A Mastertronic-published game at #1 is a good chance to reflect on some industry and chart matters. I talked in the Ghosts’n’Goblins entry about the oncoming force of budget games at a third of the standard price point, and here is their moment. Mastertronic’s business model was a fast output of games at a low price, with an emphasis on professional marketing. They attempted to push back budget games’ reputation for being a bit rubbish with consistency through more of a central quality filter for the unknowns they signed up, and by 1986 they were very big. Exactly how big is a matter of some dispute.
Right after the time of Speed King, there was some heated discussion about Gallup’s chart methodology. Which shops were included in the sample used to determine the listings had big implications for publishers, and particularly for Mastertronic. They weren’t stocked in major chain WHSmith, and so adding more of its stores to the charts had a dire effect on their presence. There was a suggestion this might be compensated by adding more Boots shops, but in the end Mastertronic masterfully managed to spin the situation into starting being stocked in WHSmith, disaster not just averted but turned into opportunity. What tops the charts is decided by a whole lot of different factors. From this distance, though, the bigger thing I take away from the situation is how mainstream games had already become. The biggest all-purpose high street chains were stocking games right alongside music singles, as well as increasingly at similar prices.
Speed King fits Mastertronic’s pattern of games by lesser known programmers (in this case one Mervyn Estcourt) with few frills but few obvious downfalls in production standards. It is the first motor-racing game of many that AAA will cover, though it was far from the first to be created. Pitstop and its sequel, to take an early favourite of mine as an example, were three and two years earlier respectively. Speed King is about racing motorcycles rather than cars, but the experience in game form is not all that different. You have a view from behind your vehicle, centred in the screen with the race track stretching out ahead of you, and you race against some other vehicles in a limited sort of 3D. It’s a basic model that would go unchanged for a very long time, and makes it a fairly unusual sport among sports video games. Usually, the model that those video games converge towards is looking like television coverage of the sport they’re based on, but motor racing has been much more resistant to that, the following shot from behind the vehicle being one you rarely see in TV.
Having played a lot of other racing games, though, the look of Speed King for the first time was as immediately familiar to me as the range of real-world circuits available to choose from on its rather basic menu (no call for championships or structure here, just select where to race). Brands Hatch, Silverstone, San Marino – all evocative names to me, this being another genre where I am coming in as a long-time fan of the associated sport and it makes a big difference. Though I would struggle to recognise any of the tracks in racing them, between the simplified layouts and pared back graphics. Nothing about a plain green background and some distinctly un-Kent mountains on the horizon really screams Brands Hatch. The focus is instead on creating as much of an illusion of speed as possible from the red and white curbs zooming past. And, for 1986, it’s a job well done!
The gameplay is not quite as instantly familiar as the look. There is no brake button, which is rare but might as well be the case for many other games of a similar era where you never need to slow down. For Speed King, though, there is no choice but to go slower, since you fall off first the track and then the bike at corners if you don’t. It’s just accomplished by other means. Pulling back and forward on the joystick changes up and down gears, and that’s how you control speed, going down to 3rd for a tricky corner before accelerating away and up to 6th. I found that I ended up watching the speedometer and gear display at the top of the screen as much, if not more, than the track. Being busy deciding whether 88mph is the ideal moment to switch and only looking at the track from the corner of your eye feels odd, but it enhances the illusion of speed when you can’t focus on any flaws.
After falling right out of my first race while I grappled with the controls, I started getting the hang of riding and enjoyed shaving seconds off my lap time each go round. Feeling out the limits of how fast I could do everything, turning the same corners from a pain to simple as I got to them once again – the same basic good feeling as I have been getting from similar games for a long time. Then I caught up with the other riders in the race en masse, couldn’t avoid touching against one of them, and saw my rider fly off their bike with exaggerated abruptness. My enjoyment hit the tarmac just as fast, never to fully recover. I suppose there is a reason it’s called Speed King and not Racing King.
