Turbo Esprit (C64), Durell what were you thinking???

[ZEUSDAZ]

Turbo Esprit, a blinder of a game on the ZX but just stinks as much as a turd that's past It's sell by date on the C64, slow, chuds along like a CPC game and will guarantee to cure your insomnia, another racer added to the shitlist of C64 driving/racing games.

This edition of Shit Game Time has been requested by Youtuber "RayC" who wants to call this out and have it flushed down the poop tube.

Shit Game Time Review Video: [ Show youtube player ]

[saimon69]

Durell was mostly a spectrum publisher; even other games like Scuba Dive are 5h173 on the 64

[ImmortalA1000]

lol who was still expecting decent games on 8 bit systems when you could buy a 520ST for about £199.99 by this time and play Lotus on that.

[jotd]

Durell also publish/port okay games for Oric like Harrier Attack and Scuba Dive.

But that Lotus crap is the pits

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

lol who was still expecting decent games on 8 bit systems when you could buy a 520ST for about £199.99 by this time and play Lotus on that.

based on Lemon64 ratings, almost all the great C64 games were made in or after 1986, and an ST cost a bit more than £199 that early. Did you mean an extra £199? Come to think of it, weren't you still buying C64 games (Bubble Bobble IIRC) after buying an ST yourself?

C64 Turbo Esprit is pretty bad though. The Spectrum one is something everyone should experience, as the earliest open-world driving experience, a decade ahead of its time.

[Seiya]

yes, this game is really a bad release..

[Seiya]

@Zeusdaz
i don't remember, but do you have tried Wec le Mans on C64?

[ZEUSDAZ]

Originally Posted by Seiya

@Zeusdaz
i don't remember, but do you have tried Wec le Mans on C64?

Unfortunately yes, here it is: [ Show youtube player ]

[ImmortalA1000]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

based on Lemon64 ratings, almost all the great C64 games were made in or after 1986, and an ST cost a bit more than £199 that early. Did you mean an extra £199? Come to think of it, weren't you still buying C64 games (Bubble Bobble IIRC) after buying an ST yourself?

C64 Turbo Esprit is pretty bad though. The Spectrum one is something everyone should experience, as the earliest open-world driving experience, a decade ahead of its time.

The first open world driving experience is on Action Biker for the C64 I would say, or for 2.5D viewpoint Durrel's Turbo Esprit game of 1984/85 but you really want the fast ZX version. Point is I doubt I would have expected the subtle ridge racer style razor sharp handling or beautiful graphics would ever make it through to any 8bit system so it's just really 'crap' vs 'very crap' for anybody who played even the 'lowly' Atari ST version. You either lose the graphics, the music or the speed/controller input response on most 68000 based computer/arcade game to 8bit conversions. So much is lost that it really just highlights 8bit in 1991 is not going to cut it, time to buy a new system.

The C64 is not particularly brilliant at 2.5D game engines where the horizon moves, Buggy Boy engine is too slow and Turbocharge is a really late game and just about matches CPC Chase HQ. It's just not suited to it anyway, only 2 coders did anything magical with 2.5D on the C64 in any situation. Where the real skill comes in is with how you deal with the limited CPU time, Accolade's GP Circuit may only push a few frames per second the game engine responds and updates to controller input at a much higher frame rate so it is really playable. But that's like 1/10000 commercial games, the sequel by Accolade (the motorcycle one) is pants and isn't like that. So whilst I agree Lotus 1 on C64 is far inferior than Accolade's miracle development of GP Circuit that doesn't mean it's a game worth playing anything lower end than an ST in 1991. On an Amiga if you have lighting reflexes you can modulate the throttle/turn in from the right lane at the right time and overtake perfectly 100% of the time because you can place your car exactly where it needs to be once you get the hang of the way the handling works. If you take that away and the big bold graphics it's not really worth owning the game, regardless of whether a conversion has been made for your system. That's really what made Lotus series unique, if you take that away it's just another driving game. I've played it on the Amstrad and C64, that's enough 8bit Lotus game time for me lol


Zak McKraken, Maniac Mansion and Pirates is number 1,2 and 3 on the Lemon Top 100 page (if you set it to minimum 300 votes per game). I don't care for those type of games, maybe something like Defender of the Crown on C64 would be number 1 for strategy for my tastes because it is cutting edge squeezing that into the 64kb and the SID/VIC-II stuff is good too. Even so these are not the best "C64 games" as by definition they need to have the best SID and VIC-II talent to be such a thing. I am totally underwhelmed by the graphics and sound of those top 3 games, I'd rather buy 7 £2 budget games like Action Biker or Panther but as usual each to their own, I just don't rate them as kick ass "C64 games" but they may be good games (and probably play better on EGA PC XT they were designed for). Now something like Times of Lore being in the top 3 I would understand, squeezing a Zelda 1 NES quality game into a 64kb single load (the intro loads first then the entire game) with lovely VIC-II and SID work included, but again that is an 80s when a lot of love was lavished on the C64 and the Amiga was still a luxury system and the NES with expensive carts made zero commercial sense in the EU. All subjective but the C64 had strong games right from the first full year on sale, Beach Head/Forbidden Forest/International Soccer....these games were a crushing blow to the competition and are the reason why the machine just took off. Bugdet games oddly did continue to improve on average right up to the end, Slicks is one of the best C64 budget games of all time and a multi-load to boot. But still by 1991 IMO most C64 full price games were a joke and a lot like the dross pushed out in 'what the hell is Color RAM' era of 1984, luckily by then I had loads of 16bit stuff to play with so I really didn't care, the 8bit tech was an early-mid 80s solution to the problem of boredom, not a 90s one but again YMMV. Before VCS Space Invaders wasn't much point owning one of those to cure boredom either, I know that from experience

But I guess my point is, you want to play a Lotus game you need an STFM or better. You want to drive a Porsche it better be using something better than a 924 otherwise no point and a waste of time in the grand scheme of things IMO. Driving a 924 is not the same as driving a Porsche in all but the most futile argument you could muster IMO. I feel the same about the Lotus series, 1 and 2 are the only zero frame drop 2.5D games for A500 class computers, and people had 7 years and many price cuts before 1991 to save up for a decent machine to play Lotus on, even if it is the twangy tune-tastic Megadrive version IMO

[Megalomaniac]

Didn't Mansion, Zak and Pirates! all originate on the C64 as well? Even we you ignore adventures and strategy games, Lemon64's highest rated games are mostly 1986 or later in every genre, including racing - and I'd say that in most genres the later titles have better graphics and sound than similarly-regarded earlier games.

True that the C64 struggled a bit with 2.5D or 3D games (once you had to depend on the processor rather than sprites, the C64's limitations became apparent), but what decent racing / driving games did the ST have in 1986? Super Cycle is about all I can think of, which is better than the C64 version, if only because it's not quite as insultingly easy. Looking at what was released that early in most genres (especially actiony ones), you were buying (for more than £199) the promise of great games in future, rather than what was out there then.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Didn't Mansion, Zak and Pirates! all originate on the C64 as well?

Yep. When I first read that SCUMM was developed with the C64 in mind I was quite surprised. The C64 was very important in the 80s

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by ImmortalA1000

lol who was still expecting decent games on 8 bit systems when you could buy a 520ST for about £199.99 by this time and play Lotus on that.

Well it was another few years before I could even hope to buy a 16bit system so 8bit was all we had.

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Well it was another few years before I could even hope to buy a 16bit system so 8bit was all we had.

I'm sure most people were the same. An ST with a (single sided, not that it mattered then) disk drive cost £450 from Silica in December 1986 (RRP £550 at the time), that was 2 weeks average wage back then, so equivalent of maybe £1200 in today's money, plus the games cost twice as much. 16-bit games didn't start outselling 8-bit games in quantity, let alone in value, until the late 80s here. I was just a kid then, but I understand that not everybody was loaded in the 1980s.

[gimbal]

What I find hilarious is that they still dared to call this turbo esprit, knowing that it is a snail simulator.

[ImmortalA1000]

lol just realised this is the other Esprit game, gotta love these pain killer oops

[Megalomaniac]

Honest mistakes happen, though I'd still say that £279 (cheapest I can find a 520ST in the mags of late 1990 when Lotus came out) was a lot of money when a recession was starting to bite - and with the STe and A500 both less than £100 more, was it really that great value? A C64 for half that price wasn't that bad a first-time option for a kid who mostly wanted action games.

[ImmortalA1000]

The 520STFM was the same price as the 128k Amstrad with disk drive in 1987 though to be fair. God knows what the final discounted Commodore 128D units were but they were more expensive in 1987 than the 520STFM, they did have better 2D scrolling and sound than the ST to be fair though.

[Megalomaniac]

128k Amstrad with disk drive and screen in 1987, that's a crucial difference in households with only one TV - imagine having to stop playing when you've almost got the high score because Dallas is about to start? Plus, 8-bit games were half the price on cassette (or 2/3 the price on disk), even before you consider all the budget stuff (which didn't really start on the 16-bits until the early 90s)