are in.  It is easy to read and not too much of a distraction from the bottom, where the other bike riders you pass do come at you.  If you crash into one, or go too far off the track, then it is time to drop back down to first gear and build the speed back up to catch the riders up again.  It can take some time to do, so a good clean lap or two, especially in longer races, can really pay dividends for you.  The end of the race shows multiple flags along with your race result, overall lap time and best time, which is stored as a best if you have beaten the record.   Naturally on more advanced levels, you need to be faster and indeed take more risks, which is a sizeable challenge to say the least.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Speed King are reasonable, with the sprite of your bike having a good number of frames of animation as you corner the bike.  The other bikes coming at you in increased size with the effect of speed works well, as does the cycling of red and white on the edges of the track to indicate the feeling of speed, and at high speeds this really does work well, although it can be a little skitty on corners at very high speeds.  The sound in game is mainly the engine throttle noise and some effects as you pass the other riders, plus a sound when you crash, with a short and rather odd sounding title theme that is at least fast paced to resemble what riding a motorcycle at speed should at least be like.

Final Thoughts

Speed King was a solid motorcycle racing game at full price, and even better value when on budget. The options you have plus the number of courses to race, plus the three difficulty levels really makes for a good challenge, with best times to beat for a single lap and overall, and a real sense of speed, which is often missing on Commodore 64 racing games.  Whilst it may not seem the best visually, the playability and controls really do matter here and makes for a very enjoyable game overall, with lots of variety.  Whilst a two-player option is missing, I would rather have the speed and enjoyment this has, and until Super Cycle came along later, this was the de facto bike game for the Commodore 64.

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