Race Rad Cars. Defeat the AI Menace. Ponder the Terrible Future.
NES Catalog #077-78
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Rad Racer
PUBLISHER: Nintendo
DEVELOPER: Square
RELEASE DATE: Aug. 7th, 1987 (JP), Oct. 1987 (US), Jan. 15th, 1988 (EU)
Rad Racer nails that feeling of going too fast on the freeway, the overwhelming sensation of freedom on the road, the wind, the garish scenery, the obnoxious slowpoke motorists that won’t get out of your way.
Choose from either a Ferrari Z28 or a stock Formula One car, though there is no real choice. Pick the Ferrari, both for stylish points and to reward yourself for a blessed stock portfolio. Then just get in the car and drive, baby.
You start off by the Sunset Coastline in California, Highway 1, one of the most dangerous in the country. Yellow cars generally stay away from you, but the green cars like to cut you off, despite your excess speed. Brake, downshift, speed past them. No time for the finger, you’ve got rubber to burn.
The locales speed by, you can’t keep track of them all. Los Angeles and San Francisco at night, the lights so beautiful, they almost make you forget about California’s energy crisis. Suddenly, as if in a dream, you’re in Athens, racing towards the Parthenon, as if that’s a feat you could even achieve. You snap out of it, just in time to nearly get run off the road by a blue car. The further you go, the different variety of cars try to cut you off or hit you off the road. The world is really an aggressive place.
Eventually, you find yourself in a snowy place. Wyoming, perhaps? You encounter a typhoon off the East Coast, but you are undeterred. With each location, you feel the need to drive faster and faster. An ethereal time limit haunts you. Are you going too fast? Of course you are, but speed is necessary. Without it, how will you accomplish your goal of being the raddest racer that ever was?
Zanac
PUBLISHER: FCI
DEVELOPER: Compile
RELEASE DATE: Nov. 28th, 1986 (JP - FDS), Oct. 1987 (US)
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Famicom Disk System, iOS, MSX, Wii Virtual Console, Switch
Zanac might sound like some sort of cursed pharmaceutical, but it is, in fact, a shoot-em-up. One with Artificial Intelligence, that great leveler of worlds.
But how can A.I. exist in an 8-bit shoot-em-up from 1987? Developer Compile does not divulge its secrets in the manual, so a mystery it shall remain. What is known, however, is what the A.I. does. The better you play Zanac, the harder the game is. The worse you play, the easier it is. The A.I. acts as a sort of adaptive difficulty that, depending on the way you play shoot-em-ups, you’ll either appreciate or abhor.
Zanac itself is a fairly basic shoot-em-up. You control Zanac and your goal is to stop an A.I. computer that’s gone rogue. Apparently sending too many ships at the computer would result in a mechanical bloodbath, so those opposing the computer send just one, in hopes that it’ll get the job done. Zanac’s two attacks are a large circular orb, and a slow-moving missile. Weapon upgrades abound, although their potency depends on how you choose to play.
Will you try and annihilate the baddies as quickly as possible with as much force as you can willingly muster? Expect Zanac to be an unrelenting hellscape, one in which little satisfaction can be found. Those who were weaned on shoot-em-ups know that, with 99% of the genre, if you’re not shooting as hard as possible from level 1, you will be killed. Zanac almost provides incentive for the player to not do this, unless they want an obscene challenge.
Adaptive difficulty is not really a mechanic you see very often in the NES days, and playing Zanac, it’s easy to gauge why. Being rewarded for knowing how to play a shoot-em-up with additional, unasked-for difficulty is a quick trek back to the video store.
I really enjoy this writing. I owned Rad Racer. I have always been bad at it. I'm bad at OutRun, too. The game has such an awesome vibe, which your writing captures. And yet I feel like I can only half-participate in it because my race is always cut so short. In both Rad Racer and OutRun, it feels like the only way to play and to fully enjoy it is to make zero mistakes. And in both cases, avoiding mistakes is very hard compared to a more traditional racing game (at which I generally display middling competence) because of how treacherous the other cars are. The right way to play these games has just never clicked with me.
Zanac: you didn't comment on this box art. I know for a fact I spent long periods of time staring at it. Maybe I saw it as an advertisement somewhere? I'm not even sure if I have played the game. But I'm noticing a trend where top-down NES SHMUPs of this era have fascinating box art, and Zanac might take the cake. Added to that is the mystery of what an "exclusive power play game" would be. I suppose it's just meaningless marketing-speak, the Blast Processing of its day?
I remember getting Rad Racer as a kid. We were on vacation but we'd have to wait until we were home to play it. And then the box got lost in our van amongst my dad's tools! I felt so bad! I was so relieved when it was found! I played hours & hours on this, but never *quite* finished level 8. I made up lyrics for the music & I can still hear it in my head.