Nintendo Okie

There are few games that evoke a sense of nostalgia in me more than Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Super Off-Road. If you’re not familiar with the game it was an arcade game, usually a stand up cabinet that featured three steering wheels, most of the time broken, and gas pedals. It was a racing game that took place on one screen much like Super Sprint, though in an off-road Baja style race. The game was also featured on both the Nintendo and the Super Nintendo among many other platforms. I own, as I have since the mid 90′s the NES version of the game.

Off-Road, while the arcade version I remember being awesome, the NES version was not as good. It featured crude graphical details and fairly barren tracks. Aside from some slight elevation changes there wasn’t much to look at. The trucks themselves didn’t look like much more than a truck shaped blob, the wheels didn’t move. It looked very much like the trucks were scooting along the ground. Much of the was a result of the limitations to the NES hardware. It was despite those flaws one of the most memorable racing games of my childhood.

You raced on tracks with names like Fandango, Sidewinder and Cliffhanger, the last of which featured many levels that you could fall off resulting in many laps (and races) lost. There were six tracks featured in the NES edition of the game and you would race these same tracks over and over again until you could no longer continue. During your first 14 races continues were allowed and you could keep progressing. After the first 14 races you entered the tournament of champions mode which did not allow continues and you were racing until you came last too many times.

As you’re racing on the track two different types of items would drop onto the track; money and nitro. Nitro would allow you a quick burst of speed and money would be added to whatever winnings you had at the end of the race. These winnings would be used to upgrade your truck with higher speed, better acceleration, tires, shocks or nitro. All of these items had a limit to how far you could upgrade. Nitro was the only one you could upgrade past the available slots in your “inventory” where you could have up to 99 nitros.

There were some issues that caused the NES version of the game to not be as enjoyable as it could have been. The first is the fact that the AI would routinely cheat. It was very noticable that they would get speed bursts when you would hit the nitro button and they would not lose a nitro themselves. There were also many races where it wasn’t possible to win without spending dozens of your available nitro. This would be followed by a race where without using any power ups you would lap opponents and win races. The hit detection was also attrocious. There would be many times where you would hit a wall at an angle and be sent back in the opposite direction. Computer opponents would also be given all of their nitro back after each race where you would have to be content with what you had. If you used too many nitros in one race you’d be left with little to none for the next race while your opponents would be restored to their original 25.

One thing that would negate any computer advantages was by hooking up a Four Score to the system. This allowed up to four people to play together and they would all face all the same issues. There’s no denying the game was infinitely better with multiple friends playing together and it was a great party racing game.  Despite whatever flaws the game had it was one of the best racing games of its time and has served as the inspiration for many games that would follow it.