Chequered Flag -Driving Miss Julie
This review should be about car racing, it should be high octane ( okay, it's the Sinclair Spectrum, medium octane), it should be about race tracks (of which there are ten) , it should be about the cars ( of which there are three , including one automatic) surely at least it should talk about pit crews? Well , dear reader, sometimes things are never what they seem. Welcome to Chequered Flag from 1983.
This was a nice sensible Formula One racing game for the Sinclair Spectrum, drive round the tracks, with no opponents, avoiding hazards and staying on the road. It was brought into our household with educational intent, always lurking that educational intent, it could hide in the strangest of places. The first few plays of this game ended up in the destruction of the car, as driving something with just a keyboard was an alien concept even to my father who had driven all his life. But he persevered and was soon zooming round the tracks with obvious glee. The sound is fairly basic but with a child's imagination it could become an engine noise. With my father's imagination it found itself amplified through his large Ferguson Radiogram speakers and took on the volume and tone of a rather determined jack hammer ( our neighbours must have loved us during the early 80's).
It has to be said my father loves his Formula One and indeed he loves his cars. This game was ,
I suspect one of his all time favourites , his chance to live out his dreams of speed and glory. He did seem to transcend all time and space ( and requests to help with house hold chores) whilst playing. But what about someone who at the age of 11 obviously couldn't drive ? Who was actually so scared of being in control of something moving was unable to even drive a dodgem car? Would presenting the driving experience away from a steering wheel be useful? Would the educational intent pay off? Could this little black, rubberised keyed box help her?
I suspect one of his all time favourites , his chance to live out his dreams of speed and glory. He did seem to transcend all time and space ( and requests to help with house hold chores) whilst playing. But what about someone who at the age of 11 obviously couldn't drive ? Who was actually so scared of being in control of something moving was unable to even drive a dodgem car? Would presenting the driving experience away from a steering wheel be useful? Would the educational intent pay off? Could this little black, rubberised keyed box help her?
My first attempts at playing this were ...well....not good. Even in the automatic option car I still struggled to stay on the track, even on the straight , at the first sign of a corner I would slow down to the extent that a snail could over take. The noise that the game made when you came off the road was a constant when I was playing and with my father's idea of increasing it's sounds output to rock concert standard (okay, slight exaggeration) , my attempts at completing a lap were accompanied by sounds that should perhaps only be heard on a decent into hell.
I did try to master this game, I played it alone without my helpful backseat driving father, but still I was unable to get round a lap at the speed that any normal person should. I had friends round and would load up this game to let them play it, they would zip round the laps , we would drink endless glasses of highly e-numbered drinks as their times got faster. But I still crashed off the track at the first or second corner. So why do I include Chequered Flag here? Wouldn't I be better off burying all memory of the game that made me realise there was something a little askew in my own internal programming? ( I now realise it was part of a type of dyslexia where I have difficulty with some co-ordination and the concept of lefts and rights .)
Well, no. This game is the game that introduced me to the joy of watching others play computer games. I find that I get more joy in watching someone else play a game than playing it myself. I have the opportunity to admire the scenery ( which on Spectrum games can be truly endearing), to take in the plot line (which on Spectrum games can be truly crazy ) and to look at the artistic qualities of all the sprites ( which on Spectrum games can be beautifully made) . I had found my niche in a computer gaming world.
I did try to master this game, I played it alone without my helpful backseat driving father, but still I was unable to get round a lap at the speed that any normal person should. I had friends round and would load up this game to let them play it, they would zip round the laps , we would drink endless glasses of highly e-numbered drinks as their times got faster. But I still crashed off the track at the first or second corner. So why do I include Chequered Flag here? Wouldn't I be better off burying all memory of the game that made me realise there was something a little askew in my own internal programming? ( I now realise it was part of a type of dyslexia where I have difficulty with some co-ordination and the concept of lefts and rights .)
Well, no. This game is the game that introduced me to the joy of watching others play computer games. I find that I get more joy in watching someone else play a game than playing it myself. I have the opportunity to admire the scenery ( which on Spectrum games can be truly endearing), to take in the plot line (which on Spectrum games can be truly crazy ) and to look at the artistic qualities of all the sprites ( which on Spectrum games can be beautifully made) . I had found my niche in a computer gaming world.
I hope I will always be someone who enjoys playing computer games, but I also hope I will never lose my love for watching others play them and being able to appreciate them on a whole new level.
These days I now use the watching of computer games as a way of managing my stress load and switching my mind into neutral at the end of the day. Chequered Flag never educated me in the way my father thought it might, it never convinced me I was able to control something without me turning it into a weapon of mass destruction.
Instead it taught me something far more important, it taught me how to control stress.
These days I now use the watching of computer games as a way of managing my stress load and switching my mind into neutral at the end of the day. Chequered Flag never educated me in the way my father thought it might, it never convinced me I was able to control something without me turning it into a weapon of mass destruction.
Instead it taught me something far more important, it taught me how to control stress.