Ivan ‘Ironman’ Stewart’s Super Off Road is a 1989 arcade release that plays kind of like a fancy Super Sprint. It’s a single screen game where three players race their trucks over a number of courses, picking up nitro and money, and upgrading their vehicles between races. It’s fast, goofy, chaotic and a lot of fun. The orginal arcade, notably, featured a three steering wheel cabinet.

The arcade version of Super Off Road

On the face of it, this simple game looks ideal for home ports… but can they capture the mayhem of the original?

The Amstrad CPC port is, unsurprisingly, based on the Spectrum version. But in this case, they’ve at least attempted to include some colour. Sadly, this amounts to changing the track to orange-brown and adding colour to two of the cars, meaning that the other two remain resolutely orange-brown. It’s a curious choice, but I guess they ran into some four colour screen mode limit. It’s not terrible though, but it does suffer from some horrendous slowdown. Like the Spectrum, it allows for just two players.

Next up is the C64 version, and it’s pretty good. It’s more colourful than its 8-bit cousins, and it allows for up to three players. It moves and plays okay. But it feels a little bit stiffer, losing some of the chaotic speed of the original. Good attempt!

The Spectrum port is arrestingly yellow. Yellow cars on a yellow track, with your yellow car being distinguished by a yellow square above your vehicle that takes a good few seconds to spot. However, despite its monochrome shortcomings, the conversion itself is top notch. As is often the case with Speccy ports, you can’t hang your hat on either the graphics or the sound, but you will frequently find that the feel of the arcade original is captured surprisingly well. And that is totally the case here. Great speed, fluid control, a lot of fun! And some surprisingly good 128K sound!

So, for the 8-bit micros at least (the only comparison that really matters) a Speccy win!

For the posh kids, the Amiga got an effortlessly competent port. Lovely smooth graphics that perfectly capture the arcade original. Not much to say about this one, other than it’s very good indeed.

The console versions of Super Off Road

Over on the consoles, the SNES port is the best of the bunch. It looks, plays and sounds superb, retaining much of the original arcade and adding to it. Notably, the soundtrack is brilliant, with lots of catchy and memorable tracks. If you’re going to play just one home port of Super Off Road, pick this one. It’s rad!

The Megadrive/Genesis port… not so much. It’s not terrible, it just tries to add a uniquely Megadrive spin on the game, which doesn’t quite work. The end result is a drab looking version with a crunchy/scratchy Megadrive soundtrack which doesn’t play quite as well as the SNES version.

On the 8-bit consoles, the Mastersystem is the best of the two. It’s bright and crisp with good controls and smooth gameplay. The NES doesn’t fare so well, with an incredibly drab palette that somehow swaps red for pink on the main car. However, it supports up to four players, which makes it unique among the home ports and even the arcade!

The handheld versions of Super Off Road

Sadly, the handhelds don’t fare so well. All of them lose the single screen in favour of a scrolling play area, which tends to make the game feel a bit claustrophobic. The best of them is the Game Gear version, which is basically the Mastersystem version on a small screen, and it plays almost as well.

The Gameboy version, on the other hand, is a disaster, with slow scrolling, terrible controls and indistinct graphics. Kind of like a shitty RC Pro Am.

And even worse than the Gameboy port, is the Atari Lynx port. It initially looks promising, with chunky, colourful graphics that capture the arcade well. Then it starts moving… jerky scrolling, bad controls and annoying sound make this the very bottom of the bunch. Avoid!

  • nymwit@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Cool comparison. I didn’t know it could be had so many ways.

    I feel like a huge part of the arcade experience was the free spinning steering wheel controller. You just spun it hard and stopped it after your truck made it around the corner. No unwinding of the wheel or anything. As a kid that couldn’t drive, that was the right amount of realism (untealism?).

  • Wintendo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Fantastic write up!

    I remember going over to my friends house and playing this game for hours on the SNES, what I always loved about this game were the upgrades. So you could play it for a decent time and it would still be fresh.

  • Haru@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Oh wow this is unlocking some childhood memories, I used to play this on the Amiga. What a blast.

  • turbodrooler@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    IMO the main feature of this arcade game was those frictionless steering wheels. As a kid I would play with them even with no quarter.

  • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    This was one of those games that I always wanted to play on the arcade but always left sorely disappointed. The small sprite combined with the awkward control meant I always lost track of where I was and where I was turning.

    I think with practice, I might have enjoyed it more, however I just didn’t have the quarters back then to do so.

  • ace_garp@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I played the fullsize Super Off Road this Friday at our local barcade.

    It is generally fun mayhem, but sometimes a frustrating airborne collision will set you back half a lap. Easy to win 6-8 races on 1 credit(was probably on lowest difficulty) .

    I still prefer Championship Sprint overall, for the precise control, full slide turns and the shortcut jumps. (Plus laying down awesome donuts by constantly spinning the wheel)

    • Special mention to Badlands which adds guns and an apocalyptic theme.

    Or the original Sprint series that had no speed-limiter, which made for hilarious out of control death drifting.

    Similar top quality games on home computer were:

    Supercars II on the Amiga, top multiplayer action.

    and

    Slicks ‘n’ Slide for DOS. 3-4 player on a single keyboard with excellent drift physics, just brilliant!

  • Mountaineer@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I never owned a console, but I distinctly remember playing this, so there must have been a PC port some time in the early 90s.

    Classic game.

    • Dave@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I believe there was an MSDOS port, I just didn’t have the set up to play it. From YouTube, it looks similar to the Amiga version.

  • VraethrDalkr@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Wasn’t there a DOS version later? Or maybe I’m confusing it with a similar game? I remember playing to death a game like this on DOS a long time ago but I completely forgot how it was called.

    • ace_garp@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I linked in Slick ‘n’ Slide in this thread. It was an excellent similar game for DOS.