Checkered Flag

The Good
At least I do not dislike Checkered Flag for the reason most people say it: The controls. At first, of course, I thought it was very strange, but in a way, they are just... well... unique :P. Seriously... The control of the car is very unusual and sometimes FUNNY (if you're in the mood) but, with time, is very cool to get the timing and the right tapping tricks to each curve, and the happiness when you just don't crash into the walls is unbelievable.. LOL The options are really nice: Weather, Tires, colors and stuff, just nice... The courses are pretty cool either, sure, nothing compared to something Jaguar could really do... I mean, why not put some scenary's details as scaled sprites? It would certainly be better than those block based penguins and trees... But the problem for me isn't here yet...

The sound of the engines is normal... and the musics could be better too...

The Bad
But the unforgiven problem with this game to me, is that THERE'S NO 2 PLAYER MODE! I just can't imagine a game in which the one and only objective is to finish first that doesn't have 2 players mode... This may sound silly, but in my opinion THIS is what kills this game.

The Bottom Line
Probably this is not a game you'll enjoy at first, but give it a chance and you will see it has some good points. Just try not to see it as the bad copy of Virtua Racing it meant to be. Its fun... but certainly could be much better.

The Good
I can appreciate games like Checkered Flag. I really can. I should not be in a position where I critisize racing games just because they have a resemblance of Virtua Racing. And that's the charm about Checkered Flag. From the looks of the screenshots on the box, it's a simplistic polygon racer that reminds us of that simpler time when Virtua Racing hit the arcades and was actually a great deal of fun, especially when you had plenty to do.

The Bad
Unfortunately, the very concept of this game was about all I liked. Everything about the game, once you start playing it, is absolutely pitiful.

Checkered Flag doesn't suffer from graphics. They're actually a bit more colorful than Virtua Racing's was. That is, to say, "slightly". Nothing more. But the game is shockingly slow and choppy. This game is the perfect example of what's entirely wrong with the Atari Jaguar, and that's its weak and pathetic MC6000 CPU that barely can power the system's powerful 64-bit processors. The racing is also virtually impossible to control. The car you drive is way too "touchy" and steers left and right way too fast with just a slight push.

Every level's design looks identical to the last and the framerate is so terrible that the game truly enrages you after playing it for more than 2 minutes.

The Bottom Line
Frankly, the game's color and graphics make it a complete Virtua Racing clone, except the problem is that compared to the Saturn (and sadly, even the Sega 32X version), the Jaguar feels like your playing a polygon racer on the NES.

The control on the Jaguar controller is easy enough to learn, except if you don't have the numeric pad nameslip over the keys, it's way too hard to figure out where the correct button is to change the viewpoint. Basically, if you loved Virtua Racing, you'd probably have loved this game if the graphics weren't so slow, the gameplay weren't so unplayable, and the controls weren't so confusing. Simply a tragically bad game. Why didn't they have someone test-play this game before they sold it?

The Good
By today's standards it looks pretty darn blocky, but back in 1994 this was state-of-the-art for a home system. It's hard to estimate, but I'd guess that CF displays several hundred polygons per second, perhaps even over a thousand. For comparison, I'd say that Flag's polygon count is roughly the same as Cybermorph, but CF has deeper draw-in distance - and of course Checkered Flag is using a selection of colors that is less harsh on the eyes than Cybermorph's rather bright neons! There are ten circuits, each with differences in track layout. Some courses have tunnels, some have bridges, and others simply twist between hills. As with Cybermorph, there's no texture mapping at all, but unlike Cybermorph the programmers didn't bother with Gouraud shading, leading to rather vanilla-looking landscape. The light-gray terrain in "Concrete Canyon" doesn't really look that much different from the grayish snowy Arctic track - except that the Arctic track has snowmen and penguins on the roadside. (Someone should have pointed out to Rebellion that the Arctic has polar bears; penguins hang out in the Antarctic.) Still, in Checkered Flag the Jaguar's limited polygon drawing abilities are pushed hard.

The Bad
In the game manual Rebellion are proud to state that CF uses a "bell curve" to handle steering input: at first the steering input is very gentle, and then quickly becomes more sensitive. This is very different from most racing games. Let's face it, in the majority of racers you press constantly on the controller and lean hard into the steering as you sweep through the curve. However, with CF you must use "gentle taps" on the steering to finely tune your cornering; if you steadily hold the steering left or right, it's just too much input and your car swings wildly out of control. Rebellion apparently claimed this was more a more accurate depiction of true racing. Hey guys, it's a video game - it's not supposed to be accurate, it's supposed to be FUN! Now, I could buy into this "accurate simulation" argument if Checkered Flag were a simulation, but it's not. Clearly the game is meant to be an arcade racer, and the input should have been similar to every other arcade racer.

The Bottom Line
Overall, what do I think? Usually I complain that the overly-critical are just haters of the Jaguar, but in this one case they have a legitimate beef. Checkered Flag could have been fun and it isn't. This is definitely not a game for the Jaguar to be proud of. If you're thinking of buying a copy, this game isn't worth the postage to mail it! My score is a well-below average 3.5 out of 10.