Uploaded March 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Now this isn’t based off of the Mattel toys, it’s completely its own thing. Hot Wheels was created, I believe exclusively for the Atari ST by John Gymer and was one of those games that was bundled on a cover disk via ST User magazine. I believe that it was released in 1991 with the programming language of choice being STOS.
The game itself is an overhead racer that can be played with 1-2 players with the multi-player being played in split screen which is very nice to see at least attempted on the Atari ST. The objective is very simple – just get to the end of the race as the winner. There’s no championship or anything, it’s just a series of single races. There are a number of different settings in the options which can alter the game experience such as disabling hazards such as oil slips in the road, disabling the awful sound effects, changing the car colour and disabling the collision which I will come back to later as to why this is important.
It’s also worth noting that the game has its own track editor, it’s fairly basic, but at least it has one and does extend the lifespan of the game a little bit.
Visually you can tell the game was made by one person. I know that the ST only allows for up to 16 colours on screen at any one time, but I swear that this one only uses about six, it looks pretty bland. Plus the car sprites themselves look rather blocky and pixelated. There’s also not a lot of variety in the track designs, however I expect that this was due to the size limitations of being forced to push the game out onto a cover disk.
Game play wise the joystick is clearly what the game is designed for despite the other options available. Whilst the controls do work fine my major complaints come with the collision detection, when you hit something you bounce off it creating a bit of a pinball effect. Worse is when you try to pass one of the rival cars and you continually bump into each other, which happens quite a bit given the fact that the tracks are pretty tight. Quite often I turn off the car collisions just so I don’t have to deal with this frustration. Although this makes the game ridiculously easy because the computer AI is also pretty dumb. Car 3 moves around at a snail’s pace and regularly bashes into corner – I have regularly seen this car struggle to make it around the simplest of courses. Car 2 is a little faster, but as long as you don’t crash too much you are almost guaranteed to win.
I’m not going to be too critical with this title because it was free and was a small game that was used to fill up a cover disk. Having said that is it still worth playing? Not really. Especially when you could be playing similar overhead racers such as Super Sprint, Jupiter’s Masterdrive, Power Up Plus and Super Cars on the Atari ST which offer more content, better graphics, more challenge and a better experience.
If you're interested in seeing more retro or current game videos then feel free to subscribe or check out some of my playlists:
Atari ST: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4xxIIv8AfzF1WNCk2yjFs9SNEZUf6o3
Sega Mega Drive: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4xxIIv8AfzY6iR6W6cRsFRt7zUlgHIE
Sega Master System: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4xxIIv8AfySbjh71hXweL28cqu-DbR5
Windows PC: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4xxIIv8AfxkkqPP6dWcSarH94BPrbvr
Now this isn’t based off of the Mattel toys, it’s completely its own thing. Hot Wheels was created, I believe exclusively for the Atari ST by John Gymer and was one of those games that was bundled on a cover disk via ST User magazine. I believe that it was released in 1991 with the programming language of choice being STOS.
The game itself is an overhead racer that can be played with 1-2 players with the multi-player being played in split screen which is very nice to see at least attempted on the Atari ST. The objective is very simple – just get to the end of the race as the winner. There’s no championship or anything, it’s just a series of single races. There are a number of different settings in the options which can alter the game experience such as disabling hazards such as oil slips in the road, disabling the awful sound effects, changing the car colour and disabling the collision which I will come back to later as to why this is important.
It’s also worth noting that the game has its own track editor, it’s fairly basic, but at least it has one and does extend the lifespan of the game a little bit.
Visually you can tell the game was made by one person. I know that the ST only allows for up to 16 colours on screen at any one time, but I swear that this one only uses about six, it looks pretty bland. Plus the car sprites themselves look rather blocky and pixelated. There’s also not a lot of variety in the track designs, however I expect that this was due to the size limitations of being forced to push the game out onto a cover disk.
Game play wise the joystick is clearly what the game is designed for despite the other options available. Whilst the controls do work fine my major complaints come with the collision detection, when you hit something you bounce off it creating a bit of a pinball effect. Worse is when you try to pass one of the rival cars and you continually bump into each other, which happens quite a bit given the fact that the tracks are pretty tight. Quite often I turn off the car collisions just so I don’t have to deal with this frustration. Although this makes the game ridiculously easy because the computer AI is also pretty dumb. Car 3 moves around at a snail’s pace and regularly bashes into corner – I have regularly seen this car struggle to make it around the simplest of courses. Car 2 is a little faster, but as long as you don’t crash too much you are almost guaranteed to win.
I’m not going to be too critical with this title because it was free and was a small game that was used to fill up a cover disk. Having said that is it still worth playing? Not really. Especially when you could be playing similar overhead racers such as Super Sprint, Jupiter’s Masterdrive, Power Up Plus and Super Cars on the Atari ST which offer more content, better graphics, more challenge and a better experience.
If you're interested in seeing more retro or current game videos then feel free to subscribe or check out some of my playlists:
Atari ST: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4xxIIv8AfzF1WNCk2yjFs9SNEZUf6o3
Sega Mega Drive: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4xxIIv8AfzY6iR6W6cRsFRt7zUlgHIE
Sega Master System: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4xxIIv8AfySbjh71hXweL28cqu-DbR5
Windows PC: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx4xxIIv8AfxkkqPP6dWcSarH94BPrbvr
