Head On: Casually Colliding Killer Cars
Head On is an early maze game where you control a car driving around a broken square grid. Your goal is to navigate the entire grid without getting pulverized by another car, which drives in the opposite direction around the circuit and intentionally tries to navigate itself into the same lane as you. It's sort of like an extended game of chicken on a race track, except you have to be the chicken because your opponent is actually suicidal.
Fortunately, the track has five lanes and you can change your speed at any time. Unfortunately, the circuit only has four small gaps where you can switch lanes, so if you get stuck in the same lane as your opponent between these gaps, you're screwed. You do have an initial advantage over your opponent in that you can move up to two lanes at a time, while they're restricted to one. After the first level, however, the other car gains the ability to switch two lanes at a time.
Much like Breakout, the graphics are fairly minimal, but the concept creates a constant tension that clashes with this simplicity. In 1979, head-on collisions might have seemed edgy and exciting, but today it seems out of place in a game with such crude graphics. This is a shame, because there is definitely an elegance to the game design. For example, watch in this clip (speed x4) as the cars dance their way around the grid:
I'm pretty terrible at these games. I have Dodge'Em on the 2600, and I'm usually lucky to get past the first level. I'm not even sure if I've ever gotten past the second.
ReplyDeleteSafari Rally unwinds the track into a looping straight away and I find that one much easier. The moving animal targets are also a different touch to the gameplay.