Radar Rat Race

The Good
Radar Rat Race (R3) is a clone of the 1981 Namco game Rally-X. It was a game where your car has to negotiate a maze collecting flags while avoiding cars and making sure you don't run out of time. You can slow down the cars by littering the paths with smokescreen. I guess that this game wasn't popular enough, considering that the game received very few ports.

Commodore USA brought it to the US market for its C64 and VIC-20 machines, and the game was also one of the launch titles for the VIC-20. Although the game mechanics are similar between the two games, Commodore modified the sprites to blend in with the title. The cars were replaced by rats, the rocks replaced by cats, and the flags replaced by pieces of cheese. The smokescreen is also changed to feces, which can be planted down as many times as you like, at the expense of reduced time.

R3 was also one of the first games where it was crucial for you to keep an eye on more than one area of the screen. There is a radar on the right below your score, and you need to keep tabs on it to avoid crashing into rats that may be zooming toward you.

The graphics and animations are not bad, even with the VIC's low screen resolution. I like how the layout is the same as Rally-X, and if you played Namco's game before this one and memorized the maze layouts, you'll feel right at home here. There is a bit of background music in the game, in the form of Three Blind Mice, with the first part heard as you start each level. The sound effects are on par with its arcade counterpart.

The Bad
As far as I know, R3 was only released for NTSC machines, so the display won't be right for people playing this game outside the US.

Unfortunately, the second part of Three Blind Mice gets irritating as you make your way around the maze.

The Bottom Line
For those VIC-20 owners who are not familiar with Rally-X, you drive around a maze collecting flags while avoiding crashing into other cars. Commodore modified the game when they brought it to US shores, changing the sprites and releasing it as Radar Rat Race. Other than this, the game mechanics are the same. Pity about the sound.