Lotus Turbo Challenge Games

This week on Super Adventures, I'm taking a trip back to the past... back to the early days of Super Adventures, when I thought it was acceptable to cover a bunch of old-school arcade-style sprite-based racing games in one article. I'd give them each three screenshots and write things like "Dodging cars is hard!" and "Hey, I got first place!" underneath.

I eventually learned my lesson and realised that these kinds of games weren't going to give me much to work with. You have a sprite of a car and you slide it left and right to get around the other cars and obstacles, while also trying to avoid flying off the track on the turns. There, I just described all of them.

But I could never resist showing off screenshots full of art, and it occurs to me that I never got around to covering the biggest stars in the genre. No Out Run, no Road Rash, not even Lotus 1-2-3. Uh, I mean Magnetic Fields' legendary racing trilogy, not the legendary spreadsheet software. Speaking of spreadsheets, did you know Lotus made a car called the Excel?

Anyway, I'm going to play some Lotus games and I'm going to show off all the artwork, and if I can find anything to write about them, well that's a bonus. Screenshots will be from the Amiga 500 versions unless specified otherwise, though I will have a look at some of the ports as well. These games made their way onto all kinds of systems, like the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, C64, PC... though not the NES or SNES for some reason. I've no idea why Nintendo got left out.

There was another game called Lotus Challenge released on the PS2 in 2001, but that's entirely unrelated so I won't be playing that one.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (C64)

Developer:

Off the Wall

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Release Date:

1989

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Systems:

C64, Amiga, DOS

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Today on Super Adventures, to celebrate Cyberpunk 2077 eventually coming out at some point hopefully, I'm kicking off Keanu Reeves week! I'll be playing three games this week, each of which is based on a movie starring Keanu Reeves, starting with the computer version of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Which works out pretty well I reckon, seeing as the third Bill & Ted film just came out.

I've already played a Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure game, on the Lynx, but I'm pretty sure this one's something completely different. Maybe even something better! This version came out on three systems, Amiga, MS-DOS and Commodore 64, and I'll be playing all three of them, because I'm hardcore like that. But I'm mostly focusing on the C64 game, because the poor system doesn't get much love here and it'll be a change.

There may be SPOILERS below for the first Bill & Ted movie... but I doubt it somehow.

Turrican (C64)

"Hello and welcome to Turrican, be my guest! Another day another try, but remember... shoot or die! Ha ha ha!"

Today I'm playing legendary run and gun platformer Turrican, created by two of the blokes that brought the world The Great Giana Sisters: designer Manfred Trenz and musician Chris Hülsbeck. Apparently some anonymous artist with the initials 'MT' thought it'd be good idea to entirely rip off this badass Manowar album cover for this loading screen artwork, and hey it probably was. Definitely smarter than ripping off something like Lovesexy by Prince anyway.

Turrican came out on a lot of systems and is probably best known as an Amiga game, but I'm going to be mainly focusing on the C64 version as it's the original all the others were based on. Shouldn't take me long to regret that choice I expect.

The Great Giana Sisters (C64)

The title screen calls this The Great Gianna Sisters, though the box is adamant that it's The Great Giana Sisters with just the one 'n'. Either way this definitely isn't called Super Mario Bros., but Nintendo were of the opinion that it sure played a lot like it and scared the publisher into taking it off the market. Plus it does have kind of a similar name as well now that I think about it...

But were Nintendo being assholes again or were they in the right this time? I'm going to load it up and find out.

Judge Dredd (C64)

Adventures in Judge Dredd Games - Part 1

Yeah sorry I've gone crazy again and decided to waste the best part of a week on games no one cares about. No RPGs, no requested games, not even a Zelda game for the entire week. Just a guy with a big helmet and a metal bird on his shoulder shooting people.

There's been a few games made about 2000AD's Dirty Harry inspired fascist super-cop, but this is the very first of them, released on the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum in the mid 80s.

I hear Dredd's comic book stories are actually pretty decent, but all I know about the character comes from vague recollections of the 1995 Stallone movie. So I'm pretty much expecting Dredd's going to take his helmet off about ten minutes in, then the rest of the game will be about his run from the law, punctuated by slurred one liners and a digital Rob Schneider giving his best imitation of comedy.

007 Games Part 3: Licence to Kill, The Spy Who Loved Me

Super AiG's Guide to Every (old) James Bond Game Ever, Volume 3

Aka. "To Kill Who Licenced the Spy Love"

James Bond week, day three. I'm seven years into the first decade of Bond games, and it's starting to become clear that the series was one of the true pioneers of the 'terrible movie tie-in' genre. Maybe GoldenEye actually was the first good Bond game. I kind of hope not as I've still got four days worth of these things to go, starting with...

007 Games Part 2: The Living Daylights, Live and Let Die

Super AiG's Guide to Every (old) James Bond Game Ever, Volume 2

Sadly not a real thing that actually exists.

James Bond week continues! In part one I took a brief look at the first four years of Bond games, from James Bond 007 on the Atari 2600 to Goldfinger on PC. I can't say any of them really impressed me, but hopefully that just means I've gotten past the worst of them now.

007 Games Part 1: James Bond, A View to a Kill, Goldfinger

Super AiG's Guide to Every (Old) James Bond Game Ever, Volume 1

This is what happens when I have Photoshop open when I'm bored.

It's another Super Adventures special event! Every day for the next week I'll be going through the first 10 years of the Bond game series, from James Bond 007 to The Duel, and hopefully everything in between. So if for whatever reason you don't like reading about James Bond, or looking at crap screenshots from ancient Atari and Commodore systems, I'll apologise now. Sorry about that.

Total Recall

Super Adventures in Games Based on the Original Total Recall Movie Starring Arnold Schwarzennegger.

I thought seeing as there's a Total Recall remake coming out, this'd be a great time to take a look at the game based on the original film. Seemed a sensible enough idea, until I found out that there was more than one of them. Four entirely different games in fact, on six different systems, all with the exact same name. But whatever, I'll just play all of them.

Total Recall (Amiga/Atari ST) (1990)

Amiga

Nice title screen but, uh, why is Arnie's head orbiting Mars? I'm sure his face wasn't tilted sideways in any of the posters.

Bad Cat (Amiga) - Guest Post

Hey mecha-neko, why don't you play a game about cats?

Sure, cats are awesome!

Bad Cat aka Street Cat in crazy, far off countries.

"It's the year 1984 and Los Angeles prepares for the Olympic Summergames."

"The dignitories and celebrities prepare their speeches, preparing for the huge crowds who are expected to attend."

"But, there are still the straying city-dweller cats - despised by all. The infamous cats are well known for they are planning their own competitive games."

"Will Bad Cat live up to his name?"

Will he? WILL HE?

Nonterraqueous (C64) - Guest Post

"Nonterraqueous"! Say it, it's fun!

X-Men (C64)

X-Men: Madness in Murderworld... sounds like a nice place. Oh crap, it's playing clown music. That's never a good sign.

This is the second ever X-Men game, coming after Uncanny X-Men on the NES. And I really hope it's an improvement because Uncanny was pretty bad.

Ghostbusters (ZX Spectrum) - Guest Post

I've received a challenge!

Ghostbusters on the ZX Spectrum. One of the very first games I ever played, if not the first. Haven't played it in many, many years.

Can I play it start to finish without going completely crazy? We shall see!

The Blues Brothers (C64)

Another Blues Brothers game. At least they're not grinning like idiots this time.

Beverly Hills Cop (C64)

That is definitely the correct picture for the title screen, and it's even playing a reasonable version of the theme tune. So far so good.

Ghosts 'N Goblins (C64)

Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts publicly humiliated me, now I'm going after the first game in the series for revenge.

This is the first Commodore 64 game I've ever played by the way, so I'm not sure what to expect from it.