Chase HQ

Copyright : Ocean Software | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

As if this arcade classic needs any kind of introduction, it has since been emulated by Raine and played by thousands of people in the UK alone. This was Oceans finest moment, bringing the Taito powered arcade to the home computer in the early 1990s - great stuff.

If you cross Segas "Out Run", Taitos "Continental Circus" and any cop drama you are likely to see on Cable Television you have a pretty close idea of how this game looks and plays. You are working as an independant part of the police force in an organisation known as Chase HeadQuarters (Chase HQ) and with the aid of your clever administration assistant Nancy you are guided along busy roads and freeways in order to track down, stop and arrest known murderers, car thieves and robbers. It?s all in a days work.

The arcade was fantastic but what about the conversions?

Graphics

The roads are paved with obstructions, Sunday drivers and all kinds of crazy bends and twists that make the game hard to control but a must play. Armed with a turbo boost and the most armoured car on the road it is your job as the driver to track the enemies down, smash their vehicle into almost a moving wreckage and pull them over before they escape into another town to do the same thing all over again.

It has to be said Ocean have done a great job in converting the arcade over to the Amstrad with vibrant colours, great controls and very well drawn graphics. The roads from the original arcade have been computerised and cloned exactly (withouth the high detail of course) which makes the game fully enjoyable for those that have played and completed the arcade before hand. You actually get to see the expression on your co-drivers face when you hit an innocent car, Nancy makes an appearance to give you a good bollocking if you are driving too slow and even the police light flashes when you get close to the villians...very nice touches indeed.

Sound

There are some great sounds in the computer version, including the turbo boost that wizzes into action when you hit the fire button, the siren that blurs out when you get close to the on-coming nutter and the whack of the car as you crash into them. The only let down is that due to a lack of available memory on the Amstrad CPC 464 (the machine I first bought) you never got to hear the "Lets go! Mr Driver" before you took off but on the 6128 version they added this bit of speach, along with "Out Of Time" and a few others - good to know that Ocean didn?t just cut the speach out of the computer version.

Gameplay

The game plays just like the arcade, hit left and right when required, only change gear once to hit high and low and remember to turn around the corners avoiding all on-coming traffic. Obviously the game isn?t as simple or easy as it sounds but it is still one of the most successful arcade to computer conversions in years.