Reviews

This was a great little game.I only ever played 2 Games Workshop games and both were great.You could customise ya car and save it to tape and fight ya mates with it.Only problem was the controls were a bit of a nightmare...
I do remember enjoying it lots :o)

Battlecars was an highly ambitious attempt to port a tabletop car duelling game to a home computer format from developers SLUG, who'd earlier given us Apocalypse and later went on to do Talisman.

The idea is that you create your own fighting vehicle using an editor written by Julian Gollop who'd later go on to great success in his own right. You've a choice of different chassis, engines, armour, etc. and can arm up with weapons from lowly machine guns to high powered lasers. Additional passive weapons include things like mines, smoke and oil which can be dropped into the path of unsuspecting opponents. Your cash is limited, so it's important to design a balanced vehicle, or at least one with strengths you can play to.

You then pick a choice of three venues. There's a racetrack, the open arena of the Autodrome, or the mean streets of Slug City. Ideally it's a two player game, although the computer can sub for the second player if you just want a straight race or a duel in the Autodrome. It's not a terribly sophisticated opponent, however, and can easily be outmanoeuvred.

Despite the grand concept, the game rather suffers from some unsophisticated programming. There's on a small window on the action for each player, the scrolling is slow and jerky, and the controls are bizarre. Each player has an entire half of the keyboard on which only a single key can be pressed at a time; if this seems like a bit of a nightmare to get to grips with, you're not wrong. I can only presume that it was done this way to avoid the inevitable matrix clashes when more than two keys are pressed at once.

Combine this with a sluggish multi-load, and you've got a rather difficult game to get into. However, it can still be an ultimately rewarding one, especially if you can find someone else prepared to give it a go with you.

Battlecars was a 1984 port of a board game created by Slug and published by Games Workshop, known for publishing table games.
The idea is of a duel between customized cars heavy on weaponry. Two players can either confront themselves or play against the computer. This means the screen will be divided in two and the position of both cars is visible for both players. A sort of Mad Max meets Demolition Derby.
The problem arises because of the outdated and sloopy programming, the game is sometimes slow and not that responsive, and the choice of keys is not by any means appropriate. That said it's still a fun game, if you can manage the outdated feel.

Back again and I'm back with this turd of a game. What could have been a decent game is ruined by a shoddy look and a bullshit keyboard setup. Your Sinclair ripped the Summit re-release for being outdated and written in BASIC, as if the reviewer didn't even know it was a re-released game. Turns out it looks dated even for 1984 standards. And Julian Gollop's name is credited for this game, yes THE Julian Gollop who a year later went on to write Chaos which is one of the greatest games in Spectrum history. It's safe to say this was a blemish and things would get better, much better.