Mastertronic's BMX Racers - rad, bad or sad?
BMX RACERS
(Mastertronic)
Aaaaand I’m back doing some new stuff on this site – bet ya missed me, didn’t ya? Whaddya mean, you didn’t notice I’d gone? And who am I anyway?! Sheesh. I know it was only a few weeks but I reckon you missed it anyway, deep down inside somewhere. I half-thought I might pack in this website malarkey if I’m honest, but frankly I do quite enjoy knocking up these write-ups and I do kinda miss it when I’m not thinking up a silly comment or concocting a cunning pun, while ever magicking up copious knowing references to other games, and taking exciting, colourful, well-timed screenshots. And moreover, to quote Mr. Eminem "it feels so empty without me." Despite my clear talent, some people don’t actually read the reviews per se and just like to offer their own opinions on Spacebook, which is only to be expected, as reading and writing are very much lost skills these days. But in ten years’ time, where will a load of cutting comments and half-bottomed opinions be? Lost in the ether, that’s where! At least the contents of this website should stay put forever, or at least until the Future Content Quality Police take it down in the year 3026, but I’ll let my great-great descendants fight that battle for me, which I’ve no doubt they’d be more than happy to do.
Trumpeting aside, I also realised that I’d left a number of ‘features’ on the site unfinished, so I felt I should carry on to try to complete stuff properly and at least pretend to be a perfectionist of sorts. There are still a few years as yet undone on my “The Games That Time Forgot” features, so here we are, jumping in again at the mighty year that was 1984, a time when the Spectrum was really beginning to show its chops (lamb and pork) and produce some amazing software. But of course I’m not interested in that! I’m focusing on five games I’ve spotted which didn’t get reviewed in the big mags, and mostly not even in the ickle ones either. Is it because they’re bobbins, or have they just been given a bit of a bum ride? Not sure I’ve got the right phrase there.
I like to do these in reverse order of goodness, so if you’re paying attention you’ll probably have noticed that there’s not much down for the first one mentioned each time. And this dubious honour for the year 1984 is bestowed upon Mastertronic’s BMX Racers. Which I bet sold absolute millions by the way, since most of their affordable offerings did, regardless of whether they were any good or not. Which is not to say they didn’t produce quite a few good games over the years, but it is certainly to say that you were taking a bit of a punt if you hadn’t done any research before parting with your three and a half groats. But if it did turn out to be pants, at least you didn’t buy The Great Space Race, look at it that way.
I was never into those “British Motor Cross (X)” doodahs myself, unlike most kids of the time. I had to persevere with my lovely ‘Spectrum magenta’ Tomahawk chopper bike for ages, until a racer was the thing to have. My mate had a red Grifter though, which was quite a beast, as we bombed around the block on our “suicide machines” as Bruce Springsteen would undoubtedly call them. If you were a proper ponce, you’d have all the gear and twizz around doing tricks I suppose – it was quite the fad, but at least it was a healthy one – kids nowadays don’t even know what a “bike” is, or even a “road” come to that. Grumble, grumble, moan, moan. And there were plenty of Speccy games featuring them of course, in fact it was practically obligatory for budget games to have the letters “BMX” in the title. Like… Finders BMX Keepers. Or Olli And BMX Lissa. Or Fe(BMX)ud. Or BMX Dizzy. No I won’t stop, I’m having too much fun. Erm, BMX Simulator. Oh wait…
First impressions then, and they be good. The cover features 2 neon-coloured BMX botherers doing jumps in moody darkness, and it all looks very cyberpunky and impressive. The little flappy bit even boasts that you should type LOAD “” CODE to start ‘er up, therefore it MUST have machine code lurking in it somewhere, therefore it MUST be super mega-amazing! Let’s check out the blurb then, it’s short which is a relief. I’ve pointed out the spurious bits for you. “Race through the city park on your BMX keeping to the track (not actually necessary) otherwise you will hit the oil slicks and slide (this doesn’t happen) or crash (this does). There is a maniac on the loose in the park (two, including you) who is trying to run you down, but if you get too close to the old lady (only one allowed in the park at any time) she is liable to put her walking sticks (how many has she got?) through the spokes in your bike. Don’t lose your head and you can be champion of the BMX Racers! (not actually possible)” So a bit of poetic licence but we’ll allow it. And no screenshots, I wonder why…
So type LOAD “”, then go and put the kettle on. Then come back and remember that, oh yes, it should have been LOAD “” CODE, which you thought only applied to janky Richard Shepherd Software titles, so you’ve just wasted a lot of your time. Then hang on for the usual few minutes – this is a 48K title after all allegedly. Of course I didn’t actually do any of this as I’m one of those emulator heathen who can’t be arsed getting the real thing out of my loft. Weirdly the +2 in my loft wasn’t actually mine back in the day, and no-one’s quite sure how it got there, including my parents who gave it to me a few years back, as my Speccies of choice were rubber-keyed 48K, then bog-standard 128 only. God damn you, Sugar - he's behind it, I know it.
At least while you wait for the action to begin, you’ve got a loading screen to ogle at. It’s not… quite… one of those tedious big skyscraper 'M' things Mastertronic threw onto most of their early products, because – look! There are a couple of yellow bikers up there, one of which may or may not be Clumsy Colin. At least they tried a bit in this respect. On load-up, we get a screen full of text telling us what the point of it all is, if you couldn’t quite muster up the patience to read through that interminable inlay spiel. Or if you copied the game, heaven forbid. The Spectrum’s default font is to the fore here of course, generally (but not always, I grant you) a sign of impending lack of quality…
And we’re off! Time to bash those pedals as fast as your poor bruised ankles can tolerate, once you’ve safely donned your sexy cycle clips to stop your flappy flares getting caught in the mechanisms. If the first impressions of this game are good, then the second, third and fourth might come as something of a disappointment. I’ve put that as kindly as I could. You’re faced with an obstacle course of, erm, obstacles which you have to ride through on your short-cut to get through the park, to the only newsagents around that sells Crash magazine, to try to snag the last copy before some other like-minded geek has the same idea. We’ve all been there! Though thankfully in real life, the trip through the park did actually end at some point, unlike this affair which literally goes on forever until your head falls off.
BMX Racers is not much of a looker, it’s true. It looks kinda like a really good… type-in. The UDGs are well-designed, with a small amount of humour injected occasionally, like a bunny wabbit with flappy ears (I did say a small amount), and the granny is an amusing if somewhat ageist touch. She flings her infinite supply of walking sticks across the screen, hoping to catch your wheel and topple you over the handlebars, which happened to me once in real life and was quite painful. Though I just went over them of my own accord, not due to a malevolent octogenarian. The apparently evil ‘ghost BMX rider’ fellow flies past now and then, reminding me of those infernal cyclists Trashman used to dodge on Montague Road and other places in Bath. Easily the best bit of the game is when he mows down the granny, leaving a bloodied red mess – haha, die, helpless old crone! But unfairly if you then decide to ride over granny’s mangled, red corpse, you yourself crash! No fair! Where’s my share of oldie-murdering fun eh? To add to the sense of under-realism, if you come into contact with an oil slick, you crash directly into its outermost pixels, rather than skidding, taking most of your skin off, and then crashing into something else instead. That’s a bit rubbish.
So you tootle on upwards, in a disappointingly flickery way, and while there are indeed numerous obstacles to avoid, I found that sticking mostly to the rightermost extreme of the park was by far the safest option. Hardly anything gets in your way there, but every now and then something does, so you can’t completely go to sleep and take your hands off the handlebars the way tosspots do sometimes on the roads. By using this sneaky method I clocked up a high score of 2,825. Oh, and your score only appears after you’ve crashed, the programmer chose not to put it on the main screen at all. Talking of which, who was the programmer? No evidence exists on this subject. Chinny chin chin, Mastertronic. The jump ramps in the park are bobbins too, you simply roll over them with no graphical flourishes involved. In fact, if you fail to line your jump up 100%, you’ll crash into the ramp itself like a moron. Embarrassing.
Maybe I’m being overly harsh, but I wonder how BMX Racers might have been improved upon? It very much lacks purpose, excitement and joie de vivre generally. It’s a shame there isn’t a mechanism for throwing things, a la Paperboy. If he’d thought on, your rider could have borrowed a pea-shooter from Eric from Skool Daze, and been able to fire peas at grannies, bikers and farm animals alike, creating a messy mash-up of graphics all over the shop – now THAT would have been awesome anarchic fun right there! But sadly, without such fanciful tomfoolery, it’s all a bit dull and ends up feeling a bit like… possibly the best type-in ever. BM-ouch.
RAD RATING
34%
THE GAMES THAT TIME FORGOT: 1984 EDITION
5th out of 5
BMX, how much did I want one of those when I was little. But, instead, I got some nondescript hand-me-down.
As for games, I didn't think much of the BMX Racers. But it was better than the Jungle one, though that's not saying much. I thought the Pro BMX one looked familiar, but it turns out that the one I had was Code Master's 1987 BMX Simulator. In fact I think I had it twice, as I had it in a compilation as well.