I seriously believe this game is under-appreciated for its TAS potential. It is also technically full of wonders. I have disassembled the game, and am in the process of reverse engineering it completely.
The game is divided into two parts: Off-road races between two destinations, and races involving hill climbing, car crushing, tractor pulling and other things.
The off-road races are very difficult to optimize. I am currently trying to figure out how they work exactly. The screen scrolling works very chaotically, and it seems quite random where the game decides to suddenly slow down both cars or where it decides to bump them both forward. You can't ever escape the screen, so having the screen scroll as fast as possible is a paramount. Using nitros may help in that regard.
The meat of the game is in the events though. I have completely reverse engineered the simulated car mechanics in this game, and believe me, the simulation is very thorough, down to the gear ratios at various gearbox levels. It is very interesting.
I have complete confidence that I can do perfect races in all of those events. In this WIP you can already see a couple of those races completed.
Beating the events is not just a matter of frame-perfect mashing of left and right. You need to take care to shift gears at the right time, and to know when you need to slow down to avoid damaging your engine, your tires, your suspension, or your gearbox at an inconvenient time. There's also the issue of running out of fuel. Sometimes blowing one of those up costs you more than what you gain by going at full speed.
Note that both players can still lose equipment after one of them reaches the goal.
Note that both players can still lose equipment after one of them reaches the goal.
Optimization challenges:
- The offroad races. The game performs quite erratically there, with the camera's motions playing a large part in how fast you can go. Sometimes you may come to standstill for no reason at all, just because the game decides so. Once I figure this out, I may need to start the TAS over.
- Your money. For optimal performance at the events, you will need to maintain full equipment in all categories at all time. Luckily this is rather trivial as long as you don't wreck trucks and lose events.
- Opponent's money. The opponent wrecks his truck like mad in the events. Your job is to ensure he doesn't have money to buy anything back, because he's a horribly slow shopper, or to beat the race before he can do too much damage to his own truck. Be aware that if you bankrupt the opponent, a rich new one takes his place. This can sometimes save time, if the opponent totally wrecked their equipment in the last event and would otherwise need to do shopping to repair it.
Auxiliary goals:
- Bankrupt the opponent as fast as possible. There are a number of computer opponents, and I'd like to see what happens if you bankrupt the last one. Bankrupting the opponent also means that in the beginning of the next event you don't need to wait for the opponent to repair their truck.
This WIP plays until the beginning of the race to Pueblo.