Test Drive
Back when I we first got a PC for the house, (We were pretty lucky to have one.) it was a pretty straight-forward 286 with a 16 colour monitor and a dot-matrix printer. Of course, back then they didn't have too much use around the house; they were glorified typewriters with a calculator taped on. However, there were a few games that we had loaded on it. Indy 500, Silent Service, Carmen Sandiego and Test Drive.
Test Drive was slow and clunky. It rattled your PC case with whatever small range of beeps that it could muster out of the pc-speaker and like most racing games at the time it featured a virtual draw distance shorter than the fog of Silent Hill. And yet, I loved it. It featured all the cars that adorned my postered wall as a kid; the Lotus Esprit, Porsche 911, Ferrari Testerossa, Corvette and the ultimate 80's car, the Lamborghini Countach. Mind you, the car select animations were much better than the actual game was.
Test Drive was pretty similar visually to the other racers at the time. The entire screen a flat rasterized image with a fake sense of perspective, cars popping on quickly at the horizon giving you very little chance to avoid them. Unlike most though, Test Drive felt more like a simulator title. Though it doesn't compare to games like Forza, you felt more like you were out navigating traffic and properly driving on the road whereas Super Monico GP or Super Hang On felt like you were either holding left or holding right through a turn and then repeating for the whole track with very little in-between.
Though I'm glad I didn't have to spend much of my gaming years playing racers that were this limited, it certainly stuck with me as one of the first games I experienced that included real-world cars and gameplay that reflected an enjoyment of driving. But man, going back and watching a video of the game sure brought back memories of those sound effects. I'm pretty sure most of the time I had just shut them off.
Test Drive was slow and clunky. It rattled your PC case with whatever small range of beeps that it could muster out of the pc-speaker and like most racing games at the time it featured a virtual draw distance shorter than the fog of Silent Hill. And yet, I loved it. It featured all the cars that adorned my postered wall as a kid; the Lotus Esprit, Porsche 911, Ferrari Testerossa, Corvette and the ultimate 80's car, the Lamborghini Countach. Mind you, the car select animations were much better than the actual game was.
Test Drive was pretty similar visually to the other racers at the time. The entire screen a flat rasterized image with a fake sense of perspective, cars popping on quickly at the horizon giving you very little chance to avoid them. Unlike most though, Test Drive felt more like a simulator title. Though it doesn't compare to games like Forza, you felt more like you were out navigating traffic and properly driving on the road whereas Super Monico GP or Super Hang On felt like you were either holding left or holding right through a turn and then repeating for the whole track with very little in-between.
Though I'm glad I didn't have to spend much of my gaming years playing racers that were this limited, it certainly stuck with me as one of the first games I experienced that included real-world cars and gameplay that reflected an enjoyment of driving. But man, going back and watching a video of the game sure brought back memories of those sound effects. I'm pretty sure most of the time I had just shut them off.
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