What's in the box
Title screen
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Digging...
My copy of Fast Tracks had the "Bobby Rahal Challenge" disk included. I did a quick online reseach and haven't really found anything about it, which means, this expansion is not available yet on the net. That said, I've asked over at Twitter if someone knew anything about it. I've also tagged Frank Gasking from Games that Weren't who does know a lot about preserving old disks, hoping, he could point me to somebody able to help me get the disk online.
His quick reseach brought up a post by Quapil, a fellow Austrian game collector, who shared his Fast Track boxes over at retrocollector.org. Looks like his copy has all the original paper work, so while there's of course no "Bobby Rahal Challenge" disk, there is the order form needed to grab a copy of it, which would us provide with some more details about the disk. I've mailed Quapil and asked, if he would be so kind scanning the mail oder form for us and about an hour later, I had a readable version of the form. The disk could be ordered for USD 4.95 but only from the US or Canada; also the offer ended on December 31, 1986. With the disk having not yet found its way onto the net, my take is that there weren't really that many gamers willing to spend a couple of bucks which is understandable, especially as creating your own courses was the main selling point of Fast Tracks.
Anyway, my copy of the disk will soon be shipped to Frank for creating a .d64 file and finally preserving those tracks.
To be continued...
Construction Kit Madness
Games that ship with a construction kit were and still are rather rare, and back in the 80s, fooling around with the construction kit for "Fast Tracks" was pure mayhem in our household. My brothers and I spent hours building the most ridiculous tracks for ourselves, and the longer and the more confusing, the better. The possibilities seemed endless, with crossings, sharp turns, and even switches that sent you in a random direction. The tool itself is simple to use, and the available space is more than sufficient for our devilish tracks.
Playing those tracks was — you've guessed it — not as fun for the player, especially as the tiniest error sent you back to the start. Completing a race — or sometimes even a single lap — was most of the time impossible, but seeing others fail was the goal anyway, right?
With a beaten-up boxed copy of Fast Tracks in my hands, it's time to give it another go.
First, I loaded up one of the given tracks, and lo and behold, I'm racing at top speed in no time. With the game being a slot car simulator, turning is done automatically, but one has to control the car's speed as well as position on the track. Driving and bumping other cars off the track feels great, but getting thrown off the course yourself hurts big time. Long story short, I didn't really complete the "Spaghetti" course right away but rebooted the game instead.
Now, the real fun begins with loading up the constructor. Here, existing tracks can be tweaked, or brand new ones built from scratch. Placing pieces as well as building a track is smooth, and I'm quite impressed with how usable the single-button joystick interface is. After creating and saving my track, I couldn't bring myself to load it up. It's not that it might turn out to be a dull one or that I'm going to fly off repeatedly, but having none of my brothers here with me right now to give it a go is what's stopping me. Guess, I have to postpone it until our next family event :-)
12 months, 12 boxes
We've got a nice tradition over at the Big Box PC Game Collectors on Facebook at the end of each year where everyone joining in would show their top 12 games from all the game that they've picked up in the past 12 months.
Here's my list for 2023:
- Omikron (PC, FR, Limited Edition)
- Half-Life 2 (PC, US)
- Hexen II: Portal of Praevus (PC, EU)
- Quake (PC, US, Shareware)
- Fast Tracks (C64, US)
- Wizardry IV (PC, US)
- Tetris (C64, US)
- id Anthology (PC, US)
- The Bard's Tale (C64, DE)
- Syndicate (PC, EU)
- Quake II: Ground Zero (PC, US)
- Daggerfall (PC, FR, Classique Collection)
Latest Pickup: Fast Tracks
My copy of "Fast Tracks" for C64 arrived today \o/
Last game of 2023
There's one last game on the way but sadly I won't be able to pick it up until Jan 2 so it's kinda the first game of 2024 and what a beauty it is: Fast Tracks for C64 (incl. The Bobby Rahal disk, which might not be archived yet. Haven't done much research though).
