AHEAD OF THE GAME
Back in the 1980s, television shows focusing on crime fighting often featured investigators driving around exotic locations in the kind of high-powered sports cars their salaries are unlikely to have been able to accommodate. In the case of Magnum PI and Miami Vice, European sports cars were the chariots of choice — readers who grew up during the decade of excess will be just as familiar with the image of Tom Selleck in a Hawaiian shirt spinning the wheels of a red Ferrari 308 GTS as they are with Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas brushing their pastel suits against a white Testarossa.
Things were different in the film world, where audiences laughed out loud at the sight of law enforcement vehicles being systematically destroyed en masse. Here, the baddies had the cool cars, while plod had to make do with poorly handling barges exhibiting unshakable enthusiasm for crashing into inexplicably positioned piles of cardboard boxes, fire hydrants or, as guffawing movie goers favoured, other police cars.
Many arcade games were inspired by these films and television shows.
Sega’s Out Run was one of the most popular, but where this “high-action road racing adventure” from 1986 was simply a time trial to get to the end of each level (in a Testarossa Spider, no less), 1989’s Taito hit, Chase HQ, upped the ante by introducing vehicular combat. Sure, you still needed to get to the end of each level within the allotted time frame, but the objective was to do so having used your black Porsche 928 to forcefully stop cars being driven by criminals.
A level playing field was given to cops and crims: Ralph, the Idaho Slasher, drove a Lotus Esprit, while Carlos, the New York armed robber, drove a Lamborghini Countach. The Chicago Pushers (evidently doing well for themselves) drove a 959. With the right player at the controls, however, none were capable of escaping the 928. What a game. What a car.