I’ve talked a bit about racing games before, and as I’ve said, I prefer 3D racing games to 2D ones, but this old 2D racing classic from the Commodore 64 is still worth having a look at: yes, it’s Pitstop!
This is probably one of the first games I ever played. At the core, it’s a quite basic racing game; you push the joystick around to control your car, and you must avoid bumping into the other cars or the edge of the road.
If you do bump into anything, you will both lose speed and your tires will take damage (and will change color to indicate this). When they’ve taken enough damage, the will explode, and you’ll have lost the race. You also have a fuel meter, and if it ever reach empty, you will also lose.
So what you need to do, is drive into the pit when you pass it (once per lap), to change tires and fuel up. You control the guys using the joystick, and it is quite fiddly until you get used to the controls, but once you’re getting good at it, you can start the fuelling up process first, and then change all four tires before the tank is full, thus saving valuable seconds. But be careful: you need to stop filling the tank before it gets too full, or it will explode and you’ll lose the game!
The addition of the pit is what takes this game from just a standard racing game to a game which stood out at the time, and which still is quite good fun!
Pitstop looks interesting. I’ve never player it before.
This game ate many many many hours of my life!I still love the game, and can still play it on my trusty STILL_WORKING C-64! ^-^I used to get so frustrated with the pit controls until I got a little older, and managed to get to where I could change all the tires before the fuel tank filled up…lol you said just that in your post.Ironic.Anyway, yeah, its loads of fun.And everyone should play it at least once.Grab a C-64 emulator (or the real HW) and get the game from somewhere and play it!