Game Review: Super Stock Car (Commodore 64, Mastertronic Plus)

Super Stock Car has the premise of being a game with stock cars, in that in the game’s plot, you are Rick Radial, the meanest man on the stock car circuit. The instructions claim you can select one of four cars to drive. Whilst this may be true on other versions, it is not the case here. It also states that you need to do five laps of each track. Again, not the case. There are six tracks, it says. No, having played it through, there are only five – there are six on the ZX Spectrum version. Add to that the claim you can press fire to blast bullets at the other cars, and use space for mines, and again these are completely false. Did anyone actually bother to check this version before printing the instructions? I do wonder.

Stock Aitken and Waterman

Loading Super Stock Car is a relatively quick experience, and once the game loads, there is a nice scrolling message effect, with a nice piece of title screen music from Reyn Ouwehand. It is a shame that there was not an option to have that playing in game. You see a high score table with five scores, and there are some zooming in sprites at the bottom which tell you to press fire to play and note the name of the game too. All very standard demo scene effects and all, but still, it does add to the presentation.

Pressing fire starts the game on the first of the five tracks. There are three opposing cars of various colours, and your car is the red car. You need to get around the track, completing the required number of laps, and you also have to finish first. If any computer opponent crosses the line first, it is an instant game over. There is not even an incentive for more points for finishing first, and then say second would be enough to qualify without any bonuses, which may have helped you to get used to the game. The controls are relatively straight forward, hold down fire to accelerate, let go to brake, and left and right steers the car in the direction it faces, in classic Super Sprint style controls. All of that is at least responsive, but there are unfortunately some design mistakes which spoil things.

Out of Stock

The collision detection in Super Stock Car is bad. Very bad. As you drive, even if you are within a good few pixels of the opponent car, you will inevitably hit the car, and every time you try to get past, it is always them hitting you even if you appear to have taken a wide enough line. You can get around but you really have to take an outside or inside line around a straight and outdo them on acceleration, decelerating for the corner in good time. You can potentially power slide into a corner, but more often than not, you will end up colliding with the edges of the track.

That is where the other collision detection issue really does kick in. Often you can be facing well away from the corner but when you accelerate, you are deemed to still be hitting the corner. It seems only one angle on certain corners can mean you escape from it, which can be a very frustrating experience when learning the track layouts. In addition, because the computer opponent can win very quickly at times, unless you manage to get ahead of them before the number of laps have expired, then it is game over. No one play tested it enough to see that the detection was not quite up to scratch, and to suggest some design improvements to make the game play better.

Taking Stock

Once you are able to get past the opening track, you receive some bonus points and it is on to the next track. The track layouts do at least vary, with some twisty turns, all at right angles around the track, and a case of being able to get round those with minimal collisions. On the later tracks, the home straight where the finish line is can often be the longest straight, so do use that to overtake as much as you can and then avoid colliding with the corners too much by decelerating early enough to be able to drift a little – or stop, turn then accelerate again if needed.

The somewhat random computer opponent movements do mean that you either just collide into everything on the first track and it is game over straight away, or you can get very far into the game, sometimes on to the fifth track, before being beaten. If you do beat all five tracks then it is back to the first one, albeit supposedly harder. On the occasion I was able to loop the game, I did manage to beat the first couple of tracks once again so was able to amass a decent score because of it, but this did feel more like luck on some tracks than outright skill, which feels a shame to be honest.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics on Super Stock Car are well drawn, from the nice title screen logo to the cars themselves, with some animation when you collide with puffs of smoke. They can sometimes obscure the view of the car in a car-to-car collision. The track backdrops are also nice and smoothly scroll, but they could do with some more variety on occasion, and maybe outside circuit markers like a Formula One track with the ability to go slightly offline may have helped the visual appeal. The sound effects are nice enough but what does excel is the title theme by Reyn Ouwehand which is well up to his funky standard that he was producing at the time – and it is one I can recommend leaving the title screen on and listening to for a few minutes.

Final Thoughts

Super Stock Car sounds a promising game, with the overhead view of the circuit resembling the classic Super Sprint style conversion, with smooth scrolling and a good sense of speed as you hurtle around the track. Even with some good sound, the playability is always the crucial element for the gameplay. And this is where it fails. The collision detection alone does spoil proceedings, with it being far too finicky and a need to be so precise when getting past the computer cars, not to mention getting stuck on a corner with only one way out. The opponents seem to be random too, so you can either get defeated on the first level every single time or make it all the way through all the circuits and be on a roll due to the opponents’ randomised movement. More care and attention needed to paid to this one – from the sloppy instructions that even have a font enlarged in part which looks a mess, to the gameplay and the need for testing. A shame really, as the idea is there but the execution definitely is not.

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