BC Racers

Shorty after the Martians colonised Earth as an experimental breeding ground (around 500,000 years ago), they found the water made them a l dicky and legged it off back home. But heir creation, prehistoric man, did pick up few handy tips from them before they left one being the internal combustion igine. For thousands of years afterwards, rehistoric motor-cyde and sidecar races ere held on one island in the Atlantic very year, where crowds would gather to atch the island's top racers battle it out or the ultimate prize - their very own Dulderdash Bike. Sadly though, when tlantis sunk, all this technology was lost the seas and the rest is history. This, hbelievably, is all true.

Anyone fancy going clubbin'?

As with our Royal's children, beating your opponents about the head with a blunt instrument is the name of the game, and this is the responsibility of your sidecar-inhabiting passenger. Make sure you get some practice in these tactics first, so every time you overtake get as close as possible and have a good whack. When you're confident enough, go home and give it a shot in the game and you'll see their strength go down - hit 'em enough and they're out of the race. The same, obviously, can be done to you.

Sadly though. BC Racers gripped me like a bald tyre on ice. liven the head to head option failed to have any oomph. There's no real skidding when taking a corner at speed, for instance, so you end up going at full throttle all the way! This, coupled with incredibly short tracks, means one lap lasts no time at all. and with a maximum of eight per race, the whole thing's over before you know it.

If you do wish to persevere with BC Racers. however, there are four skill levels and eight tracks to choose from. You can pick from six duos to control, each with different qualities such as speed, acceleration etc. This should go some way towards padding out your enjoyment, but unfortunately. I can't see your interest lasting for too long. You can run down spectators, though.

Virgin's famous cave dude known as Chuck Rock, returns once again for another adventure. BC Racers is more or less a 3DO version of Mario Kart. You have your choice of several different bikes, each with its own ratings for speed, attack and acceleration.

The characters compete for a chance to win a prized motorcycle. The many races take place in several locales. Some are a simple lap around a cave city, while others are complex and twisted, complete with hairpin turns.

The 3DO doesn't seem to handle the scaling too well. The game is surprisingly choppy. Hopefully, this is because it is an early copy. There are a few nice effects, though. One of the races takes place in a graveyard, and your bike has a headlight that brightens the way. It is a neat transparency effect.

The gameplay is simple. One button is for the gas, another for the brake. The third is for bopping your opponents over the head. Each bike you choose has a sidecar with a partner who helps out with the fighting.

BC Racers will be appearing on the 3DO soon.

KICK SOME ASPHALT

Wonder how races really evolved? Well, this will enlighten your mind a little bit. In this prehistoric racing game you have a tricycle with your lady friend riding shotgun. Race against other wacky dudes, dudettes and overweight dinosaurs. Of course this is not your obstacle. But beware, they have the same fist action to do the same damage to you. Don't inflict too much damage on your bike, as you can wreck and lose the entire race. Remember, don't bump against the other riders if you don't want to trash your bike and become extinct.

As you pass the early courses the tracks get a bit more difficult. Slow down on those nasty turns and take the other racers out of the race with the punches from you and and your mate. A very wacky racing game.

Put the thrilling motorcycle racing of Road Rash in to a comical Flintstones-like Stone Age environment, and you get BC Racers -- a goofy but enjoyable racing game.

Meet the Racers

In this wild prehistoric realm, you choose from six teams of racers, then ride behind the bike for a view of your driver and sidecar passenger. On 32 challenging tracks, you must race while using your sidecar character to attack others and defend your bike. To continue to the next race, you can't finish last or wreck your bike.

Detailed sprites and colorful backgrounds lend cartoony character to this game, which looks much crisper than the Sega CD version. The graphics, however, take an evolutionary step backward when the racing begins and the scrolling becomes choppy. Some slowdown plagues the simultaneous two-player split- screen races.

The decent music captures the game's funky flavor. But the sparse sound effects and shallow-sounding screech of your tires taking a corner leave you craving better racing audio.

Bedrock Bombers

Simple controls make steering through these twisty tracks relatively easy, but you hardly have time to use your attacks. Three skill levels let you select the difficulty. Normal and Harder modes plant crazy obstacles in the tracks, like pop-up coffins on the graveyard course.

BC Racers' numerous tracks, humorous attacks, and simultaneous two-player action will appeal to those looking for a lighthearted challenge. Serious racers who won't appreciate the game's humor should stick to present-day speedways.

Super Mario Kart goes Road Rashin' in this charming racer. It's not intense, but BC Racers is good-natured fun.

Blast to the Past

Joe 'n' Mac would recognize this cartoonlike racing. Competing on 32 prehistoric courses, your Neanderthal racers are paired up on stony motorcycles with sidecars.

Snagging power-ups as they go, the cave dudes bash their competitors. Without serious timers or gauges to complicate the races, and with word balloons punctuating punches, BC Racers emphasizes lightweight action.

The graphics could be straight from The Flintstones. Comical characters with goofy hair ramble past volcanoes and rock houses, making this ride a lark in the Jurassic Park. Unfortunately, pixilated landscapes sometimes make it hard to spot the power-ups on the track.

The sounds aren't as colorful as they should've been. Peppy music drives the action, but the minimal voices and sound effects don't really convey the exuberant spirit of the graphics.

Yabba Dabba Doo

The only complications are with the controls. Get a six-button pad, or you'll fumble with the three-button setup as you try to simultaneously accelerate, steer, punch, and hit Nitro. One good control feature is the ability to switch your view from behind the racer to an aerial shot.

While it probably isn't for sophisticated gamers, BC Racers still has plenty of youth appeal. Until they're ready for Road Rash, novices can get good mileage from these cave clowns.

A fun prehistoric racing game that was also released on many console systems. The storyline is as simple as the gameplay: millionaire caveman Millstone Rockafella has arranged a formula BC contest with a Ultimate Boulderdash Bike as the prize. A host of bizarre characters have entered in pairs -- one driving, one deploying weapons from the side-car -- in a wacky race across eight circuits ranging from a "jungle rumble" to the hellish "volcano dash".

There are four skill settings and they make a significant difference in game, with "easy level" loop tracks suddenly spawning all sorts of dog-leg corners and chicanes on harder difficulty settings. Other than that, it's all very straightforward with no power-ups or unusual hazards -- apart from bridges and leaps.

Besides one-player mode, you have a choice of competing against a second player alone or with all the racers included. Getting down to gameplay, the first minutes you need to get used to the steering which reacts much stronger than in kart games. The first stage is easy and just a warm-up.

The second one features a race at night as extra difficulty. There's a light spot in front of you, in the area of your front lamp, but the view is much worse than in the first stage. Upcoming stages feature bridges and ramps -- too bad if you miss them -- and even snow. After eight stages, the settings repeat but with new courses. This way, you get 32 levels in all.

The higher levels have quite interesting course lay-outs (in contrast to the rather simple first eight levels) with narrow passages and even narrower short-cuts. As they get very difficult later on, it should be enough to keep you occupied for a while. Even more in split-screen two-player-mode, of course, which harks back to the days of Epyx's Pitstop, with very good graphics detail that isn't very pixellated. Overall, if you enjoy Wacky Wheels or other kart racing games, you'll enjoy BC Racers.

This game was released as freeware in 1995.

Storyline

BC Racers tries to create a racing simulation by mixing the usual elements of games of this genre with the "prehistoric" theme. Particularly, the game takes place in the world of one of Core's iconic characters, Chuck Rock. The storyline of the game is pretty simple, but it adds much to the general feeling: the millionaire playboy caveman Millstone Rockafella has organized a BC bike race, the winner of which will receive the Ultimate Boulderdash Bike. Six groups of riders -one driving, one deploying weapons from the sidecar- from all around the prehistoric world will use their rock-powered sidecars to compete for this prize.

Description and Gameplay

BC Racers has four difficulty settings: Easy, Medium, Hard and Rockhard. Each of the settings has eight different circuits, making a total of 32 circuits in the game. There are also eight themes, from desert wastes to active volcanos and massive jungles. The tracks need four laps to complete, and feature many special elements specific to the circuit's setting. Unusually for a game of this type, there are no power-ups, except for a "turbo" that the bikes can trigger every few seconds.

Other unusual feature of the game is the function of the bikes' riders: both of them can use physical attacks to injure other drivers. If the bike gets beaten enough, it crashes out, giving the player extra points. Of course, the same thing can happen to the player's bike.

The game does not seek to accurately simulate real world bikes, driving conditions, or physics. In fact, many internet reviews consider the bikes quite hard to control, since the steering reacts much stronger than in other racing games.

Some ports of the game include a split-screen two player mode. However, other ports didn't include this modality, having instead a two player cooperative mode (one of the players controls the driver, while the other controls the fighting, steering and turbo).

Trivia

Some of the riders in BC Racers come from other famous Core Design games, such as Chuck Rock and Chuck Rock Junior. Others are obvious references to several real world characters, such as Brick Jagger and Jimi Handtrix (referencing Mick Jagger and Jimi Hendrix).

Here is a game that proves that, just because it's released for a superior platform, doesn't necessarily mean it's any better than before. We first saw this prehistoric motor racer on the Sega CD and 32X. Now, Core has been kind enough to release it on the 3DO for all of those B.C. heads out there. Unfortunately, the 3DO version is not much better and, if I dare say so, even worse than, the former two versions. True, this version is prettier to look at.The colors are sharp and the backgrounds are much more vibrant. But, the lousy control which plagued the other two, has returned like a chronic sickness.These guys are driving vehicles primarily made of stone; you'd think the control would be a little meatier.

On top of the poor control, is the issue of track visibility. It becomes difficult to discern the course from the out-of-bounds areas. Apparently, these clever Cro-Magnons burned out their brains after inventing a combustion engine 8,000 years ahead of schedule. As a result, they weren't able to properly rope off the racing area.

You should expect more from a game when it shows up on a platform like the 3DO; the power's there. If you really need to whet your caveman craving, pick up an old copy of B.C.'s Quest for Tires for the Apple II; it's more entertaining.