Revolution


Revolution intro screen #1 Revolution intro screen #2
Revolution intro screens #1 & 2

Revolution intro screen #3 Revolution intro screen #4
Revolution intro screens #3 & 4

Revolution intro screen #5 Revolution intro screen #6
Revolution intro screens #5 & 6

Revolution game screen #1 Revolution game screen #2 (VW)
Revolution game screens #1 & 2 (VW)

Revolution game screen #3 (VW) Revolution game screen #4 (VW)
Revolution game screens #3 & 4 (VW)

Revolution game screen #5 Revolution game screen #6
Revolution game screens #5 & 6

Revolution game screen #7 (Porsche) Revolution game screen #8 (Lotus)
Revolution game screens #7 (Porsche) & 8 (Lotus)

Revolution game screen #9 (Ferrari) Revolution game screen #10
Revolution game screens #9 (Ferrari) & 10

Revolution game screen #11 (creating level-difficulty 1 Revolution game screen #12 (creating level-difficulty 7)
Revolution game screens #11 & 12 (creating level - difficulties 1 and 7)
Revolution game screen #13 (creating level-naming track)

Revolution is the commercial version (and highly enhanced) of a low resolution game from the September 1982 issue of Rainbow magazine written by the same author, called The Track. That was a game that could run in 16K of RAM and cassette, and let the player design their own tracks. It let the person typing the game in choose which of the 4 car settings they wanted to type in: VW, Datsun, Lotus or Ferrari, but only one was active. One fairly unique thing about it was the ability to design and save your own tracks.

By December, the "full" version of the game was out as a commercial release. This upgraded to 32K RAM & disk required (although a few months later a cassette only 16K version was also released) .The graphics were upgraded to PMODE 3, and the main driving part of the game is now in machine language with much better sound effects. The commercial release came with 10 different tracks pre-built in and, as with The Track, the player can create their own. They can be of varying lengths, and the with a track difficulty between 1 and 7 (the difficulty is how wide the track is). Four cars are included in Revolution, and you can switch between them between races. There is the VW, Porsche, Lotus and Ferrari, each with different acceleration and steering mechanics. Most tracks the player creates only take one granule, so there is room for dozens even on the main disk, and up to 68 on an empty disk. The game lets you pick how many laps you want to go through for each race, and will display which lap and your lap time as you complete each one. At the end of each race, you get some statistics including your average lap time, your best lap time, and how many times you drove off course. Each track keeps track of the best lap time and who set it (internally, it also keeps track of which car the player was driving when they set the record). The game itself is a vertical scrolling track from top to bottom with varying track widths and curves to follow. This game requires an analog joystick as well, as both it's steering and acceleration are more detailed than just 8 directions and the middle. For an early racing car game for the Coco, this one has good graphics and sound, but the ability to create one's own track pushes it above any others from that time.

An interesting bit of trivia from the September 1982 Rainbow The Track article - at the bottom of page 60 it mentions that not only was the author Al Hine the head of Inter + Action and a programmer, but he actually was a race car driver.

Title: Revolution

Author: Al Hine

Publisher:Inter + Action

Released: December 1982

Requires: Color Computer 1,2 or 3, Extended BASIC, 16K RAM (cassette only version) or 32K RAM (Disk version), joystick

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