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Tranz Am

Moby ID: 14731

Description official description

Tranz Am is set in a post-apocalyptic world, placing you on the ruins of America. Eight Great Cups of Ultimate are scattered around the country, and you must collect these in your vehicle.

Fuel is in short supply, and you must drive over one of the fuel pumps to refill. Contact with trees costs you a life, as does contact with the Black Patrol Cars. The gameworld has an invisible border, which causes the car to reverse automatically, so watch out that this doesn't cause a crash. There is a map at the side of the screen, which locates the fuel and your car, but obviously not the Cups.

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Credits (ZX Spectrum version)

4 People

Designed by
Programming by
Graphics by
Cover artwork

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 78% (based on 4 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.2 out of 5 (based on 6 ratings with 1 reviews)

How we cruised the USA back in the 80ā€™ies

The Good
Trans Am is a very open game. You are in control of a red car. You can cruise around the USA looking for the eight great cups. This sounds more than it is because it doesnā€™t take you more than a minute to drive from one end of the USA to the other. You have a small map on the screen that shows you your position and also shows a tiny dot whenever you come close to a cup, a petrol station or a black car chasing you. The black cars that chase you around add a bit of excitement to the game. They have a rudimentary AI built in and can attack you from the sides even if you drive as fast as you can. When two cars are chasing your car you can drive slow or fast and do tight turns to shake the cars of you. It is also fun to let them chase you when you drive towards a tree and then at the last second do a sharp turn so the car chasing you crashes into the tree. The best part about Trans Am is that it actually seems to be perfectly realistic to be able to finish it. We never made it that far though, at the height of its popularity at our house we got seven out of the eight cups.

The Bad
It takes some practice before you master the art of shaking of cars chasing you and itā€™s sometimes irritating that you have to be constantly looking for gas all the time.

The Bottom Line
Out of all of Ultimate Play the Gameā€™s legendary first batches of games for the Spectrum, Trans Am always seems to get the least respect. In my view it is at least as good as Jetpac. As a top down racer it isnā€™t perfect because there are no tracks to race on, as a racing game and adventure itā€™s excellent.

ZX Spectrum · by Nakre Nakresson (68) · 2006

Trivia

Cassette release

As well as releasing the game on cartridge, Sinclair planned to reissue it on cassette, but although a catalogue number exists for it, this edition has never been found and is one of the Holy Grails for Spectrum collectors.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Martin Smith.

Additional contributors: karttu, Alaka, ZeTomes.

Game added September 12, 2004. Last modified March 8, 2024.