NOTE: This game is (c) Hanna Barbera, and is distributed freely without any profit as part of a digital preservation project. With thanks to David A Palmer productions.
Yet another surprise addition to the archives, and one we had no idea about. Before you say anything, Wacky Races was indeed released on the Commodore 64 – but not THIS Wacky Races. Did you ever notice the strange Richard Rinn tunes lurking in HVSC under the same name?
Well, it seems that Enigma Variations were the original development team for the game, creating a full game based on the very same design in 1991. The team apparently hit some problems finishing the game off, and so Keith Purkiss was brought in to help tie things together.
For reasons as yet unknown, Hi-Tec Software decided not to release the game and got in Rave Developments (Nick Taylor and Jason Brashill) to re-do the game, with music by David Spicer this time round. Hopefully we will learn more from the developer Jon Barry about what happened.
Thanks to Keith, we have been able to fully preserve the complete development, and also the source code too – which we’ve also included in the archive. As you will see, it follows the exact same game design, but has much larger characters and score panels.
It plays relatively well, and its hard to see why Hi-Tec rejected it (far worse games had been released by them). However, I did find that it was difficult to know what was coming up due to the size of everything on screen. There was little time to react to anything. In Nick’s version of the game, the sprites are much smaller and you can see more of what is ahead (it is a better version as a result).
Interestingly, contributor Stevie Aaron has found that the game is actually almost identical in design/style to the released Amiga version, which was done by Enigma Variations too:
Same large scale sprites – but this version was deemed ok to release. Might be more to it all than we think. It seems the other 8-bit versions are also scaled down (but not so much – almost like a half-way house between the two C64 versions), so perhaps a decision was made to bring those versions in-line. Or there are ZX + CPC versions out there of the larger car version too!
This is a wonderful curiosity and finding, and we’re pleased to have saved it from obscurity. Enjoy!
Contributions: Keith Purkiss, CSixx, Jazzcat, Martin Pugh, Stevie Aaron
Supporting content
Available downloads
- Game_WackyRacesV1 (zip)
- Source_WackyRacesV1 (zip)
Gallery
Update history
20/12/24 – Reference about the Amiga version added.
