Battle Wheels (Lynx)

I know it's an Atari Lynx game and they've only got a tiny res and a handful of colours to work with, but that just looks bad.

Wow, what is it with the Lynx and spinning cars? First A.P.B. puts one on the title screen, now this has one too. They must be very proud of the hardware's spinning car capabilities.

I always go with the default difficulty level for these games, so it seems this time I'm stuck with 'Master'. But the difficulty cycles through 'Master, Knight, Destroyer, Dark Lord, Runner, Rookie, Pro', so I guess it's only about halfway up the scale.

Wow, you can barely tell they scaled up that sprite in the foreground for this screen.

And then the music stopped and there was silence, but for the rumbling of an engine.

Hey, I've got a map! I'm glad there's no chance I'll ever be stuck driving around for half an hour searching for the last car on the map.

These cars can take quite a bit of damage. I must have put nearly 50 rounds into his backside and there's no signs he's even noticed.

Oh crap, I was so focused on the yellow car I didn't even notice this guy driving up to me. Fortunately they had the sense to give these cars a reverse gear. Not that the game actually really has gears.

The poor guy must have already come from a fight because it only took 20 shots to get him to bail out.

They're not so tough without their car.

Oh hi! Here, just let me unload my bullets into your engine.

I really hope this guy's more wrecked than I am, because he's exchanging every bullet I give him with one of his own right back at me.

Well that's over with then. Now all that's left is to bounce this guy off my hood.

He... he shot me!

There's no character wearing all black, so I'm betting it was that woman wearing brown that blew up my car.

Damn, I just missed out on first place. Still, it could have been worse, that guy second from the right looks like he's got part of his skull exposed.

Round 2! I race into the fray and almost immediately find myself facing down three enemies head on. And then slightly less immediately I find that my car is now scattered across the ground in flames.

Why do they get to fire missiles at me? Where's my missiles?

Round 3. I have just learned how to use missiles. They look flashy, but they don't seem to be any more effective than my bullets are.

Oh crap, that green arrow means I'm being attacked from the left. And then she blows me up. It was my arch nemesis in the black car again.

Aww, did you get your car stuck on a building? Here, allow me to fix that for you. Hopefully before the blue car does.

I wonder if it makes any difference where I shoot these enemies. Maybe they've got a weak point.

It definitely looks like there might be separate armour for each side of the of the car.

Also, there's my missiles and my machine gun at the front, but what's that at the sides and the back of the car?

I've got mines! Suddenly the enemies seem less keen to follow me when I'm driving backwards.

Haha, I've got a flamethrower on my side view! Actually I'm bored of that now, I'm going to swing around and hit them with real guns.

Well okay, that didn't work. Now he's shooting me up the ass and I can't even evade him, never mind turn to shoot him.

Wait, why do I need to evade him? He's sitting right in front of my rear weapons. I just have to hope (again) that he's more damaged than I am.

(He was).

When I left it at 'first to 10 kills' on the menu screen, I didn't realise it would take so damn long to get to 10 kills in this game. I'm running out of interest here.

On the plus side, I've found the button that lets me get out of the car! Look, that's my red car over there.

Aw crap. Why the hell did I get out of the car?


A COUPLE OF ROUNDS LATER.

And my nemesis bounces off the bonnet of my car. I hope that's kill number 10, because I'd really like to turn this game off now.

Whoa, I'm surprised I actually managed that. I stopped paying attention to the scores after a couple of rounds so I had no idea I was doing so well.

The match is mine, so I guess... I've finished the game then. And the opposition gets pelted with paper planes and tomatoes.


This was actually better than I expected... for an ancient handheld 'Car Wars' game. I'm not generally a fan of the vehicular dogfighting genre though. 'Cars with guns' sounds great in theory, but it never really works out as well as 'people with guns', or 'planes/spaceships with guns'.