THE MAKING OF SUPER CARS II
If you were a fan of top-down racers around the time when the world waved goodbye to the Eighties and welcomed the Nineties, then you were in luck. Developers knocked out the likes of Badlands, Super Off Road, Hot Rod, Nitro and Micro Machines – with Gremlin Graphics adding Super Cars to that list in 1990.
In doing so, some devs were looking in their rear-view mirror at iconic titles released a few years earlier, most notably Atari’s Super Sprint. “It was definitely the inspiration for Super Cars,” says Shaun Southern, programming director of Magnetic Fields. “I used to go to the arcades in Rhyl a lot and I remember a huge imposing machine with lots of steering wheels on it.”
Super Cars was a refreshing spin on the genre: Super Sprint with weapons, in a nutshell. It wasn’t complex nor realistic but the cars handled well, vehicles could be customised, fixed and purchased, and the nine tracks were short yet sweetly designed so that it moved along at a fair old pace. The joy of handbrake turning on a 90-degree bend was a boy racer dream and the game oozed personality. “We were pleased with Super Cars when it came out,” says Shaun. “The handling and playability were always paramount but the style of the graphics and the screens in between the races really gave it a lot of depth.”
Those screens included cheering crowds as you scanned details of your position, maximum speed’s artist and designer. “But, while was probably the closest thing at the time, top-down racing games had been around for years and there were influences from the genre generally. I also wanted more than a racer so there were other games you probably would not think inspired me such as on the C64 which let you purchase items. I liked the battle/customisation idea which I hadn’t seen in that style of game before.”
