Gaming the Pandemic - Day 6: Enduro Racer (Sega Master System)

This is the latest in my attack of (at least) one game from my 639 strong backlog every day that the UK is in 'lock-down'.

I'm not planning on completing them, just playing them for long enough to know:A) What they're all about.B) If they're good enough to continue playing ASAP

I put a random selection button in my game database and today it threw up...

Enduro Racer on the Sega Master System.

This is the first time I've but the hardware in the title of the post - I'm going to keep doing it from now on but there's a very good reason why it's important for this game.

We used to call these 'Coin-op Conversions'; games that we knew and loved from the arcades brought to home consoles (apologies if this is patronising to anyone). It's worth remembering that there were pretty much no 1:1 arcade-to-console accurate games until the Dreamcast, that's pretty much half the time that home consoles have existed.

So, as you can imagine, a ride-on arcade motocross game that used Sega's 'super scaler' technology was not going to be 'Arcade Perfect' on an 8 bit console in 1987.

'Arcade Perfect', by the way, would totally be the name of my garage band if I had any musical talent whatsoever.

So instead of riding into the screen and hoiking back on a life size bike, the Master System version of Enduro Racer has the player on an isometrically presented course, riding from the bottom left to the top right corner.

Initially it all feels a bit too basic. You press a button to accelerate and move left or right, as you would expect, to avoid other vehicles and obstacles, occasionally pressing down on the d-pad to pop a wheelie over a jump. But I noticed I was losing a lot of speed on landing, so I dug out the manual to see if I was missing something - and lo-and-behold the game features a pre-cursor of Crazy Taxi's Crazy Dash to keep the speed up over the jumps.

That may seem an extreme analogy, but when you're playing it really does have that exact rhythm. You press back as you hit a jump to wheelie then forward as you hit the top - I assume to simulate the action of pumping the bike over the ramp - but the timing and result immediately put me in mind of Sega's 1999 masterpiece.

On top of this, the game is further elevated beyond the basic by the developers decision to embrace the distance from the original and actually turned the game into an endurance event, rather than the checkpoint racer from the arcades.

Your bike will inevitably get damaged in the course of the stage and it becomes of far more concern to keep the wheels turning than to make the fairly generous time gates. Fortunately you can patch up or upgrade your bike between stages using points you earn from passing vehicles on course, and today it might even be called a roguelike, as each upgrade only lasts a single stage and nothing in carried over beyond the game over screen.

All in, this is one of the best games I've played on the Master System. That might be considered damning with feint praise by some, but personally I love Sega's plucky underdog in the 8 bit fight.

Enduro Racer (Master System) - A 100% nostalgia free 'Recommended'

Previously...

Day One was the excellent Luminees II on PSP

Day Two was the fun-but-probably-better-in-co-op Sanctum 2 on PC

Day Three was the pretty ropey but maybe worth a second chance on PS2 Dead to Rights 2 on Xbox

Day Four was the utterly stunning Pyre on PC

Day Five was the horribly aged but undeniably addictive skate it on the Wii