Baja Buggies

Last updated
Baja Buggies
Baja Buggies Cover Art.jpg
Developer(s) Arcade Plus
Gamestar
Publisher(s) Gamestar
Designer(s) Dan Ugrin [1]
Platform(s) Atari 8-bit
Release1982
Genre(s) Racing

Baja Buggies is a desert-themed racing video game written by Dan Ugrin for Atari 8-bit computers. [1] It uses a third-person, 2.5D perspective. The game was originally developed and sold as Night Rally by Arcade Plus before the company folded, then it was revamped and became the first release from Gamestar. [2] [3] Gamestar went on to publish a series of sports games for the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 before becoming a label of Activision.

Contents

Gameplay

The player's green car, driving across the desert at 80 MPH Baja Buggies Atari 8 bit screenshot.png
The player's green car, driving across the desert at 80 MPH

Baja Buggies is an off-road race through the desert against 80 opponents Most of the racers are anonymous. The top three have names that play on those of real drivers, such as "A. J. Cactus" (similar to A. J. Foyt). The game displays the player's current rank, and a radar shows relative position to the race leaders. The goal is to finish in the top six. The joystick steers left and right and the button applies the brakes. Acceleration is automatic. The race ends when the last car of the leading group finishes–or if the player crashes too many times.

There are three courses: beginner, pro, and a random course that's also classified as pro-level. [4]

Reception

Electronic Fun with Computers & Games favorably compared Baja Buggies to Sega's Turbo , but found the audio to be simplistic and disliked the lack of support for paddle controllers. [5] Marc Benioff, reviewing the game for Antic , wrote "It has some similarities to Turbo by Sega, but is not a copy." [6] Page 6 wrote, "What makes Baja Buggies special is the unique 3-D perspective as you drive toward the distant mountains. When you turn a corner, you really do turn–the mountains and sky scroll across and you feel as if you are really in the car." [7]

The reviewer for The Book of Atari Software 1983 found the game became boring in long stretches without seeing another vehicle. They also didn't like the game immediately ending once the leading group crosses the finish line and would have preferred to finish the entire race. [8]

Antic concluded, "Baja Buggies is an excellent product. Compared to driving games of the past, this is a programming masterpiece." [6] In a review for Electronic Games , Bill Kunkel wrote, "Put flat-out, this is the best racing contest, in terms of graphics and game play, ever designed for a computer system." [2] Several years after release Atari Explorer called it, "the first computer program to seriously court the favor of race car fans". [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

<i>Pole Position</i> 1982 video game

Pole Position is a racing arcade video game released by Namco in 1982. It was licensed to Atari, Inc. for US manufacture and distribution. Pole Position is considered one of the most important titles from the golden age of arcade video games. It was an evolution of Namco's earlier arcade racing electro-mechanical games, notably F-1 (1976), whose designer Sho Osugi worked on Pole Position.

<i>Kaboom!</i> (video game) 1981 action game

Kaboom! is an action video game published in 1981 by Activision for the Atari 2600. The gameplay was based on the Atari arcade video game Avalanche (1978), with the game now involving a Mad Bomber who drops bombs instead of falling rocks. Kaboom! was programmed by Larry Kaplan with David Crane coding the graphics for the buckets and Mad Bomber. It was the last game designed by Kaplan for Activision, who left the company shortly after the release of the game. The game was later ported by Paul Wilson for the Atari 5200 system.

<i>Zaxxon</i> 1982 video game

Zaxxon is a scrolling shooter developed and released by Sega as an arcade video game in 1982. The player pilots a ship through heavily defended space fortresses. Japanese electronics company Ikegami Tsushinki was also involved in the game's development.

<i>Pitfall!</i> 1982 video game

Pitfall! is a video game developed by David Crane for the Atari 2600 and released in 1982 by Activision. The player controls Pitfall Harry, who has a time limit of 20 minutes to seek treasure in a jungle. The game world is populated by enemies and hazards that variously cause the player to lose lives or points.

<i>Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom</i> 1982 video game

Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom, known as Zoom 909 in Japan, is a pseudo-3D rail shooter released as an arcade video game by Sega in 1982. The player controls a spaceship in a third-person perspective, adapting the three-dimensional perspective of Sega's earlier racing game Turbo (1981) for the space shoot 'em up genre. It uses the Buck Rogers license, referencing the space battles, though Buck himself is never seen.

<i>Jungle Hunt</i> 1982 video game

Jungle Hunt, originally released as Jungle King, is a side-scrolling action game developed by Taito and released for arcades in 1982. It was originally distributed as Jungle King, then quickly modified and re-released as Jungle Hunt due to a copyright dispute over the player character's likeness to Tarzan. Jungle King, along with Moon Patrol released a month earlier, is one of the first video games with parallax scrolling.

<i>Phoenix</i> (1980 video game) 1980 video game

Phoenix is a fixed shooter video game developed for arcades in Japan and released in 1980 by Taito. The player controls a space ship shooting at incoming enemies that fly from the top of the screen down towards the player's ship. There are five stages which repeat endlessly. The fifth is a fight against a large enemy spaceship, making Phoenix one of the first shooters with a boss battle, an element that would become common for the genre.

<i>Moon Patrol</i> 1982 video game

Moon Patrol is a 1982 arcade video game developed and released by Irem. It was licensed to Williams for distribution in North America. The player controls a Moon buggy which can jump over and shoot obstacles on a horizontally scrolling landscape as well as shoot aerial attackers. Designed by Takashi Nishiyama, Moon Patrol is often credited with the introduction of full parallax scrolling in side-scrolling games. Cabinet art for the Williams version was done by Larry Day. Most of the home ports were from Atari, Inc., sometimes under the Atarisoft label.

<i>Demon Attack</i> 1982 video game

Demon Attack is a fixed shooter video game created by Rob Fulop for the Atari 2600 and published by Imagic in 1982. The game involves the player controlling a laser cannon from the surface of a planet, shooting winged demons that fly down and attack the player in different sets of patterns.

<i>Keystone Kapers</i> 1983 video game

Keystone Kapers is a platform game developed by Garry Kitchen for the Atari 2600 and published by Activision in 1983. The game involves a Keystone Cops-theme, with the player controlling police officer Kelly, who traverses the many levels of a department store, dodging objects to catch the escaped thief Harry Hooligan.

<i>Caverns of Mars</i> 1981 video game

Caverns of Mars is a vertically scrolling shooter for Atari 8-bit computers. It was written by Greg Christensen, with some features later added by Richard Watts, and published by the Atari Program Exchange (APX) in 1981. Caverns of Mars became the best selling APX software of all-time and was moved into Atari, Inc.'s official product line, first on diskette, then on cartridge.

<i>Turbo</i> (video game) 1981 video game

Turbo is a racing game released in arcades in 1981 by Sega. Designed and coded by Steve Hanawa, the game received positive reviews upon release, with praise for its challenging and realistic gameplay, 2.5D color graphics with changing scenery, and cockpit sit-down arcade cabinet. It topped the monthly Play Meter arcade charts in North America and ranking highly on the Game Machine arcade charts in Japan.

<i>Surround</i> (video game) 1977 video game

Surround is a video game programmed by Alan Miller and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600. The game plays similarly to the arcade game Blockade (1976), which allows players to navigate a continuously moving block around an enclosed space as a wall trails behind it. Every time the opposite player has their brick hit a wall, the opposing player earns a single point, with the winner being the first to collect ten points.

<i>Preppie!</i> (video game) 1982 video game

Preppie! is an action video game for Atari 8-bit computers published by Adventure International in 1982. It was programmed by Russ Wetmore of Star Systems Software, whose name is prominently displayed on the box cover. Leaning on the preppy trend of the early 1980s, the game follows prep schooler Wadsworth Overcash as he navigates the hazards of a country club to retrieve golf balls. Preppie! borrows heavily from Konami's Frogger, with lanes of traffic in the bottom half of the screen and a river crossing the top portion. Alligators are an element from both Frogger and preppy fashion; an open-mouthed gator is the icon of shirt brand Izod. Reviewers recognized the game as derivative, but called the music and visuals some of the best for Atari 8-bit computers.

<i>Chopper Hunt</i> 1984 video game

Chopper Hunt is a side-view shoot 'em up written by Tom Hudson and published by Imagic in 1984 for Atari 8-bit computers and Commodore 64. It was one of the last games from Imagic before the company went out of business. Chopper Hunt is an enhanced version of the Atari 8-bit game Buried Bucks released by ANALOG Software in 1982. In both games, the player files a helicopter that uses bombs to unearth buried items. Contemporaneous reviews were mixed.

<i>Hockey</i> (1981 video game) 1981 video game

Hockey is a ice hockey video game published by Gamma Software for Atari 8-bit computers in 1981. Gamma released the Atari 8-bit game Soccer the following year.

Soccer is a sports video game for Atari 8-bit computers published in 1982 by Gamma Software.

<i>Starbowl Football</i> 1982 video game

Starbowl Football is an American football video game published in 1982 by Gamestar for Atari 8-bit computers. An earlier version of the game was sold by Arcade Plus as Arcade Pro Football.

<i>Kid Grid</i> 1982 video game

Kid Grid is a grid capture game which borrows heavily from the 1981 arcade video game Amidar. Written by Arti Haroutunian for Atari 8-bit computers, it was published by Tronix in 1982. A Commodore 64 port from the same programmer was released in 1983. In Kid Grid, the player moves along the horizontal and vertical lines of the playfield, turning the lines from dotted gray to solid blue. If all the lines around a square are completed, it is filled-in. Deadly creatures chase the player.

References

  1. 1 2 "Baja Buggies". Atari Mania.
  2. 1 2 Kunkel, Bill (April 1983). "Computer Gaming: Baja Buggies". Electronic Games. Vol. 1, no. 14. pp. 62, 65.
  3. "New Products". ANALOG Computing. No. 9. 1982. pp. 17–18.
  4. "Baja Buggies Manual" (PDF). Pixelated Arcade. Gamestar. 1982.
  5. Slon, Steven (May 1983). "Baja Buggies". Electronic Fun with Computers & Games. Vol. 1, no. 7. p. 66.
  6. 1 2 Benioff, Marc R. (February 1983). "Product Reviews: Baja Buggies". Antic. Vol. 1, no. 6. p. 91.
  7. "Baja Buggies". Page 6. Vol. 1, no. 1. December 1982. p. 15.
  8. The Book of Atari Software 1983. The Book Company. 1983. p. 114. ISBN   0-201-10286-2.
  9. "Start Your Electronic Engines". Atari Explorer. June 1985. p. 8.