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Badlands |
Copyright/Publisher: Tengen/Domark, Programmed By: Steven Collins,
Music By:
Matt Furniss, Release Year: 1990, Genre: Racing Sports, Number Of Players: 1 or 2
After a nuclear war. life goes on - in the motor racing world at least. Violent races
continue on tracks in a zone known as the Badlands. Cars are armoured and armed and losers
pay with their lives.
Eight single-screen, planview tracks are littered with hazards such as oil patches and
spikes. One or two players compete against computer controlled opposition in four-lap
races. If a car is destroyed, a helicopter lowers a replacement onto the track, wasting
precious time - only the winner goes on to the next race.
Spanners lying on the track can be collected and used in the interlevel shop to buy
shields, higher acceleration, missiles etc.
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BiN |
Badlands suffers from coming after the brilliant Iron Man conversion. The cars are just
that bit too large for courses, making overtaking difficult and it's frustratingly
easy to crash as you try to barge through. The pace and rough and tumble action of Iron
Man is missing, but the weapons are a nice addition.
Also the two-player mode works well enough - Phil and I had some fun co-operating
against the computer player. If you liked the coin-op this isn't bad.
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WOZZA |
A few years back, I thought the Super Sprint coin-op was outdated rubbish but it was
converted to the Commodore all the same. Badlands is really no better; different
graphics and one or two new features. Gameplay's just a matter of steering left and
right to negotiate curves and dodge obstacles - hardly likely to tax the brain cells
and reflexes of today's gamers.
Aesthetics of the conversion are weak too: crude, boring backgrounds and grating
music and engine noises. Bearing in mind Domark's success with previous coin-ops, Badlands
is a vast disappointment.
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