AutoDuel

The Good
The game world is very large and has a lot of different cities. The roads between the cities branch and you need to learn the best routes unless you are prepared to drive round in circles.

The gameplay is completely open ended and you can play the game any way you like. There are courier missions to transport goods between towns, you can fight in the arena, or drive out and find battles on the highways to increase your stats and money. You can even just play poker in Atlantic city to raise your money and prestige if you prefer.

There are countless options for building a car with no ultimate set-up. Depending on how you want to play you can have a heavily armoured tank or something much faster and smaller. You can have your big weapons on the front of the car for attacking head on, at the rear for taking out pursuers or in any other direction you wish. You can own up to 8 cars and store them in garages, so you can even have a car for every occasion.

The Bad
What Origin achieved with one floppy disk on an Apple II is impressive, but the technology still limits the game. There is no real variety in missions and the graphics on the roads are very basic and quite slow. There is hardly any traffic for the standard missions, usually just a couple of cars between cities.

The drives between cities can get dull, especially if you go the long way round. You can be following the roads along for 5-10 minutes with nothing to do.

There are very few plot missions, and they don't really give the game any storyline. The game is more about building your car and it feels as though the plot missions were added just to give you a way to win.

The Bottom Line
This is a good game for 1985 and if anyone made a modern remake, I'd go out and buy it. It's a cross between Grand Theft Auto and Privateer, years before either of them came out. Unfortunately the Apple II wasn't really capable of doing justice to the idea and the game is a bit limited as a result.