Game

Last PC88 game for a bit, this is New Rally-X, a classic arcade maze chaser from the very early 80s made by Namco. It’s basically just a lightly tweaked version of Rally X, which was a little bulshit. Some new graphics, easier gameplay, new music, and the iconic Lucky Flag you can pickup that gives you bonus points. And of course, like so many early 80s arcade games, this was ported to the PC88.

Game

I’ll be real, I don’t think I like Rally-X very much. It feels… empty. Flat. To explain it very simply, you take Pacman, make the maze like 12x bigger, with scrolling, and place only a few dots all around at random. You also have a fuel meter, if that runs out you’re dead, and you can release smoke behind you to confuse the ghosts (cars in this case). Also some spaces are wider than the 1 tile you occupy, so enemies can juke you a bit easier.

I don’t really like it much. Like I said, it feels too big and empty, and the mini-map combined with the larger map on the left just feels confusing in a way I don’t think I appreciate. After a few levels you get a “Challenging Stage”, where the enemies don’t chase you, but instead you have shit laying around you can run into, and it’s way easier than the other stages. Another reason I don’t like it much is the AI of the enemy cars makes no god damn sense. Sometimes they’re like, ALL Inky from Pacman, good at jukes and chasing you down/doing pincer attacks. And at other times they’re all Clyde, ignoring you completely and just wandering randomly, sometimes going in the opposite direction when chasing you. It makes no sense and it makes me anxious.

This set was EXTREMELY easy though. It’s not a very hard maze game, all things considered.