Checkered Flag

The Good
By today's standards it looks pretty darn blocky, but back in 1994 this was state-of-the-art for a home system. It's hard to estimate, but I'd guess that CF displays several hundred polygons per second, perhaps even over a thousand. For comparison, I'd say that Flag's polygon count is roughly the same as Cybermorph, but CF has deeper draw-in distance - and of course Checkered Flag is using a selection of colors that is less harsh on the eyes than Cybermorph's rather bright neons! There are ten circuits, each with differences in track layout. Some courses have tunnels, some have bridges, and others simply twist between hills. As with Cybermorph, there's no texture mapping at all, but unlike Cybermorph the programmers didn't bother with Gouraud shading, leading to rather vanilla-looking landscape. The light-gray terrain in "Concrete Canyon" doesn't really look that much different from the grayish snowy Arctic track - except that the Arctic track has snowmen and penguins on the roadside. (Someone should have pointed out to Rebellion that the Arctic has polar bears; penguins hang out in the Antarctic.) Still, in Checkered Flag the Jaguar's limited polygon drawing abilities are pushed hard.

The Bad
In the game manual Rebellion are proud to state that CF uses a "bell curve" to handle steering input: at first the steering input is very gentle, and then quickly becomes more sensitive. This is very different from most racing games. Let's face it, in the majority of racers you press constantly on the controller and lean hard into the steering as you sweep through the curve. However, with CF you must use "gentle taps" on the steering to finely tune your cornering; if you steadily hold the steering left or right, it's just too much input and your car swings wildly out of control. Rebellion apparently claimed this was more a more accurate depiction of true racing. Hey guys, it's a video game - it's not supposed to be accurate, it's supposed to be FUN! Now, I could buy into this "accurate simulation" argument if Checkered Flag were a simulation, but it's not. Clearly the game is meant to be an arcade racer, and the input should have been similar to every other arcade racer.

The Bottom Line
Overall, what do I think? Usually I complain that the overly-critical are just haters of the Jaguar, but in this one case they have a legitimate beef. Checkered Flag could have been fun and it isn't. This is definitely not a game for the Jaguar to be proud of. If you're thinking of buying a copy, this game isn't worth the postage to mail it! My score is a well-below average 3.5 out of 10.