ChinnyVision: Badlands

[chinnyhill10]

Seems to be bit of a marmite game. Some like it, some hate it. Have to say that considering it came out around the same time as Supercars, why buy this? Especially when the Speccy and CPC versions are very shoddy. C64 version is decent enough mind but the problem is the arcade original is somewhat lacking.

[Gryzor]

Oh my, I certainly remember it being better than the piece of crap it looks like by now...

[Carnivius]

Had the Amiga version on a bunch of pirated disks I'd got given back then.   Total crap.  I already had Indy Heat which myself and two friends would enjoy playing when it came to the single screen top down racers and games like Nitro for scrolling.  The Badlands disk eventually got recycled as one of my many, many project disks for storing IFF pics I'd drawn or tracker mods I'd 'composed'.   But yeah I thought it was crap even for a 'freebie'.

And that CPC port is just terrible beyond belief...

[Shaun M. Neary]

I actually enjoyed this in the arcade, despite it being a souped up version of Super Sprint. But there were loads of games that had come out in between. Super Off Road and Hot Rod being two that spring to mind, so there was still a demand for the genre.


Of course, Badlands, Hot Rod and Super Off Road sucked absolute shit on the CPC, it had gotten to the stage where the top down race games were looking less and less appealing until Supercars came around and changed the game. It's just really unfortunate that the the 8bit scene was on life support by the time it had been released. But the shelves were diminishing of 8bit titles to make way for the 16bits, so the writing was on the wall.


I also think lazy developers had a hand in the speeding up of the demise too. The plus machines had so much more additional capabilities, but developing for the CPC was a headache inducing process for a lot of people as it was, so learning additional functionality was out of the question and we were getting shoddy ports left and right for years. Badlands (and Super Off Road) were classic examples of this. I'm not even saying this in retrospect. I remember AA's On The Grapevine feature showing previews of future releases and getting worked up for some, only to discover that they looked well and played shit, looked shit and played shit, and in some cases, releases that never saw the light of day.


Also, Chinny, I think you're referring to Grand Prix Simulator instead of F1 simulator, and yes, it was a lot more fun, even if the cars were blocks.

[Joseman]

and Super Off Road sucked absolute shit on the CPC,

I LOVED Super Off Road on the CPC, a LOT of hours and fun with it!!

i was fan of the arcade machine and i thought that the CPC conversion was good back in the day!

[Puresox]

Super Off road was a pretty decent attempt tbf. Allthough the controls did seem a little screwy sometimes . And Even though it was a Speccy port it had the edge on the Speccy version because you could identify your car on the CPC version

[chinnyhill10]

I LOVED Super Off Road on the CPC, a LOT of hours and fun with it!!

i was fan of the arcade machine and i thought that the CPC conversion was good back in the day!

Super Off Road and Badlands came out the same month. AA and ACE both reviewed them side by side. While Super Off Road didn't get outstanding marks in either mag, IIRC it did easily beat Badlands.

[Shaun M. Neary]

Super Off Road and Badlands came out the same month. AA and ACE both reviewed them side by side. While Super Off Road didn't get outstanding marks in either mag, IIRC it did easily beat Badlands.

Of course it did! Badlands wasn't exactly competition was it?
And the problem with Super Off Road, was it didn't do anything that Codemasters better with the likes of BMX Simulator. Garish mode 1 colours didn't help it's cause.


But by 1990, I was fairly sick of mode 1 and speccy ports.