Uploaded April 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Turbo Charge by System 3, Loaded from Tape
This is one of the most brutal tape loaders that I've experienced - as an aside, why is it always racing games that are terrible? This one gives the notorious Turbo Outrun a serious run for its money, and commits all of the same sins. What it doesn't do, is have the variety of presentation to make it at least somewhat worth it - the title is fine, but it's no Magical Sound Shower Remix, and the intro is fine, but it's not, well, the turbo outrun intro. And those between stages bitmaps are fine, but they're repeated and just static bitmaps.
I'd always heard the story that this game was designed for cartridge first, and then ported to tape/disk at the last minute when system3 realised that was too expensive for that market, and that's really what it feels like - to the point where the loader will just, you know, kick in half way through a presentation scene to load more presentation. That sort of thing.
So, okay, what about the game? The game is.... fine. It's a fundamentally Chase HQ 2 with Chris Butlers fancy racing engine, and some pretty presentation, but beyond being technically accomplished, it's okay as a game but not great. This is mostly down to the fuel mechanic, which in the early levels is severely unforgiving - as well as the forks in the roads that lead to dead ends, with no actually telegraphed way of knowing which to take.
Like, it's _fine_, I'd say on cartridge or disk it'd be a 80%ish game, but on tape it's a 60%ish game - especially if you ever get any good at it, the levels are actually pretty short, so you'll spend way more time loading the game than playing it, but again, it just doens't feel anywhere as fancy as Turbo Outrun does, which makes the whole experience less worth it. It's good, but not "get away with this loader" level of good.
Powerdrift was honsetly, to me, a much better playing game - and it fit in one load! Which is honestly the frustrating thing about this - it could have been a 96% game with just a few tweaks. Seperate out the presentation to side b of the tape, don't force the between-stage bitmaps, and balance the game - level 2 is way easier than level 1, for example, on that fuel point. Because the code is honestly great, and it's technically probably the single most accomplished racer on the C64. Just... everything else around that is half baked, and that's very, very sad.
Turbo Charge by System 3, Loaded from Tape
This is one of the most brutal tape loaders that I've experienced - as an aside, why is it always racing games that are terrible? This one gives the notorious Turbo Outrun a serious run for its money, and commits all of the same sins. What it doesn't do, is have the variety of presentation to make it at least somewhat worth it - the title is fine, but it's no Magical Sound Shower Remix, and the intro is fine, but it's not, well, the turbo outrun intro. And those between stages bitmaps are fine, but they're repeated and just static bitmaps.
I'd always heard the story that this game was designed for cartridge first, and then ported to tape/disk at the last minute when system3 realised that was too expensive for that market, and that's really what it feels like - to the point where the loader will just, you know, kick in half way through a presentation scene to load more presentation. That sort of thing.
So, okay, what about the game? The game is.... fine. It's a fundamentally Chase HQ 2 with Chris Butlers fancy racing engine, and some pretty presentation, but beyond being technically accomplished, it's okay as a game but not great. This is mostly down to the fuel mechanic, which in the early levels is severely unforgiving - as well as the forks in the roads that lead to dead ends, with no actually telegraphed way of knowing which to take.
Like, it's _fine_, I'd say on cartridge or disk it'd be a 80%ish game, but on tape it's a 60%ish game - especially if you ever get any good at it, the levels are actually pretty short, so you'll spend way more time loading the game than playing it, but again, it just doens't feel anywhere as fancy as Turbo Outrun does, which makes the whole experience less worth it. It's good, but not "get away with this loader" level of good.
Powerdrift was honsetly, to me, a much better playing game - and it fit in one load! Which is honestly the frustrating thing about this - it could have been a 96% game with just a few tweaks. Seperate out the presentation to side b of the tape, don't force the between-stage bitmaps, and balance the game - level 2 is way easier than level 1, for example, on that fuel point. Because the code is honestly great, and it's technically probably the single most accomplished racer on the C64. Just... everything else around that is half baked, and that's very, very sad.
