You know me, I love an arcade racer. And while the Atari 8-bit era was very much a time where this genre was just starting to define itself, there were still some fun, interesting games to enjoy.
Baja Buggies from Gamestar is a game from the early days of the system that I didn’t play that often back in the day, primarily because it was on cassette, and who has time to sit around waiting for those things when you have a US Doubler-equipped 1050 disk drive for high-speed floppy loading goodness? (Said drive died recently, please raise a glass in memoriam. Thank you.)
Anyway. It’s an interesting racer that eschews the Pole Position timers-and-checkpoints formula in favour of an endurance race format: pass 80 opponents before you wreck your buggy or cross the finish line. The desert awaits!
Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.
Seeing this totally reminded me of The Great American Cross Country Road Race. 🙂
Yes! Someone else brought up its predecessor Enduro over on YouTube. This predates both of those games. Big fan of both, though.
GACCRR used to make me cry when I was a child because I thought the timer “cheated”. Turns out I just didn’t understand what gears did. Pulling away in 5th gear is not how you win a race.