In the arcade, Enduro Racer was as much furniture as game. Sega built it in 1986 in two forms, an upright cabinet with handlebars and a full-sized dirt bike to sit on, and the player raced over hills, ramps and boulders against a one-minute timer. A home computer could offer none of the bike. When Activision’s Spectrum conversion arrived in the spring of 1987, CRASH‘s reviewers expected a let-down and found “an almost perfect copy of the arcade game (apart from the 10p slot of course)”. They made it a CRASH Smash, and by Christmas it was the most popular game in the magazine’s readers’ chart.
Fast facts
- Arcade original: Sega, 1986.
- Home versions: published by Activision in 1987 for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and Atari ST. Sega made its own version for the Master System.
- Spectrum version: written by Giga Games; £9.99, according to CRASH.
- Reviews: CRASH 92%, CRASH Smash (May 1987).
Five courses in under a minute
The Spectrum game kept the arcade’s structure: five motocross courses, each with its own landscape, and 60 seconds to finish each. The first is a tree-lined country road with a few rival riders. The second is desert, with rock falls and a jeep racing alongside the bikes. The third has water on both sides of the track, the fourth is snow, and the fifth is sea and sand.
The view is from just behind and above the rider, who stays in the middle of the screen while the track swings from side to side to show the bends. What impressed reviewers was that the horizon also rose and fell, because Activision had kept the original’s bumps and hills. Hitting a ramp sends the bike flying over whole fields of boulders. On landing, pulling back on the joystick pulls a wheelie, which Your Sinclair explained helps the bike pick up speed again; without it, the rider nearly comes off the seat. Lean too far into a bend and your foot scrapes the ground and slows you down. Colliding with another rider throws the bike aside and costs precious seconds.
What the reviewers said
CRASH’s three reviewers had not expected much. “Whoever picked this for an Activision licence took a great risk, but it’s certainly paid off,” Paul wrote. Mike had counted Full Throttle his favourite race game until now: “Enduro Racer has converted me. It knocks the pants off Spectrum race games.” Their complaints were about sound. One disliked the tune that played during races, and Mike noted that the 48K engine noise was the same one used “for Formula 1 racing cars, helicopter rotors and aircraft engines”. The magazine scored it 92% overall, with 94% for graphics and 93% for playability, and added that Activision had “decided not to include the arcade original’s bike saddle”.
Your Sinclair’s Marcus Berkmann began his review with a sinking heart (“It’s another racing game”) and ended up calling Activision’s conversion “a down home Class 1 ripsnorter”. He found the 3D illusion so convincing that “Crash over a boulder and you can almost feel the bruises.”
Readers were soon passing on a cheat. So many wrote in after the review that CRASH’s tips pages thanked them by name: holding forward, Caps Shift and A at the start whisked the player through the first three levels.
In the charts
Enduro Racer shows how differently a sales chart and a readers’ chart could treat the same game (see Reading the charts).
Sales. Sinclair User printed Spectrum charts compiled by the market research company Gallup. Enduro Racer entered at number 7 in June 1987. In July it was second only to Feud, a £2.99 budget game, and the magazine noted that it “looks to be coming up fast”. In August it was at the top of Gallup’s full-price chart.
Readers’ votes. CRASH‘s Hotline counted readers’ votes, not sales. Enduro Racer entered at number 6 in June 1987, slipped to 10 in July and August, then climbed: 3 in September and October, 2 in November, and number 1 in December 1987. “After an incredible eight months at Number One Gauntlet gets pushed off the top by Enduro Racer,” CRASH reported, ending the run of US Gold’s Gauntlet. CRASH printed no monthly Hotline in January 1988. The game was at number 4 in February and March 1988 and still at 11 in July 1988, more than a year after it first entered.
Sources
- CRASH issue 40, May 1987: Spectrum review, CRASH Smash (Activision, £9.99, Giga Games; the five courses; the reviewers’ comments; the ratings, 92% overall).
- Marcus Berkmann, Your Sinclair issue 16, April 1987: Spectrum review.
- CRASH issue 41, June 1987: Playing Tips, the level-skip cheat.
- Sinclair User issue 63, June 1987; issue 64, July 1987; issue 65, August 1987: charts compiled by Gallup for Sinclair User.
- CRASH Hotline charts, issues 41–54, June 1987 to July 1988; issue 47, December 1987, p. 112 (number 1, and the end of Gauntlet’s run); issue 48, January 1988 (an all-time chart in place of the monthly Hotline).
- Wikipedia, “Enduro Racer” (web, secondary): the 1986 arcade release, its two cabinets, and Activision’s 1987 conversions for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Atari ST. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enduro_Racer